Authoritarianism / Fascism

Dykes on Bikes Melbourne describes itself as a volunteer-run, not-for-profit motorcycle club for LGBTQ+ folks who identify as women, non-binary or genderqueer, and the group is known for its activism. As a Melbourne member, one of Kieran’s favourite recent experiences was leading the Trans Day of Visibility: Reclaim the Streets protest in March 2023.

After Nazi protesters spouting dangerous transphobic and racist rhetoric were offered police protection, Dykes on Bikes stepped in. The group led thousands of trans folks and allies in a huge protest, and Kieran remembers riding down the street and hearing the marchers chanting: ‘You can’t run, you can’t hide, Dykes on Bikes are on our side!’ Kieran said: “Just thinking about it now gives me chills. I will remember it forever.”

Draft of the Chapter published in Fascism and Theatre: The Politics and Aesthetics of Performance in the Era of Fascism, ed. Günter Berghaus, Berg, Oxford (1994), pp. 11-29.

On the weekend of October 14-15, the state Labor government in New South Wales threatened to ban a pro-Palestinian protest in Sydney, on the grounds that it could result in incidents of violence and hate crimes. A demonstration opposing the bombardment of Gaza in Melbourne was also met by a massive police presence.

Actual Nazis, walking through Melbourne like stormtroopers and hunting for Jewish people, received a tiny fraction of the negative media coverage that the mass peaceful Palestinian protests did. This glaring disparity only underscores that the official campaign over anti-Semitism is a conscious fraud. The media is cynically using the accusation against people it knows are not hostile to Jews, while largely responding with indifference to those who are actual anti-Semites.

Blaming Russia, or third party candidates who never poll in significant numbers for the election of Trump and the rise of Christian fascism, is infantile. The Libertarian Party received 1.2 percent of the vote in the last presidential election. The Greens, 0.26 percent. The death blow to democracy is not those who vote for fringe parties, but apathy. Eighty million eligible voters did not vote in the last presidential election, no doubt because they did not expect much to change in their lives whoever was in office. And they were probably right.

The root cause of our political distress lies with a liberal class that places corporate and personal profit above the common good. Liberals have conspired, since the presidency of Bill Clinton, to strip the country of manufacturing, and with it, jobs that sustained the working class. They have been partners in the transformation of democratic institutions into tools to consolidate the power and wealth of corporations and the ruling oligarchs. They forgot the fundamental lesson of fascism. Fascism is always the bastard child of bankrupt liberalism. This was true in Weimar Germany. It was true in Italy. It was true in the former Yugoslavia with its warring ethnic factions. And it is true in the United States.