Whenever the reactionaries carry out a terror campaign, they utilize the applicable social base within the society where the killings take place. In Indonesia under the CIA-installed military regime, this base was found in the Muslim communities, which could be persuaded through anti-communist atrocity propaganda to assist in the extermination of dissidents and ethnic Chinese. Under the European fascist states, the base for the concentration camps and mass executions was found in the petty bourgeoisie and labor aristocrats, who could crudely be called the “middle class.” In the United States, the base supporting all of the reactionary terror campaigns of the past, present, and future is centered around settlerism.
This base can be considered distinct from that of European fascism because though the petty bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy are also instrumental parts of U.S. fascism—the Capitol Hill rioters were predominantly petty capitalists, law enforcement members, armed forces members, and sheltered suburbanites—settlerism is a trait that’s particular to reactionary movements within the settler-colonial countries. Whereas the capitalists and capitalist lackeys in Europe are fighting to preserve their status within an oligarchic system which exists on their own homelands—with the exception of the part of Ireland that’s still ruled by British settler-colonialism—those tied to U.S. capital are fighting to preserve not just the bourgeois state, but the colonial occupation this state is built upon. Capital only has a presence on this continent because of the genocide of the indigenous peoples, the use of free African labor that still hasn’t been paid back, and the construction of a global empire on the foundations of this ill-gotten territory and wealth.
Integral to this empire has been the sharing of its stolen land and wealth with the whites, at least in select amounts and among the whites who’ve been lucky enough not to get pushed to the destitute peripheries of capitalist society. This engineering of scarcity, even among the most favored group, has conditioned the settlers into a mindset that’s perfectly aligned with fascism: racially based social darwinism, where the whites are incentivized to ruthlessly compete with each other for imperialism’s spoils while keeping down the colonized peoples who rightfully own the foundations for this wealth. Under settler-colonialism, the fascist is preoccupied not just with crushing the working class movement, but with crushing any movements that may bring about the end of settler-colonialism—and therefore the basis for the existence of capital. Which is why the decolonial struggle is so crucial for communists here to study and fight on behalf of.
It’s this dual agenda of colonial and class warfare that produced the Ku Klux Klan poster which said: “Negroes beware—do not attend communist meetings. Paid organizers for the communists are only trying to get negroes in trouble. Alabama is a good place for good negroes to live in, but it is a bad place for negroes who believe in SOCIAL EQUALITY. The Ku Klux Klan is watching you. Take heed. Tell the communist leaders to leave. Report all communist meetings to the Ku Klux Klan.”
Such is the agenda behind the U.S. version of Jakarta. The Jakarta Method, consisting of carrying out a coup and terrorizing the communist movement into submission, was replicated across the Latin American settler-colonial states throughout the Cold War. The name Jakarta became associated with the CIA-facilitated extermination campaigns throughout the region, where reactionaries in different countries tailored the term to fit with their own projects for mass murder. The only reason Jakarta still hasn’t come to the U.S.—and I say this in a purely literal sense, as governmental killings of black liberation fighters in particular have absolutely taken place—is because the U.S. empire hasn’t yet reached the point in its decline where it sees such drastic measures as necessary. When the empire does reach such a stage, it will fully employ Jakarta.
And the Klan’s rallying cry towards terrorizing colonized peoples for the purpose of eliminating communism will reflect how the empire goes about this, because it’s in settler-colonialism that the social base for an extermination campaign exists. In 1995, Umberto Eco wrote: “Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old ‘proletarians’ are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.” In the settler-colonial context, this can be translated to a scenario where the settlers, particularly the ones with a little bit of capital or a job that’s tied to capital, embrace white supremacist paranoia.
Kyle Rittenhouse is a good example of this. At under 20, his personal net worth is known to be around $50 thousand, not rich but also a vast step above what most people own in the neoliberal era. This is in spite of him having only ever worked as a fry cook and janitor, aside from his attendance of various local police cadet programs. These are the comfortable conditions that incentivize the reactionary settlers in this country to fight for the preservation of capital, whether so that they can continue enjoying these comforts or so that they can attain them. The logical conclusion of this is the militaristic, ultra-nationalist, and anti-intellectual obsessions that Eco described in his analysis of the fascist mindset. The logical conclusion of which is mass murder against the undesirables.
When Jakarta comes to America, it will be carried out by settlers who seek to fortify the occupation of Native lands, the ongoing marginalization of the African communities so that slavery reparations can continue being avoided, and the exploitation of the Global South. All of which are integral to the petty wealth of people like Rittenhouse, and the towering wealth of the capitalists whose interests are adjacent to theirs.
These are the social factors that just led to another one of the settler reactionaries shooting into a crowd of racial justice protesters in Portland, killing one and wounding several others. The recent political factors no doubt have to do with the settler state’s justice system having found Rittenhouse not guilty, accepting his claim that he shot the 2020 Black Lives Matter protesters in self-defense. This latest participant in the country’s rising fascist terror campaign will no doubt claim the same, and will likely be let off as well. Over the years, these kinds of killings will get more frequent, their participants emboldened by an empire that’s eager to use them as footsoldiers for its collapsing capital. They’re who we’ll have to defend from as we fight to abolish the United States, return full jurisdiction to the occupied indigenous nations, and build workers democracy on this continent.
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