The "Correlation of Forces" That Bode for a Fascist Future
Cold War metrics foretell a victory for autocratic forces.
During the Cold War, the Americans and their allies would compare the “balance of forces” between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. This concept measured military hardware and troop numbers on each side. We feared that Moscow’s superior numbers of tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and infantry divisions could storm through the Fulda Gap and overwhelm Western forces. The Soviets, on the other hand, spoke of the “correlation of forces.” This concept was actually more sophisticated in that it also incorporated intangibles such as civilian and troop morale, coherence among allies and ideological commitment. Moscow to this day misreads these intangibles, for example entertaining the same misguided trope that the West is decadent, divided and therefore weak. Hence, a delusion-driven Putin bumbles into Ukraine. And we used to misread them by not taking into enough consideration the intangibles of incompetence and rot in communist regimes (not to mention the Mafia-state that is Putin’s Russia).
As an unreconstructed former Cold War functionary, I often apply the correlation of forces tool in assessing non-military matters. Lately, I’ve been using it to analyze American politics, and I’m deeply disturbed at what I’m finding: the serious reality of a fascist future.
The far-right has been methodically putting into place over many years the components necessary for the ultimate installation of an authoritarian regime. The oft-heard scowl of “Own the Libs!” encapsulates this plan in a nutshell.
Consider the following:
The successful years-long process, conducted by the Federalist Society with a huge assist by Mitch McConnell, of packing the courts, especially the Supreme Court, with pliant right-wing judges. The result: a 6-to-3 conservative SCOTUS majority pursuing a political agenda that has torpedoed Roe v. Wade and is now brazenly defending Donald Trump in his court cases. Add to this the unchecked corruption on the part of some justices and consequent record low public approval of the court. Look next for rulings favoring the authoritarian-leaning “unitary executive” concept.
Republicans have been putting into place so-called “ballot integrity measures” since 1986, the actual aim of which is to discourage Democrat-leaning constituencies such as African-Americans, other minorities and the poor from voting.
The 2010 Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision allowing unlimited donations to political campaigns. So that today, just 50 billionaires have already spent more than $600 million on the 2024 election campaigns, with that number surely to increase in the coming months. More than two-thirds of this ocean of cash is going to Republicans.
Also in 2010, Republicans launched Operation REDMAP to elect Republicans to state legislatures in advance of the 2010 census-mandated redistricting. The result has been extreme partisan gerrymandering in Red and swing states aimed at making it nearly impossible for Democrats to win elections even if gaining a majority of the vote.
The 2013 Supreme Court Shelby County v. Holder decision neutered the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requiring states with a history of racial discrimination to obtain Department of Justice approval prior to changing voting laws. With preclearance no longer required, Red states promptly began enacting new measures that discriminate against voters of minority groups.
Hard-right operatives have filed a series of lawsuits alleging that the federal government is suppressing conservative speech. One (Murthy v. Missouri), now before the Supreme Court, alleges that the federal government has colluded with social media companies to suppress the freedom of speech of conservatives. This is a MAGA ploy to try to stifle honest efforts to track autocratic disinformation production and dissemination in the United States.
Senator Mark Warner, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum that “we are actually less prepared today than we were four years ago” to protect ourselves from foreign attempts to influence the 2024 election. This is not only because authoritarian propaganda campaigns have become more sophisticated, but also because “the lawsuits, threats, and smear tactics have chilled government, academic, and tech-company responses.”
Applebaum adds:
One could call this a secret authoritarian “plot” to preserve the ability to spread antidemocratic conspiracy theories, except that it’s not a secret. It’s all visible, right on the surface. Russia, China, and sometimes other state actors — Venezuela, Iran, Hungary — work with Americans to discredit democracy, to undermine the credibility of democratic leaders, to mock the rule of law. They do so with the goal of electing Trump, whose second presidency would damage the image of democracy around the world, as well as the stability of democracy in America, even further.
Can we then not label today’s GOP “an American Fifth Column”?
More indicators on the tangible side include:
26 percent of Americans believe that autocracy is a “very good” or “somewhat good” form of government, while another 28 percent think it’s only “somewhat bad,” according to Pew Research. Furthermore, 15 percent surveyed said they think military rule would be good, and another 23 percent believe it would be only “somewhat bad.”
Recent polls report Biden and Trump neck-and neck nationwide, though they also show Biden trailing Trump in five key swing states. Polls have tended to underestimate Trump’s support, not overestimate it. An NBC poll earlier this year shows Trump has a 22-point lead over Biden on whom voters trust more to deal with the economy. This constitutes a 15-point increase for Trump compared to the same poll in 2020.
As to who would do a better job on dealing with immigration, Biden is 35 points behind Trump.
Only a third of Americans say they approve of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
As to who is more competent overall, a recent NBC News poll shows that Biden led Trump by nine points in 2020, but Trump today leads by 16 points, a 25-point change that appears to reflect a popular negative perception of the president’s age.
44 percent of Americans surveyed by IPSOS said that a conviction of Trump in Manhattan would have no impact on their likelihood to support Trump for president. 60 percent of Republicans believe outright that he is not guilty in that case; 65 percent of Republicans believe Trump is innocent in the 2020 election subversion case; 61 percent believe he is not guilty in the classified documents case, while 67 percent think he is guilt-free on the Fulton County, Georgia election subversion charges.
Meanwhile, FBI Director Christopher Wray has told Congress, “The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now, and it’s not going away anytime soon.” Former acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf reported, “I am particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years.” Factoid: there are more guns (400 million) in the U.S. than people (333 million) — 120.5 firearms in civilian possession per every 100 residents, a rate exceeded only by violence-wracked Yemen. Add to this: a startling 33 percent of Republicans (and an even larger 41 percent of Trump supporters) agreed with the statement that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”
When I get too down in the dumps by these data, I turn to the indefatigable Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg. A veteran of political campaigns, Rosenberg scrupulously backs up his assertions with hard data. His central premise: Biden is doing much better among likely voters and his strength is steadily increasing. He delves deeper into recent ABC News and NPR/Marist polls comparing Biden-Trump:
ABC News: Adults: 44% Biden vs. 46% Trump; Regular Voters: 46% Biden vs. 45% Trump; Likely Voters: 49% Biden vs. 45% Trump.
NPR/Marist: Regular Voters: 50% Biden vs. 48% Trump; Likely Voters: 51% Biden vs 46% Trump.
As for the swing states, he notes that polling samples thus far have been small — in the mere hundreds. “There is now mounting evidence that as we move into the likely voter universe, and we use larger sample size (more accurate) polls, Biden’s numbers get better. The polls with the largest sample size in the battleground states — CBS — found MI, PA, WI tied, no Trump lead. A large sample size WI poll this week found Biden up 6.”
The upshot, per Rosenberg:
So, no, Trump is not winning this election. As voters get closer to making their choice, the ugliness of MAGA is causing Trump and Republicans to lose ground. Our strength among the emerging likely voter electorate is a big deal. It means we are far more likely to win this November, and that all this red wavy analysis we’ve seen has not yet caught up to the realities of what we are seeing now. If we keep doing the work, what should happen this November is that we win, again, and they lose, again.
On the intangible side of the correlation of forces ledger, one must consider morale and motivation among candidates’ followers, election turnout, apathy and the potential for violence, including another insurrection instigated by sore-loser Trump and other election deniers. Add to this, how will defenders of democracy react and what measures would the federal government and Congress take to control the situation, or not?
So, viewing America’s fate through the prism of what the Soviets called the “objective factors” relating to the “correlation of forces,” I apply the following analytics defined by a Soviet writer in the 1970s:
The correlation of forces between the two systems is a correlation of their class forces and not of their military strength... The correlation of class forces includes such elements as: the economic potential and the solidity of the economic structure of society; the extent of cooperation between its different classes and strata; the population's support for the government; the impact and efficiency of state power; the political and ideological unity and strength of society; the amount of cooperation and cohesion of the states and the political forces in the system as a whole.
Not bad, actually, eh?
As for the state of the U.S. economy, the “objective factors” should favor Biden, but the public isn’t seeing it that way; more Americans think Trump was and would be better on economic issues. “Cooperation between the different classes and strata” is low and diminishing. Support for the government is nonexistent among the American hard-right and not a whole lot higher among the rest. Efficiency of state power is weakening as court cases against Trump are delayed and sabotaged and Red state governors repeatedly get away with challenging Washington’s power on issues ranging from immigration to voting rights. Political and ideological unity and strength of society can best be described as approaching a pre-civil war level. The same can be said for cooperation and cohesion of the states and the political forces in the system as a whole.
My thinking therefore has not changed from three years ago when I wrote in Fascism: Are We There Yet?, “As [the] election approaches, and the heat is turned up further, violence, I fear, is inevitable, perhaps on a large scale. And should the radicalized GOP win, or steal, the 2024 elections, count on some form of creeping fascism displacing our democracy. And it will be because the American people allowed it.”
With that, dear comrades, I need a stiff vodka. Do svidaniya.