Fascists Are Racist. Yet, They Are Just as Much Sexist as Racist
From the East, Middle East, Eastern Europe and more, regimes want to conquer more than just people of color.
Most people want equality and prefer peace over aggression
Recently, former president Trump rallied support for his 2024 election by decrying “the radical left communists, Marxists, and fascists.” But, this suggests everyone who wants inclusion and social change is somehow radical, or fascist.
Most people are not.
As often noted by Medium writers Elle Beau and Katie Jgln, the patriarchy is not about men mistreating women, but about who has power and authority. Any lopsided control that portrays domination and aggression as a primary tool for social order is suspect.
It’s also very important who calls out it when it leads to inequality and even genocide.
At the recent Republican debate, several candidates — notably, as the only woman, Nikki Haley — asserted how strong and tough they were, insinuating that non-dominating politicians can’t handle the global ‘playground’ without bullying. However as a former international diplomat, Haley knows better.
At the debate, Haley even managed to even bring the subject of her high heels to the fight — as metaphorical weapons — as well as calling Ramaswamy “scum.” This may be seen as progress for women who are free to speak their mind, but it’s more nuanced than that.
Appearing tough means candidates are hawkish for war, intolerant of outsiders or foreigners having influence, and adamant that the marginalized, be they fellow women, or people of color, immigrants, or even non-combatant citizens are fair game in social, or literal, war.
This zombie idea of Social Darwinism still grabs for the throats of people around the world, and it often suggests that women, by nature, have more graspable necks.
We are so indoctrinated to think that you must be a dominating fighter to be a leader that we usually do not question such suggestions. Instead, we can blindly follow this guidebook on the road to fascism.
We fight racism more ardently than we fight sexism
In Hitler’s Germany, it was all about ‘race’. The ones who wanted white supremacists to rule as a ‘master race’ were against any ‘others’ who were Jewish, Slav, Black, Roma, or somehow not Aryan.
The master race soon won the hearts of just enough people that everyone else felt forced to comply, or possibly die.
Except that, here is the thing. It was not all about race. It was just as much about sex and gender. The Nazis did not tolerate LGBTQ+ people and they had very definite roles limiting the freedom of women.
Authoritarian regimes can, and do lead to fascism. Across the board, authoritarians fear one thing above all: the empowerment of women. Women represent the subjugated and inferior. All other “inferiors” in the acceptance of such an order also fall into place once this rule is firmly established.
In Nazi Germany, the role of women, even if it had been all about race, was to proliferate more of the master race, Aryan boys and girls. master gentlemen prefer blondes and blue eyes, if possible, but baby-makers could come in every color, size, and shape of uterus.
It’s almost a century later, why fear such fascists now? It’s important to see sexism and racism together for what they are. Today, all over the world there are those who want to limit people according to their color and their genitals.
Liberty is a woman
Please take note when speeches, or ads, or media of any kind advocate that there’s a natural order suggesting we all want to be strong and tough, but only in a ‘manly’ way that dismisses endurance, resilience, expression, and femininity.
We really truly need the strength of all sexes, genders, and colors.
We can examine the preferred role of women and LGBTQ+ people among Trumpeteers. In either case, male supremacy demands domination and/or dismissal. Even a moral code is asserted that insists gender and sexuality must be socially monitored for compliance.
Think of the ideal version hour-glass woman who has no place in the world except as a kind of trophy. Sometimes a broken trophy, but always a feminized, objectified one. The being and voice of these women only have value (temporarily) if they stick to rigid roles. Motherhood offers them another role, to create future workers to uphold the system.
Women in such a system have no bodily autonomy except as granted by men who make the rules. If you think Western women are free, just examine who decides who should have babies, and when. It tells us much.
Today, women have votes and property ownership because suffragists valiantly demanded them for more than half a century. What would our world look like without women, their science, sacrifice, steadfastness, spine, and spunk?
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