The Roots of U.S. Fascism with Prof. Johanna Fernandez

“At a labor conference on Fascism, Democracy, and a workers party, CUNY AFT PSC professor Johanna Fernandez gave a presentation on the roots of fascism and the US working class. This presentation was made on September 7, 2024 in Los Angeles at the conference initiated by Roofers Local 36.

“Production of Labor Video Project www.labormedia.net” —quotation from video description.

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“A workers meeting of labor and the community is being organized in Los Angeles on the issue of fascism, democracy and a workers party. Cliff Smith who is the business manager of Roofers Local 36 in Los Angeles has initiated a day long meeting in Los Angeles on September 7 on the issue of fascism, democracy and the formation of a workers party.

“Cliff Smith who is the Business Manager of Roofers Local 36 in Los Angeles with the support of his local has called for a labor community conference on Fascism, Democracy and a Workers Party.

“He spoke with Steve Zeltzer of WorkWeek about this meeting in Los Angeles on September 7, 2024 and why labor and working people need to get educated and organized to prepare for a fascist movement and another possible insurrection and coup attempt.

“He also discussed the bi-partisan support for trillions of dollars for wars abroad and the continuing US supported Israeli genocide in Gaza and the recent Zionist Fascist attacks on a UCLA peaceful encampment for Palestine. […]”

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“920 S. Alvarado St., Los Angeles, CA 90006-3008

“Event by Roofers Union Local 36, Elect Cliff Smith to L.A. City Council District 8, and five others. […]”

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The presentation on fascism by Prof. Johanna Fernandez in the video above from the 2024 Los Angeles Roofers Local 36 Conference is the type of excellent presentation, which would have been featured on the original KPFA. The KPFA I knew in the 1980s and ’90s has been increasingly morphed into an NPR-ized version of itself by those, who disagree with keeping KPFA true to its antiwar and social justice activism mission. This NPR-ized version of KPFA—manifested by Democrat-Party-apologist liberals on KPFA (e.g., Mitch Jeserich, Philip Maldari, Brian Edwards-Tiekert, et al.) and supported by their proxies (i.e., “KPFA Protectors”, et al.) on the KPFA Local Station Board—filters compelling perspectives out of KPFA’s airwaves, such as those of Prof. Johanna Fernandez, as much as they can, whilst maintaining a façade of authentic, honest, grassroots, radical (i.e., going to the root causes of social ills), community radio.

KPFA listeners used to regularly hear compelling, radical, provocative, inspiring, and politically mobilizing speeches and talks from people like Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, Ralph Nader, Arundhati Roy, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Pam Africa, Utah Phillips, Howard Zinn, John Trudell, and others. With radical voices like those regularly on the air, KPFA listeners could not be so easily fooled or seduced by the “lesser of two evils“. KPFA listeners had a more sophisticated grasp of just how rigged our political system has been, how important political alternatives are, and how important political reform is to realizing the will of the people. As KPFA’s editorial direction increasingly drifted towards the political center, becoming duller, many of those listeners turned away from KPFA.

So, KPFA has lost tens of thousands of listener-members, as it has largely lost its edge whilst pandering to the political center, a center which perpetually shifts rightward in the absence of any meaningful leftist counterbalance to rightist extremism. Granted, many of the above luminaries, like Michael Parenti or Utah Phillips, are retired from the public eye or are no longer with us. But there are many new radical and cogent voices, such as Prof. Johanna Fernandez, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Maté, Omali Yeshitela, Scott Ritter, Chris Hedges, Ben Norton, Esther Iverem, et al. who deserve to populate the KPFA airwaves. Instead, we mostly get a lot of Democrat Party apologism and establishment punditry/sophistry from KPFA programmers, like Mitch Jeserich, Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Philip Maldari, Kris Welch, et al.

I was looking for some good radio to listen to this morning (11 SEP 2024) during the 4am timeslot, as I got myself ready for the work day. But KPFA disappointed me with hours of electronic music, which I find uninteresting. Don’t get me wrong. I love electronic music, along with many other genres, from classic jazz to metal to classical to hip hop to Americana to mariachi, and many other genres in between. But this was a waste of KPFA airtime, in my opinion, especially when the state of the world (locally, regionally, nationally, globally) continues to worsen. And good, honest, compelling, critical news and information is so scarce these days, even on free speech radio KPFA, which increasingly sounds as mealy-mouthed and middle-of-the-road as NPR or PBS.

So, I turned to YouTube and found this excellent presentation on fascism today in the USA by Prof. Johanna Fernandez, which reminded me of the KPFA I grew up with in the 1980s and 1990s, even in the early 2000s. The issue of burgeoning fascism and totalitarianism is an important issue, which is underreported. Recall the important book by Prof. Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, with an Introduction by Chris Hedges. These types of descriptions and analyses communicate a more honest portrait of our nation and the world, which listeners used to be educated about on KPFA. These are the types of voices listeners deserve to hear on KPFA’s airwaves, voices not commonly heard elsewhere, yet which challenge conventional thinking.

Prof. Johanna Fernandez, speaking in the video above from the 2024 Roofers Local 36 Conference (c. 27min 29sec): “In the 1930s, there was a [Great Economic] Depression. And, ironically, fascism emerges in Europe. But it doesn’t emerge in the United States. Why doesn’t it emerge in the United States? It doesn’t emerge in the United States because there was an organized, coordinated, revolutionary union movement, that explained to the workers: The problem is not the Mexicans and the blacks and the immigrants. The problem is our rulers and the captains of industry, who will do anything to take home profits, even if it costs us our lives.

“And the most epic union movement was built, that averted fascism in this country. The only thing, that will avert the re-emergence of fascism or its threat is a working-class movement, that teaches the working class—the white working class—the root causes of their betrayal. And that cannot happen within the Democratic Party.

“If you think about what has happened in this country over the last 50 years, union halls are empty in the middle of fucking-nowhere-America, where they’re most needed. Before the 1980s and ’90s, white people probably had backward ideas. But they went to the union meeting; they talked to their guys; and they got a different understanding of the world. That doesn’t exist anymore. So, it is our responsibility to actually rebuild the movement of workers, a union movement, and a workers party, that will explain the deep crisis and despair that white Americans are experiencing, but that we are experiencing, too, and that the entire world is living through.”

Prof. Johanna Fernandez said, “The only thing, that will avert the re-emergence of fascism or its threat is a working-class movement, that teaches the working class—the white working class—the root causes of their betrayal.” She was speaking about the working class, particularly the white working class, having been betrayed by neoliberalism, by the two-party dictatorship of collusion between the Democrat and Republican parties both facilitating corporate capitalism, shipping jobs overseas, and the deindustrialization of the nation. However, an important institution for peace and for averting fascism in the USA has been the Pacifica Radio Network, which has a duty and responsibility enshrined within its Mission Statement to educate the working class and all people about the root causes of conflicts and wars, such as the military-industrial-congressional complex. Unfortunately, the dominant editorial direction of KPFA manifested by the likes of Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Mitch Jeserich, Ian Masters, Philip Maldari, Thom Hartmann, and KPFA News Anchors Max Pringle, Scott Baba, et al. refuses to discuss root causes. Instead, they perpetuate the false left-right paradigm, which redirects listeners’ attention away from the militarism and anti-working-class agendas of the Democrat Party and focuses listeners’ attention mainly on the militarism and anti-working-class agendas of the Republican Party. This is another kind of betrayal; this is establishment apologism. This is a lack of journalistic integrity. This is a betrayal of the Pacifica Radio Network mission.

Prof. Johanna Fernandez (c. 29min 47sec): “There was deindustrialization in the United States. But there’s also deindustrialization happening now in the third world. Right? And, so, the reason why there are immigrants flooding into our cities is because capitalism has created wars and de-industrial displacement everywhere. And where else are they gonna go, but where they think they can survive?

“So, if we think that our situation in the United States is a hellscape, tell that to the Syrians and to the people from the Ukraine and to the people from Palestine and to the people coming from the Congo, who are dying en route to safe haven in Europe and America. These are people, who are literally taking a path of death out of their countries and walking hundreds and hundreds and thousands of miles to get to safety.

“So, that’s why fascism is on the rise, not just in the United States, but around the world, because capitalism is in a crisis, that it cannot contain.

“And what’s happening in Palestine, the genocide that’s happening in Palestine is a taste of what the world is up against in the future. The Palestinians are being killed because their labor is not important. They are a marginal people, disconnected to industry in the global economy. So, [capitalists] can disappear them.

“But that’s the case with people in the Congo. That’s the case with many people here in the United States. That’s why [President Nayib] Bekele in El Salvador has built a prison of 40,000 people. But that large-scale prison was first built in the United States. And, now, it’s being exported all over the world, [including] in India.

“So, this is what the ruling class has in store for us. And what we need to do is wake up to the magnitude of the crisis that’s going to destroy and devastate humanity on a scale unseen. And we’ve not even talked about the environment. […]

“On this question of internationalism, part of what you’re saying and illustrating is the profound creativity and knowledge and skill of workers around the world, regardless of nation. And that’s, ultimately, what we need to amplify, rather than our nationality.”

It’s truly a shame that KPFA did not inform its listeners about this inspiring event, the 2024 Roofers Local 36 Conference in Los Angeles. An event like this used to be part of the DNA, part of the heart and soul of free speech radio KPFA. At one point, journalist and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal called in from prison to the event during Prof. Johanna Fernandez’s presentation and spoke in solidarity with the “objectives of this meeting”, referring to the Conference. As Mumia said, the conference was “remarkable” and “timely” “because [of] the choices before us. The choices represented by the two major political parties—the Democrats and the Republicans—are really choices between neoliberalism and neofascism”, “which is really the same thing. And those are not choices for working people because what both parties and the neoconservative and neoliberal movements present [prison telephone message interruption] is the sale of their party to the highest bidder. To suggest that the corporate elites, the wealthy, the super-wealthy are in control of these parties is but to state the obvious. The only thing they don’t control is independent workers, who gather together to defend their class interests and the interests not just of their people but of all people, of the common people of the world. That can be done. But it must be a conscious effort by people who want to see social transformation […]”

This is an example of a living community embodiment of the spirit of the Pacifica Mission Statement, which is filtered out of free speech KPFA by the dominant editorial patronage clique represented by the “KPFA Protectors” proxies on the KPFA Local Station Board.

I did a quick search for Prof. Johanna Fernandez on KPFA.org and there were only a few entries from years ago, circa 2016-2020. Why is Prof. Johanna Fernandez not featured more often on KPFA?

These issues inform my participation as a 2024 KPFA Local Station Board candidate. I am honored to have been nominated as a listener candidate. And I understand that not every one in the Rescue Pacifica organization will agree with everything I have to say. But I trust defenders of free speech will defend my right to exercise my First Amendment-protected right to free speech, whether they agree with me or not. The best antidote to bad speech is more good free speech, rather than censorship.

—Felipe “Phil” Messina, 2024 KPFA Local Station Board (LSB) Candidate

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NB: The views and opinions expressed in the above commentary do not necessarily reflect the views of the Rescue Pacifica organization or other Rescue Pacifica LSB members or candidates.

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This post was last edited/modified on 11 SEP 2024 at 20:15 PDT.