People in the U.S and throughout the world have seen Donald Trump — from his 2016 campaign to his presidency to his re-election campaign today — use rhetoric and implement policies resembling those of Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II. This IQ seeks to explore Marxist definitions of fascism and the resistance to it in the past in order to apply those policies to the present struggle.

1. Marxists compare Trump with past fascist leaders like Hitler and Mussolini because they all

a. incite and glorify violence by military and police forces as the solution to all problems.
b. make themselves the center of a “leader cult.”
c. use immigrants, ethnic and/or religious minorities, and left parties as scapegoats for all social problems.
d. promise to restore “national greatness” by invoking a new Roman Empire (Mussolini), a Third Reich (Hitler), and Make America Great Again (Trump).
e. All of the above

2. Behind the rhetoric of fascist leaders and parties, including Trump, Marxists see policies that

a. reflect right-wing “populism” that is not so different from left movement appeals.
b. are expressions of mass hysteria which reflect popular prejudices.
c. attempt to establish an open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary sectors of the capitalist class to serve and protect monopoly capitalism.
d. are simply corrupt acts by con men and swindlers using popular ignorance.

3. Trump is fond of spouting wacky conspiracy theories: the People’s Republic of China (PRC) somehow manufactured the coronavirus in a lab, the PRC is connected to the Black Lives Matter movement and fomenting looting and violence, or the movement itself is being funded by “stupid, rich people.” Marxists see the use of conspiracy theories as in the tradition of which of the following?

a. The Populist Party’s attacks on trusts and the money power in the United States in the 1890s.
b. The German Nazi Party’s attack on a “Jewish Bolshevik” conspiracy controlling the media and seeking to destroy the “real” Germany in the 1920s
c. Abolitionist attacks on the slave power in the U.S. before the Civil War
d. Democrats’ attempt to connect the Republicans with John Brown’s Harper’s Ferry Raid in the 1860s elections

4. Which organizations and individuals in U.S. history were linked to fascism?

a. The pro-Nazi appeasement “America First” movement funded by big business and led by Charles Lindbergh before U.S. entry into WWII
b. Senator Joe McCarthy’s charges of “Soviet spies and Communist agents” controlling the government and Democratic party leadership in the 1950s
c. Governor George Wallace’s 1968 racist American Independent Party presidential campaign and incitement of violence, calling for supporters to use their cars to run over demonstrators protesting his rallies
d. All of the above

5. Marxists, Communist parties, and underground movements worldwide developed which effective strategy to prevent the further spread of fascism after Hitler’s victory in Germany and then to defeat the fascist Axis powers in WWII?

a. All-out campaigns to win over workers from their existing trade unions and parties in order to carry forward a socialist revolution
b. Uncritical support for non-fascist parties and organizations based on a policy of “lesser of two evils”
c. Active support for the building of People’s Front organizations and coalitions to advance concrete programs to defeat fascist parties and later to build resistance movements to the puppets of and collaborators with the Axis powers
d. Attacks on the existing Communist parties and the People’s Front movements for supporting the Soviet Union and the New Deal government in the U.S. and the Popular Front government in France for betraying Marxist and socialist principles

Answers

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