Watching the creeping crawl of fascism today and what we should learn from Leon Trotsky
- Luc Cousineau
- Jul 9
- 12 min read
In 1931-1932 Leon Trotsky wrote that the “power of a supportive petty bourgeoisie” forms the genuine basis for fascism. He did this, in part, to illustrate how Mussolini came to power and how the middle class is implicated in global fascism. With the tacit and overt support of a petty bourgeois class (e.g., small business owners, shopkeepers, small-scale merchants, semi-autonomous peasants, and artisans), says Trotsky, the fascist state is able to gather capital directly into its hands. Through this command of capital, the fascist state can control the full state apparatus and all of its conjoined sub-divisions (e.g., municipalities, educational systems, universities, press, etc.) while simultaneously exerting profound control over trade unions, cooperatives, and social movements. “Fascist agency” says Trotsky, uses “the bourgeoisie as a battering ram” to overwhelm the obstacles it its path.
Trotsky, who was expelled from capitalist and communist countries alike (and was assassinated in Mexico by a member of the NKVD - Stalin’s secret police), wrote relentlessly about the perils of capitalism and its inevitable move toward fascism. While it is tempting to understand his writing as merely historical and reflexive of the time in which he lived, it would be irresponsible to do so given the clear parallels we can draw to the unfolding of state affairs in the United States today. We have seen in our neighbours to the south a slow, but very deliberate, move by political powers operating through the petty bourgeois and the latent belief in the “American Dream,” to codify power with those best served by a fascist regime - those most likely to profit from the (re)enslavement of racialized, poor, or otherwise marginalized Americans. None more forthright than the passing The One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
While there are strong arguments to trace the genealogy of American fascism into the 19th century, it is far easier to understand the neoliberal economic policy of Reaganism as the first post-Cold War step toward modern fascism. Reagan’s economic and social policies undercut the influence and power of the state, while simultaneously enriching and passing power to the ruling classes. Under the spectre of the “American Dream,” the petty bourgeois (and those hoping to enter their ranks) see themselves as small-scale or even potential benefactors of this transfer of wealth and power, and go along with these policy changes even as those changes negatively impact their daily lives. Since that time, the American far-right has been slowly putting in place the political and social dominoes required so that, under an appropriate leader (which happened to be Trump), everything can fall into place quickly and efficiently. These include, among other items: Citizens United (allowing direct corporate in politics); non-ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) (never making women’s rights a firm part of law); and the consolidation of power through capital (especially in media and tech). Even as this was happening in the US, our proximity in Canada to the game and its outcomes means that we were always going to be impacted.
This piece is not meant to re-examine what the many excellent pieces of writing and other content from the last few months discussing the implications and impacts of Trumpist fascism (I would direct you to writing by Ross Barkan, Kyle Chayka, Chuck Hobbs for just some of that work) but rather to do the labour of highlighting that without recognition and current action in this country, we are likely to follow suit – or enter into the not-impossible scenario where we have a government that cedes all or part of Canada’s sovereignty to land-hungry American Imperialism.
I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge, before jumping into my discussion, that I am not the only person, and CIFRS not the only organization, to have recognized this. The change in liberal leadership to Mark Carney, along with persistent threats from our neighbour to the south has impacted the political landscape in Canada. It caused the premier of Ontario to call a snap election to avoid the impact on conservatives across the country, which turned out to be a good decision for him and a poor decision for Ontario as he continues in power with a majority mandate. It has also caused what some have called a titanic shift in polling numbers in this country, and an eventual loss by the Conservative Party of Canada in the April 2025 election. Although the CPC made its best showing ever, they failed to bring down the Liberals, and Pierre Poilievre lost the seat in Parliament he held for over 20 years.
The shifting landscape of political opinion and new-found nationalism in this country is interesting, but it does little to address the pressures that continue to push social and economic policy to the right. We are likewise afflicted by the same pro-capitalist influences that have been plaguing our southern neighbours for the last 40 years. We have seen a consistent concentration of wealth among the richest Canadians since the 1980s, with persistent pressures among political elites to cut tax rates and “boost business” that does little for those outside of the cadre of owners and managers, pushing wealth into the hands of the already wealthy. “Good for the economy” in Canada translates rather easily to “puts money into the hands of those with money.” Income inequality is at an all-time high, we have an ever-growing wealth gap, a housing crisis anchored in housing as a form of capital rather than a human right, a lack of public transportation, public policy that is not fair or equitable, and increasing pressures on education (at all levels), all of which make it harder for Canadians to get a world-class education as a member of the general (read: non-wealthy) public.
We have moved dramatically toward public systems where we fund and favour the exceptional while leaving others (especially those that struggle or are disabled) behind, especially in education; a system designed to keep some people out of knowledge and therefore out of real decision-making power. This is exemplified by the current moves in Nova Scotia with Bill 12 that will vest significant power in the Minister of Advanced Education to install members of University Boards of Governors, and, more troublingly, withhold funds from post-secondary institutions if research at those institutions does not align with government priorities. This policy move follows similar measures that have been put into place in Alberta and resulted in a cooling of critical research in some areas.
There are many current examples in the U.S. of what happens when this type of law is passed, then subsequently escalated. Universities like Columbia, Brown, Harvard, and others, are demonstrating that the choice is between morally bankrupting your institution by allowing extra-judicial law enforcement on campus, cutting programs, removing DEI, and otherwise sanctioning students and faculty at the behest of the government, or to resist and (potentially) financially bankrupt your institution. Currently, Tufts University (where Rumeysa Ozturk was kidnapped) is one of the only high profile universities resisting, which may offer a model of sorts for Canada to follow should the wisdom in this article ("it can happen here") come to pass
Like our neighbours in the United States, deep and politicized control over public education does little but impact the quality of accessible educational opportunities and create a docile, undereducated population. For example, there is no reason, beyond a dismal failure of chronically under-funded public education and the willful allowance of unfettered and unregulated for-profit global media, that we should have measles outbreaks in Canada in 2025 (although this is certainly aided by delayed, non-serious, and ineffectual governmental responses). Another import from the media empires in the US, the conspiracy-theory laden changes in public acceptance of vaccines (which are safe, well-tested, and save lives every day - there is no authentic science that disputes this). Hundreds have been sickened or died from a disease that was pronounced eradicated in North America (1998 in Canada and 2000 in the US).
Beyond my informational diatribe, the point of this post is to give just two areas where we might consider the insidious implications of moving even further down the road of neo-liberal, capitalist, and anti-communitarian approaches to living in Canada. None of these things are new, but perhaps the current situation in the U.S. gives us a new light to be able to foresee their potential outcomes in our own country.
Wild attacks on public education prime the public to accept less radical change as compromise. This makes sweeping change (when it comes) easier to pull off.
As highlighted above with my measles example and its well-documented roots in vaccine mis and dis-information (yes, this makes me really angry and it should make you angry too), attacks on public education have significant negative impacts.
Beyond the surface-level where larger classes and poorer materials make it harder for kids to learn and thus more kids fall through the educational cracks, there are also more insidious implications of attacks on public education. First, slow and methodical reduction in the quality of public education allows for the idea that education can be better done by private offerings. The push toward privatization (and therefore a consolidation of power with the bourgeois and Petty bourgeois as Trotsky would see it) leads to the idea (as has been adopted in Alberta, suggested in Ontario and Quebec, and widely used in the U.S.) that charter schools - schools that are privately run but that receive public money to operate - are the future of “public” education.
To accept this premise, we first have to look past chronic under-funding of school in places like Ontario where, in the first term of the current Ford government, the supremely under-qualified minister of education underspent on education to the tune of over $1 Billion dollars while simultaneously arguing that public education in the province was irreparably damaged. The rub in this case is, of course, that those who benefit most from a privatized “public” education system are exactly the same people who benefit from mass and rapid construction, expansionism, consumption of green space for capitalist use (including commercial development and high land-use residential development) - the monied and ruling classes, AKA, Trotsky’s petty bourgeois. These are, in Ontario as well as in most of Canada, the class of Canadians that are landholders, small developers, medium-sized business owners, and the like, who also happen to be the most prolific donors to electoral campaigns at the municipal (example from Guelph, Ontario’s Mayoral campaign), provincial, and federal levels.
Alongside privatization of public education and its overt profit orientations,
reductions in the quality and level of education that students get in the public system lead to the (re)-codification of elitism in education where private and elite institutions are the only places where leaders of countries or political classes can be educated. This re-inscription of elitism (happening in real time now in Canada following in the footsteps of 50 years of development in the U.S.) and nepotism furthers the project of making decision makers that are themselves elites before election. Not convinced that this is the case? Ask yourself why members of parliament like Charlie Angus in Canada or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the United States, both elected officials with roots outside of the political elite and fervent supporters of properly funded public education, are seen generally as uniquely different and outsiders in their political landscapes.
We also know, and perhaps most importantly, that lower levels of education and poorer public education leads to all kinds of social impacts, including increased likelihood to believe and share misinformation, higher income inequality and lower economic growth, and depressed labour markets, among other impacts. Trotsky here would point us toward the inevitable road toward social bankruptcy precipitated by the bourgeois’ absolute need for power and capital control. In The collapse of bourgeois democracy he writes that while the lack of education allows dominance for a time, when the impacts of that dominance begin to be felt by the citizens and they begin to take action, the bourgeoisie “cannot any longer tolerate the democratic order. It is forced to smash the workers by the use of physical violence.” The inevitable outcome of divestitures and purposeful damage to education systems is fascist violence.
We are seeing this happening in real time in the United States on several fronts, none more obvious than the Trump administration’s approach to immigration enforcement. Along with the detainment, revocation of legal documents, and extra-judicial deportations being carried out in the administration’s first 150 days by executive order, many Americans see immigration to the country as an “invasion” and support a variety of measures including citizen-based violence against them. In a country built entirely on immigration (both willing and forced), and reliant on the very types of immigrants they seek to do violence against, the absolute lack of understanding and humanity is a great example of part of Trotsky social bankruptcy. There are more, but I digress.
Moving on from education (but never really moving on since education quality impacts our ability to see and understand other things), we can turn to economic policy and taxation.
The adoption of tax cuts and trickle down economics are a prescription for the elimination of social programs and supports.
Since the codification of a trickle-down economic structure and tax plans during Reagan’s term as U.S. president, we have seen increasing emphasis on this approach. The premise is that if you cut corporate and high-earner tax rates, the increased profits among the few will be re-invested into businesses and consumption, and thus have a net social and personal benefit to workers (watch this helpful video for a primer).
After 40 years, it is clear that the promises of trickle-down economics are a grift and a myth. But that does not seem to have lessened the influence and impact of this failed policy in the developing North American neo-fascism. A key lever in Trump’s economic plans is massive tax cuts to the wealthy and businesses, reaping huge dividends for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else. This pressure to lower taxes at the expense of the social programs that support Canadians is also ever-present in our own political system with the federal Conservatives making this a plank of every election in my living memory and is now a part of federal Liberal platform and, incomprehensibly NDP platforms at the federal and provincial levels.
The adherence to continual downward pressure on taxes, without the connected discussion about how this will impact social programs is also an example of something that can only occur in the end-stages of the social bankruptcy brought about by the bourgeois’ absolute need for power and capital control. The fierce individualism of neo-liberalism with its false meritocracy
Here again, alongside the leveraging of the petty bourgeois who see these reductions as beneficial for them regardless of their actual impacts, we see Trotsky’s state command of capital control. Rather than the imposition of state control for the betterment of the state, this is a consolidation of power with those in elite positions of economic influence. Many elites will have some kind of simultaneous loyalty to the state apparatus, but in true capitalist form, they remain loyal first to their own pocket books and self-interest. Lapses in this perceptible loyalty to the state are reproached in the fascist and/or dictatorial regime, and the impacts of those disciplinary actions can be swift and/or protracted. So while we permit in various ways disloyalty to the National interest in Canada (I’m looking at Danielle Smith’s public policy in Alberta, or Canadian business ghoul Kevin O’Leary’s comments post Trump inauguration), the rewards and consequences of loyalty are on full display in the United States whereas the new broligarchy bends the knee to the Trump regime, they are granted control over the state apparatus to enact their consolidations of power – perhaps most notably by eliminating even the mention of equity across the entire state apparatus or eliminating any illusions of press freedom/objectivity.
While we might want to believe ourselves insulated from the social bankruptcy that produces rapid and offensive changes to equity and policy as seen in the U.S…. we are not. In Canada we have our own version of the broligarchs, with players like the Shopify CEO calling for better ways for the rich to influence Canadian politics. Consistent pushes toward business and wealthy Canadian-friendly tax policies invariably impact social programs, pushing more of the social support structures required for a modern society into the hands of wealthy individuals and non-profits (which themselves have increasing funding challenges as governments support less). The impacts go beyond increased costs at the individual level and decreases in access and quality for those without capital, and contribute to the consolidation of power in bourgeois hands that Trotsky cautions is both essential to the establishment of fascism and a bellwether of social danger.
Trotsky, were he alive to see what is happening in North America today (I’m sure he is doing a HARD eye roll in his grave), might wonder if we had learned nothing in the intervening 85 years. We are repeating, sometimes in tight lock-step and in some cases even more rapidly, actions that led to globally catastrophic conflict and a descent into fascist ideology - erasure, deportations, removeal of rights, and corrupt cronyism included. Perhaps most pressing on Trotsky’s psyche would be the ways the petty bourgeois have been identically leveraged in the new fascism and far-right as they were in his time. With all of the cautions he (and other critics and theorists like him) levied, and the cautionary evidence we have in the historical record, we remain as susceptible to the social bankruptcy wrought by capitalism and necessary for fascism as we ever were.
Like our neighbours to the south, we are in danger of falling prey to what Trotsky calls “the sugared poison of false hope.” Promises of making America great again allow people to believe that there is a way out of the situations of disadvantage, dependence, and debt simply by following the leader. The desire to be led (blindly) into “prosperity” allows them to ignore policy and statutory decisions that negatively impact them, and turn a blind eye to the neoliberal and propagandist-fueled “progressive” policies that precipitated turns to the far-right.
In Canada, we have recently (re)elected a Liberal government that, while nominally better than the brand of far-right reactionary politics that would have swallowed us whole only a few months ago, is “progressive” conservatism in disguise. I argued three years ago in another CIFRS blog post that the shift to the right in the Canadian Overton window was fiercely upon us, and this most recent election outcome is proof of this idea. The election of a Carney government, and the pinning of Canada’s progressive hopes on he and his party is a recipe for further moves to the right, not the opposite. This is a caution to Canadians - what we got is better than far-right reactionaries but will never be our progressive deliverance. Trotsky’s full statement on the matter feels like a good place to close this long post. He said:
Nothing is so dangerous for [regular citizens], especially in the present situation, as the sugared poison of false hopes.
Very interesting, and scary. I like the Canadian focus of your comments.