The fascist regimes of the 1920s and 30s were corporatist, totalitarian and militaristic. Capitalists colluded with their respective states to wage class war against workers parties and unions; order was established through an illiberal mix of propaganda and repression; and the system depended on war or the threat of war to thrive. Those regimes were also violent, nationalistic and racist, as were fascists everywhere. For more than three decades in the United States and Britain and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in Europe and throughout the world, we have lived under a kinder, gentler functional equivalent of classical fascism in which, ironically, free market ideology is invoked to sustain a state-capital alliance as powerful as in the classical version. In the conditions in which this new order emerged, it has been possible to mute the nastiness with which fascism is rightly associated. But fascisms war on the working class continues in this new form. So does its assault on enlightenment values and the enlightened institutions that the labour movement championed. It has become commonplace to call the kind of regime I have in mind Reaganite, though Ronald Reagan was only one of several figures involved in its inception and implementation. In view of Margaret Thatchers earlier rise to power and her greater ideological lucidity, Thatcherite would be a more apt designation. But thanks to Americas paramount position in the world and Britains subordinate role, it is Reagans name that has stuck. Bertram Gross was spot on back in the early days of Reagans presidency when he called Reaganism friendly fascism. In the United States, Reaganism was never an exclusively Republican concoction. Arguably, it began timidly in the final years of the Carter administration. And Reaganisms most effective implementers have been Democrats Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama. Obama is the most recent Reaganite president in a continuous chain. With remarkable suddenness, Reaganisms moral and intellectual bankruptcy are becoming apparent to all but the willfully blind, thanks to events in Wisconsin and elsewhere. The Reaganite era may therefore now be entering into its final stage. Classical fascism was crushed militarily, though facsimiles survived for decades in the Iberian peninsula, Latin America and elsewhere. As its demise in Germany and Italy approached, fascisms perniciousness mounted to unprecedented levels. Friendly fascism is unlikely to be done in so abruptly or thoroughly, and its end too will likely be kinder and gentler. Still, regimes in their death-throes can do grave harm. Thanks to the revelatory events in the Midwest, there is reason to hope that Obama who, characteristically, toddled off to hobnob with corporate bigwigs in Silicon Valley as workers and students launched their epochal struggle in Madison, and who then paid a call on entrepreneurs in Cleveland as Ohio workers were mobilizing in Columbus may be literally our last Reaganite president. Unfortunately, we will not know for sure for some time. Since the Republican establishment, in thrall to its useful idiots, is unlikely to come up with a plausible alternative in whom a sane capitalist would place his trust, it will be hard for Obama to lose in 2012. Meanwhile, no matter how much incontrovertible evidence our bipartisan president provides for the hypothesis that he is actually a secret Republican, and no matter how vociferously he talks out of both sides of his mouth, no Democrat will run against him not that there are many who could or would plot a significantly different course. Plausible third party challenges are even less likely, since third party candidates are perceived as spoilers, and no one with any sense would risk Scott Walker or someone of his ilk landing anywhere near the levers of power. Therefore expect the Democratic base to rally around Obama again. One would think that, at long last, organized labor would at least make demands on Democrats in exchange for its indispensable support. But if the past is any guide, this is unlikely too. It has been a long time since labors vision extended beyond the abject horizons of lesser evilism, and old habits, no matter how inapt, are hard to beak. Nevertheless, caution at this time is more than usually wrong-headed if only because those vaunted independents for whose sake Obama and other Democrats ignore the interests of their base are unlikely to hand the Democrats another shellacking. Just as Bush and Cheney were godsends for Democrats in 2006 and 2008, the Tea Party-GOP alliance is sure to push moderate voters back into the Democratic camp. Sadly, though, even as there is little reason for lesser evilists to fear a challenge from the left, there is even less chance that one will materialize. But, as workers stir, there are grounds for hope. The principles to which Republicans are committed reflect their moral and intellectual level, but at least they are committed to principles. In contrast, Democratic politicians, Obama especially, are weathervanes. Paradoxically, this moral failing of theirs is why we need not despair, and why the harm the lesser evil will otherwise do after its likely comeback in 2012 can be mitigated. To that end, no effort should be spared in promoting programs that go against the self-justifications that make Reaganism possible. The time is past due to take on the Reaganites relentless colonization of the public sphere by resuming positions that appeal to longstanding sentiments and traditions and that were once universally understood to be mainstream. One way to do this would be to attack the most vulnerable private options that Reaganites, including Obama, defend. Workers fighting to retain collective bargaining rights have shown the way; they have exposed the vulnerability of the Reaganite order. In a healthier political culture than ours, resistance to privatization would be a by-product of efforts to advance a vision of a radically better society; to install real democracy, including economic democracy or, as few now dare to say except in disapprobation, socialism. Never has that struggle been more needed. But in a culture degraded first by Cold War liberalism and then by the scourge of Reaganism, a genuinely conservative resistance to privatization may be the best we can hope for in the short and medium term. Counterpunch