The scenario described in this story is not particularly analogous to where we are today. Political conflict in the 1930s was genuinely class-based. Class conflict exists today and continues to increase, but it is tertiary in relation to the intra-elite conflict (see Pareto on elites and counter-elites) pitting various sectors of the capitalist and managerial classes against each other, and the wider existential/quasi-religious conflict on the ground level. And the primary class conflict is not the workers vs. bosses model of the historic labor movement (although that is increasing as well) but the growing mass of lumpenproletarians (and what might be called lumpen adjacents like the lower proletariat, sinking upper proletariat, and lower petite bourgeoisie), and the “system” generally, which is what the most intense aspects of the riots last year were about.
This gets back to my Iraq analogy. If the Red Tribe is analogous to the Sunni (formerly dominant now losing power) and the Blue Tribe to the Shia (formerly subordinated now rising), the lower classes would be more like the Kurds (the outgroup that no one else likes). A lot of the more severe rioting last year came from these sectors. The most serious riots were immediately after the killing of George Floyd, and involved serious looting as well as attacks on cops and government buildings and all that. That was when the real lumpenproletariat struck. The middle-class liberal and young leftist protestors, statue vandalism enthusiasts, etc. were more like hangers-on and an afterthought except for in hot leftist enclaves like Portland and Seattle.
By Gillian Brockell, Washington Post
So, according to the sworn congressional testimony of a retired general, they decided to overthrow the government and install a dictator who was more business friendly. After all, they reasoned, that had been working well in Italy.
How close this fascist cabal got, and who exactly was in on it, are still subjects of historical debate. But as the dust settles after the pro-Trump attack on the U.S. Capitol, and as it becomes clearer how close lawmakers came to catastrophe, the similarities to the Business Plot are hard to ignore.
