Another way out: Pragmatic governance will not defeat fascism

William C. Anderson

Aug 27, 2026

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“People do not go to war for abstract theories of government. They fight for property and privilege.” –W.E.B. Du Bois

While conversations and debates about the merits of a blue wave of various socialist-identifying politicians rage on, an old line about pragmatism and governance has emerged. The idea is that if someone is elected, they have to compromise to serve the interests of various groups, including those said official might purport to oppose. 

Personally, I gave up arguing on behalf of people I don’t know some time ago, especially celebrities and politicians. It’s something that’s been a losing game since ancient times. That doesn’t stop me from being interested in observing what “governance” means to people who use it as a synonym for negotiation that leans toward concessions. This is of particular interest because fascists do not operate from a place of accommodation, and histories like that of the U.S. Civil War and post-Nazi Germany illustrate the risk of assuming white supremacy can be bargained with. 

Growing up in the South, I was always confused by the towering presence of the Confederacy in public life. Despite the fact that I was told that Confederates had been “defeated,” it never seemed that way. Their supposed defeat was a boisterous one filled with sloganeering (“the South will rise again”), monuments, and pseudohistories. They maintained and governed the lands known as the former Confederacy through bitter resentment over an unfinished mandate. That is to say, their incomplete destruction was an opportunity to mobilize an unrelenting push to recover what was never completely won. And winning itself was no longer a simple set of terms to be meted out by the conclusion of a victorious war; it became an endless, embittered battle in which Confederate ideology could be used as needed. This is why we must be attentive to post-Civil War mistakes. 

The Confederacy was not annihilated because those who sought to “govern” in the sense of compromise chose to instead sacrifice the safety of the downtrodden. We can look at what President Abraham Lincoln wrote in an 1862 letter to Horace Greeley, the founder of the New York Tribune who urged Lincoln to commit to the end of slavery (I’ve added italics for emphasis): 

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. 

Lincoln’s reduction of the gargantuan weight of the decision to free or not to free enslaved people traces the contours of liberal framings of governance today. As he positioned himself in an almost godlike manner by weighing such a decision, he simultaneously downplayed the egregious evil it is to tolerate slavery and live “without freeing any slave.” He simply made it an option in the name of preserving the union, even if that preservation means the torture, mutilation, and death of others. We’re still plagued by this sort of rationale over 160 years later. These kinds of mistakes are not limited to the U.S. either. 

Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has been making intimidating gains amid a surge in similar far-right activity across Europe. Despite all of the guardrails that were meant to keep Germany from ever repeating its Nazi history, a party with an increasingly open sympathy toward Nazism is gaining more power. The AfD recently held its Erfurt conference on the 100th anniversary of a Weimar Nazi conference. It certainly wasn’t a coincidence for a party with a history of Nazi mimicry as it dances around accusations of romanticism. Not long after his Nazi salute debacle, Elon Musk spoke to the AfD, telling them to “be proud of German culture and German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.” And in the spirit of diasporic white fascisms, he told them that there was “too much of a focus on past guilt,” much like white Southerners say of the former Confederacy or white South Africans say about their apartheid history. Now, as Musk boosts the AfD’s leader, they have led in most national polls since last year. 

The irony in all of this is that the methods in place to prevent the normalization of far-right extremism in Germany have failed to stop it. The “Brandmauer” or “firewall against the far right” is a policy codified to deplatform and prevent the rise of the far right. Attempts at isolation have not struck at the heart of what fascists ultimately realize with or without such opposition: They do not have to accommodate. The Economist reports that the AfD “once railed against the Brandmauer as a gross violation of democracy.” However, now “the AfD look forward to governing alone.” It quotes Malte Kaufmann, an AfD member of Germany’s parliament, saying, “We don’t think about how to make ourselves nice so that the CDU (center-right Christian Democrats) asks us for a coalition.” The Economist goes on to report that “the party’s deputy chairman in Saxony-Anhalt has said their voters want them to ‘finish off’ the CDU rather than co-operate with it. In some countries populists have moderated to gain power. But behind the Brandmauer, the AfD has had no incentive to do so.” 

It’s not even debatable whether fascism will be defeated with pragmatic governance or that the attraction many people have to it is about relentlessness. You cannot treat what we’re up against so tolerably or simply believe it can be governed away. I have already written about anarcho-syndicalist writer Rudolf Rocker explaining how this logic helped fascism come to power in Germany with the game of lesser-evilism. We could go back even further into the 1920s, when the anarchist Errico Malatesta explained that this situation would not be solved by conventional politics. He stated, “The advent of fascism should serve as a lesson to legalitarian socialists, who believed, and alas! still believe, that the bourgeoisie can be overthrown by means of the votes of half plus one of the electors, and did not want to believe it when we told them that, if they ever reached a majority in parliament and wanted—just to make absurd assumptions—to implement socialism from parliament, they would be kicked out in the butt!” 

Now, here we are again. Fascism keeps coming back to life over and over. And over and over, people respond by acting as if they have to work with it and be nice enough to let it grow into the unstoppable beast that will devour them. Well, you cannot bargain with death, and fascists deal in deadly methods. Directly or indirectly, fascists plan to kill those of us who are their enemies. And graves are filled with people who both knew this and those who felt differently. Pragmatism and compromising governance will only embolden the far right. Maltesta tells us what the future may likely hold based on what happened in the past: 

The workers did not know how to oppose violence to violence, because they had been educated to believe in legality, and because, even when all illusions had become impossible and the arsons and assassinations multiplied under the benevolent gaze of authorities, the men they trusted preached them the patience, the calm, the beauty and wisdom of getting beaten ‘heroically’ without resisting—and therefore they were defeated and offended in their possessions, persons, dignity and the most sacred affections.

Perhaps, when all the workers’ institutions had been destroyed, the organizations disbanded, the men most disliked and considered most dangerous killed or imprisoned, or otherwise reduced to impotence, the bourgeoisie and the government wanted to put a stop to the new pretorian guards who now aspired to become the masters of those they had served. But it was too late. Fascists are now the strongest and intend to get paid for the services rendered. … In conclusion, increased misery, increased oppression.

Unrelenting oppression has to be met with unrelenting resistance. Fascism being met with tolerating politics will only help it expand further.

Editorial Team:
Lara Witt, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor