How to stop fascism, p.30
How to Stop Fascism, page 30
The culture war within working-class communities cannot be avoided. In 2020 we heard from Democratic Congress candidates in the USA that ‘Black Lives Matter cost us votes’. Today, we hear from Labour politicians in Britain that trashing the statues of slave traders, or opposition to forced deportations, or active resistance to racist policing, might prevent them winning back the ex-industrial areas lost to conservatism during the 2010s.
All that, unfortunately, may be true. The left deploys no mass media, enjoys the backing of no billionaires. We cannot change the conversation from above, only from below. But as we go, face to face, into the communities that have become battlegrounds between fascism, liberalism and the left, we should remember the words of Daniel Guérin, the French anarchist who toured Weimar Germany in its last days of democracy: only a flesh and blood alternative can defeat fascism.
That means both an alternative vision and an alternative practice; it cannot mean a sympathetic ‘there, there’, designed to soften the anger of racists, misogynists and conspiracy theorists. A ‘flesh and blood alternative to fascism’ can be offered only by people who reject fascism, not by people who share its mindset.
If the common experience of working-class communities on both sides of the cultural divide is powerlessness, then the common framework around which their struggles can be unified is justice and empowerment.
Despite its liberal associations, social justice has become one of the most instinctively powerful principles around which people can unite across the ‘values’ divide. Yes, in its formulation by the US philosopher John Rawls, social justice was a form of political bean counting – asking, how do we inflict neoliberalism in the least damaging way? But the concept has deeper roots in Enlightenment philosophy and Catholic social teaching, and is explicitly embodied in the principles of both the UN and the International Labour Organization.
I once watched Glenn Beck, the right-wing populist celebrity, mesmerize a Tea Party meeting in Indiana with a prolonged sermon about the evils of social justice. Social justice, said Beck, is just communism with another name. If your church starts talking about social, ecological or economic justice, he advised the faithful, ‘you should run from it’.33
It’s an admirably clear and logical position for the far right to take: capitalism has reached the point where even to speak of justice is to challenge the entire social setup, where even to speak of environmental sustainability is to call into question the property rights and political power of large corporations.
It explains why social, economic, climate and racial justice can be the framework around which the mutually hostile offshoots from the Enlightenment, liberalism and Marxism can at least for now mount a joint defence operation against fascism.
There has been rising hope, during the back half of the 2010s, that liberalism and the left might find common cause around Green New Deal-style programmes. But as we do so, the militant defence of democracy has to have equal status. Because it is through an attack on democracy that the right will attempt to stop the progressive project.
Active anti-fascism cannot be left any longer to the monitoring groups and antifa activists, heroic as many of them are. Either we now create the modern equivalent of the mass, cultural movement that appeared in France between 1934 and 1937, or we can kiss both democracy and the Green New Deal goodbye.
To visit Majdanek you arrive by rail at Lublin station. When I got there in 2018, I found half a yard of anti-Semitic and far-right newspapers on sale at the kiosk on the platform, with the Warszawska Gazeta newspaper in prime position. ‘History according to the Jews’ read its headline; there was a strapline accusing the Polish president of being Israel’s mouthpiece. Inside there was a reprint of a Wikipedia page about the Rothschild family, plus a story implying that the Israeli elite might be amassing property empires in Eastern Europe, because of a genetic tendency to abandon their own people. Then there was another feature on the Rothschilds, again lifted mainly from Wikipedia – and so it continued.
In the magazine Polska Niepodległa, historians documenting the role of Polish Christians in the so-called ‘Jew-hunt’ towards the end of the Holocaust were labelled ‘fantasists’. The Polish researcher who helped me, who was Jewish himself, spread the whole disgusting panoply of innuendoes and hook-nose cartoons in front of me on the table. Under the right-wing populist government of Law and Justice, anti-Semitic and far-right narratives are blatant, right here in twenty-first-century Europe.
For my whole life, possibly influenced by the reaction of my mother to the Belsen TV programme, I’d never bothered visiting a death camp memorial. I’d covered mass rape and genital mutilation in Kenya. I’d watched the corpses of civilians stacked up in the morgues of Gaza. I’d chased fascists through the streets of London and run away from them in Athens. Subconsciously, maybe I thought: what can I learn from the inevitably sanitized remains of a camp?
But once through the gate of Majdanek, and through the doors of the disinfection block, a profound quiet entered my head. One of the chambers, where they used exhaust fumes to kill people, is about the size of a large living room; the other, where they used Zyklon B, is as long as a railway carriage but a bit wider. If everyone stood close – as they were forced to – you could kill 200 people in fifteen minutes.
In that concrete box died some people who had cared little about politics; others were Zionist youths who dreamed of Palestine; members of the anti-Zionist Bund who dreamed of a socialist Poland, and cosmopolitans who dreamed of a united Europe. The gas did not discriminate.
Peering through the door of the gas chamber, I remembered Vasily Grossman’s words, in his 1944 report from Treblinka. It took only ten gas chambers to execute Operation Reinhard, he noted. Before that, not even the craziest racist knew that slaughter on this scale was possible. In a paragraph so chilling that Soviet censors actually deleted it, Grossman wrote:
It is possible to demonstrate with nothing more than a pencil that any large construction company with experience in the use of reinforced concrete can, in the course of six months and with a properly organized labour force, construct more than enough chambers to gas the entire population of the earth. This must be unflinchingly borne in mind by everyone who truly values honour, freedom and the life of all nations, the life of humanity.34
In the age of algorithmic control, autonomous weapons, biometric security and nerve agents, how much easier would it be to kill the entire population of the earth?
Before I came to Majdanek, I wondered how it would feel, confronting one of these death spaces, fifty years after my mother switched off the TV to stop me seeing one. Now I knew.
I felt anti-fascist.
Notes
1. Loewenstein, Karl, ‘Militant Democracy and Fundamental Rights’, I, The American Political Science Review, Vol. 31, No. 3, June 1937, p. 432
Introduction
1. http://theintercept.com/2020/06/19/militia-vigilantes-police-brutality-protests/
2. Nolte, Ernst, Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, New York, 1966, p. 16
3. Finaldi, Giuseppe, Mussolini and Italian Fascism, Abingdon, 1998, p. 4
4. See, for example, Mudde, Cas, The Far Right Today, London, Cambridge, 2019, p. 7
5. Freedom House, ‘Freedom in the World 2020’, Washington, 2020, p. 10
6. Bardèche, Maurice, Qu’est-ce que le fascisme?, Paris, 1961, p. 176
7. Arendt, Hannah, Eassys in Understanding, 1930–1954, New York, 1994, p. 111
8. Grossman, Vasily, ‘The Hell of Treblinka’, in Grossman, Vasily, The Road: Short Fiction and Essays by the Author of Life and Fate, London, 2010, p. 179
9. https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/faqs.html
10. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war
11. https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206622.pdf
12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c91z_gh0fRQ
13. https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/islamophobia-in-the-conservative-party-a-year-in-review/
14. https://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675037245_Bergen-Belsen-concentration-camp_piles-of-corpses_guards-arrested_open-grave
15. Cull, Nicholas J., ‘“Great Escapes”: Englishness and the Prisoner of War Genre’, Film History, 2002, p. 287
16. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077025/
17. Traverso, Enzo, Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914–1945, London, 2016, Loc 457
1. Symbolic Violence
1. Varga, Lucie, ‘In a Vorarlberg Valley: Past and Present’, in Varga, Lucie, edited with an introduction by Peter Schöttler, Les autorités invisibles. Une historienne autrichienne aux Annales dans les années trente, Paris, 1991, p. 167
2. Huppert, George, ‘Review: Les Autorités Invisibles by Lucie Varga and Peter Schöttler’, History and Theory, Vol. 33, No. 2, May 1994, p. 226
3. Varga, Autorités, p. 69
4. https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Austrian-village-faces-down-its-Nazi-past-3294093.php#photo-2441641
5. https://www.doew.at/cms/download/a184m/en_war_crime_trials.pdf
6. Schaller, Stella and Carius, Alexander, Convenient Truths: Mapping Climate Agendas of Right-wing Populist Parties in Europe, Berlin, 2019, p. 8
7. https://time.com/5366462/india-assam-citizenship/
8. https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/ anti-caa-protests-azadi-slogan-kashmir _in_ 5e451ac3c5b62b85f82f00fa?guccounter=1 &guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2x lLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABA3URr twCY8JPUu9K5iUOT0nX0idzmBkcU_p8NDCAAvWjE4 0zWOc88sFXPxHm0QIbAhy1gPwUzh2oqx9r_jJylOqt6slC5DZuO8 lSR8IO-pyQ4kBN7ABBooLVGmmwNEit81p3j3WfR jt0vBlTK2fl8Z9c97yxAxnno2qhrT_-cd
9. https://time.com/5883993/india-facebook-hate-speech-bjp/
10. Report of the DMC Fact-finding Committee on North-East Delhi Riots of February 2020, Government of NCT of Delhi, New Delhi, July 2020
11. https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/moonje-amp-mussolini/article6756630.ece
12. https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/delhi-riot-accused-thought-themselves-saviours-of-community-chargesheet-6705963/
13. https://www.instagram.com/p/B9Cp-G3gBDV/?utm_source=ig_embed
14. https://www.thequint.com/news/india/delhi-riots-rss-vhp-members-accused-murder-rioting-arrested-delhi-police
15. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/us/politics/trump-modi.html
16. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/25/uk/bjp-kashmir-tory-uk-election-ge19-intl-gbr/index.html
17. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/indicators-signal-trump-triumph-among-indian-americans/1998935
18. Report of the DMC Fact-finding Committee, p. 34
19. Ibid., p. 66
20. Siddiqui, Kalim, ‘Hindutva, Neoliberalism and the Reinventing of India’, Journal of Economic and Social Thought, Vol. 4, Issue 2, June 2017, p. 154
21. https://elasyn.com/2020/03/08/ioannis-lagos-tourgreek-turkish-borders/
22. https://www.politico.eu/article/sebastian-kurz-austria-identitarian-movement-christchurch-terror-suspect-gave-money-to-austrian-far-right/
23. http://www.radicalrightanalysis.com/2020/03/16/fighting-the-great-replacement-in-2020-an-identitarian-road-trip-to-greece-and-back/
24. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sweden-full-leaflets-greece-refugees-jimmie-akesson-a9383996.html
25. https://www.avvenire.it/attualita/pagine/cani-doppiette-trattori-e-neonazi-per-dare-la-caccia-ai-migranti-nuovi-scontri-al-confine-tra-grecia-e-turchia
26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGChu5vxl30
27. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/29/how-brazil-was-ukrainized/
28. https://apublica.org/2020/05/especialistas-apontam-semelhancas-entre-os-300-de-sara-winter-e-grupos-fascistas-europeus/
29. Barbosa dos Santos, Fabio Luis, Uma História da Onda Progressista Sul-Americana (1998–2016), São Paulo, 2018
30. Fisher, Max and Taub, Amanda, ‘How YouTube Radicalized Brazil’, New York Times, 11 August 2019
31. https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/spate-murders-brazil-shines-spotlight-militia-phenomenon/
32. https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/defending-tomorrow/
33. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/brazil/
34. https://www.instagram.com/tv/CF9vKoKHAYZ/?utm_source=ig_embed
35. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/world/europe/germany-military-neo-nazis-ksk.html
36. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-crime-hitler-iDUSKBN2671ZK
37. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/200-leichensaecke-und-aetzkalk-bestellt-rechtsextremes-netzwerk-plante-attentate-auf-politische-gegner/24505056.html
38. https://www.waz-online.de/Nachrichten/Politik/Deutschland-Welt/Mecklenburg-und-die-Eiserne-Reserve
39. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/26/far-right-suspect-confesses-to-killing-german-politician-walter-lubcke; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55395682; https://www.dw.com/en/hanau-shootings-what-we-know-about-the-victims/a-52460950
40. Klikauer, Thomas, ‘Germany’s AfD – Members, Leaders and Ideologies’, Asian Journal of German and European Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4, 2019, p.3
41. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/02/28/the-thuringia-debacle-resets-the-merkel-succession-and-proves-the-afd-is-a-force-to-be-reckoned-with/
42. Du Bois, W. E. B., Black Reconstruction in America (The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois) (p. 941), Oxford University Press, Kindle Edition
43. https://medium.com/religion-bites/the-souls-of-white-folk-by-w-e-b-du-bois-354f91ca08ef
44. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/race-disparity-audit
45. https://www.radicalrightanalysis.com/2018/11/30/catalyst-or-catharsis-inside-the-dfla-secret-facebook-groups/
46. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/e5ee9e0a-18d7-49a4-a3c2-80b6b4222058
47. https://www.npr.org/2017/07/02/535267439/trump-tweets-clip-of-him-bodyslamming-cnn-network-says-do-your-job; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/05/cesar-sayoc-sentencing-pipe-bombs-targets-trump-critics
48. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/14/greece-golden-dawn-neo-nazi-prison-sentences
2. Dreams of the Ethno-state
1. De Benoist, Alain and Champetier, Charles, Manifesto for a European Renaissance, London, 2012, p. 11
2. Confino, Alon, Foundational Pasts: The Holocaust as Historical Understanding, Cambridge, 2012, p. 6
3. De Benoist and Champetier, Manifesto, p. 14
4. Faye, Guillaume, Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance, London, 2011, p. 29
5. Ibid., p. 70
6. Ibid., p. 31
7. Ibid., p. 167
8. Dugin, Alexander, The Fourth Political Theory, London, 2012, p. 94
9. https://www.boundary2.org/2019/09/kevin-musgrave-and-jeff-tischauser-radical-traditionalism-metapolitics-and-identitarianism-the-rhetoric-of-richard-spencer/
10. Teitelbaum, Benjamin, War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right, London, 2020, p. 1
11. https://theconversation.com/the-long-game-of-the-european-new-right-75078
12. Panofsky, Aaron et al., ‘How White Nationalists Mobilize Genetics: From Genetic Ancestry and Human Biodiversity to Counterscience and Metapolitics’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 28 September 2020, p. 2
13. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000122962
14. Mehler, Barry, ‘Foundation for Fascism: The New Eugenics Movement in the United States’, Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 23, No. 4, 1989
15. Piffer, Davide and Kirkegaard, Emil O. W., ‘The Genetic Correlation between Educational Attainment, Intracranial Volume and IQ is Due to Recent Polygenic Selection on General Cognitive Ability’, Open Behavioral Genetics, 11 March 2014, p. 8
16. Evans, Gavin, ‘The Unwelcome Revival of “Race Science”’, Guardian, 2 March 2018
17. Rose, Stephen and Rose, Hilary, Alas Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology, London, 2001
18. Murray, Charles and Herrnstein, Richard, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, New York, 1994, p. 548
19. Saini, Angela, Superior: The Return of Race Science, London, 2019, p. 104
20. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7516365/Cambridge-scientist-sacked-publishing-racist-research-reveals-suing-university.html; https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/17727
21. Barash D., quoted in Panofsky, et al., ‘How White Nationalists Mobilize Genetics’, p. 6
22. Hoppe, Hans-Hermann, Democracy: The God That Failed, Abingdon, 2017, p. 148
23. https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2010/02/from-mises-to-carlyle-my-sick-journey/
24. Ibid.
