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Title: Confronting Fascism Author: Anti-Racist Action Date: 2002 Language: en Topics: fascism, anti-fascism Source: Retrieved on 11th June 2021 from http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=5478ADC8BEF694C48BC05D3856D0D242 Notes: ISBN 978-1-894946-54-4. If you found the ideas is this book interesting, you may also find the http://threewayfight.blogspot.com blog of use.
by Xtn of Chicago ARA
For North American radicals the change of the century was marked not by
New Yearâs Eve celebrations but in fireworks of a totally different
kindâN30 (Nov. 30, 1999, in Seattle) and 9/11 (Sept. 11, 2001, in D.C.
and New York). The first opened up an entire range of new and energizing
possibilities. It heralded in an era of mass street protest unseen by
most of us. It exposed the weakness of capitalist power and hegemony and
was enough to make us feel that anything was possible. The second
brought entirely new elements into the picture. We were not the only
enemy of the capitalist order, and this new enemy was no friend of
liberation. Post-Seattle, the new street protest movement developed and
even accelerated at a pace that politicized thousandsâbut there were
growing problems. With 9/11 the Seattle spirit melted into confusion and
disarray.
Out of this energy and confusion comes this little book. Itâs an attempt
to look at this new era of political action and thought, focusing on an
area that we see as extremely important, relevant and perhaps at the
core to whatâs in the air todayâfascism. You are holding in your hands
our attempt to begin a different and more serious discussion of fascism,
what is it, of the relationship of fascism to capitalism, and of the
elements of a strategy with the potential to defeat both. The essays
presented here should be taken as part of an ongoing, evolving talk
within the movementâwith the emphasis on âongoing.â Unlike many
publications and political statements that try to be the authoritative
âfinal wordâ on the subject, the documents here are meant to raise more
questions than they necessarily answer. Theyâre about jump-starting our
minds and removing any blinders, allowing us to see things as we havenât
seen them before.
For us, the most important aspect of these essays is that they take
fascism seriously as a force/ideology/movement/tendency. They point out
that fascism isnât just connected to dusty history books in the back of
the university library but that it is present in some of the most
important events in political history, both in the past and in whatâs
going on today.
The actual genesis of these essays lies in the period right before N30.
Anti-fascist activity was heating up in the U.S. Midwest, directed
primarily against the neo-nazi organization called the World Church of
Creator (WCOTC). As the actions intensified, questions started
emergingâas did differences. A Chicago, Illinois, chapter of Anti-Racist
Action (ARA) had initiated a campaign to shut down a series of public
meetings planned by WCOTC leader Matt Hale. The campaign started by ARA
eventually made it difficult and even impossible for Hale and his
organization to rally, let alone go out in public, without a
challengeâpolitically as well as physically.
During this time, the Battle of Seattle grabbed everyoneâs attention and
made us sit up. Images of thousands of protesters clogging the streets
of downtown Seattle were broadcast on every television across the
worldâso too were scenes of the Black Bloc and the attacks on capitalist
property and police. Newspapers were scrambling for info on the new
street militants and their ideology of anarchism. And debate started to
rage in the radical press. The Black Bloc was seen by some as
wrong-headed youth interested only in adventurism. Sometimes the Black
Bloc was condemned outright and treated as criminalâan attitude that
rolled in from the established Left. During the riots, liberal and
leftist do-gooders actually tried to defend capitalist property from the
anarchists. In several instances, avowed âpacifistsâ attacked the Black
Bloc in an effort to protect places like the Gap and Starbucks.
The actions by the Black Bloc and anarchists turned traditional politics
on its head. This black-clad voice in the protest movement wasnât
content to beg the politicians and capitalists for reforms. The Black
Bloc symbolized a new generation of activists wanting nothing short of
revolution.
The ranks of the Black Bloc were comprised of many activists who had
actually cut their teeth fighting nazis and Klan groups. ARA groups
quickly defended the Seattle Black Bloc, seeing a similarity in tactics
and motivationâand also in the way that militant antifascism had
suffered from denunciations by the established left and liberal
reformists. It was important for us to acknowledge and embrace this
break with past thinking and action. But ARA activists were also
becoming aware of other tendencies riding on the waves of the protests.
âAnti-globalizationâ was an amorphous concept that was defined at its
lowest denominator as a mass challenge to the control and influence of
international corporations. This movement was a political free-for-all
that gave room to a wide range of ideological tendencies from left to
rightâincluding fascists. As the Seattle streets were lighting up in the
flames of protest, just an hour to the north Matt Hale was visiting
Washington State to participate in a remembrance ceremony for Robert
Matthews, the slain leader of the neo-nazi paramilitary organization,
the Order. Hale praised the demonstrations in Seattle and in particular
hailed the young rioters as heroes. He chastised the right-wing
establishment for being do-nothings and reformist and said that the
fascist movement could take lessons from the militant tactics of the
demonstrators and Black Bloc. The anti-fascist and anarchist movement
now saw that this anti-globalization movement was not a single
homogenous block. It was not only the reformist left and its ultimate
subservience to the state that had to be challengedâthe racist and
fascist elements that would continue to insert themselves into the mix
had to be exposed and beat back.
From N30 onward, global protest politics were characterized by a
willingness to fight back and break the law. Even more passive,
non-violent demonstrators showed an unprecedented determination in
disrupting the capitalist machine. Everywhere, from the big cities to
little country towns, radical anti-capitalist and anarchist actions,
graffiti and groups started to emerge. For those who couldnât be in
Seattle, the next big demo was prioritized. The spirit of revolt was
catching everyone.
This vibe of uncompromising protest, and the awareness of a growing and
vocal nazi movement, only helped to encourage anti-fascist organizing.
The WCOTC, one of the fastest growing and most dynamic of nazi groups,
was facing opposition everywhere it tried to rally. From Indiana to New
England to Haleâs hometown of Peoria, Illinois, antifa were throwing up
resistance. (One time, sitting at a bar, a bunch of Midwestern antifa
looked up to see hand-to-hand streetfighting between anarchist
anti-racists and nazis after a WCOTC rally in Wallingford, Connecticut,
courtesy of CNN.) But the increase in activityâboth anti-fascist and
anti-capitalistâdidnât come without growing problems. An increase in
state surveillance and repression coincided with the growth of the new
movement. Antifa also faced the always-present risk of fascist
counter-attacks.
At the same time, various radicals started asking whether anti-fascist
organizing should be a priority for placing our energies. What was to be
gained by doing anti-fascist work? Do groups like the ARA see more of a
threat in nazis than what really exists? These questions demanded
answers, which helped antifa to clarify our motivations and positions
and provided us with a platform to argue out why we do what we do.
Hamerquistâs essay was a direct response to these questions. In it he
makes a strong case for why anti-fascist organizing is an essential
component to the development of a genuine liberation movement.
Originally shorter, the essay focused on several key points:
organization and cadre building; questions of violence and challenging
reformist tendencies in the movement (both antifa and revolutionary);
developing a critique of the Leftâs historical analysis and assumptions
of fascism; and looking at new, potentially anti-capitalist tendencies
that may emerge from within a popular and revolutionary fascism.
As Hamerquistâs essay started to circulate among a small network of
anti-fascists and anarchists, it was proposed to turn it into a pamphlet
and distribute it to a wider audience. Sakai, author of an essay on
right-wing tendencies in the anti-globalization movement, was approached
to write an introduction and critique of what Hamerquist laid out. Sakai
soon discarded his initial draft when another event rocked our worldâthe
attacks that sent the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon up in
flames.
9/11 had a profound effect on the political climate and quickly sent the
new era of dissent and protest into disarray. Some within the
anti-globalization and anti-capitalist movement attempted to maintain
the energy of the previous two years, but overall the movement here in
the U.S. was sapped of its potency. After a while, even the anti-war
momentum came to a standstill. Today, there is still bombing in
Afghanistan killing hundreds. Whereâs the anti-war activity? Whereâs the
outrage? 9/11 was the biggest silencer of the growing anti-capitalist
movement that the capitalists could have prayed for. Why is that?
The anti-fascist movement also had to deal with this new climate.
Pre-9/11, antifa had continued to merge into the anti-globalization
movement, with many participating in the quickly emergingâand explicitly
revolutionaryâanti-capitalist wing, often taking leading roles in
planning and actions. From the protests against the Trans-Atlantic
Business Dialogue in Cincinnati, Ohio, to the Black Bloc at the A16
anti-IMF/World Bank meeting in D.C., hundreds of antifa and ARA
activists joined in and became a visible presence. The radical
anti-racist voice these activists brought had previously been
non-existent in any noticeable organized expression. This trend
continued into the Quebec City anti-FTAA actions and was also massively
present when European antifa marched in Prague and Gottenburg. Antifa
worldwide became important players in the new movement, organizing as a
block against reactionary politics and fascist attempts to join the
protests. But once the airliners-turned-cruise missiles blasted their
way into global consciousness, anti-fascists and revolutionaries had to
deal with the rapidly changing landscape. We could not ignore the
unfolding war, roundups and political repression, but we were not ready
for them.
Anti-fascists attempted to analyze the attacks and who may have
perpetrated them. Articles informed the movement of both the nature of
fascist entities like the Taliban and what the Western capitalist
response to them and similar movements would be. Antifa also took note
of fascist and neo-nazi views on 9/11 and its effect. Many of the U.S.
fascist groups were strategizing on how to take advantage of the mass
hysteria that immediately sprang up and were looking to use the loss of
security that was present as a way to insert themselves into the
picture. In an immediate climate that had mobs of people attacking
Arabs, Asians and other people of color perceived as âoutsidersâ to
America, the fascists worked to promote these hostilities and fears. The
immediate after-effects of 9/11 were very, very ugly. Those who tried to
speak out against the war and the rampant racism were beat up and
threatened. Mosques were burned down, gas attendants were attacked with
machetes and businesses were shot up. All hell seemed to have broken
loose. And the fascist movement now had a perfect opportunity to build
itself.
This takes us back to this little publication. In these essays, the
authors both discuss the dynamics of fascism and the potentially
revolutionary impulses behind it. Fascism is no friend of humanity, and
when they call fascism ârevolutionaryâ they donât mean âprogressiveâ or
âliberatory.â Fascism has a revolutionary component because it is about
a complete re-shaping of modern society, transforming how we look and
deal with one another, who has power and who doesnât and whoâs going to
get ethnically cleansed. The essays also point out that fascism will be
based in mass supportâit has to be. Fascism is not a room full of
capitalist bosses or lackeys saying, âOk, weâre gonna institute fascism
now.â No, fascism is a movement made up of lots and lots of disgruntled
people. And if we are to be successful in fighting fascism, then this is
where we have to begin.
Our strategy must be about popularizing our ideas and engaging in
struggles that open up conflict with state and capitalist interests. We
need to see where the political fissures exist and figure out how to
intervene in ways that crack them open even further. But what is our
strategy? And what are the politics and ideas that provide the basis for
our approach?
Fascism gains ground when a popular upsurge of people decide itâs time
for a change and head down the path that leads away from a liberatory,
multi-ethnic vision of freedom. How do we gain ground in the
post-Seattle, post-9/11 age, when the political climate is slanted
against us?
These essays help highlight the continuing problems faced by both the
revolutionary and still-embryonic anti-fascist movements. Despite
important leaps, overlappings and mergings between these two currents,
they often continue to exist in separate worlds. Itâs important that we
outline some of the problems we see with these two camps.
All too often, the militant anti-racist and antifa scenes lack a
coherent or even pronounced revolutionary outlook. We could even say
that a large portion of it fluctuates between revolutionary politics and
social-democratic positions, ending up with a type of militant
reformism. Antifa are willing to fight, without hesitation, and have
built up an independent culture that emphasizes self-activity: planning
actions, building a base of support through music and publishing, being
present whenever nazi or racist activity shoots up, and being permeated
with a general anti-authoritarianism. These are all-important aspects
that need to be cultivated. The majority of the antifa movement,
however, especially in the U.S., lacks a coherent critique of capitalism
and the state. Some anti-fascist organizing even consciously stops short
of promoting revolutionary social change, thinking that capitalism and
its ills are here to stay. These antifa argue that we need to focus on
beating the nazis off the street instead, and maybe in the process weâll
gain a little bit of breathing room under the weight of this racist,
patriarchal and thoroughly repressive society. But ultimately this is a
defeatist politic that can lead antifa to embrace aspects of the law and
order regime, even looking towards the state as a potential ally in some
instances. This has to be challenged and defeated. As antifa, we have
come a long way through the politicization and momentum of the last few
years our politics are now more radical than ever. But itâs still not
sufficient.
On the other hand, there is a tendency in the revolutionary movement to
ignore fascism and treat it as a shadow on the wall. Many revs believe
real fascism died in 1945 and is now a non-issue. Some revs go further,
believing that antifa actually assist the state by diverting energy away
from anti-capitalist struggle and that by struggling against the state
and capital we automatically fight fascism and its potential. This logic
sees only two forces in society: the bosses and us. It fails to grasp
the complexities of class struggle, racism and the levels of privilege
and power that are present and are held onto by those who have them. It
also fails to see the antagonism between the state and the will of a
popular, yet reactionary, movement. Another problem is that the
revolutionary movement, by not incorporating anti-fascism into its
program, may unwittingly embrace reactionary, racist and even fascist
aspects of popular strugglesâand not even know it. Or worse, they may
try to deny it while being fully aware of the slippery slope they are
playing on. Revolutionaries need to develop a more complex analysis and,
to be blunt, dump workerist notions that there exists a united
proletariat against the bosses. The history of U.S. politics alone can
show the fallacy of this approach. White supremacy and white skin
privilege long ago created differences in the working classes. Different
strata of the oppressed have unique and different class interests. And
9/11 showed that there are forces outside of the dominant boss class who
have an agenda that isnât pro-human or very proletarian.
A few observations (critiques you could say) that we want to lay out now
are specific to the essays but should also be understood as a wider
comment on our movements. First, the authors are coming out of a Marxist
perspective, albeit an extremely unorthodox one. This makes for an
insight into politics that is sharper and refreshingly different than
the majority of the Marxist movement, and in general their perspective
is uniquely different from most of the Left, period. However, they tread
lightly around addressing deficiencies in Marxâs/Marxist philosophy, the
effects the last hundred and fifty years of organized Marxism has had
and the overall failure of the Left to establish a free society. The
potentials for emerging reactionary movements have to be analyzed within
the context of this history and the collapse of the Soviet/Stalinist
model of communism worldwide. Hamerquist and (to a greater extent) Sakai
take a look into the defeat and/or degeneration of many movements,
including those for national liberation. They also point out that what
is left in the world today is far from the revolutionary socialist
aspirations for freedom and equality that many of these movements
claimed as their end goal (come on, everyone, can we say,
B-a-l-k-a-n-s?). Marxismâand the whole of the Left, including
anarchismâmust be thoroughly reviewed and critiqued if we hope to create
a movement of people capable of creating something new and liberatory.
Another major weakness in these works is that they insufficiently
address the condition of women in relation to capitalism and fascism.
Globally, women continue to be at the bottom of the pyramid of
domination. They do, however, remain decisive factors in social and
cultural development. Along with children, women continue to represent
the largest block of exploited humanity, both existing as proletariat
and still fulfilling traditional domestic roles. One is paid the lowest
in wages and the other receives no labor pay at all, thus providing the
free and accumulated labor that the whole of capitalist society depends
on. The providing of this free labor, or the potential for an organized
womenâs movement to take itâand the whole of their laborâaway, could
become a major factor in the future and itself could undermine the
capitalist structure. But these issues are also at the center of fascist
ideology. In an emerging fascist culture, the traditional forms of
oppressing women become exaggerated beyond the point of recognition. The
patriarchal nature of fascism places women in a particular class, or
sub-class. Women become mere property, dominated and exploited by a male
authority.
But herein lies the contradiction. The power of ideology affects all
classes and strata of society. A fascist movement will draw its strength
from both men and women. Hitlerâs rise to power wasnât merely the work
of stormtroopers in the streets, it was made possible by the mass
support of women. Hitler promised the creation of a cultural value
system in which the contributions of âAryanâ women to the fascist German
society would simply be child rearing and care of the home and hearth. A
new proletarian slave class of gypsies, Jews and North Africansâmade up
of men, women and childrenâwould handle the work previously done by
âAryanâ women. All sexual elements outside of conceiving for the master
race would be handled by state-promoted brothels.
Looking back at these lessons, what would the role of women be in a
modern fascist movement? As is the nature of society, there will be
contradictions and antagonisms to ideology and its implementation. Women
will play a subservient role in fascist, patriarchal politics, but they
can also act as active agents in its realization. Currently, the more
sophisticated fascist and neo-nazi groups in the U.S. have and promote
women as organizers, on par with their male counterparts. Aided by
magazines, websites and how-to courses, a subculture of fascist women
supports each other and promotes female participation in fascist
activism. Will women play more extensive parts within reactionary
movements? What are the potential developments here? How do we organize
to deal with these complexities? What are the questions to be asked and
priorities needed to combat both patriarchy and fascism? The struggle
between oppression and liberation for women has to be placed at the fore
of our politics and action.
In closing, we need to re-assert Hamerquistâs theme: that the
development of an anti-fascist politic is essential to the development
of a genuine liberation movement. Clearly understanding the
characteristics of anti-human politics and ideologies in all their forms
must be prioritized. So also must be the struggle against them. Taking
the fight to fascismâwhether in its white supremacist form, in a
crypto-fascist fundamentalist variety or perhaps even in forms we have
yet to seeâcannot be sidelined for the larger struggles, or vice versa.
During the Spanish Civil, the anarchist militants fighting on the front
against Francoâs troops used the slogan, âThe War is not inseparable
from the Revolution!â We take this to heart.
In this new era, the future is clouded with the still-shifting smoke and
haze of 9/11. Our recovery process is slow going and filled with
questions that seem to have no immediate answers. However, chances and
steps forward can be had. What is needed is the political clarity to
seize those opportunities and take those chances. We hope that these
essays will assist in that respect.
For A Free Humanity!
Against Fascism,
Against Capitalism and the State!
by Don Hamerquist
This paper is directed towards a narrow audience of revolutionary
activists who, hopefully, will not demand a finished product. It is not
finished and probably will never be. Much of what I say will be
controversial and is certainly open to challenge. On some points I would
not be so unhappy to be proven wrong. I realize that I make a number of
generalizations without what would normally be regarded as sufficient
evidence, and I havenât adequately checked some of the evidence that I
do offer. Feel free to shoot down any part of the argument, but remember
that on the major points, validity isnât ultimately a scholastic matter,
but an issue that will be determined and âdecidedâ in struggle. Much
depends on what we, and also the fascists, do and donât do.
For much of the U.S. left, fascism is little more than an epithetâsimply
another way to say âbadâ or âvery badâ applied loosely to quite
different social movements as well as to various aspects and elements of
capitalist reaction. But for those with more of a âtheoretical bentâ
fascism in essence is, and always has been, a âgorillaâ form of
capitalism. That is, fascism is a system of capitalist rule that would
be more reactionary, more repressive, more imperialist, and more racist
and genocidal than current ânormalityâ of ruling class policy. Many of
those who see fascism as essentially capitalist also minimize the extent
to which it is a sharp break with ânormalâ forms of capitalist rule.
They see it as just the extreme end of the continuum of systematized
repression that characterizes late capitalism. Often this is expressed
in the view that capitalism contains an inherent drive towards fascism.
A trip that some believe has already been completed.
In opposition to this position, I think that fascism has the potential
to become a mass movement with a substantial and genuine element of
revolutionary anti-capitalism. Nothing but mistakes will result from
treating it as âbadâ capitalismâas, in the language of the Comintern,
âthe policy of the most reactionary sections of big capitalâ.
Fascism in my opinion, is not a paper tiger or a symbolic target but a
real and immediate danger both in this country and around the world.
However, the nature of this danger is not self-evident. It requires
clear explanation and it requires the rejection of some conventional
wisdom. Fascism is not a danger because it is ruling class policy or is
about to be adopted as policy. Not even because it could have major
influences on this policy. Nor is it a danger because of the ârahowaâ,
racial holy war, that is advocated by some fascist factions. The
policies of official capitalism carried out through the schools and the
criminal justice and welfare systems are both a far greater and a more
immediate threat to the health and welfare of people of color than
fascist instigated racial attacks and their promotion of racialist
genocide. The real danger presented by the emerging fascist movements
and organizations is that they might gain a mass following among
potentially insurgent workers and declassed strata through an historic
default of the left. This default is more than a possibility, it is a
probability, and if it happens it will cause massive damage to the
potential for a liberatory anti-capitalist insurgency.
In this country, particularly, radical anti-fascists must be prepared to
compete ideologically and every other way with fascists who present
themselves as revolutionary and anti-capitalist and who orient towards
the same issues and constituencies as the left. This is not to deny that
capitalist reaction exists within and influences fascist movements,
perhaps even decisively in some places and at some times (Eastern
Europe?). However, I think that both logic and evidence supports the
conclusion that this side of fascism is on the wane in this country and
in many other areas of the so-called developed world.
When fascist movements, theories, and governments emerged following WWI,
the common left view was that, in essence, they were a policy of
capitalist reaction intended to counter the possibility of a serious
working class challenge to capital. Of course, fascism was seen as more
than a normal capitalist policy optionâlike tight money or
protectionism. It was a âpolicyâ, but one that had relatively autonomous
popular support. It was a policy, but one advanced by the most
reactionary neanderthal wing of capital, while the âliberalâ
âprogressiveâ wing opposed it, putting fascism at the center of major
disputes within the ruling class. This position cut across the
ideological spectrum, and was even expressed by major anarchist leaders;
e.g., Durruti, âWhen the bourgeoisie sees power slipping from its grasp,
it has recourse to fascism to maintain itself.â
Features of fascism that donât fit this picture are normally ignored or
dismissed as some kind of black propaganda from the ruling class. But
historically these have been pretty significant features. Mussolini and
Italian fascism developed out of the Italian Socialist Party and
subsequently picked up some important figures from the Italian Communist
party. German Nazis were national socialists and a large section of
their following and some of their leadership were serious about
socialism and anti-capitalism. (This is the Strasser-Brownshirt tendency
that is the historical antecedent of the so-called third position, a
growing factor in the current fascist movements.) Even the Hitler wing
of the NSDAP was clearly anti-bourgeois.
From the early twenties it could not be denied that fascism had a mass
base. However, most left analyses placed this base in competitively
insecure sectors of the capitalist class; in pre-capitalist classes
resisting proletarianization; and in essentially declassed elements, the
lumpen, not in the working class. Any fascist influences within the
working class were attributed to some extreme form of âfalse
consciousnessâ, or were discounted as the effects of temporary and
accidental features of capitalist development (like losing a major war)
which would be eliminated by the engine of history. At the heart of
fascism in this view were, on the one hand and playing the strategically
decisive role, the most reactionary elements of capital, and on the
other hand a street force composed of gangs of opportunistic and
essentially cowardly thugs. Fascism was a club over the working class,
not a tendency within it. With the notable exception of Reichâs position
on the mass psychology of fascism, there was little serious examination
of the actual and potential mass popular appeal of fascism.
This simplistic view of fascism was, and still is, paired with a
simplistic anti-fascism. The main strand of anti-fascism was essentially
social democratic. This stressed the need for a defensive popular unity
against fascism premised on the general understanding that it was the
policy of capitalist weaknessâa final resort position for most of the
ruling class. Since a complacent and comfortable capitalism would have
no need to resort to fascism, the social democratic response (and the
same essential positions were held by many who werenât organized social
democrats) was to strengthen and stabilize âdemocraticâ capitalism
through the incorporation and institutionalization of trade unionism and
the subordination of all struggle to parliamentary and legal
considerations. The resulting de facto endorsement of liberal capitalism
follows right along the track of social democracyâs increasingly
reformist and evolutionary general politics. Not surprisingly, since
they shared the view that fascism was essentially a form of capitalist
rule that became more attractive to the ruling class when capitalism was
in a weakened position, the Communists (Third International) ultimately
wound up at a place quite similar to social democracy. However, before
the eventual convergence there were important differences that demarcate
a second strand of anti-fascist politics, a strand which at times has
been very antagonistic to the reformist position even though it shares
important underlying assumptions with it.
During the so-called âthird periodâ of the late twenties and early
thirties, communist orthodoxy posed working class revolution as the
answer to fascism as well as to various other inconveniences, all of
which would be eliminated as the byproduct of the elimination of
capitalism. (The Italian communists who had early experience with
fascism in power had significantly different positions, but in
conditions of emerging Stalinism, they kept pretty quiet). If this
âleftâ anti-capitalist stance led to a temporary strengthening of
fascism, that was acceptableâan attitude made famous by the German C.P.
slogan, âAfter Hitler, Usâ. A parallel communist position of the period
presented social democracy and fascism as two not so different sides of
the same capitalist coin. Social democrats were âsocial fascistsâ, and
any strategic alliance with social democracy against fascism was
excluded. In fact, there were examples of tactical alliances between
Communists and Nazis against the social democrats. This is
notwithstanding the well-known clashes between armed fascists and
communists during this period. Clashes that are frequently exaggerated
for reasons of post facto communist public relations.
Some of the positions taken in the debates about Spanish politics during
the thirties follow a pattern similar to âthird periodâ positions.
Ironically these are often anarchist criticisms of the popular front
governments, and particularly of the participation in these governments
by the anarcho-syndicalist leadership of the CNT-FAI.
This âleftâ position is the second, much weaker, strand of anti-fascism.
Elements of it re-emerge regularly as revolutionary groups see
mainstream leftists evading confrontation with capitalist state power or
even colluding with it, while undermining radical victories and
potentials. All done in the name of anti-fascist and anti-right wing
politics. This makes the âleftâ position understandable, but doesnât
make it correct. At the present time such a position will lead to a
serious blurring of the distinctions between the politics of a
revolutionary left and those of various militant anti-capitalist fascist
tendencies.
(Some populist and anti-capitalist fascists are already promoting a
position of âleft-right convergenceâ, arguing that such historical
differences are largely irrelevant and should be superceded. (See the
Spartacus Press or other National Revolutionary websites for numerous
examples.) On the other hand, the state and some flacks on the liberal
left, are attempting to buttress the legitimacy and hegemony of
capitalism by presenting a picture of a supposed âterroristâ merger of
the extremes of left and right. I will deal with this âleft-rightâ
convergence issue, both as presented by some fascist tendencies and as
an element in capitalist ideological hegemony, at a number of points in
the course of this paper.)
Shortly after Hitler came to power, and with Nazi Germany posing an
obvious military threat to the Soviet Union, the communists made the
dramatic change in anti-fascist policy and theory that is associated
with the name of Dimitrov and the slogan of the united/popular front. No
longer would fascism be defeated through the defeat of capitalism. Now,
the policy was to defeat fascism by saving capitalism from its own
fascist potentials and propensities. This would be accomplished by
developing the broadest possible popular allianceâeven broader than that
envisaged by orthodox social democratsâaround the defense of bourgeois
liberty and bourgeois parliamentarianism. This period of the
united/popular front against fascism lasted through the military defeat
of Germany and Italy except for the brief, but historically very
significant, reversion to a corrupt and hypocritical variant of the
third period positions during the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939â40.
After the defeat of fascism in power in WWII, the Communist policy
morphed into the familiar pseudo-strategy of anti-monopoly coalitions
and anti-monopoly governments; focusing against the âultra rightâ and
relying on alliances with âdemocraticâ and âprogressiveâ sectors of
capital for âpeace, democratic rights, and economic progressâ. Hidden in
the dialectical wastebasket is the classic Marxist tenet of bourgeois
democracy being the preferred form of capitalist rule. The net result
was, and still is, institutionalized support for a never-ending
succession of capitalist lesser evils. Frequently this involves de facto
support for the policies and positions advanced by the sector of capital
that actually controls the main levers of state power. One of the more
familiar examples of this approach in action in this country, was the
support of both social democracy and the CPUSA for âpeace candidateâ,
Lyndon Johnson, against Goldwater in 1964, an historical moment when a
challenge to all capitalist policy options was clearly developing
momentum.
Insofar as there is thinking here, the underlying thought is this:
first, fascism, rather than being a unique and specific danger, the
policy of capitalâs extremity forced on it by its weakness in the face
of adversity, becomes the permanent project of a âbadâ, âreactionaryâ,
âwarlikeâ, âultra rightâ sector of capital. Bourgeois democracy;
parliamentarism, constitutionalism, legalization of trade unions, rather
than being a double-edged collection of questionable âpeopleâs
victoriesâ, become the best possible terrain for waging popular struggle
against capital, a neutral ground that must be defended against the
âultra-rightistsâ and fascists who would obliterate it. It would be
possible to spend a lot of time on the history of these positions, and
on various examples of their implementation, but for purposes of my
argument there are two central points. Fascism was capitalism, but of a
âbadâ, gorilla variant. Anti-fascism was either confined to the terrain
of reformism or collapsed into the general struggle against capital. In
the rest of this paper I hope to demonstrate whatâs wrong with the first
point, and to develop an alternative to the second.
The way we estimate the shape and the prospects of the incipient fascist
movement in this country has a lot to do with our estimates of the
prospects for capitalism. If we project a period of relative stability
and balanced development, capitalist hegemony, particularly in the
metropolitan center, can be maintained through ostensibly neutral
mechanisms which hide the realities of domination and subordination.
This will keep fascist movements (and likely the left as well) on the
margins of society. If, on the contrary, capitalism is entering a period
of major social and economic dislocation, a period of crises, the growth
of the left, and, as well, the growth of fascist movements will be both
a manifestation of the crises and a reaction to them.
There are good reasons why fashionable leftism no longer revolves around
conceptions of capitalist crisis. We can remember the theories of
âgeneral crisisâ and its various âstagesâ. The predictions of the âfinal
crisisâ and of the collapse of the capitalist world system. We also
should know what actually collapsed. Thereâs certainly nothing wrong
with delivering some kicks to Soviet âMarxismââs simplistic economic
determinism, but it shouldnât extend to accepting capitalismâs unlimited
flexibility by default, preventing serious discussion of the systemâs
limits. While I donât directly argue the issues of capitalist crisis in
this paper, I realize that the points that I do make imply a definite
position that can certainly be challenged. Be that as it may, I think
that capitalism, although superficially reascendent, contains defining
and ultimately terminal internal contradictions. Of course these donât
preordain a dismal capitalist future, or even necessarily give us the
capacity to make specific predictions about this future. They do make it
proper, even prudent, to assume a capitalist system that is crisis prone
and crisis ridden. Carefully read, serious Marxism does not claim that
capitalism will inevitably collapse or that it will be inevitably
succeeded by communism. It claims that: âCapital itself is the moving
contradiction, (in) that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum,
while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and
source of wealth. Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form
so as to increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the
superfluous in growing measure as a conditionâquestion of life or
deathâfor the necessary. On the one side, then, it calls to life all the
powers of science and of nature, as of social combination and of social
intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth independent
(relatively) of the labour time employed on it. On the other side, it
wants to use labour time as the measuring rod for the giant social
forces thereby created, and to confine them within the limits required
to maintain the already created value as value. Forces of production and
social relationsâtwo different sides of the development of the social
individualâappear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it
to produce on its limited foundation. In fact however, they are the
material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high.â (Marx,
Grundrisse, p. 706)
This âcrisis in the law of valueâ is the reality that underlies the
distortions and absurdities currently characterizing global capitalism.
It is the stuff of the ecological crises, and of the marginalization of
labor as well. It ties opulence to famine; medical marvels to epidemics;
tremendous productivity to meaningless drudgery. This crisis does raise
specters, but not only that of communism. Marx was aware of a different
possible future one that also is a specter, the specter of
âbarbarismââof the âcommon ruin of the contending classesâ. Capitalismâs
current contradictions provide the potentials for revolutionary fascist
movements, the basic ingredient, I think, of âbarbarismâ, just as
certainly as they provide potentials for a revitalized revolutionary
left. It is not ordained that it will be a revolution from the left
rather than an attack from the right that will âblow this foundation
sky-highâ. Indeed, if we listen to T. Kazynski, and other less exotic
advocates of deindustrialization, capitalist collapse might result from
processes that reflect neither left nor right goals or visions. This is
why some very diverse political tendencies subordinate all issues to the
preparation for survival in a post-collapse era.
There is no doubt that in response to these developing crises some
elements of resurgent fascism will ally with capitalist reaction. But in
my opinion these are unlikely to be the decisive and defining elements
in this country.
Letâs look at this as two different, though closely related, questions.
First, is there a potential that a strategically significant section of
U.S. capital would opt for a fascist state? Second, even without such a
ruling class support, might a pro-capitalist variant of fascism gain
hegemony over the various elements of right wing reaction and shape it
into a unified mass movement that could impose fascism on the capitalist
ruling class as well as the rest of society.
I want to focus on the first point in this section. However, the second
point cannot necessarily be ruled out, so in a later section I will deal
with the potentials of a mass pro-capitalist fascist movement without
important links to any major sectors of the ruling class.
Obviously, if an important section of capital opts for fascism, it will
have a major impact on the politics and the potentials of fascist mass
movements. Even as it enjoyed greater visibility and more material
resources, the cohesion and coherence of the overall fascist movement
would be weakened by the defection of more radical and militant fascist
positions. Its path towards power would orient towards coups and
putsches and away from popular insurgency. To varying degrees, this is
what happened in the processes of the victories of fascism in Germany,
Italy and Spain.
However, we face conditions that are different in major ways from
Germany of the twenties and from most other historical situations where
fascism gained a mass following and challenged for state power. Germany
after WWI was a defeated and humiliated nation with a politically and
economically shackled capitalist class. In Germany, accurately or not,
the left anti-capitalist revolutionary potential certainly looked real
and substantialâsufficiently substantial to force a reactionary unity on
a capitalist class that was in no position to respond to the working
class insurgencies with substantial pre-emptive concessions. Similarly,
in Italy in the early twenties, and in Spain slightly later, a large and
militant anarchist and socialist upsurge faced a weak and poorly
developed capitalist class that could reasonably conclude that it needed
to rely on the fascist card. In these conditions a significant sector of
the ruling class did develop an interest in imposing a fascism âfrom
aboveâ, developing a relationship with those sectors of the autonomous
fascist mass movement that were not genuinely committed to the more
radical aspects of the fascist program. Despite this, even in Germany,
the nazi political structure had a clear and substantial autonomy from
the capitalist class and the strength to impose certain positions on
that class. German national socialism was never just a tool of the
entire ruling class, or even of a reactionary sector of it. When this
has been recognized by the left, it has usually been viewed as something
of a âbonapartistâ situation, which, though important for historical
moments, is always eventually overweighed and overwhelmed by the
realities of class interests. Indeed, it is believed that exactly this
triumph of ruling class interests occurred in Germany when Hitler
crushed the fascist left wing in 1934 and made a compact with German
capitalism. A parallel argument applies to Mussoliniâs accommodation
with the Vatican and Italian capitalism.
The German left communist, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, infiltrated the top
circles of the German Association of Manufacturers and much later wrote
a book with an on the spot description of the actual relationships
between the nazi movement and party and various capitalist groupings.
His book makes it clear that the nazis had substantial independence from
the capitalist class even after the pro-capitalist right wing coup in
the German fascist movement. This independence, according to
Sohn-Rethel, went beyond bonapartism. He thought that the German fascist
state and society were developing features that foreshadowed a new
âtranscapitalistâ exploitative social order.
The most important of these features was fascist labor policy where, in
significant areas of the economy the distinctively capitalist difference
between labor and other factors of production was obliterated. Labor,
not just labor power, was consumed in the process of production just
like raw materials and fixed capital. The implications are barbaric and
genocidal and genocide was what occurred. But this was not the genocidal
aspect of continuing primitive accumulation that is a part of ânormalâ
capitalist development. That type of genocide is directed mainly against
pre-capitalist populations and against the social formations that
obstruct the creation of a modern working class and the development of a
reservoir of surplus labor. The German policy was the genocidal
obliteration of already developed sections of the European working
classes and the deliberate disruption of the social reproduction of
labor in those sectorsâall in the interests of a racialist demand for
âliving spaceâ.
There is no significant parallel between our situation and the
conditions in which German, Spanish, and Italian fascism developed. U.S.
centered capital is triumphant on a global scale, not defeated and
disorganized. Its main concern is to avoid unnecessary disruptions to
its hegemony, and if it were to support the fascist option, particularly
in this country, it would obviously be just such a disruption. We might
hope differently, but no significant internal or external challenges
from the left are pushing U.S.-centered capitalism towards such acts of
desperation. Some more or less marginalized sections of the ruling class
(e.g. Millikin?) might develop ties to fascist movements and provide
resources that could help coalesce a reactionary right bloc. However,
this would only happen at the cost of diluting and undermining the
militance and radicalism of the fascist constituency, channeling it into
reformist and parliamentary arenas where it will have difficulty moving
beyond pressure group status. We can hope that the fascists will be as
blind to the dangers of this course as much of the left certainly is,
but, as I will show in the course of this paper, we had better not
depend on it.
It is easy for U.S. anti-fascists to be lulled into complacency because
of the historic stupidities and religiosity of fascist groupings in this
country. But fascists who can think are emerging, and as they do, there
will be a base for their kind of thinking. The emerging fascist movement
for which we must prepare, will be rooted in populist nationalist
anti-capitalism and will have an intransigent hostility to various state
and supra-state institutions. The essence of anti-fascist organizing
must be the development of a left bloc that can successfully compete
with such fascists, presenting a revolutionary option that confronts
both fascism and capitalism in the realm of ideas and on the street. As
I have said, unless the left can become such an alternative, there is a
real danger that fascist movements will be the main beneficiary of
capitalâs developing contradictions. It would be convenient if, for lack
of an alternative, large numbers of people would automatically rally
behind the leftâs various tattered flags wherever they got basically
pissed off. However, in a crisis there will be alternatives to the
leftâfascist ones, and the left may very well not look like much of an
alternative to capitalism. Sadly it will not only be hard to distinguish
the U.S. left from various liberal capitalist factions, the lines
between it and some of the fascists are also likely to be pretty
indistinct.
Nevertheless, most of the U.S. left operates on the unstated assumption
that in any competition with fascists for popular support we win by
default. When the secondary issues underlying this assumption are
eliminated, two main grounds for it remain. The first is the belief that
all of the significant fascists will eventually expose themselves as
pro-capitalist. The second is the belief that fascism is inevitably
white supremacist. I want to deal with the elements of this assumption
separately and at some length. Of course, this separation is for
purposes of discussion only. In reality white supremacy and support for
capitalism are normally linked. In this country, white supremacy has
been a central factor in capitalist social control, and it is certain
that any white fascist movement in the U.S. that was not categorically
opposed to capitalism would be white supremacist.
People are not stupid and unable to see political reality. To the
contrary, they are smart and see the truth more clearly than the left.
This extends beyond the popular view that leftists are just another
species of politician to a basic skepticism about the leftâs vision of
the revolutionary alternative to capitalism. Donât forget that the left
is saddled in the popular consciousness with the Soviet and Chinese
models (for some a treasured burden). These models look a great deal
like fascism to the average person. They look a lot like fascism to many
fascists, old and new. Wasnât it Mussolini who said that Stalinist
U.S.S.R. was âfascism without a marketâ?
There will be no widespread popular confidence that those who identify
with the currently non-existent âactually existing socialismâ in any of
its phases and permutations are reliable anti-fascists or that they
should be entrusted with power under any circumstances. Nor should there
be. The truth is that many left groups function like fascistsâorganizing
themselves in cultist obedience to a maximum leader and proposing models
of a good society that emphasize typically fascist virtues like
discipline, loyalty, and sacrifice. Other left perspectives are just
liberal reformism served with some nostalgic rhetoric. Itâs not at all
uncommon to find both features in the same left organization.
Do we think that all of this has escaped popular notice and will have no
consequences? How could that possibly be the case? It would not be
difficult to pre-empt the terrain of discontent from this left of ours.
Certainly this is more likely to happen than that all of the fascists
will decide to help us out and become pro-capitalist. Letâs look at this
issue in more detail.
Following fairly logically from the position that fascism is just a
capitalist policy option, the U.S. left (also the British or at least
the old Searchlight people along with their many other blemishes) has
tended to view the actual fascist and neo-fascist groups as more or less
of a joke. Their political positions are treated as propaganda that
should not to be taken seriously, as just a cover for an opportunistic
mixture of thugs, nuts, and cops that is essentially in the pay of
sectors of the capitalist ruling class. Accompanying this is the
terminally foolish conception of fascist cadre as cowards and bullies
who will run from anyone willing to fight. Such positions should have
died quietly a quarter century ago with the appearance of the Turner
Diaries in this country. This novel, based of Jack Londonâs Iron Heel,
was written by William Pierce, who until his recent death was head of
the fascist National Alliance and previously a major figure in George
Lincoln Rockwellâs Nazi group. The Turner Diaries is not a cartoon-Klan
concoction. It elaborates a radical critique of the existing capitalist
social structure and goes to some lengths to differentiate revolutionary
fascists from reactionary, but reformist, right-wingers. Beyond a
political perspective, the Turner Diaries lays out a moral and ethical
framework for U.S. fascism which, whatever else can be said about it, is
not opportunistic or lumpen. The left in the U.S paid essentially no
attention and, with few exceptions, drew no political conclusions. Much
of it is probably still, after two decades, familiar with the Turner
Diaries only through its mention in newspaper accounts as a major
influence on Timothy McVeigh, the Order, the Posse Commitatus, the
Phineas Priesthood, the World Church of the Creator, etc.
Although the Turner Diaries were clearly revolutionary, they make a
narrow and moralistic attack on what they picture as the essential
corruption of U.S. society. Pierce is not enthused about
anti-capitalism. His criticisms of U.S. capitalism focus on excesses and
abuses, criticizing the alleged dominance of the financial element over
the productive (sic) element. William Pierce was totally aligned with
the Hitler wing of the Nazi spectrum. His politics rested on a mix of
anti-Semitism, white supremacy, myths of a heroic white past, and other
assorted aryan garbage. His vision of an alternative society was
hierarchical, authoritarian, and patriarchal. This worldview may find
mass support in fundamentalist right-reactionary circles, but it has
distinct limitations in popular appeal elsewhere.
Pierceâs attempt to create an American variant of classical German
Nazism has resulted in new fascist formations that frontally attack him
and his organization, the National Alliance, for being insufficiently
anti-capitalist, insufficiently militant, and far too bureaucratic and
hierarchical. A struggle is developing among fascists over whether they
should try to corral and capture the generic right or, alternatively,
whether they should confront and challenge right wing variants of
reformism and parliamentarianism while looking elsewhere for a political
base. This provides a good place to raise a question mentioned earlier.
Might an essentially pro-capitalist fascist tendency heading a mass
reactionary movement develop the autonomous strength to impose fascism
âfrom belowâ on a corrupt and weakened capitalist ruling class? There is
absolutely no doubt that this is the intended and preferred strategy of
the National Alliance and a number of other fascist groups in this
country and elsewhere in the world. They would like to gain hegemony
over the massive amorphous right-reactionary base and build
incrementally from this base towards power. (Of course, another part of
their perspective involves the penetration of key institutions, the
military and the police and the development of real military assets of
their own.) These fascists advocate both open and covert participation
in the Reform Party, in the Right to Life movement, and in various
conservative political and social movements in order to implement their
perspective.
This strategy has obvious parallels to approaches of the traditional
Marxist-Leninist left. Whether the strategy is advanced by
authoritarians on the right or on the left, it generates the same sorts
of criticisms and opposition. Capitalist development creates an
anti-capitalist fascism that will neither retreat nor evaporate when
confronted by what it sees as pro-capitalist fascism. Long before
Pierceâs strategy succeeds, it has created its own fascist challenge, a
challenge that it will have great difficulty defeating or absorbing.
Which variant of fascism will prevail? Will they cancel each other out?
I have my opinions but I could be wrong. What I do know is that, on this
point as on all others, the most dangerous left assumption is that the
easier road is the one that we will be traveling. The worst error the
left could commit in this situation is to assume that Pierceâs variant
of fascism will ultimately prevail because it looks most like the best
recognized historical model, German National Socialism. This assumption
might ultimately prove to be true, but acting on it now only means that
fascism will be effectively discounted as an ideological challenge,
whatever significance it is assigned in other respects. This then
becomes another support for an ultimately suicidal complacency about the
leftâs own perspectives and visions. The only remaining question will be
whether we get done in by the fascists or by the capitalists.
Some of the conflicts and contradictions in the fascist camp are
apparent in the fascist music / cultural magazine, Resistance. Recently
the magazine was taken over by the National Alliance, and its
revitalization and reorientation admittedly took a lot of Pierceâs time.
It is clearly an attempt to appeal to and organize radical white
skinheads. In the first issues after the magazine came under National
Alliance control some polemical articles by orthodox fascists led to an
outraged and hostile response from the magazineâs audience. One article
criticized âundisciplinedâ and âtattooedâ skinheads and argued that they
should join the army and learn military skills. Another attacked the
conception of âleaderless resistanceâ as infantile and amateurish. A
further argument challenged any orientation to the âworking classâ. The
reaction to these traditional fascist positions led to the dismissal of
one editor, and a formal editorial apology from his successor.
It is likely that Pierceâs successors would have to modify his entire
conception of white aryan culture if they want to seriously contend with
more radical fascists for this base. I wouldnât presume to predict how
this situation will ultimately work out. However, I do think that while
the likes of Pierce might prevail organizationally and/or through force
for a period of time, it is unlikely that they can win a conclusive
ideological triumph.
However unfortunate this was for him and his organization, Pierceâs
categorical critique of U.S. society in the Turner Diaries provided part
of the impetus for the reemergence of the Strasser/Rohm âsocialistâ wing
of fascism in the U.S., the so-called âthird positionââa fascist variant
that presents itself as ânational revolutionaryâ, with politics that are
âbeyond left and rightâ.
(There appears to be two distinct wings to the third position. One calls
itself the International Third Position, ITP, and tends to be more
predictably racist, anti-feminist, anti-semitic, homophobic, etc. There
is also a distinctly religious character to their politics. The other
wing is called âNational Revolutionaryâ or âNational Bolshevikâ, and is
much more radical; categorically attacking âHitlerian fascismâ, and
going to lengths to argue that they support all movements that are
genuinely anti-capitalist. Some National Revolutionaries like the NRF in
England are still overtly racist and white supremacist, despite their
support for certain liberation movements; e.g., the Irish and
Palestinian. Others, as indicated in some quotes I will introduce later,
claim to completely reject white supremacy. Various National
Revolutionary groups and ideologists also have differences about
anti-Semitism that parallel their differences on racism and
anti-imperialist national liberation. I would recommend that people look
at the material of both groups. This can be done easily by beginning
from the websites for âamericanfrontâ and for the international third
position.)
This third position variant of fascism poses a different and, I think,
greater danger to the left than Pierce and the National Alliance. It
makes a direct appeal to a working class audience with a warped, but
militant, socialist racialist-nationalist program of decentralized
direct action that has at least as much going for it as the warped
reformist, nationalist, and pervasively non militant schemes of the
established left. Not only does it intend to appeal to the working class
and dispossessedâin distinct contrast to groups like the National
Alliance; but at least some elements within it explicitly aim to recruit
from the ranks of the militant left, and not from the radical right.
It is one thing to talk about abstract potentials for a militantly
anti-capitalist brand of fascism. Itâs another to show evidence that
something like this is actually developing. I believe that there is some
evidence in this country and that there is a great deal of evidence in
the rest of the world. The first indicators appeared when fascist groups
began to move away from their traditional base in white racist reaction
and look for recruits and influence in areas which the left naively
believes are part of âits movementâ. Iâm including a statement about the
Seattle WTO demonstrations from our World Church of the Creator friend,
Pontifex Maximus to illustrate this development:
âWhat happened in Seattle is a precursor for the futureâwhen White
people in droves protest the actions of world Jewry not by âwriting to
congressmenâ, âvotingâ, or other nonsense like that, but by taking to
the streets and throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of the enemyâs
machine. I witnessed some of what happened in Seattle firsthand, for as
chance would have it, I was in Seattle from December 2 until December 5
to meet with Racial Loyalists there and speak at the yearly Whidbey
Island vigil honoring Robert J. Mathews. I witnessed some of the
marches, and while there was certainly a fair amount of non-white trash
involved in them, the vast majority were White people of good blood, who
can be mobilized in the future for something besides their economic
livelihood or environment; their continued biological existence. It is
from the likes of the White people who protested the WTO (and who in
some cases, went to jail for illegal actions) that our World Church of
the Creator must look to for our convertsânot the stale âright wingâ
which has failed miserably to put even one dent in the armor of the
Jewish monster. Did the right wing hinder the WTO? No. They were too
busy âwriting their congressmenââcongressmen who were bought off a long
time ago, or waiting for their âgreat white hopeâ in shining armor who
they can miraculously vote into office. The reality, though, is that
there is invariably a kosher U or K on that armor. How many defeats must
they suffer before they realize that a change in tactics is advisable?
No, it was the left wing, by and large, which stymied the WTO to the
point where their meeting was practically worthless, and we should
concentrate on these zealots, not the âmeet, eat, and retreatâ crowd of
the right wing who are so worried about âoffendingâ the enemy that all
too often, they are a nice Trojan Horse for the enemyâs designs.â
So Matt Hale believes, âIt is from the likes of the White people who
protested the WTO (and who in some cases, went to jail for illegal
actions) that our World Church of the Creator must look to for our
convertsânot the stale âright wingâ.â Is he just deluded? I donât think
so. On the one hand, Matt Hale carries some baggage that would hinder
his approach to our constituency, though the baggage is to some extent
disposable. Weighing against this, he can appear to be, and probably is,
more militant, more ârevolutionaryâ, and particularly in military ways,
more effective, than the existing left. Haleâs position shows the will
and intent to break out of organizing approaches that have entrapped
fascists before. We had better plan on the emergence of fascists that
are substantially better able to exploit these initiatives than a
hopeful, but frustrated, aspirant to the Illinois bar.
Consider the following passage from a statement by Louis Beam, the
advocate of âleaderless resistanceâ and former head of the Texas Klu
Klux Klan, who speaks to and for a militant, but more populist than
socialist, variant of the third position: âWhile some in the so-called
right-wing sit at home and talk about waiting for the Police State to
âcome and get them,â some other really brave people have been out
confronting the Police State, instead of hoarding guns that will never
be fired, these people were out bravely facing the guns of the New World
Order.
â...My heart goes out to those brave souls in Seattle who turned out in
the thousands from both Canada and the U.S. to go up against the thugs
of Clinton and those who put him in office. I appreciate their bravery.
I admire their courage. And I thank them for fighting my battle...
âSoon, however, there will be millions in this country of every
political persuasion confronting the police state on streets throughout
America. When you are being kicked, gassed, beaten and shot at by the
police enforcers of the NWO you will not be asking, nor giving a ratâs
tail, what the other freedom loversâ politics âused to beââfor the new
politics of America is liberty from the NWO Police State and nothing
more.â (L. Beam, Radical Okie Homepage)
The left had better begin to deal with the fact that issues that are
regarded a part of our movement; âglobalizationâ, working class economic
demands, âgreenâ questions, resistance to police repression etc. are now
being organized by explicit fascists and others who might as well be.
Nor do we have a patent on decentralized direct action. That is exactly
what the fascist debate around âleaderless resistanceâ is about.
Finally, the question of who and what, exactly, is anti-capitalist
remains very much unsettled. Some of the fascists take positions that at
least appear to be much more categorically oppositional than those of
most of the left. I said earlier that many third position fascists
explicitly aim to recruit from the ranks of the left. This isnât as
quixotic as it might appear. Indeed, elements of third position politics
are hard to distinguish from common positions on the left, even from
positions held in some of the groups that are closest to us. For
example, some punks and skinheads who view themselves as working class
revolutionaries, some elements of RASH, and even some participants in
our own anti-fascist organizations are ambiguous on issues which should
clearly differentiate right from left. These ambiguities, and actually
this may be too mild a term, include romanticized views of violence,
male supremacy, susceptibility to cults of omniscient leadership, and
macho opposition to open debate and discussion with respect for
individual and group autonomy.
There is a more serious similarity between third position ideology and
the views of one important tendency in our section of the left. Various
green anarchists advance a strategy of anti-capitalist
de-industrialization and ruralism based on decentralized cooperatives.
Various fascist national revolutionaries explicitly argue for a similar
strategy. Of course, the fascists present this position in opposition to
multiculturalism and, more particularly, in opposition to immigration
and foreigners. No significant element of the left in this country would
currently accept these positions, although this may not be so true
elsewhere in the world.
Even so, many U.S. leftists do believe that large sections of the
population are so deformed by their patterns of consumption and by their
acquiescence in relationships of domination and subordination that they
cannot be considered as potential revolutionary subjects. This is a
position which can also be found, not coincidentally, in such artifacts
of the dominant culture as the movie, The Matrix. When the left combines
these elitist perspectives with militant, but diffuse, actions against
capitalist targets, the result can take on more than a passing
resemblance to the âstrategy of tensionâ admired by many European
fascists and acted on by some.
Of course a major goal of our political practice should be to increase
the âungovernabilityâ of capitalist society. But this cannot be done
without taking adequate account of the effects of our actions on the
actual living conditions of masses of people. We have to recognize and
criticize the elitism and arrogance in our camp that writes off large
sections of people as terminally corrupted. Blood and soil fascists, who
are mainly concerned with âtheir own kindâ, can, and do, treat masses of
less favored people as redundant and mere objects. We canât.
This leads me to the second source of unthinking complacency in the left
view of fascism (perhaps Gramsciâs term, âimbecilic optimismâ, is more
appropriate). This relies on the assumption that fascism must be white
supremacist. Thus even if it is granted that fascism might have some
mass appeal, the argument is that this canât extend beyond the âwhiteâ
population. The emerging non-white working class majority in the U.S.,
not to mention in the world as a whole, will provide the left with a
solid and stable bloc, perhaps a majority even here, that, while it may
be reformist, must be at least latently anti-fascist. There are obvious
historical roots for this thinking, but it is dangerously wrong.
Two points: First, there is a real potential for working relationships
and alliances between white fascist movements and various nationalist
and religious tendencies among oppressed peoples. In no way does this
potential involve the denial of the reality of white supremacy and
racial and national oppression. It only means that the left cannot count
on the responses to this pattern of oppression, privilege and domination
fitting into its neat and comfortable categories.
Second, there is no reason to view fascism as necessarily white just
because there are white supremacist fascists. To the contrary there is
every reason to believe that fascist potentials exist throughout the
global capitalist system. African, Asian, and Latin American fascist
organizations can develop that are independent of, and to some extent
competitive with Euro-American âwhiteâ fascism. Both points deserve
elaboration.
Despite all of its rhetoric of âmud peopleâ etc., even the WCOTC brand
of white fascism could conceivably reach some level of tactical
agreement with certain conservative forms of Black nationalism. This has
happened before in this country and elsewhere in the world. Remember
that even Malcolm X, met with the KKK while he was still working within
the Nation of Islam. However, it is unlikely that such agreements would
have more than some public relations significance. The same does not
hold with respect to many of the âthird positionâ fascists. They argue
that their support of white separatism entails that they also recognize
the right of other peoples to their own nations and cultures. Some of
them deny that they are white supremacist at all and attack other
fascist and racist groups for being white supremacists. Consider the
following representative statement from the head of the neo-fascist
American Front:
âI am far from a White supremacist. To me a White supremacist is a
reactionary of the worst kind. He focuses his energies on symptoms
rather than the disease itself. The disease is the SystemâInternational
CapitalismâNOT those who are as exploited, often as badly or worse, as
White workers are by it. Yes, We actually see more in common,
ideologically, with groups like Nation of Islam, the New Black Panther
Party or Atzlan than with the reactionaries like the Hollywood-style
nazis or the Klan. In the past weâve worked with Nation Of Islam and
single issue Organizations like Earth First! and the Animal Liberation
Front when the opportunity arose. Iâm sure the future holds more common
actions and Revolutionary coordination between our âFrontâ and others of
like mind.â (americanfront.com, Interview with Chairman)
Many leftists might dismiss this position and others like it as
contradictory and insincere, irrespective of how many of them could be
introduced. I wouldnât deny the problems and contradictions that are
inherent in the racial nationalism of the American Front. It is
certainly possible that the âChairmanâ could be spouting lies and
disinformation. However, Black movements are already used to a great
deal of contradiction and insincerity from the predominantly white left,
not to mention mountains of hypocrisy. They are not likely to instantly
dismiss expressions of political agreement and offers of solidarity from
neo-fascists, particularly when they come with the prospects of material
support. Nor will they be alienated by the explicit support of these
fascists for the Palestinian struggle, the IRA, and the Zapatistas.
However, whatever the possibility for tactical alliances between white
fascist formations and non-white organizations, this issue is not at the
heart of the problem. As barbarism emerges throughout the global
capitalist system one of its motivating forces will be the alternation
of competition and cooperation among fascist blocsâwith the competition
dominating. In this country and around the world some of these fascist
blocs will be, and, in fact, already are, Black and Brown.
Potentials that exist for a militant left exist for militant fascism as
well. This is true in Uganda. It is true in Utah. If we limit our
conception of fascism to Euro-American white supremacy, the only social
base for fascist movements in most of the world, specifically in Africa
and Asia, would be the atavistic remnants of white colonialism. We would
be forced to another complacent conclusion, namely that only the left
could develop a mass militant and anti-capitalist response in the areas
of the world where the contradictions of capitalism and neo-colonialism
are most severe. Such a conclusion would fly in the face of all
empirical observation and of good sense.
Mass movements based in religious fundamentalism and various types of
warlordism exist everywhere in the third world. They often have
anti-capitalist features and frequently these have a quasi-fascist
aspect. This should not be surprising. The crumbling structures of the
national liberation states and the fragmented and demoralized elements
of the communist movements in these areas are more likely to be fertile
grounds for fascist development rather than a force against it. The
foreign control of capital, labor, and commodity markets distorts the
development of parliamentary and trade union traditions. The form of
global capitalism that dominates in the periphery of the world
capitalist system is not healthy terrain for the reformist leftism that
predominates in capitalâs historic center.
The current situation of capitalism, its âcrisisâ if you please, impels
a reemergence of genocidal tendencies in the capitalist center, a
reemergence that is pushed by fascist ideology and organization around
issues of labor and immigration policy and âeco-fascismâ. However, the
really pressing danger of genocide is developing in Africa and Asia. On
the surface it appears that fratricidal conflicts within neocolonial
structures combined with famine and disease are the cause of genocide in
the third world. However, underneath these conflicts, hidden behind a
careful hands-off public relations stance, lies international capital.
The real responsibility lies in the essential acquiescence and the
elements of complicity by the dominant sectors of international capital
and the states in which its power is centered. If capitalism can survive
the upheavals that these neo-colonial conflicts entail, no foregone
conclusion, they will ultimately serve dirty capitalist interests by
wiping out âsurplusâ labor. Whether or not this happens, this process
leaves a substantial residue of fascist ideology and organization in the
Third World, that is not restricted to the neo-colonial elites, but also
exists on a mass level.
On a world scale, capital has largely succeeded in incorporating
anti-imperialist nationalism through the neocolonial bag of institutions
and ideologies. In this country neocolonialism involves important
changes in class composition in the Black community. One of these is the
development of a Black neocolonial elite that is important to capitalist
hegemony. This elite combines a sort of nationalism with little radical
potential with pro-capitalist reformist ethnic interest group politics.
Any revitalized Black insurgency will have to challenge the Black
neocolonial elite and its ideology from a radical anti-capitalist and
internationalist perspective. Beyond this, a revitalized Black
insurgency will have to deal with reactionary religious fundamentalism
and lumpen criminal organization. These are mass phenomena in Black
communities across the country that already display fascist tendencies
in their treatment of women and gays, in their attitude towards
discipline and order, and in their use of violence and intimidation to
limit and control discussion and debate. It must be said that a critique
of the Black elite as corrupt and as betrayers of the interests of their
people can be made by fascists. We are not talking about a critique from
white fascists but from Black fascists with their own issues and agendas
which, in all likelihood, will be at least partially hostile to those of
white fascist movements and organizations. The revolutionary left in the
Black Nation will have to compete with such fascists for the allegiance
and support of some of the most disaffected and militant people of
color. It does not portend well for this competition that maintaining
âunityâ and âmoraleâ make some Black radicals reluctant to differentiate
themselves, not only from Black reformists, but from Black
crypto-fascists as well.
Historically the Black movement is at the center of every progressive
development in this country. We certainly must hope that it has the
resources to deal with these problems successfully, but we cannot blind
ourselves to the difficulty of the tasks and assume that the right side
will necessarily triumph in time.
While there is something left and radical-seeming about confronting
organized fascists in a military or quasi-military fashion, this âhardâ
approach, besides being risky, often carries a load of conservative
political baggage. Frequently this is the same old united/popular
frontâmassing the greatest possible quantitative strength by developing
alliances based on minimum agreements, agreements that are inevitably
within the framework of capitalist hegemony.
There is no meaningful sense in which fascism can be strategically
defeated while capitalism survives. Unfortunately for us, capitalism
constantly grows fascists. Indeed, it is forming and reforming the
social base for fascist movements at an accelerating pace. On the other
hand, if capitalism were to collapse or be politically defeated anywhere
in the world, this would not necessarily mean an end to the dangers of
fascism. Under some conditions fascism might both contribute to this
collapse and be its major beneficiary. So much for, âAfter Hitler, us.â
This is not to deny that fascism may present a real military danger,
both in general and specifically for the revolutionary left. Effective
anti-fascist organizing can not be implemented without the development
of a cadre with military experience and capacity. Anti-fascists must
mount a military response to the actual fascist organizations if only
for self defense, and there is no doubt that such activity may help
organize our forces and raise our morale. This can be important,
particularly in early stages of activity. Indeed, since military
capabilities are essential assets for a revolutionary left, this is one
reason to choose anti-fascism as an area of work. However, we must be
aware of the dangers in this area and recognize that a military response
will never be all, or even most, of what is needed to successfully deal
with the fascist threat.
There is an important tendency in the anti-fascist movement to place the
confrontation with, and the military defeat of fascism, as a
precondition, perhaps an essential precondition, for an assault on
capitalism. This looks like a variation on the Chinese strategy (at
least it was once their strategy) of âprotracted peopleâs warâ. This is
my reading of the RASH position, although it is all by implication and I
would be surprised if in this case much is owed directly to Lin Piao,
Mao and Giap. It is also the way that I understand the position of
Britainâs Red Action.
I think that seeing anti-fascist work as primarily military, and
premising a strategy on the possibility of its military defeat is a
fundamental mistake. The truth is that no genuinely committed movement
can be permanently defeated purely by military strength even when that
strength is overwhelming and has state power behind it. We know that
this is true for the revolutionary left, we had better learn that it can
be true for the revolutionary right.
At times the anti-fascist movement may win military victories, but these
are often pyrrhic. While fascists may have been driven off the street in
some situations, this is no ground for triumphalist claims if, as is
often the case, fascist sentiment and organization keeps on growing in
other forms. It is always possible that our âvictoriesâ are only part of
a process of different fascist tendencies gaining ascendancy and working
out new and possibly more effective tactics, ones that can minimize our
impact. My argument here is not against militance and confrontation
directed at the fascists and, for that matter, against the state. These
are absolutely vital. Itâs against basing political work on shoddy and
careless thinking, and forgetting that we should, âClaim no easy
victories.â
As Gramsci noted, in military tactics the emphasis is on attacking
points of weakness and encircling points of strength, while in
revolutionary political struggle it makes little sense to attack minor
players and weak arguments. Politically defeating the weakest and
wackiest of the fascists is not strategically significant. Neither are
successful military ventures against isolated, unprepared or exposed
fascists. Anti-fascist work in this country at this time is
fundamentally a political contest with the fascists for a popular base.
To do well in this contest we need to develop a coherent alternative to
the fascist worldview that confronts the strongest points of its best
advocates. Alexander Dugin, for example, not William Pierce or Matt
Hale. Of course our alternative must simultaneously confront liberal
reformist âcapitalistâ anti-fascism.
There is another exceedingly important consideration. The left and the
fascists arenât the only players in these games. The capitalist state
also plays a major role, but not one that is uniform, predictable and
obvious. Notwithstanding the simplistic rhetoric of some leftists, the
state seldom wants an organized and public fascist presence. Usually its
public intervention is an attempt to ritualize and defang confrontations
between fascists and anti-fascists, buttressing capitalist hegemony
while making both sides look and feel a bit ridiculous. But this isnât
all that is involved. Think back to Greensboro where a police informant
apparently instigated the Klan attack on the Communist Workers Party, or
to the Secret Army Organization fascists in Southern California where
agents pushed plans for assassinations of left leaders. Along with cases
like these where the state has promoted conflict by siding with the
fascists, there also are situations where they let the fascists and
anti-fascists âfight it outââa preference that we have all heard
expressed by various cops on the street.
However, it is still another possibility that I believe is the most
relevant to us. The state can tolerate a certain level of anti-fascist
illegality on our part just as well as it can look the other way at
certain actions of the fascists. Currently, many of our âstreetâ
victories do seem to involve tacit police cooperation at a certain
level; implicitly sanctioning, or at least not confronting, our tactics
and deliberately choosing not to investigate and prosecute at the level
which would easily be possible. We have to be smart about this. The
behavior of the state in this area is certainly not benign and it is not
being smart to think that it is unplanned and accidental. However, when
I read Red Actionâs self-congratulatory descriptions of its
confrontations with English fascistsâand I have seen similar reports
from various ARA sourcesâI donât see any recognition that such success
could only occur for a significant time period with police acquiescence
at the minimum. Such âacquiescenceâ can be withdrawn at any point, and,
until it is, it can and will be used politically against the
anti-fascists both by the fascists and ultimately by the state. Keep in
mind that in our confrontation with the fascists, the side that is
identified with the state is ultimately going to lose politically
although it may appear to be winning some street fights. And this is the
least of the problem. We must also consider the possibility that the
state is engaged in a more active counter-insurgency policy, a policy
that attempts to determine the content of both the fascist and the
anti-fascist movements and to keep the content of their interaction
essentially encapsulated. (I want to come back to this point later.)
The left does have important advantages over all fascists, some of which
will be mentioned later, but, generally speaking and certainly in this
country, organized anti-fascists are at a major disadvantage in the
military arena. Clearly the fascists have more military skills and a
more substantial and better-prepared logistical network than we do. It
is obvious that they are more able to draw on support and resources from
within the armed forces and the police. With time, if we have it, and
effort we could conceivably catch up in some of these areas of logistics
and training.
However, even if we did catch up, one fact still provides a military
advantage for the fascists, even where they donât have such clear
superiority in resources and training. Fascism is fundamentally a
doctrine of justified force to advance selected special interests.
Fascists do not worry too much about who and what is injured by their
use of force. The left must, if it is to be true to a universal vision
of liberation. When we abandon this vision and rationalize non-combatant
casualties and collateral damage as the fascists might, the heart goes
out of both our confrontation with fascism and our radical critique of
capitalism. The prime beneficiaries of this will be the various liberal
ideologists who are promoting the notion of the essential unity of the
radical extremes.
This gets to the fundamental danger in overemphasizing the military side
of anti-fascist work. A danger that is serious, whatever policy the
state pursues. The âvictoriesâ in this area often have a major political
cost. Combating serious fascist tendencies through physical and military
confrontations is no joke. It requires a serious attitude towards
internal security often including the limitation of discussion and
debate and the compartmentalization of information according to âneed to
knowâ criteria. It requires a conscious decision to avoid those
confrontations that might end in defeat or use up too much of our scant
military resources. Since it could be fatal to rely on the state
continuing to take a neutral or passive attitude towards such a project,
security must be maintained against the police as well as against the
actual fascists. Organizationally, there is an inevitable pressure here
towards clandestinity. Strategically, the direction is towards military
considerations taking priority over political ones. Under such
circumstances the most dedicated organizers will often be forced to
stand aside from potentials for mass militancy in order to maintain and
protect a military potential. I realize that there may be situations
when exactly this approach is needed. However, we should be very sure we
are at such a point before taking steps that may be irreversible.
There are many examples of situations where the real or presumed need to
function militarily has done much more serious damage to the movement
than to its targets. This damage takes the form of militarizing the
movement without conclusively defeating or, often, without even
weakening the core politics of the enemy. Even within a best case
scenario, militarization of the anti-fascist movement will always
undermine essential political and cultural elements of our challenge to
fascism, not to mention our alternative to capitalism. However, this
best case example, one where we enjoy some military successes without
major consequences from the state, is hardly the most probable case. In
addition to the critical political damage that we do to ourselves by
militarizing our movement, we could also suffer costly military defeats
from the fascists, and major legal and political onslaughts from the
system.
One argument of this paper is for a priority on anti-fascist work. It is
important to put this argument in the context of an approach to
political priorities in general. Sometimes mass popular movements
dictate where and how we work and are ignored only at the price of
sectarian irrelevance. But this is not the case at present, barring some
major developments coming out of the Seattle WTO action. Instead there
are a range of issues and organizing areas, all of which have legitimacy
and potential and all of which present unique problems along with some
common ones. Given the limitations in quantity and quality of the left
in this country, not to mention those in our sector of it, there is no
possibility to explore the potentials in every possible area of work.
Since our choices between priorities will have to be made with no prior
guarantees that they will turn out to be wise ones, we cannot forget the
potentials and possibilities in the options that we have not chosen. If
we do, our movement may rot in strategic dead ends, or, when we make
necessary changes, they can appear to be arbitrary and even
inexplicable, disrupting and disorienting the work. So what are the
criteria for evaluating whether one area of political work or another
should be a priority? Iâll confess in advance to most forms of âleftismâ
and my position here will probably only be confirmation of this. I think
that there are only two such criteria; first the extent to which the
work develops a revolutionary cadre able to both think and act, and,
second, the extent to which it helps develop a popular culture based on
a core of intransigent anti-capitalism. I want to conclude this paper
with some thoughts on the relationship of each of these criteria to
anti-fascist work. I know that I am dealing largely with anarchists for
whom vanguard party and professional revolutionary belong in the same
out-basket as Moonies and cops. There are things to talk about here, but
without dealing with most issues of party and organization, we can agree
that it is important to discover and develop activists who are radical
and militant and who are willing and able to formulate, implement,
criticize and modify a collective political practice. This is what I
mean by cadre. To the extent that the core group of cadre is growing in
size and in capabilities, an area of work is relatively successful. If
questions develop about changing the focus of work in an area, or even
about moving resources to a different political priority, the extent to
which cadre have been developed will determine how serious and
productive the discussions are, and whether criticisms and disagreements
can also be serious and productive and conducive to organized and
collective changes in direction.
A substantial group of rebellious and anti-authoritarian young people is
attracted to militant anti-fascism. The essence of this spontaneous
anti-fascism certainly isnât an elaborated critique of fascist theories
or a detailed understanding of the actual history of the fascist
movement. Itâs more of a gut level rejection of the traditional fascist
notions: whoâs superior and whoâs inferior; what constitutes a good life
and whatâs corrupt. Fascists want a society and culture restricted to
those they define as superior people. We donât. They want discipline and
order; we want autonomy and creativity. Their goal is an idealized,
basically mythical, past, we want a totally different future. They line
up behind maximum leaders; we want a critical and conscious rank and
file.
This spontaneous consciousness is a tremendous advantage for
anti-fascism vis a vis fascism in all of its variants including the most
radical and anti-capitalist. The appeal of freedom and autonomy is far
greater than the appeal of the fascist alternative of duty and
self-sacrifice not to mention its cults of justified supremacy. Of
course, spontaneous anti-fascism is more vulnerable when forced to deal
with the emerging third position fascism that breaks with the
traditional fascist verities and doesnât fit traditional leftist
categories. However, even in this case the left has an advantage. The
neo-fascists, even those who call themselves, ânational anarchistsâ,
donât find it easy to separate from their history in a way that can give
them credibility as a force for liberation and autonomy. Even more
important, the racialist cultural autarky which is the root premise of
even the most radical among them, looks more like unhealthy inbreeding
than anything liberatory.
It is important to note that the national revolutionary fascists are
aware of the historic weaknesses in their position and blame traditional
fascists such as the National Alliance who they bitterly attack for
their failure to oppose all of the institutions of official capitalism.
Itâs also important to realize that the left can easily lose its initial
advantages, if it is so lacking in militance and anti-capitalist
commitment that the problems the radical fascists have with their white
myths, illusions about natural order, and various other aspects of
ideological baggage can be overshadowed and overlooked.
The same radical popular consciousness is also a tremendous advantage
for us against the hegemony of capital. Spontaneous anti-fascist
consciousness does not see liberal capitalism and parliamentary
democracy as the anti-fascist alternative. More typically it breaks with
official society on many levels. Rebelliousness and
anti-authoritarianism are directed at the schools, the police, the job
and the family, not only at the fascistâs version of the good society.
In fact, hopefully, even if not quite accurately, official society is
usually seen as a hypocritical masked paternalistic version of the
fascist worldview.
This anti-fascist constituency provides an important source of
revolutionary cadre. We have to go to it. It will not necessarily come
to us. Of course, there are spontaneous potentials in areas of work
other than anti-fascism, but for a couple of reasons they arenât as
large and they arenât as promising. One reason involves issues of
reformism and self-interest. At this stage of the movement, no one is
genuinely anti-fascist solely from the sort of narrow self-interest
motivations that plague other areas of radical organizing (including
much organizing against the ârightâ). Fascism is rejected as a worldview
and lifestyle, not because it is costing fifty cents an hour or
something like that. As a consequence, many of the types of concessions
and maneuvers that capital uses to co-opt and contain popular movements,
approaches which are premised on appeals to narrow self and sectoral
interests, have minimal impact on an anti-fascist movement.
Consider the main capitalist concession that can be offered to defuse
militant anti-fascismâillegalization of fascist organizations, the
terrain where liberals and conservatives debate the First Amendment. It
is not hard to point out two facts to potential cadre, no matter how new
and inexperienced they may be. First, the illegalization of fascist
organizations can and will easily, and with pretty much parallel
arguments, be turned against anti-fascist and revolutionary left
organizations. Second, insofar as fascism is a real social movement, its
illegalization is likely to consolidate its revolutionary credentials
with its potential base and help differentiate it from, and strengthen
it relative to, the reformist rightânot something in the interests of
revolutionary anti-fascists. Another potential of anti fascist work is
that, as contrasted specifically with anti-âultra rightâ work, much of
it is necessarily illegal or, at least, is on the extreme margins of
capitalist legality. This dictates tactics and attitudes, and provides
experiences that are important parts of the development of a
revolutionary opposition. This work is good âpracticeâ in a couple of
different meanings of the term. In other areas organizing has a much
greater likelihood of turning potential revolutionaries into reformists
and/or cynics.
There is one major practical problem with anti-fascist work compared
with other potential uses of the same human and material resources. The
capitalist state and economic structures provide a permanent arena and
relatively fixed targets for organizing. In contrast, in anti-fascist
work, we appear to be dependent on the fascists having sufficient
success to make them a real and palpable danger.
While capitalism, globally and nationally, will continually reinvigorate
the base for fascism unless a left revolutionary alternative
conclusively preempts it, at any given time or place the fascist
movement may go through protracted periods of retrenchment or may embark
on self-defeating projects. It is not a certainty that they always and
everywhere will appear as a viable social movement, much less the sort
of strategic threat that I have been indicating. There is little
importance to symbolic anti-fascist organizing, or to muscle-flexing
exercises against crackpots and dysfunctional teenagers, and at times it
may appear that this is all there is to the fascist movement. This leads
to questions about spending resources in what looks like a political
sidechannel.
This possible dilemma strengthens one prior point. To the extent that
anti-fascist work has developed a core of organizers, a cadre, the
ability to make assessments and judgments that lead to a change in focus
are improved. Whatever changes are called for can be implemented with
greater resources and more clarity than would have otherwise been
possible. However, in a more basic sense, it is likely that a weakening
of the forms of fascism that we find relatively easy to locate and
organize against, masks the growth of more sophisticated forms, better
able to challenge us on âour issuesâ and with âour baseâ.
One final point. Much left political work is essentially administrative
routine and/or academic discussion. Out of this comes, not cadre, but
more bureaucrats and professors, and we have enough of both. In the
Phenomenology, Hegel puts the ârisking of oneâs lifeâ as a central part
of the emergence of genuine freedom out of servitude and subordination.
This is an important concept. A moments thought will show that this
element of risk and potential transformation is central to anti-fascist
work, while it is pretty deeply buried in other arenas. Fascists are
deeply committed to their views and are willing to kill and die for
them. It takes some time, but eventually this imposes some serious
thinking on anti-fascists, thinking which can lead to some of them
committing to anti-capitalist revolution as a vocation.
This leads to the question of revolutionary culture, the other criterion
for evaluating an area of work. I have argued that one tremendous
advantage for anti-fascists is that the attraction of freedom and
creative space is far greater than any fascist appeal to duty,
self-sacrifice, order and certainly more attractive than racialist
solidarity. Of course, this advantage is undermined by various
authoritarian and sectarian tendencies in the left that are as hostile
to freedom and creativity as the fascists, although they do not normally
attack it openly. These tendencies pose obvious difficulties in relating
to the spontaneous potentials of anti-fascist work.
However the limitations of the left are only the surface of the problem.
Our main difficulty is not so much that we appear to be hypocritical,
although we often do, as it is that our alternative appears to be
utopianâto be a vision that canât work and that is fundamentally at odds
with social reality. This view, that communism (or perhaps I should say,
anarchism) is utopian because it is not based on natural order, on
âblood and soilâ, is one essential ground for the racialist view of
culture which is shared by all fascist tendencies, whatever their other
differences. The same pessimism about the viability of the leftâs
objectives is also at the root of the pervasive popular cynicism, and
passivity. Needless to say, this mindset is actively propagated by the
dominant capitalist culture.
Building a revolutionary culture means beginning the practical
demonstration that our alternative vision can âworkâ; that it can
survive as an organizing principle without being either co-opted by the
dominant culture or compressed into a self-contained and essentially
elitist âalternativeâ. This culture must be something that is palpably
ours, and that can remain âoursâ. This involves developing the internal
resources to prevent insurgent cultural initiatives from eroding into
matters of style and fashion and becoming merely a more or less skewed
reflection of the dominant culture without the capacity to deal with the
movementâs internal problems and contradictions.
I donât feel able to do much more than indicate a few issues here.
First, all fascists even the most radically anti-capitalist, view what
they term as multiculturalism or internationalism as essentially
degenerate and opposed to the proper order of things. The physical and
social separation of people along racial and ethnic lines is crucial to
the fascist worldview, even to tendencies that ostensibly reject the
familiar larding of white supremacy. They all argue that society based
on the opposite principles cannot work. Of course, passive acceptance of
the inevitability of this same separation is normal capitalist common
sense.
It is just as crucial for us that our cultural alternative to fascism
and capitalism challenge racialism. A revolutionary culture must be
practically internationalist, a space for the coming together of people
of different racial and cultural backgrounds. Of course there are
problems and dangers in this and it wonât happen without effort and
conflict. It is one thing to say that we have to respect autonomy and
encourage the expression of differences without abandoning the attempt
to build a coherent counter-hegemonic challenge to official society. But
it is quite another to even partially accomplish this in reality. Real
conflicts and contradictions are involved. They cannot be wished or
defined out of existence or resolved verbally. The difficulty is
increased because there are a number of tendencies within our movement
that are politically opposed to it, for a range of quite different
reasons. Some believe, just like some of the radical fascists, that
freedom and autonomy are the fruit of the revolution rather than
preconditions for it. Others basically question the attainability of
genuine solidarity, often for quite understandable reasons. Second; a
revolutionary culture must recognize the distinction between and
oppressed and oppressor and organize against it practically. Much of the
left recognizes only one side of oppression, its impact on the group
subject to itâfailing to see the centrality of opposing popular
acquiescence and participation in it. This is a common position in the
left and one that is shared by the most radical and anti-capitalist of
the fascists. We canât allow a concrete opposition to the entire range
of oppression, national, sexual, and gender, and specifically to the
ways in which it is popularly implemented and sanctioned, to be subsumed
into a generalized and abstract opposition to a common enemy,
capitalism. Not only does this entail a certain approach to political
work, it entails a definite obligation on the radical culture to
practice internally what it professes as a social goal. Third, a
revolutionary culture must not incorporate violence into its internal
functioning. This is an extremely important distinction with all
variants of fascism and unfortunately with many variants of leftism. It
has to be a place where everyone feels safe, particularly those who are
the objects of violence in society generally. This is not at all easy to
combine with the importance of militance in the general struggle, with
the necessity to reject strategic pacifism, and with the need to sharply
challenge and vigorously debate various ideas and attitudes which
inevitably will be a part of the scene.
Itâs been pointed out that in the form of an argument for a priority on
anti-fascist work, I have actually been arguing for a certain critical
stance towards the left that is not really dependent on accepting this
priority. This is true, and particularly so in the final sections.
Hopefully, if nothing else, the emergence of anti-capitalist fascism
will be a âgift from Allahâ (not my phrase but I love it), pushing the
left to deal with the crucial weaknesses in its analyses and
perspectives. If it isnât, something else will have to be found.
This is a draft and, probably obviously, the concluding sections are
particularly fragmentary. There is a group of questions that I initially
incorporated into the body of the argument, but then it seemed to me
that they made things too complicated and too confusing. However, I
think they are important issues, so Iâve put them into an appendix on
the relationship of fascism and capitalist state repression.
Obviously, my argument puts a lot of weight on the emergence of an
anti-capitalist âthird positionâ variant of fascism. It was hard to find
a way to make this point while raising questions, which I think must be
raised, of the extent to which that position is authentic and rooted, or
alternatively, the extent to which it may be shaped by some repressive
initiatives by the state. Even when we establish that the fascist
movement is not in any important respect just an adjunct of capitalist
repression, a lot of questions about the specific relationship of
repression to fascism remain. Some of these require research and
investigation. All of them require serious thought and debate.
It is undoubtedly true that state repression, including systematic
population mapping and, more importantly, active counter insurgency
organizing under the rubric of anti-terrorism and low intensity
conflict, is becoming more important in this country and around the
world. While still attempting to maintain an ideology and rhetoric of
harmony and equilibrium, important sectors of capital have come to
accept that the potential for radical insurgency is a permanent feature
of the political landscape, not an anomaly or an exceptional situation.
Thus there are organized and sophisticated policies aimed at crushing,
diverting or preempting such insurgencies in their early stages before
they become serious challenges to capitalist power.
(Contrary to common left prejudice and public statement, none of the
more significant fascist groups in this country make support for state
repression the political focus of their work. This is in distinct
contrast to the common positions in the reformist and legalist section
of the conservative right. Parenthetically we might note that these are
the elements, Buchanan, et al., that some reformists on the left see as
potential coalition partners against âneo-liberal globalizationâ. This
convergence of reformism of the right and the left has more reality that
any convergence of radical extremes.)
State (and supra-state) repression, particularly its new features, is
increasingly important and must be understood and organized against, but
it is not, in itself, fascist. Organizing against state repression as if
it were essentially fascism will lead to serious errors. In this country
for the foreseeable future, state repression will be organized to
complement and supplement, and not to replace ânormalâ methods of
capitalist rule. This is different from situations elsewhere in the
world, where state connected death squads and para-police vigilantism
are important features of fascism.
This is not to say that there are no direct and supportive connections
between fascism and state repression. There is no doubt that fascist or
quasi-fascist groups associated with LaRouche and the Moonies sell their
services to both state and private capitalist repressive agencies. These
services go beyond âresearchâ and can include infiltration and
disruption of left organizations. This entrepreneurial fascism is going
to increase in importance in the capitalist center as elements of the
ruling class and various capitalist enterprises maneuver to get around
institutional legal obstacles to repression without obviously abandoning
the so called rule of law. However, even this most dependent form of
fascism doesnât conform to the common left view that fascists are
essentially just a tool of one or another segment the ruling class, just
mercenaries. They still retain their independent interests, both to make
a profit and also, and more importantly, to advance their own political
agendas.
A different sort of semi-relationship between state repression and
fascism could easily develop out of some of the stateâs pre-emptive
approaches to potential insurgencies. Privatized police forces or, more
likely, the âpseudo-gangsâ laid out in F. Kitsonâs theories of counter
insurgency, might drift out of the total control of the police and take
on a semi-autonomous character overlapping with fascist groupings of
more âauthenticâ origin. This has certainly happened elsewhere in the
world; for example, in Colombia. The so-called âwarsâ on drugs and on
street gangs provide a good basis for it to happen here.
However, the obvious antagonisms between emerging fascism and state
repression are more important than any of these points. There is
absolutely no doubt that some fascist groups are the objects of
organized state repression in which they are treated not as criminals,
but as potential armed insurgencies; just as revolutionary sections of
the left have been and will be in the future. Even a rudimentary survey
of the National Alliance, World Church of the Creator, International
Third Position, and National Revolutionary literature makes it obvious
that thinking fascists universally see both the state and the ruling
elites as active enemies. The fascists pay a good deal of attention to
the attempts to suppress and repress them and are attempting to develop
a number of different approaches to counter them. Despite this, even
individuals and groups that should be familiar with U.S. fascism persist
in the position that the fascists are protected by the state and
subsidized and controlled by the ruling class, and deny that they are
the objects of organized and systematic repression. The way the state
dealt with Bruder Schweigen (The Order) and the Posse Comitatus should
have led the left to discard these particular prejudices, but apparently
neither such facts nor the symptomatic glut of made for TV movies about
heroic government agents penetrating armed fascist groups, can spark a
light in that dim tunnel. I suppose it shouldnât really surprise anyone
that a left that does not clearly understand or effectively deal with
its own repression wouldnât see the repression of the fascist movement
even if it was sufficiently motivated to look at the issue.
Itâs important that these questions be taken seriously and that they be
addressed practically. The capitalist state and its repressive apparatus
is a player in the conflict between anti-capitalist left and neofascist
right. It has interests in disrupting and diverting both sides. It has
interests is setting the terms and circumstances of their opposition to
each other. I mentioned earlier that the state is attempting to buttress
its own legitimacy and hegemony by presenting a picture of a terrorist
merger of the extremes of left and right. Only the naïżœïżœve would think
that state intervention in this area doesnât involve active attempts to
determine the politics of radicals of both left and right that go far
beyond the development of liberal propaganda.
Letâs look at a possible context for this state intervention. Shortly
after the Nov. 30 demonstration in Seattle last year, some discussion
began about the role of fascists in that action. In part this discussion
challenged the common movement assumption that the left owns
anti-globalization issues and stressed the strategic differences within
the anti-globalization forces in the capitalist center, and between the
center movements and those in the Third World. (e.g., âAryan Politics
and Fighting the WTOâ by J. Sakai,
pamphlet by Anti-Fascist Forum, and interventions by Sleeping Dragon
Press in Canada and by de Fabel van de Illegaal in the Netherlands).
Other contributions noted some significant and contradictory positions
on the action from various fascist tendencies. Most of this discussion
was helpful and potentially quite productive.
There was also a very different discussion initiated (to the best of my
knowledge) by Morris Deesâ Southern Poverty Law Center. They put out a
so-called intelligence report on Seattle last winter entitled, Neither
Left, Nor Right. The theme of the piece was that the Black Bloc in
Seattle marked the probable beginning of a convergence between the most
militant and (in the reportâs view) dangerous elements of the terrorist
left and the violence prone fascist right. While the report presents no
actual evidence of involvement of fascists with the Seattle Black Bloc,
it does point out accurately that some fascists both in Europe and in
this country see the potential of organizing along these lines and that,
in fact, with varying degrees of success, they have begun to do it.
The SPLC report clearly shares the common liberal criticisms of the
Seattle Black Blocâs militance and anti-capitalist alternative to
reformist protest politics. It also has the smell of cooperation between
the âmovementâ and the state, something Morris Dees has been linked with
many times, but seldom so dangerously. Predictably, the report has been
adopted by traditional right wing âthink tanksâ that sell advice to
various ruling class groupings and police agencies. For example, it is a
major part of the factual basis for the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service report entitled, Anti-GlobalizationâA Spreading Phenomenon. This
purported left/right convergence will increasingly figure in official
and semi-official propaganda aimed at undermining the legitimacy of the
growing radical anti-capitalist tendency in the left. The issue,
however, goes way beyond capitalist propaganda and disinformation.
This paper has tried to show that the notion of left/right convergence
is neither a capitalist fabrication, nor a fascist pipe dream. Political
tendencies from the less radical sectors of the left, as well as from
the more radical sectors of the right, are attempting to organize around
this line, sometimes without realizing it. Some revolutionary leftists
are developing political positions that, irrespective of their
intentions, appeal to radical fascists. I have mentioned this earlier in
terms of Green Anarchy. There is real political momentum behind these
processes and they must be fought intelligently and directly.
At the same time, things should not automatically be taken at face
value. They can easily be something quite different from surface
appearances. Keep in mind that we are evaluating positions that are
often of indistinct origin and unknown strength, some of which may only
exist in cyberspace. Some positions taken by third position fascists
seem almost too calculated to enrage traditional fascists while
eliminating one distinction after another between their variant of
fascism and the politics of important segments of the left. These
positions certainly must be disruptive and provocative within the
fascist movement. They could easily play the same role within the left,
if it is unable to develop an argument against fascist positions that
are âbetterâ, certainly more radical and militant, than positions that
are universally accepted as a part of the left.
Various elements of the repressive apparatus are certainly aware of the
potential to manage and manipulate these developments to demoralize and
disorganize both the right and the left. We should remember how such
antagonisms have been promoted by state repression against the U.S. left
in the past, and should carefully try to determine the extent that this
may be an influence on both the fascist movement and on the discussion
of âleft/right convergenceâ. Of course, this inquiry cannot become a
substitute for actually confronting the political questions raised by
third position fascism and by the limitations of left political
strategy.
Anti-Fascism
by J. Sakai
âThe Superman is a symbol, the exponent of this anguishing and tragic
period of crisis that is traversing European consciousness while
searching for new sources of pleasure, beauty, ideal. He testifies to
our weakness, but at the same time represents the hope of our
redemption. He is dusk and dawn. He is above all a hymn to life, to life
lived with all the energies in a continuous tension towards something
higher.â
âBenito Mussolini[1]
We werenât thinking about fascism while we watched two 757s full of
people fly into the ex-World Trade Center. And maybe we still werenât
thinking of fascism when we heard about the first-ever successful attack
on the Pentagon. But fascism was thinking about us.
Fascism is rapidly becoming a large political problem for
anti-authoritarians, but perhaps moving up so close to pass us that itâs
in our blind spot. Fascism is too familiar to us, in one sense. Weâve
heard so much about the Nazis, the Holocaust and World War II, it seems
like we must already know about fascism. And Nazi-era fascism is like
all around us still, ever-present because Western capitalism has never
given fascism up. As many have noticed, eurofascism even crushed has had
a pervasive presence not only in politics, armies and intelligence
agencies, but in the arts, pop culture, in fashion and films, on
sexuality. For years thousands of youth in America and Europe have been
fighting out the question of fascism in bars and the music scene, as a
persistent fascist element in the skinhead subculture has been squashed
and driven out by anti-racist youthâbut come back and spread like an oil
slick in the subterranean watertable. It feels so familiar to us now
even though we havenât actually understood it.
While the scholarly debates about âclassicâ 1920-30s eurofascism only
increaseâand journalists like Martin Lee in his best-selling book, The
Beast Reawakens, have sounded the alarm about eurofascismâs renewed
popularityâexisting radical theory on fascism is a dusty relic thatâs
anything but radical. And itâs euro-centric as hell. Some still say
fascism is just extreme white racism. For years many have even argued
that no one who wasnât white could even be a fascist. That it was a
unique idea that only could lodge in the brains of one race! Others
repeat the disastrous 1920s European belief that fascism was just âa
tool of the ruling classâ, violent thugs in comic opera uniforms doing
repression for their capitalist masters. Often, both views overlap,
being held simultaneously. So we âknowâ fascism but really we donât know
it yet. Once reclothed, not spouting old fascist European political
philosophy (but the same program and the class politics in other
cultural formsâsuch as cooked-up religious ideology), fascism walks
right by us and we donât recognize it at first.
As fascism is becoming a global trend, itâs surprising how little
attention it has gotten in our revolutionary studies. Into this unusual
vacuum steps
Don Hamerquistâs Fascism & Anti-Fascism
. This is an original theoretical paper that has in its background not
only study but fighting fascists & racists on the streets.
In this discussion of Hamerquistâs paper we underline three main points
about fascism:
from the spreading zone of todayâs protracted capitalist crisis beyond
either reform or normal repression;
has a defined class character as an âextraordinaryâ revolutionary
movement of men from the lower middle classes and the declassed;
With the failure of State socialism and national liberation parties in
the capitalist periphery, in the Third World, the far right including
fascism is grasping at the leadership of mass anti-colonialism.
Fascism has shown that it can gather mass support. In many nations the
far right, including fascism, has become a popular oppositional force to
the new globalized imperialism. In many countries the far right has
replaced the left as the main political opposition. It doesnât get more
critical than this. This stands the old leftist notion about fascism on
its head. It isnât just about some other country. Without a serious
revolutionary analysis of fascism we canât understand, locate or combat
it right here. And if you donât think thatâs a serious problem, youâve
got your back turned to whatâs incoming.
There is one thing we have to confront before we go any furtherâthe
political nature of what is known as religious fundamentalism. The
stunning attacks of 911 are being assigned to religious fanaticism, an
âislamic fundamentalismâ that represents all that is backward to the
West. Ironically, both sides, both the u.s. empire and the insurgent
pan-islamic rightists, prefer to call their movement a religious one. To
the contrary, nothing about capitalismâs âfirst World War of the 21^(st)
centuryâ can be understood that way. Think it over. A supranational
political underground of educated men, organized into cells with
sophisticated illegal documents and funding, who are multilingual and
travel across the world to learn how to fly passenger jet airliners and
then use them as guided missiles, is nothing but political. And modern.
Pan-islamic fascism pressing home their war on a global battlefield.
The small but growing white fascist bands here in the u.s. picked up on
this immediately. They had political brethren in the Muslim world.
Politics is thicker than blood. âAnyone whoâs willing to drive a plane
into a building to kill Jews is alright by meâ, said Billy Roper of the
National Alliance, the largest white fascist group here. David Michael
of the neo-fascist British National Party (which received several
hundred thousand votes in the last local elections), was jubilant:
âToday was a glorious day. May there be many others like it.â[2] As one
New Afrikan revolutionary always reminds people: âLike is drawn to
like.â[3] Not race and not religion but class politics.
Why do we insist that some religious fundamentalist movements can only
be understood as fascists? It isnât that the Taliban or Egyptian Jihad
arenât religious groups. They clearly are, in the sense that their
ideology and program are couched in an islamic framework. And they are
part of broader islamic rightist currents that contain people of
differing political programs. Just as the German Nazi Party was part of
broader nationalistic currents in Germany in the 1920-30s that shared
many of the same racialist views. People have tried to shallowly explain
away the Nazis by saying that they were only extreme racists. They were
that (which they shared with many other Germans) but they also had
far-reaching fascist politics beyond that. In the same way, the hindu
far right in India, for exampleâwhich contains perhaps the largest
fascist movement in the world right nowâis not only a religious movement
in form but one which has far-reaching fascist politics in essence.
There is no natural law saying that menâs religions have to be benign or
humane or non-political. And they seldom are.
But what the West calls âislamic fundamentalismâ is not that at all.
First off, like its brother âchristian fundamentalismâ thereâs some kind
of relationship to religion but thereâs nothing fundamental about it.
Thereâs no similar vibe between white racist abortion clinic bombers
today and some outcast Jewish carpenter with illegal anti-ruling class
ideas in the Middle East 2000 years ago. And the Prophet Mohammadâs
youngest wife wasnât wearing a burka and hiding indoors, she was riding
the desert alongside male warriors and disputing doctrine with male
preachers as the head of her own religious school.
The modern islamic rightists, who began in 1927â28 with the founding of
Egyptâs Muslim Brotherhood, took religious ideological form but were
started as a political movement against British neo-colonial domination.
They were backed not by workers or peasants but by the middle-class
bazaar merchants and traders. The core of the islamic rightists from the
beginning were not theologians but young men who had middle-class
educations as scientists and technicians (like todayâs Mohammad Atta who
supposedly led the 911 attacks), and who used assassinations and trade
boycotts. One trend within this broader islamist political movement
developed fascist politics and a definite fascist class agenda. The fact
that everything is explained in religious ideological terms doesnât
change the fact that their program and class strategy fit fascism
perfectly. Perhaps thatâs the real âfundamentalismâ that they have.[4]
Throughout the Muslim world, from Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Turkey to
Pakistan, Western imperialism has helped maintain militarized
neo-colonial regimes that have looted and deadended society. They have
destroyed local subsistance economies of self-production for use in
favor of globalized export-import economies. The number of the
declassed, those without any regular relationship to economic production
and distribution, keeps growing. The lower-middle classes keep losing
their small plots of land, their small market businesses, their toehold
in the educated professions. These are men who are threatened with the
loss of everything that defined them, including the ability of
patriarchs to own households of women and children.
This is the class basis of todayâs pan-islamic fascism, which demands a
complete reversal of fortune. Revolutions where todayâs Muslim elites
shall be in the prisons or the gutter and the warriors of fascism shall
be the new class ruling over the palaces, mosques and markets. They are
more than national in scope just as all revolutionary movements have
been. Because they are in a fluid war of undergrounds and exile,
striking from abroad, of retreating from savage military repression in
one nation to concentrate on breakthroughs in another nation. And to
them, the world citadel of globalization in New York was not an innocent
civilian target but a fortress of an amoral enemy.
The key thing about them isnât that theyâre following some old book.
Itâs that theyâre fighting for State power just like everyone else in
the capitalist sinkhole. They upfront want to rule, to not work but get
affluent and powerful as special classes alongside the bourgeoisie, to
hold everyone else underfoot by raw police power. Whether itâs
christianity or islam or whatever they claim to be following, these are
definitely political movements.
Take another example: There are ultra-orthodox Jews who donât believe in
participating in secular politics. There are ultra-orthodox Jews who
believe in voting into power conservative pro-religion governments in
bourgeois democracy. There are even ultra-orthodox Jews who support the
Palestinian liberation struggle and reject the existence of the state of
Israel on doctrinal grounds. But while the ultra-orthodox zionist
settlers movement in Palestine claims that itâs about nothing but pure
jewish religion, like any other fascists they swagger around with guns,
proclaim the right to do genocide to set up their self-identified master
race, have an economy based on expansionist war, crime, and enslavement
of other peoples. They are publicly proud of such âreligiousâ milestones
as their bloody massacre of unarmed people praying in a mosque and even
their assassination of the Israeli prime minister. These are only
fascists in drag, and we should see that thereâs more and more of them
in capitalism today.
Adding to the confusion is the question of what âcrisisâ is. Weâre used
to thinking of serious fascism as a product of traditional capitalist
economic âCrisisâ, an economic depression like the 1920s and 1930s. That
was true, but itâs not the only situation for creating fascism. Because
under capitalism the success of one class is the crisis for another
class. There is social crisis of capitalist success (as in oil-affluent
Saudi Arabia) as well as economic crisis of capitalist smashup.
All through the post-World War II period up to the end of the 20^(th)
century, as Western capitalism was in a long rising curve of protracted
prosperity and explosive economic growth, fascism was starting to grow,
too. Because that period of imperialist economic stabilityâultimately
leading to todayâs huge globalized economy of the transnational
corporationsâwas also a time of large scale transition, of sudden
historical shift that pushed some classes and cultures towards
obsolescence as others rose up.
Not Depression but change propelled by the development of the world
capitalist economy. In the industrial North of England, for example, the
entire blue-collar culture of the British working class was transformed
as factories, mines and shipyards steadily kept closing year after year.
A new white-collar yuppie boom economy produced the Americanized England
of Tony Blair just as marginal employment and three generation welfare
families living in public housing came to characterize many in the
former industrial working classes. Remember that despite well publicized
fringe activity, fascism never sank roots in 1930s working class
Britain. The British working class back then remained loyal to their
colonial empire and their own social democratic Labour Party despite the
misery of the Depression. But itâs a different world now, of classes
feeling abandoned by empire. Widespread âPaki-bashingâ, fascist marches
and now a successful neo-fascist electoral protest party are only small
signs of things to come. In a chain reaction, the British town of Tipton
that was surprised to find four of its Muslim youth fighting in
Afghanistan with Al-Qaeda had given 24% of its vote in the 2000 local
elections to the neo-fascist British National Party.[5] And Britain is
only playing catchup, lagging behind as all of Europe is being tugged,
pulled by the political shift towards the right in all its forms.
Despite historic prosperity.
It is vital to theoretically understand fascism because the general
rightist tide from which fascism emerges is the strongest mass political
current in the world today, and we need to delineate one from the other.
The main thesis of Fascism & Anti-Fascism rejects the traditional left
view that fascism is just âa tool of big businessâ, racist thugs in
macho costume carrying out repression to the max under the orders of
their capitalist masters. Hamerquist sees no short term danger, in fact,
of a fascist period over the u.s.a. Or even a significant âracial holy
warâ led by white fascists against Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Indians,
Jews, Gays & Lesbians or others anytime in the near term future.
Instead, he sees the danger of a new fascism thatâs more independent,
more oppositional to capitalism. A âpotential... mass movement with a
substantial and genuine element of revolutionary anti-capitalism... The
real danger is that they might gain a mass following among potentially
insurgent workers and declassed strata through a historic default of the
Left.â He sees fascism not as a brutish prop for major industrial
capitalism, but as a possible new form of barbarism. With mass support.
That is the main argument, but the paper is also dense with related
insights and questions. Unlike the old left analysis of fascism, this
analysis catches the vibe of Ruby Ridge and the Turner Diaries, of Ted
K. and the Taliban. But itâs still flipping a new page to think of
fascism as a rebellious, oppositional force to u.s. capitalism. We
should get used to itâquickly.
This critique cannot deal with all of the ideas in Fascism & Anti
Fascism. What we can quickly do here is, of necessity, somewhat ragged.
We define fascism in relation to other modes of capitalist rule. Major
points in Fascism & Anti-Fascism are explored, such as the meaning of
the âleftâ anti-capitalist fascism vs. âclassicalâ 1930s fascism;
fascismâs mass appeal and how ârevolutionaryâ it is; whether fascism is
âa tool of the big bourgeoisieâ or has its own agenda. Midway into this,
we dive into a series of brief historical discussions of German Nazism,
since it is the standard case for any analysis of fascism. Throughout,
we are looking at Hamerquistâs work, putting out analyses of our own,
but most importantly trying to open up more questions. i apologize for
whatever difficulties the reader encounters in this preliminary work.
Fascism & Anti-Fascism brings several important understandings to us. It
roots out the unpleasant fact that the movement is still using the old
leftâs failed theories about fascism & anti-fascism from the 1920s. And
that these old left ideas are really dead. This alone would make it
worth while. In a movement that is long on stacks of little newspapers
and short on new ideas, this is radical theory with an edge. Old failed
ideas have their disguises pulled off, while we are helped to refocus on
the realities of a post-modern future. What the author intends is to
spark off a long overdue housecleaning of anti-fascismâs dusty political
attic.
Hamerquistâs second contribution is to emphasize how fascism has its own
life, and can be influenced by but is independent of the big
bourgeoisie. Fascism is a populist right revolution that has arisen in
the past from left sources as well as the far right, Hamerquist reminds
us. He disagrees head on with the old leftâs position that fascism is
just a repressive âpolicyâ or strategy used by imperialism. In his view,
fascism isnât born because some big bankers and industrialists give
secret orders from a smoke-filled room. While the bourgeoisie can use or
support fascism, the fascist movements are not ever neatly under their
control. Theyâre much more crazy-quilt radical, more grassroots
oppositional than that. And once a fascist State is raised, this rogue
tribe is even less under capitalist influence.
So this is a type of rightist challenge that has been an ultimate danger
to us. Because fascism not only is an unrestrained violence against the
oppressed & the left, but is a different class politics. One that
infects and takes over masses of men that the left once considered
safely either in its own camp or on the sidelines.
To me, one reason the left has preferred to think of fascism as only a
puppet of the big capitalists is because in a strange way thatâs
reassuring. Since the imperialists arenât really threatened by the tiny
left here, they have no rational need to unleash maximum repression.
Paradoxically, despite their front of condemning the government for
being soft on fascists, the left in its peaceful slumber is actually
counting on the imperialists and their State to be rational & keep
fascism locked up in the warehouse. Counting on the capitalists to
protect us from themselves, in other words. Hamerquist really picks up
on this contradiction.
In subsequent sections, Hamerquist develops his argument that the leftâs
smugness about fascism (â...the unstated assumption that in any
competition with fascists for popular support we win by defaultâ ) is
based on two misconceptions. The first is that fascism only comes in the
traditional, opera costume-loving, Hitler-worshipping pro-imperialist
type so quick to discredit itself. The second is that fascism can only
be white and racist, so that any real fascist outgrowth here will
automatically, like an alien cell in the bloodstream, be under mass
attack by the New Afrikan, Native American, Latino and other communities
of color.
Fascism & Anti-Fascism is valuable here because it opens up, in print,
possibilities that have been discussed informally but not publicly dealt
with by revolutionaries.
This is especially true when Hamerquist quietly points out that there
exists the possibility that new white fascist groups might well find
âworking relationships and alliancesâ with âvarious nationalist and
religious tendencies among oppressed peoples.â And that âthere is no
reason to view fascism as necessarily white just because there are white
supremacist fascists. To the contrary there is every reason to believe
that fascist potentials exist throughout the global capitalist system.
African, Asian, and Latin American fascist organizations can develop
that are independent of, and to some extent competitive with
Euro-American âwhiteâ fascism. Both points deserve elaboration.â
Fascism & Anti-Fascism isnât right on everything, but because it insists
that our basic theoretical assumptions about the political situation are
shaky & need to be questioned it is especially valuable to us right now.
The paper starts by stating that the left has no real analysis of
fascism. Either itâs just a label we attach to anything bad or itâs only
the repressive policy, the punishing puppet that the real villain, the
capitalist ruling class, wields to hold onto power. Notice that in
neither case does fascism exist as a real social development in its own
right.
âFor much of the U.S. Left, fascism is little more than an
epithetâsimply another way to say âbadâ or âvery badâ loosely
applied...â
This isnât merely an intellectual question. One of the important
sub-themes in Fascism & Anti-Fascism is the realization that our present
left theories and responses to fascism are actually the same theories
and strategies that the European left used with such spectacular lack of
success against fascism in the 1920s-30s.
This new generation of radical activism still has old basic ideas, and
failed ones at that. Right now, everyone acts as though the word
âfascismâ is a free shot. So in our movement talk and propaganda we find
racism, dictatorships, neo-colonialism, welfare cutbacks, repressive
acts by bourgeois democracies, riot cops actually hurting middle class
protesters at Globalization summitsâall being wildly described as
âfascistâ. One important reason that the German working class couldnât
focus on Nazism is that the left had effectively watered-down the
meaning of fascism, in effect convincing many to ignore the decisive
fascist events as just more political musical chairs. Is the same thing
happening here, right now? (it certainly has to folks as well
intentioned as the anarchist black bloc, who were blindly led in the
Anti-Globalization free for all into becoming the de facto allies of the
white racist right).[6]
This paper does have significant problems. As is very common in our
discussions on fascism, Fascism & Anti-Fascism has no definition of
fascism. So the obsolete old left views on fascism are replaced by good
insights but also by a partial formlessness. Things are left hanging in
mid-air, unmoored from the class structure and its basis in the means of
production. Also, some of Hamerquistâs most useful insights are
overstated, perhaps underlining the discovery but also adding to the
theoretical confusion. There is a relationship between these two
problems, as we shall see.
Fascism is the newest of the forms of capitalist rule that we have
encountered so far. We need to place fascism in context by first
discussing it & other forms of capitalist rule, starting with a baseline
of bourgeois democracy.
While modern capitalism strives to blur the distinction between two very
different thingsâbourgeois democracy and democratic rightsâat its heart
bourgeois democracy simply means âdemocracy for the bourgeoisâ.
Remember, it was alive and robust long before there were any modern
democratic rights at all. For several centuries in the English-speaking
world, bourgeois democracy with elections, political parties and
legislatures co-existed effortlessly with the chattel slavery of tens of
millions, genocidal wars and colonial exploitation of indigenous
peoples, the subordinate status of all women as an intimate species of
patriarchal livestock, feudalistic dictatorial rule over the working
class, and a government voted upon by a small minority of white male
property-owners. That was the pure bourgeois democracy, the undiluted
hundred eighty proof thing.
Back under feudalism, the State was simple. The ruling aristocracy were
the State, and ruled directly and personally. But this is not practical
under capitalism. Would IBM trust Microsoft to make the laws? Both the
relatively large size of the capitalist class and its ever-shifting
composition, as well as their culture of constant warfare to the death
vertically & horizontally within the class, forced the bourgeoisie to
create an indirect system of representative government. So bourgeois
democracy became the preferred form of government for the capitalists.
Even with all its constant stumbles, feuds and scandals, it is the most
effective form of capitalist rule for their entire class. There is
nothing new here. The renowned 19^(th) century u.s. statesman Senator
Daniel Webster was the open paid representative of the banking industry
then, just as another important u.s. politician in the 1960s was
actually called by his colleagues and by the press âthe senator from
Boeingâ. Others represent the coal mining industry, the weapons lobby,
New York banking and so on. Bourgeois democracy lets capitalists of
every geographic region, industry and commercial interest influence
State policy, although there is no pretense of equality amongst them.
This is the most ânormalâ form of capitalist rule.
While it is overused as a left explanation, it is also true that
bourgeois democracy is important to capitalism for its cooptive features
(however, capitalism isnât adopting a form of self-government merely
based on whatâs good propaganda). In an earlier paper on fascism,
Hamerquist noted that â...the mainstream of Marxist tradition which has
consistently pointed out that bourgeois democracy is the ideal form of
capitalist rule from the capitalistsâ point of view. Its virtue is that
class exploitation and oppression are masked by supposedly objective and
neutral institutions and processes: the market, the
parliamentary-electoral system, the legal-judicial system... The
capitalist ruling class will opt for fascism out of strategic weakness,
not strength.â[7]
The other ânormalâ form for the capitalist State is dictatorship. Which
is not really the opposite of bourgeois democracy but rather its
sibling. There are frequent situations where bourgeois democracy cannot
function. While the bourgeois democratic State uses police and military
repression routinely, in a major crisis the mass unrest in society or
the breakdown in social order can effectively deadlock or paralyze the
legislative State. In the imperialist periphery, in the neo-colonial
nations of Latin America, Asia, Afrika and the Middle East where extreme
social crisis is just daily life, ineffective bourgeois democracies and
bloodthirsty military regimes seem to regularly relieve each other in a
revolving carousel. As though their rotation in mock battles was itself
a new institution, one that is losing potency all the time.
Many people believe that fascism is just dictatorship and vice versa,
that the two are the same thing. But while fascism is dictatorial, it is
a different type of dictatorship. Capitalist dictatorship can take
various forms, from military juntas to clerical capitalist police states
to monarchy. But in general dictatorships use the repressive forces of
the State to directly command society, sitting atop of the existing
class structure. While fascism uses a violent mass popular movement to
both remake the State and abruptly alter the class structure.
Colonialism referred originally to the system of colonies, which were
commercial-military outposts of a nation in a foreign land. In Marxâs
day, âthe colonies properâ meant populated settlements abroad still
ruled by the mother country. As all major capitalist nations built their
rampaging economies on conquest & occupation in the Third World,
âcolonialismâ was used more generally to indicate the ownership of one
people or society by another. Colonialism has been a feature of
bourgeois democracy, obviously (in the pre-1960s u.s. South there was
stable bourgeois democracy for settlers while the New Afrikan population
lived under a reign of institutionalized terror). For that reason both
the Black Liberation Movement and later radical feminism raised the
question of âinner coloniesâ.
Fascism is a relatively new and âextraordinaryâ form of capitalist rule.
It first became a power as a new political movement in Italy in 1919.
(Named after the fasci, the bundle of rods lashed together with an axe
blade protruding from the top, used as the symbol of authority by Roman
magistrates and standing for the imperial unity of the diverse classes
of Roman citizens. The word âfascismâ also had popular Italian
connotations then of extraordinary emergency actions, of the Sicilian
âfasciâ of workers who revolted in 1892, of the democratic âfascioâ that
stopped the military coup at the turn of the century, etc). It is the
twilight creature of a new zone in history, of protracted capitalist
crisis beyond reform or ordinary repression.
Fascism is a revolutionary movement of the right against both the
bourgeoisie and the left, of middle class and declassed men, that arises
in zones of protracted crisis. Fascism grows out of the masses of men
from classes that are abandoned on the sidelines of history. By
transforming men from these classes and criminal elements into a
distorted type of radical force, fascism changes the balance of power.
It intervenes to try and seize capitalist State powerânot to save the
old bourgeois order or even the generals, but to gut and violently
reorganize society for itself as new parasitic State classes. Capitalism
is restabilized but the bourgeoisie pays the price of temporarily no
longer ruling the capitalist State. That is, there is a capitalist state
but bourgeois rule is interrupted. As Hamerquist understands, the old
left theory that fascism is only a âtool of the bourgeoisieâ led to
disasters because it way underestimated the radical power of fascism as
a mass force. Fascism not only has a distinctive class base but it has a
class agenda. That is, its revolution does not leave society or the
class relations of production unchanged.
Fascism has definite characteristics that are both so familiar and
exotic, because it combines elements from all past human history in a
new form that is startlingly brutal and dis-visionary. Indeed, fascism
never appears in public as its secret parasitic self but always in some
other grandiose guise. Like the original fascism of Mussoliniâs Italy
claimed to be the virile modernist recreation of the ancient Roman
Empire. The Nazi Party claimed to be the recreation of the Nordic race
of Aryan warriors (that never actually existed in human history, of
course). The Talibanâwho proudly brought order to the streets just as
Mussoliniâs first fascist regime didâclaim to be the recreation of the
original islamic followers of the days of the Prophet Mohammed. None of
these guises are in the least bit true, of course, but are closer to
political fantasy played with real guns for real stakes.
This fascism has definite characteristics, whether in Nazi Germany or
the Talibanâs Afghanistan or the u.s. Aryan Brotherhood: It taps into
and is filled with revolutionary anger against the bourgeoisie, but in
distorted form. There is a supreme leader over a State that is not
merely hierarchical but that tries to absorb all other organized
activity of society into itself. The reason that Mussolini coined the
word âtotalitarianâ to describe his vision of the State-society; and the
reason that the Nazi State banned all sports groups, unions,
professional associations, womenâs groups, lay religious societies,
youth organizations, recreational groups, etc. except its own National
Socialist forms. Same with the Taliban. It exults in the violent
military experience that is said to be ânaturalâ for men, while scorning
the soft cowardly life of the bourgeois businessmen and intellectuals
and politicians. (The Italian fascists put a key motto up on billboards
and public buildings: âCREDERE OBBEDIRE COMBATTEREâ. âBelieve Obey
Fight.â)[8]
Along with that it raises repression to a new level by overturning the
class structure, recruiting millions of men into new parasitic State
warrior and administrator classes that are outside of production but
live on top of it. It was early 18^(th) century euro-capitalism itself
that first redefined women not as free citizens and ânot as patriarchal
property of individual men, but as a natural resource of the
nation-Stateâ. Fascism exalts this, and makes of women a semi-slave
resource of the State restricted to the margins of an essentially male
society.
One part of this discussion is whether political movements or social
phenomenon can be said to have gender. Yes, fascism appeals to women as
well as men. Yes, Nazism owed much to German women, no matter how
unwilling feminists now are to admit that. But we have said âmenâ so
often when discussing fascism because we are being literal. It is a male
movement, both in its composition and most importantly in its inner
worldview. This is beyond discrimination or sexism, really. Fascism is
nakedly a world of men. This is one of the sources of its cultural
appeal.
While usual classes are engaged in economic production and distribution,
fascism to support its heightened parasitism is driven to develop a
lumpen-capitalist economy more focused on criminality, war, looting and
enslavement. In its highest development, as in Nazi Germany, fascism
eliminates the dangerous class contradiction of the old working class by
socially dispersing & wiping it out as a class, replacing its labor with
a new unfree proletariat of women, colonial prisoners and slaves. The
âextraordinaryâ culture of the developed fascist State is like a
nightmare vision of extreme capitalism, but the big bourgeoisie
themselves do not have it under control. That is its unique
characteristic.
Fascism exists in a wide spectrum of development besides the well known
State examples of fascist Italy and Germany. From politicalized criminal
gangs and far right politicians operating tactically inside the
constraints of bourgeois democracy to various nationalist movements and
informal ethnic quasi-States. There are a number of examples of the
latter just in the u.s., thanks to the u.s. government policy of using
seriously fascist groups to control âminoritiesâ.
For example, last year an opportunist merchant in âLittle Saigonâ in the
Los Angeles area tried to cash in on ânormalizationâ of u.s.-Vietnamese
relations by putting the communist flag in his video store window
alongside the flag of the old Saigon regime. Mass violent protests
ordered by fascist Vietnamese General Kyâs subterranean
regime/gang-in-exile not only forced the storeâs closing but ended the
career of Californiaâs newly elected first Vietnamese state legislator
(who had to quit politics because he had offended General Ky). General
Kyâs informal floating ethnic State may not have a geography or a
recognized name, but it enforces laws of its own and regularly collects
taxes in the form of mandatory âcontributionsâ (to funds to allegedly
fight communism). Incidentally, the video store owner first found his
shop set on fire and then was himself arrested by the police for
illegally pirating videosâ do you wonder what the message was to the
community?
And all fascist movements and leaders have their own particularities.
The first fascist State of Mussolini was far more tentative and more
conservative than Nazi Germany or the Taliban, for example, in part
because the younger, less developed Italian fascism was weaker
politically (and had to make major compromises with the monarchist army,
the Roman Catholic Church, and the industrialists that Hitler for one
didnât have to). The National Islamic Salvation Front that rules the
Sudan both welcomed Osama bin Laden and his terrorist operation... and
then couldnât resist robbing him of over $20 million (by their own
admission). Poor Osama later complained to an Arab newspaper that his
brother Sudanese fascists were a âmixture of religion and organized
crimeâ.[9] So different fascist movements will not look exactly the same
and might even conflict (just as the left does).
Fascism & Anti-Fascism has bold conclusions. i think that they are true
in essence but not exactly in the way that Hamerquist suggests. A key
passage in his paper is: âThe emerging fascist movement for which we
must prepare will be rooted in popular nationalist anti-capitalism and
will have an intransigent hostility to various state and supra-state
institutions.â
This is really not a guess. Hamerquist is accurately recognizing the
reality already on the ground, seeing without any old left ideological
filters. This passage describes much of the current fascism that has
emerged around the world. Not just small bands of third positionists in
the West, but Osama bin Laden and the Israeli ultra-orthodox zionist
settlers in the Middle East, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the âAnarchist
partyâ in Russia, etc. New populist neo-fascists in the wealthy
imperialist metropolis, such Jorg Haider in Austria or the rapidly
growing British National Party, are already anti-Globalization and
anti-u.s. and could easily swerve much further leftward if the social
crisis deepens.
But when Hamerquist says that this wave of fascism is both seriously
anti-capitalist and revolutionary, i would have to qualify that. His
insight is deep, but his exact breakdown is not and i think that serious
misunderstandings could arise. Reading Fascism & Anti-Fascism too
literally could get one disoriented, wondering if fascists are really
ârevolutionaryâ and âanti-capitalistâ like socialists or anarchists are,
then maybe anything can be anything and right could be left and
oppressors could be oppressed?
The truth here is startling and it isnât in the least bit vague. The new
fascism is, in effect, âanti-imperialistâ right now. It is opposed to
the big imperialist bourgeoisie (unlike Mussolini and Hitler earlier,
who wanted even stronger, bigger Western imperialism), to the
transnational corporations and banks, and their world-spanning
âmulticulturalâ bourgeois culture. Fascism really wants to bring down
the World Bank, WTO and NATO, and even America the Superpower. As in
destroy. That is, it is anti-bourgeois but not anti-capitalist. Because
it is based on fundamentally pro-capitalist classes.
Fascism, in this slowly accelerating global crisis of transformation,
believes in what we might call basic capitalism, o.g. capitalism. It is
the would-be champion of local male classes vs. the new transnational
classes. Enemy of emigrant Third World labor and the modern
supra-imperialist State alike, fascism draws on the old weakening
national classes of the lower-middle strata, local capitalists and the
layers of declassed men. To the increasing mass of rootless men fallen
or ripped out of productive classesâwhether it be the peasantry or the
salariatâit offers not mere working class jobs but the vision of
payback. Of a land for real men, where they and not the bourgeois will
be the oneâs giving orders at gunpoint and living off of others.
Against the ocean-spanning bourgeois culture of sovereign trade
authorities, Armani and the multilingual metropolis, it champions the
populist soverignty of ethnic men. The supposed right of men to be the
masters of their own little native capitalism. In the post-modern chaos,
this part of the fascist vision has class appeal beyond just simple race
hatred alone.
Fascism is revolutionary far beyond that, and not as a pose. But by
ârevolutionaryâ the left has always meant overthrowing capitalism and
building a socialist or communal or anarchist society. Fascism is not
revolutionary in that sense, although it may use those words. Fascism is
revolutionary in a simpler use of the word. It intends to seize State
power for itself. Not simply to sit atop the old pile, but in order to
violently reorder society in a new class rule. One cannot read The
Turner Diaries seriously or understand Timothy McVeighâs politics (he
was slaughtering the federal government not the Black Radical Caucus)
without facing this. The old left propaganda that fascism is âa tool of
the ruling classâ is today just a quaint idea.
This paper raises the danger of potential fascist inroads into the heart
of its oppositionâthe working classes. We would have to question this.
âClassicâ German and Italian fascism demonstrated the ability to win
over a mass base. Not just in general, but of a specific class nature:
urban small traders and businessmen, craftsmen and foremen, junior
military officers, significant parts of the peasantry (small farming
landowners), petty government civil servants, the long-term unemployed
or declassed out of the working class, the police and criminals. To sum
up, men of the pro-capitalist lower middle classes and the declassed.
Some workers left their class to join the fascists, just as some from
the privileged upper classes left theirs to join the revolutions of the
oppressed. But there is no evidence yet of significant working class
support for fascism. While this question will be answered only in
practice, by the struggle, it might be helpful to probe this now.
Fascism hasnât come from working class poverty or oppression. Thatâs a
deliberate capitalist intellectual confusion we have to get rid of. The
oppression that colonial workers had to endure in Asia, Afrika, Latin
America and the Mideast didnât produce fascism but hopeful, radical left
movements of liberation that might have been ultimately subverted, but
that also contained the constructive efforts of hundreds of millions of
ordinary working people. Centuries of lynchings and police state terror
and colonial poverty here in the Black Nation never produced anything
like fascism, until neo-colonialism and what Malcolm X called
âdollarismâ took over. New Afrikan colonial oppression produced so many
who were internationalist and forward looking, conscious
anti-capitalists with integrity and democratic values. That really
represented the historic Black Nation. A people that, however poor,
however held low, were predominately working class and at the productive
heart of the u.s. empire. A working class culture that had a lived
belief in the importance of justice for everyone.
So donât be thinking that fascism just comes from poverty or recession,
because itâs not that way at all. In Euro-Americaâby far the weathiest
nation thatâs ever existed since Babylon in biblical timesâthe growth of
white fascism has nothing to do with poverty but everything to do with
the crisis of white settlerism. So letâs get two concepts overlaid
together here. Even the imperialist metropolis is not uniform or
homogenous. There are classes and economic sectors and geographic
regions that are successful parts of the new globalized corporate
economyâand there are those that are obsolete, cut off, part of
something like an inner periphery.
For one thing, the u.s. empire is the largest of the historic European
settler-colonial societies, but it is rapidly (in historical terms)
being desettlerized by imperialism. Thatâs why in the right-wing reign
of President âWâ (for âWhiteâ) a Japanese-American general is head of
the u.s. army, another Japanese-American is secretary of transportation,
while African-Americans are secretary of state and âWââs national
security advisor (did you ever think youâd see a Black woman as the
presidential national security advisor?). NASAâs chief of the technology
applications division is a Black woman scientist and the head of ATFâs
anti-terrorism division is a white woman cop. In Silicon Valley there
are four hundred computer corporations owned by Indian immigrant
scientists. Oh, thereâs tons of white male privilege and white male
preference here still and will be for generations, the continuing
momentum of âthe daily lives of millionsâ. But the big guys are sending
a message down to ordinary white men. Itâs like a bomb. In the new
globalized multicultural capitalism, in the new computer society, the
provincial, sheltered white settler life of America is going to be as
over as the white settler life of the South African âAfrikanersâ is.
Forget about it.
Only, they canât forget it, many of them. It just sticks in their
cerebellum. Settler America has never been really lower working class,
remember. The mass of privileged white workers have always been in the
labor aristocracy, a layer in the lower middle classes (the millions of
immigrant blue-collar workers from Eastern and Southern Europe in the
early 20^(th) century were not classed as âwhiteâ by Americans back
then, but were said to be from inferior âswarthyâ races).[10] And failed
farmers like McVeighâs fellow conspirator Terry Nichols havenât been
peasants (like in old Europe or Mexico) but a type of small businessmen.
Timothy McVeigh canât be the real white man his father was, because the
lifelong, high paying, industrial labor aristocracy of the steel mills
and auto plants is shrinking not expanding. And heâs not suited to be a
softwear designer or patent attorney or tourist resort manager or any of
the other good slots in the new yuppie economy.
Formerly, Tim would have been guaranteed security and respect as a white
settler policeman or army officer, but he couldnât adjust to being
lesser in the âmulticulturalâ age of Colin Powells. McVeigh lost his
army career despite being almost exactly the type of gung-ho noncom the
military was looking for, because he couldnât stop fighting with his
âniggerâ fellow officers. Imperialism doesnât care if you are a bigot.
Or if you make decisions on that basis just as the big guys do. Only you
are expected to not be crudely upfront about it and cause them problems.
Be a team player, as they always say. Only the Tims canât swallow the
humiliation of not being automatically on top as white settlers always
have been before. To them fascism neatly takes over from
settler-colonialism.
There can be many different kinds of capitalist crises, social crisis as
well as a depression. The key here is the class loss of the role in
society, in production and distribution. Men who are robbed of having a
place and as a class canât go forward and canât go backward. Who are at
an end.
Just as so many white farmers in the Northern Plains states know how to
raise commercial crops, run complex farm machinery, juggle agricultural
chemicals, negotiate government and bank loans in the hundreds of
thousands of dollars for their own lands and business. But they really
arenât needed anymore as a small business class (and the State is tired
of subsidizing them). Globalized transnational capitalism can get cattle
and wheat much cheaper in other countries. Most of those rural white men
forced off the land and out of small towns, losing their independence as
producers, make the jump to cities and ordinary jobs. Others canât
adjust to losing their middle class feelings of independence (government
subsidized, of course). However they manage to survive, in their hearts
they are drifting to the far right as enemies of the State and the banks
and corporations that destroyed them. Like at Ruby Ridge. Like the tax
refusers. Like the very successful violent movement to reclaim federal
lands for free local settler exploitation.
Even through the difficult poverty and insecurity of the Great
Depression in the 1930s, the fascism that was raging in Europe found few
followers here. Because white settler-colonialism and fascism occupy the
same ecological niche. Having one, capitalist society didnât yet need
the other. Nazism didnât do anything to Jews that Americanism didnât do
first to indigenous peoples. And for the same reasons. Settlerism has
many points in common with fascism as popular oppressor cultures, of
course. Which is the reason some Nazi theorists used white settler
America as the idealized model for their Greater Germany. When
capitalism has abruptly de-settlerized before in other countries, a
populist fascism has been one political result. For instance, when
French capitalism decided in 1961 to secure Algerian oil by abandoning
the million French colonial-settlers there (at that time colonial
Algeria was officially an integral province of France), a popular
settler-army fascist movement immediately sprang into life that started
bombings and tried to assassinate the French president and militarily
topple the French State. That 1960s French fascism of the âcolonsâ not
only had mass support, but it still forms a base for the far right in
France today.
Obviously, rightist political views that touch on fascism are held by
many white Americans. Theyâre conditionally loyal to the government (and
in the government) only because their level of prosperity and privilege
is so high that why should they lift their faces from the trough? But if
the u.s. capitalist class left it to a âdemocraticâ vote of its white
citizens, known fascists like David Duke would be in the u.s. senate,
there would be no W.T.O. but also no Civil Rights Act, and much of
America would proudly fly the Confederate flag of the slavemasters. The
imperialist Stateâs largest domestic security priority is not terrorism,
the ghetto or the border as they pretend, but restraining and defusing
white settler rebellion to the right.
So far we have not seen fascist movements based on oppressed workers
(while workers are present in fascist movements, they have been
outweighed by the declassed, lower middle class and labor aristocracy).
Not only Al-Qaida but the entire Muslim far right has always been
centered in the middle classes and declassed, in country after country.
Like all mass insurgencies, men from different classes may be drawn in
but particular classes dominate the core, the cadres and leadership. In
Syria, where a Muslim Brotherhood with a mass base actually conducted a
violent terror campaign against the Baâth Party and the Asad
dictatorship in an attempt to seize state power, this class composition
was very clear. The movement began in the 1930s with imams, students of
the sharia, and small traders of the market. (In fact, just as in the
Iranian Revolution these categories overlap, with many clerics earning a
livelihood in the market as traders). By the time of Syrian civil war in
the 1976â1981 period, an analysis of 1384 political prisoners (most of
whom were Brothers) showed that 27.7% were students, 7.9%
schoolteachers, and 13.3% were professionals, such as lawyers, doctors,
engineers.[11]
It is the classes dislocated out of productive life, the humiliated
layers of middle class men who are angry and frightened, who feel they
have nowhere to turn to restore their status... except towards fascism.
Many unemployed college graduates in the corrupt and stultified Muslim
neo-colonial world can always emigrate and become our $5.35 an hour
clerks in the neighborhood convenience stores, or perhaps Western
Europeâs low-wage street sweepers and factory workers. (Like sons of
former stalinist party officials in East Germany who are now prominently
found in the nazi youth groups, they might have been on top but just
lost historyâs lottery). Some would rather say no and take the Trade
with them. You donât have to like them to understand them.
The discussion in Fascism & Anti-Fascism of the political differences
within fascism today is mind-stretching and definitely educational. New
fascist politics are being produced. However, the paperâs elaborate
scenario about the importance of the fight between the old âclassicalâ
fascism of the Hitlers and Mussolinis vs. todayâs seemingly more radical
third position fascism seems questionable. Hamerquist writes:
âObviously, my argument puts a lot of weight on the emergence of an
anti-capitalist âthird positionâ variant of fascism.â To the contrary, i
believe that his take on fascism today is essentially accurate whether
third position fascism comes to predominate or not. He might be right
about third position fascismâwhich stresses âsocialist liberationâ
politics and makes a pretense of dropping racismâbeing the wave of the
rightist future. But while a thin scattering of third position fascist
commentators are attracting much attention, especially on the internet
(and especially from their right-wing enemies in racist groups like the
so-called Anti-Defamation League), so far they appear to have few
soldiers. Every time we see any number of young eurofascists in public,
theyâre the swastika-loving types we know so well.
Again, looking at fascism historically shows how it has always been very
revolutionary, very radical, although not in the way that leftists are
used to thinking of those terms. But radical and populist and
anti-establishment enough to draw considerable support as an alternative
to bourgeois rule. Which is what the question is here.
Hereâs the deal. The supposed importance of the defeat of the
Strasser-Rohm âleftâ within the Nazi Party after 1933 was a big issue to
many euro-leftists back then. It is the one slice of the old left
position on fascism that Hamerquist still holds on to. But not only is
it shaky factually, this view is clearly wrong conceptually. For one
thing, the political meaning of that factional defeat has never been
establishedâthere is even some evidence that the Strasser-Rohm âleftâ
would have been much less radical in power than Hitler and the S.S.
proved to be. While intellectual Otto Strasser, who ran the Partyâs main
press for years, and Captain Rohm of the âBrownshirtsâ pressed a more
âsocialistâ line than Hitler, talk before taking power is often worth
less than the paper it is printed on. Strasserâs âGermanic socialismâ
seemed to be mostly a collection of petty utopian plans and laws. After
the war Strasser claimed that Hitler had only perverted the Nazi ideals,
and set up a nationalistic social-democratic party in Bavaria.
Also, for all we know the only historic function of fascist âleftâ
factions is to put on a more convincing public face to better lure
embittered, anti-establishment men into the fascist movement.
But the most important reason that this line of thinking has proven to
be wrong is because fascism in generalâincluding the âclassicalâ euro
fascismâhas proven to be violently radical & dangerously capable of
attracting mass support far beyond the leftâs complacent expectations.
Hitler is still being underestimated by the left. He was a brilliant,
exciting leader who yearned for, fought for, dangerous changes far more
radical than anything anyone imagined back then. That his radicalism was
of the right makes it no less radical. Under his leadership the left was
made to look pedestrian, dull, inadequate, as he crash created a
shocking techno-culture of mass worship and violent mass
re-identification. Hitler made millions of people change who they were.
He left the bourgeoisie intact save for the Jews, but diminished its
importance. He destroyed whole peoples, relabelled others and even
eliminated the old working class. He reshaped Germany as a society for
generations to come, and then destroyed an empire in titanic wars of his
own choosing.
We forget that fascism has always been mainly a movement of the young.
That many youth in 1930s Germany viewed the Nazis as liberatory. As
opposed to the German social-democrats, for example, who preached the
dutiful authority of parents over children, the Hitler Youth gave
rebellious children the power to keep their own hours, have an active
sex and political life, smoke, drink and have groups of their own.
Wilhelm Reich pointed out long ago that fascism in practice exposed
every hypocrisy and internal cultural repression of the old left.
All during the rise of euro-fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, the left
dissed & dismissed them as pawns of the capitalist class. Whether in the
brilliant German Communist photomontage posters of the artist Heartfield
or the pronouncement from Moscow that âfascism is the terroristic
dictatorship of the big bourgeoisieâ, there was a constant message that
Italian fascism and German Nazism were only puppets for the big
capitalist class. This has some parts of the truth, but is fatally
off-center and produces an actually disarming picture. Not that no
leftists saw the problem, of course. In 1922 one German communist writer
warned of a âFascist Danger in South Germanyâ, and even analyzed the
Nazi Party as a highly militarized anti-semitic sect that was based in
the petty bourgeoisie but was agitating against big business.[12] These
assessments on the ground were soon swept away by dismissive theories
from the big left uberheadquarters in Berlin and Moscow.
Today we think of fascism so much in terms of its repression, that we
forget how much Nazism built its movement by campaigning against big
capitalism. One famous National Socialist election poster shows a social
democratic winged âangelâ walking hand in hand with a stereotyped
banker, with the big slogan: âMarxism is the Guardian Angel of
Capitalismâ.[13] Hitler promised to preserve the âgoodâ productive
capitalism of ordinary hard-working Germans, while wiping out the âbadâ
parasitic big capitalism of the hidden finance capitalist Jewish bosses.
In fact, tens of millions of Americans (and not just white folks) would
support such a program right here & now. Fascism blended together a
radical sentiment against the big bourgeoisie and their State, together
with racist-nationalist ideology, into a political uprising of the
middle classes and declassed.
The Nazi Party under Hitler was acting always under the pervasive
hegemony of capitalist culture, but it was in no way under the orders of
the former capitalist ruling class. It actually pushed the big
capitalists away from State power, just as Hitler always promised that
it would (Hamerquist strongly emphasizes this point).
The notion that big business interests push buttons to create or
disappear fascism at will, as they need it, is an enduring left fable.
It sounds so reasonable from a conspiratorial point of view, and
generations of leftists have repeated it so often we just assume that
itâs true. But, you know, thereâs a special hell for movements that fall
in love with their own propaganda. Weâre going to dip into a discussion
of fascist history to sort out these questions factually.
Itâs true that Adolph Hitler didnât need a day job. He was the most
dramatic new leader on the German political scene; one who had
participated in violence himself and whose politics were not only
outside of the mainstream but beyond the boundaries of the law. Once he
got out of prison after the failed 1923 Munich putsch, Hitler was
personally supported by the Duchess of Sachsen-Anhalt as he began
rebuilding his party.[14] Party gossip then talked about âHitlerâs
womenâânot mistresses but older, wealthy right-wing women who were
charmed to have tea with the poetic, stormy young fuhrer in return for
donations. And there were always some businessmen, like the Bechstein
family of piano makers, who supported the Nazis. This level of support
might square with, say, the support that the 1960s Black Power
radicalism got from wealthy white progressives. The militant u.s. Black
Power movement received large amounts of money from upper-class sources
as diverse as the national Episcopal Church and one of the Rockefellers.
Should we think that H. Rap Brown and Amiri Baraka were âpuppets of the
ruling classâ? Or that their nationalist Black Revolution was a ruling
class strategy? Fact is, many wealthy people have many different causes
and hobby horses to ride.
The major German capitalists didnât support the excessively unstable,
fractious, violent, anti-bourgeois Nazi Party until after its 1930
electoral breakout into being the dynamic major party of the Right. That
is, after a long decade of difficult fighting and building from tiny,
obscure beginnings.[15] The Nazis were a poor party by bourgeois
standards, financed primarily from their own members and followers. Big
capitalism in Germany had instead backed a rival party with big cashâthe
right wing but respectably bourgeois German Nationalist Party, headed by
Alfred Hugenberg. (A director of the giant Krupp armaments firm,
Hugenberg owned the major UFA film studios, the leading German
advertising firm, and a nationwide chain of newspapers. He was supported
by Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank and Albert Voegler of United
Steel.)[16] This is another way of saying that the major German
capitalists themselves long misjudged how to handle the crisis that was
destroying Depression-era Germany. This is no surprise, since their
misruling class ineptitude was one reason things were in such crisis.
The failures and misjudgement of the capitalist class leadership play a
larger role in things than we sometimes recognize.
In particular, fascism has always developed a hard radical edge to it
that called to the lower middle classes and the declassed to come battle
not only the treacherous left but the bosses and their government (in
the periphery this same fascist class politics is reshaped to an
âanti-colonialâ battle against Western imperialism and its corrupt local
neo-colonial allied regimes). The âclassicalâ Nazi fascismâwhich named
itself the âGerman National Socialist Workers Partyâ, after allâcould
get roughly a quarter of its votes in 1930 from the working class,
although mostly from the long term unemployed strata.[17] But it was not
based in the working class. Nazi Gauleiter Alfred Krebs of Munich
reported that the party cadres came almost exclusively from the lowest
of the middle classes (office workers, petty civil servants,
self-employed craftsmen and traders), not from either the main middle
classes or industrial workers.[18] Nevertheless, these new class
fighters numbered in the hundreds of thousands and millions, a powerful
political force. And anti-bourgeois politics were music to their ears,
just as condemning the corrupt excess of Saudi princes and oil
millionaires help attract pan-islamic fascismâs followers. Nazi
Gauleiter Krebs reported that âany attack on capitalism and plutocracy
found the strongest echo among the local functionaries [of the Nazi
Partyâed.] with their middle-class origin.â[19]
Listen to Daniel Guerinâs eyewitness account of a Nazi SA âstormtrooperâ
rally in Leipzig in 1933:
âSaturday evening at a popular dance hall in a working-class district of
Leipzig. Men and women around tables, dressed like petit-bourgeois, like
all German workers. There are many SAs and Hitler Youth, but here there
is neither arrogance not starchiness; itâs free and easy, noisy
laughterâweâre among the people. The orchestra, in uniform, plays good
classical music: Wagner, Verdi. At the intermission, an orator mounts
the stage and harangues the crowd, which is at first attentive and
docile. The theme: âOur Revolutionâ.
ââOur Revolution, Volksgenossen [âNational Comradesâ], has only begun.
We havenât yet attained any of our goals. Thereâs talk of a national
government, of a national awakening... Whatâs all that about? Itâs the
Socialist part of our program that matters.â
ââThe crowd emits a satisfied âAh!â This is what everyone was thinking
but didnât dare articulate. Now their gaze passionately follows this man
who speaks for them all.
ââThe Reich of Wilhelm II was a Reich without an ideal. The bourgeoisie
ruled with its disgusting materialism and its contempt for the
proletariat. The 1918 Revolution, Volksgenossen, couldnât destroy the
old system. The Socialist leaders abandoned the dictatorship of the
proletariat for the golden calf. They betrayed the nation and they
betrayed the people. As for communism, itâs proven itself unable to get
rid of them, since Stalin renounced Leninist Bolshevism for capitalist
individualism.â
âI listen spellbound to this tirade. Am I really at a Hitlerite meeting?
But the demagogue knows what heâs doing, for the crowd is vibrating
around me at an ever-increasing rhythm.
ââThe bourgeoisie, Volksgenossen, continued to monopolize patriotism, to
abandon the masses to Marxism, that dogâs breakfast. For our part, weâve
understood that we had to go to the proletariat and enter into it, that
to conquer Germany meant conquering the working class. And when we
revealed the idea of the Fatherland to these proletarians, there were
tears of gratitude on many a Face...â
âThis emphatic missionary language is followed by diatribe and threats:
âWe have now but one enemy to vanquish: the bourgeoisie. To bad for it
if it doesnât want to give in, if it doesnât want to understand...â
âAnd carried away by his eloquence, he lets the admission slip out:
âBesides, one day it will be grateful that we treated it this way.â
âBut the crowd didnât hear that. It believes only that the revolution
has begun, that socialism is on the horizon. And when he has finished,
it sings with raw anger:
Is todayâs third position fascism more radical than that? I doubt it.
Fascism always taps into and channels the raw radical anger and class
envy of lower classes against the bourgeois, in order to create a
distorted revolutionary instrument. Not just as a trick, either. This
distorted class anger is necessary to sharpen the violent instrument
that fascism needs.
Nor was this true only in Germany. Fascism originally started in Italy
among some socialist intellectuals, demobilized arditi (the Italian
armyâs elite assault commando units), avant-garde artists & writers, and
then young rural landowners. Their economic program was very âleftâ and
against big business. Even as late as 1921, fascist leader Mussolini
(the former pro armed struggle tendency leader of the Italian Socialist
Party and editor of the party newspaper) was proposing that the monarchy
and parliament be forcibly abolished, and replaced by a joint
fascist-socialist-catholic reformist âright-leftâ rule over the nation.
Although Mussolini explored this path towards power, it was too late
alreadyâas he spoke, fascist squads were killing leftists, burning whole
villages that had gone âredâ, and breaking up unions. That is less
significant for us than understanding his need to put forward the most
âleftâ face possible on his way to State power. Mussolini even spoke
favorably about the spontaneous workers councils movement that was
taking over factories and calling for anti-capitalist revolution:
âNo social transformation which is necessary is repugnant to me. Hence I
accept the famous workersâ supervision of the factories and equally
their cooperative social management; I only ask that there should be a
clear conscience and technical capacity, and that production be
increased. If this is guaranteed by the trade unions, instead of by the
employers, I have no hesitation in saying that the former have the right
to take the latterâs place.â[20]
Again, does todayâs third position fascism sound more radical than that?
Not hardly.
It wasnât just that the early fascists ran under false colors. There was
a new militant energy created on the Right by playing âleftâ off the
increasingly stale, dishonest, reformist leanings of organized
socialism. Remember that fascism is a movement of the young, and that in
Italy it was the fascists not the left that swept the universities with
their subculture of dangerous excitement and drama. As Mussolini
thundered:
â...democracy has taken away the sense of style from the life of the
people. Fascism brings back a sense of style to the life of the people,
that is, a line of conduct, colour, force, the picturesque, the
unexpected, the mystic; in short, all those things that count in the
spirit of the masses. We play the lyre on all its strings: from violence
to religion, from art to politics... fascism is a desire for action, and
is action; it is not party but anti-party and movement.â[21]
In an unpublished manuscript, R. Vacirca explains this:
âItalian Fascism initially positioned itself to the left of the Social
Democracy, denouncing the bourgeoisifaction of the socialist movement.
Mussolini and other early proto-fascists like the famous futurist artist
Marinelli did this, attracting many radical youth to them as a more
radical alternative to the mainstream Marxists. This is why Antonio
Gramsci and other student socialists idolized Mussolini until he became
pro-war in1914. The bourgeois reformist character of the
Social-Democracy played into the fascistsâ hands. People in the U.S.
have a false picture of the historic euro-left, they donât realize how
big and strong rooted Social Democracy was. How, like our AFL-CIO, the
Civil Rights movement, the womenâs movement here, how much a part of the
establishment it had become. And of course from its beginnings fascism
was a fighting force, an armed organization. It emphasized violence and
direct, spontaneous action which made them look a lot racier than the
broad socialist movement which was de facto pacifist. Just like today
the âanti-war movementâ Mussolini faced was totally inept and
bourgeoisified.
âUp to December of 1920 when the fascists opened up their first big
sustained terror campaign against the socialist party, Mussolini
presented himself and the fascists as a revolutionary, pro-worker
alternative to the increasingly reformist Marxists. Trafficking on his
rep as the leader of the most revolutionary faction of the Italian
Socialist Party. After all, if he hadnât broken rightward to made common
cause with the nationalists and supported Italy entering World War I to
gain more territory, Mussolini would have been the natural leader of a
communist revolution in Italy. This is what Lenin himself said at one
point! This is how disorienting the new fascist movement was. By the
time enough people had figured out what Mussolini was doing he had a
lock on power, and gradually washed all the red out of his program.â[22]
The âclassicalâ fascism openly despised & promised to supplant the
bourgeois culture of accumulating capital to live off of, the central
fixation with money and soft living. The Nazi cultural model was not a
businessman or politician, remember, but the Aryan warrior willing to
fight & kill. Fascism was a movement for failed men: of the marginally
employed professional, the idle school graduate, the deeply indebted
farmer, the unrecognized war veteran, the perpetually unemployed worker
with no chance of work. But failed not because of themselves, but
because bourgeois society had failed them in a dishonorable way.
So fascism called men from the middle classes to recover their heritage
of being holy warriors, to sweep the decayed old bourgeois order away in
a campaign against two classes: to seize State power from the
bourgeoisie and completely eliminate the working class left. The
bourgeoisie would be forced to step back, would fulfill their useful
role in the economy and be rewarded as is needful for capitalism to
function, but they could no longer control the State or nation. And the
State would be made up of real men who wouldnât profit from the petty
counting of stocks, but by manfully just taking what they wanted.
This is the truly rightist revolutionary aspect to fascism, as
Hamerquist recognizes. It is capitalism run out of control of the big
capitalists. Which is why the commanding elements of the capitalist
class feed fascism and use it in emergencies, but eventually must try to
limit, co-opt, regularize or militarily subdue fascist states. This new
World War by the u.s.a. against pan-islamic fascism cannot possibly be
more violent than the last world war of the imperialist Allies against
European & Japanese fascismâin which 60 million people died. What is the
attack on the World Trade Center or the recent bombing of Kabul compared
to just the one Allied firebombing of the German city of Dresden? An
unknown number of persons in the many tens or even several hundreds of
thousands died that night as the uncontrolled firestorm from u.s.
âanti-Naziâ bombing sucked the oxygen out of the air and swept through
whole city blocks in a leap.
Much of the standard old left analysis of the Hitler regime as
essentially acting for big business is based on a vulgar Marxism, and is
a fundamental misreading of fascismâs character. This pseudo-materialist
line of thinking says: the biggest German corporations got bigger and
richer, so the big capitalists must have been running the show. How
simple politics is to those bound and determined to be simple-minded.
While Nazism could be thought a âtoolâ of the bourgeoisie in the sense
that big business took advantage of it and supported it, it was out of
their controlâin other words, not a âtoolâ in the usual meaning of the
word. Picture a type of power saw that you hoped would cut down the tree
stump in your backyard, but that not only did that but also went off in
its own directions and escaped your control.
There was a considerable consolidation of German industry under Nazism,
particularly once the war was at its peak. Many small factories were
ruthlessly taken from their owners by the Nazi state and given, in
effect, to the largest corporations. The fascist interest was in greater
ease of government supervision and in spreading the higher state of war
production techniques of the advanced corporations.
That this completely contradicted Hitlerâs âsocialistâ doctrine of
âanti-capitalismâ and preserving the small producers, was so evident
that even in wartime the Nazis had to politically defend themselves to
the public. Notice that even as late as 1943 the Nazis were maintaining
the desirability of âsocialismâ and âanti-capitalismâ even as they said
it was impractical in the current situation. The Deutsche Allgeine
Zeitung said in June 1943:
âIt cannot be denied that in practical life things can work out very
differently from the ideal National Socialist economy. We find it hard
to reconcile ourselves to increasing mechanization... to the growth of
enormous companies, to the decimation of the middle classes which the
war has brought about... But that is the way it is; it would be folly to
go counter to technical progress... Many an old entrenched doctrine of
anti-capitalism, with the feelings it engendered, has had to be thrown
overboard... Things are in a state of flux. We should not dread economic
concentration.â[23]
The key misreading is to assume that who made the most profits from
business meant anything to Hitler, who personally never cared anything
about money and politically hated the bourgeoisie. Wartime focus on
productivity aside, Hitler routinely bribed important power elites that
he needed to count on. His favorite generals were given whole estates.
Even the Prussian aristocracy, whom Hitler personally had contempt for
as a decadent elite that had betrayed him in World War I, were given
properties as bribes and permitted to rise to high offices in the S.S.
In 1942, Prince Salm-Salm was given thirteen mines; Count
Asseburg-Falkenstein-Rothkirch got nine silver, mercury, copper, zinc,
manganese, lead, iron and sulphur mines; Prince Botho zu
Stollberg-Wernigerode received five coal mines, and thirty-nine other
mines; etc.[24]The big capitalists, the Krupps, the Flicks, I.G. Farben,
General Electric and Ford, obviously profited most of all dollar-wise.
But Hitler and the other fascists never gave away any of what mattered
to them, control of the State that controlled everything.
To Hitler these bribes were of no more importance than candy passed out
to pacify children. As he was reported to have said: âWhy need we
trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human
beings.â[25]
The previous old left theory that fascism is âa tool of the ruling
classâ, that the capitalists were in effect just faxing their orders in
to obedient Adolph every morning, only shows how threadbare left theory
had become. Now, generations later, there is no historical evidence that
the big German industrial and finance capitalists were dictating Nazi
policy on suicidally invading the Soviet Union. Or on putting major
efforts into exterminating millions of Jews even at the critical height
of the war effort. Or on allying with fascist Japan in an enlarged war
bringing the u.s. empire into the conflict. Or the Nazi policy of
rigidly dismantling all the conservative lay organizations of the
Catholic Church (nonpolitical Catholic women who tried to secretly keep
meeting ended up in prisons and concentration camps). And so on.
Hitler even gave early warning that new men remade into Aryan warriors,
from classes betrayed by the hated bourgeoisie, would take command of
the State to save national capitalist society from the twin evils of the
inept capitalists and the left. Fascism, Hitler said, was not another
electoral party but a party of warriors who intended to make
ârevolutionâ:
âOn February 24, 1920, the first great public demonstration of our young
movement took place. In the Festsaal of the Munich Hofbrauhaus the
twenty-five theses of the new partyâs program were submitted to a crowd
of almost two thousand and every single point was accepted amidst
jubilant approval.
âWith this the first guiding principles and directives were issued for a
struggle which was to do away with a veritable mass of old traditional
conceptions and opinions and with unclear, yes, harmful aims. Into the
rotten and cowardly bourgeois world and into the triumphant march of the
Marxist wave of conquest a new power phenomenon was entering, which at
the eleventh hour would halt the chariot of doom.
âIt was self-evident that the new movement could hope to achieve the
necessary importance and the required strength for this gigantic
struggle only if it succeeded from the very first day in arousing in the
hearts of its supporters the holy conviction that with it political life
was to be given, not to a new election slogan, but to a new philosophy
of fundamental significance...
â...And so, if today our movement gets the witty reproach that it is
working toward a ârevolutionâ, especially from the so-called national
bourgeois ministers, say of the Bavarian Center, the only answer we can
give one of the political twerps is this: Yes, indeed, we are trying to
make up for what you in your criminal stupidity failed to do. By the
principles of your parliamentary cattle-trading, you helped to drag the
nation into the abyss; but we, in the form of attack and by setting up a
new philosophy of life by fanatically and indomitably defending its
principles, shall build for our people the steps on which it will some
day climb back into the temple of freedom.
âAnd so, in the founding period of our movement, our first concern had
always to be directed towards preventing the host of warriors for an
exalted conviction from becoming a mere club for the advancement of
parliamentary interests.â[26]
The nature of the capitalist State and how it operates is a complex
issue. For example, it has not been unusual for the capitalist State to
actually be operated by another class. In Great Britain, the feudal
State had been administered by the hereditary landed aristocracy, who
simply continued to run the government for well over the first century
of British industrial capitalism. That was particularly true for the
imperial military, traditionally officered by the younger sons of the
aristocracy and gentry. Germany had a similar arrangement until the end
of World War I, with the military in particular being the domain of the
junkers and other aristocrats (Prince Otto von Bismarck, the brilliant
founder of the modern German capitalist nation, was himself a noble not
a capitalist politician). So in that sense the concept of fascism
commanding the State, relegating the capitalist class to the temporary
role of passengers not drivers in their own car, is not completely
without historical precedent.
Fascism & Anti-Fascism raises the possibility of fascist revolution
leading to a de-civilization, of a post-capitalist regression into a new
âbarbarismâ. As Hamerquist writes insightfully: âCapitalismâs current
contradictions provide the potentials for revolutionary fascist
movements, the basic ingredient, I think, of âbarbarismâ, just as
certainly as they provide potentials for a revitalized revolutionary
left.â
He might well be right. Although, again, plain vanilla fascism seems to
be capable of almost as much barbarism as human society can absorb (if
we consider the case of the Khmer Rouge, it might be that such extreme
breakdown into a neo-barbarism could come from the authoritarian left
more than the right) . When we say that one automatically thinks of the
Holocaust, but the âclassicalâ fascism did much more than that alone.
Hamerquist notes that while capitalism is supposed to live off of the
exploitation of labor power fascism raises the possibility of a
âbarbaricâ mode of surplus value extraction that rests on the actual
destruction of labor power. This is a terrible thing, but it is not new
for capitalism. For that matter, âclassicalâ very capitalist German
fascism did exactly that. It dissolved the German proletariat as a
class, drafting it into their army or promoting it away, and created a
better, disposable, always-dying-off working class that was literally
being worked to death.
Even political conquest didnât eliminate National Socialismâs constant
clashing with their own native industrial working class. As the Partyâs
German Labor Front reported in 1937 over mass resistance to speed-ups
and Taylorism: âWorkers, whether of National Socialist persuasion or
not, still hold on to the Marxist and union position of rejecting
critera of production...Controls over individual achievement are
rejected. Therefore they resist all attempts to time them.â[27]Remember
that until well after 1933 the Nazis could venture into hard-core
proletarian neighborhoods only in large groups. There were large-scale
working class sabotage campaigns in the shipyards, docks, railroads and
armaments factories (Italian fascism was always plagued by strong
working class opposition, and was basically overthrown by the Italian
workers).
Fascism de-proletarianized Aryan society. Or to put it more precisely:
it created an Aryan society that had never existed before by
de-proletarianizing and genociding the former German society. The Nazis
pursued Adolf Hitlerâs evolving strategy, which was to simultaneously
promote both techno-industrial development and the Aryan re-organization
of classes. If it is the superior race manâs destiny to be both a fierce
soldier and ruler over othersâas the Nazis held in a core beliefâthen
how can this superior race man at the same time be packing groceries for
housewives at the supermarket or bucking production on the assembly
line? In 1940 Nazi Labor Front leader Robert Ley said in an amazingly
revealing speech: âIn ten years Germany will be transformed beyond
recognition. A nation of proletarians will have become a nation of
rulers...â By the millions, newly Aryanized men were shifted into
military & police service and into being supervisors, office workers,
foremen, straw bosses and minor bureaucrats of every sort. The new
proletariat that started emerging was heavily made up of involuntary
foreign & slave laborers, retirees, andâdespite Nazi ideology about
womenâs ânaturalâ place in the kitchen and nurseryâwomen.[28]
Nazi slave labor is seldom dealt with in its class reality. Usually it
is mentioned as a side-effect of the Holocaust. Or as a short-lived
desperation measure of a tottering regime facing military defeat on all
fronts. The truth was that it was much more than that. Slave and
semi-slave labor was a necessary feature of mature Nazi society. If
Hitlerism had been successful, slave labor was to have gone on for his
entire lifetime and beyond. Even conquered Eastern Europe and Russia, in
official Nazi plans, would gradually have given way to the spread of
vast Aryan owned agricultural estates, whose rural slave proletariat
would have been involuntarily furnished by the inferior races.[29]
By 1941 there were three million foreign & slave proletarians at work in
National Socialist factories, farms and mines. Coincidentally, the Nazi
elite S.S.âwhich had only 116 men at its first public display at the
July 4, 1926 Party Rally at Weimar[30] (by happy coincidence the u.s.a.
and the Nazi Party celebrate the same founding holiday)âhad
symmetrically grown to three million as well. A new class of oppressed
workers being balanced by a new class of parasitic oppressors. Soon the
overrun territories of Europe and the East provided over four million
more slave laborers for Nazi industry & the war machine (the majority of
whom were used up, consumed, in accelerated capitalist production).
Nazismâs peculiar class structure was parasitic as a mode of life. One
history sums this up:
âThe regimeâs increasing use of concentration camp and foreign forced
labour made the working class more or less passive accomplices in Nazi
racial policy... The first ârecruitsâ were unemployed Polish
agricultural labourers, who were soon accompanied by prisoners of war
and people abducted en masse from cinemas and churches. These were then
followed by the French. By the summer of 1941 there were some three
million foreign workers in Germany, a figure which mushroomed to 7.7
million in the autumn of 1944....A high proportion of these workers were
either young or female. By 1944, a quarter of those working in the
German economy were foreigners. Virtually every German worker was thus
confronted by the fact and practice of Nazi racism. In some branches of
industry, German workers merely constituted a thin, supervisory layer
above a workforce of which between 80 and 90 percent were foreigners.
This tends to be passed over by historians of the labour movement.
âTreatment of these foreign workers was largely determined by their
âracialâ origins. Broadly speaking, the usual hierarchy consisted of
âGerman workersâ at the top, âwest workersâ a stage below them, and
Poles and âeastern workersâ at the lowest level. This racial hierarchy
determined both living conditions and the degree of coercion to which
foreign workers were subjected both at the workplace and in society at
large.â[31]
The dis-visionary fascist social engineering of the Nazi Party several
generations ago is echoed by the pan-islamic fascists of the Taliban,
who ordered the permanent house arrest and enslavement of all women in
society as a gender (as well as the marginalization/elimination of other
ethnic groupings). Fascism as we have known it in practice, operating as
an âextraordinaryâ form of capitalist rule, produces shocking barbarism
far beyond any normal expectations. In fact, to go much beyond that in
this direction would probably produce an unraveling of society itself
(as happened under the Khmer Rouge).
Although the major bourgeoisie itself is not needed to create fascist
movements, neither is it true that fascism simply comes in cold from the
outside to seize State power. It is not like the revolutionary left in
that sense. We feel that revolutionaries must make a critical
distinction between the various sectors of the capitalist class and the
State apparatus that protects capitalism. Fascism has a certain insider
leverage in its reaching for State power. In all cases of fascist
success so far there has been a complex mutual attraction between
elements of the State and fascist movements. Fascism gets important
support from operators within the bourgeois State, who recognize their
deepest identities and needs in these popular movements of the extreme
right. âLike is drawn to like.â
Big businessmen, the hereditary super-wealthy, financiers, are
notoriously inept at State decision-making. The capitalist State cannot
necessarily survive crises by being bound to their thinking (recall the
widespread capitalist opposition to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal,
even to the point of an attempted military coup led by the DuPonts).
President Theodore Roosevelt once remarked on this with disappointment:
âYou expect a man of millions to be a man worth hearing. But as a rule
they donât know anything outside their own businessesâ[32]
The infant Nazi Party, for example, might have had no support at all
from the big bourgeoisie, but it was carefully fostered for years by
elements in the young army officer corps. This was at a time, right
after Germanyâs defeat in World War I, when the German army was
politically unreliable from the capitalist point of view. To ensure that
some officers didnât try a coup to oust the new social-democratic Weimar
Republic government, the enlisted men in many army units had elected
socialist representatives to meet in councils. Rebellious army units
went socialist or even communist.
Professional officers knew that without a mass base of support, a
âworkers partyâ as one captain in the Bavarian regiments put it, they
wouldnât be able to repress the rebellious working class left or trust
their own troops enough to stage the coup they aimed for. This
particular officer had spotted a likely political worker for their
conspiracy in his battalion, a corporal named Adolf Hitler who had
successfully become the elected socialist representative of his company.
This corporal was quickly recruited to be a political agent for the
rightist officers conspiracy in the army.
Hitler later said in awkwardly defending Nazis with socialist pasts:
âEveryone was a social-democrat once.â The lesson here is that itâs not
uncommon in the chaos when regimes fall, when radical discontent is the
major drum beat of popular politics, for even rightists to get their
early political experience by joining the left for awhile. Sometimes
thatâs the best game in town. Hitlerâs biographer, Ian Kershaw, points
out that the young corporal was far more heavily involved in the left
than was earlier realized. Bavaria in South Germany went from
overthrowing both the Kaiser and its own principality all the way to its
own âRed Republicâ when the young communists seized power temporarily.
Hitlerâs 1^(st) Reserve Battalion of the 2^(nd) Bavarian Infantry
Regiment took part in the communist revolution, during which he served
as the elected Deputy Battalion Representative, probably even marching
in an armed workers & soldiers parade wearing a red armband with the
rest of his unit.[33]
In this he was far from being the only fascist-to-be drawn into
rebellious âsocialistâ activity. The commander of his elite S.S.
bodyguard, Sepp Dietrich (later to become an S.S. General and war
criminal), had first been the elected chairman of a revolutionary
soldiersâ council in 1919. Hitlerâs own chauffeur, Julius Schreck, had
been in the communist âRed Armyâ militia, while his first propaganda
chief, Herman Esser, had been a socialist journalist. These were men
looking for a cause, for change that they could swell into, and with an
anger at the smug bourgeoisie.[34] The left after all teaches how to
conduct political debates, how to organize masses of people around
issues, the technique of mass politics.
When the unsuccessful Kapp Putsch broke out in Berlin in 1920, political
agent Hitler was even trusted enough to be sent secretly to be the
liaison between the Bavarian army units and the mutinous officers. 36 By
then a full time army political specialist, Hitler was sent undercover
to join and report on a small fascist group called the German National
Socialist Workers Party (one of many promising rightist and fascist
groups the army was encouraging). Hitler had finally found his lifeâs
work, and with army approval and financing Hitler plunged into building
the Nazi Party. He was one of many such competing agents, in those
chaotic times. The German Army acted autonomously from the rest of the
weakened bourgeois democratic State for years, illegally giving the Nazi
Party and other far right groups funds, weapons and training.
While there are rogue operations and unofficially approved assistance to
fascists, there are also cases where the State on all levels gets
involved. Italy was one such case, where the newborn fascist movement in
1919â22 got informal local help from police and army officers as well as
official assistance from the highest levels of the State. Arrested with
a hundred other fascists after the 1919 elections on charges of flashing
guns (Mussolini lost to a socialist candidate by 40 to 1), Mussolini was
freed on government orders.[35] In 1920, the defense minister ordered
that demobilized officers who joined the fascist action squads to give
leadership to the mix of inexperienced middle class students and street
criminals in them would continue to get 4/5ths of their army pay.[36]
But it wasnât the Italian big bourgeoisie who were so enthusiastic about
supporting fascism but police officials, army officers, local
capitalists and the rural middle class landowners and intellectuals. It
wasnât until the eve of the fascist march on Rome in 1922, when
Mussolini was being supported by the heads of the military for the next
chief of state, that the major industrial capitalists swung into
line.[37]
We can see this pattern over and over on all levels. Because the
potential usefulness of mass volunteer movements of armed men is
irresistible to those in the State who actually have to solve
capitalismâs crises. (Many within the State apparatus naturally have
approximate fascist or âtotalitarianâ views themselves). And today these
mass volunteer movements of armed men are equally irresistible to the
small and local bourgeoisie, who feel increasingly neglected by and
estranged from the command levels of big transnational capitalism.
Afghanistan and pan-islamic fascism in that region today are a more
recent development that shows how this type of relationship can play
out. It is certainly true that the fascist Taliban movement is a
by-product of the Reagan administrationâs manufactured islamic jihad, in
the sense that the c.i.a. set the historical stage for the Taliban to
appear. But the fascist movement known as the Taliban (âthe Studentsâ)
was primarily an internal development of Pakistani-Afghan society.[38]
Pakistani military dictator General Zia took that c.i.a. strategy and
ran with it in a strategy of his own, to deliberately create out of the
refugee camps and Pakistanâs dispossessed a huge manipulated guerrilla
army of jihad. General Ziaâs decision is cursed by many in Pakistan
today, but it made sense in terms of his class situation. The Pakistani
bourgeois officer class was locked into a bitter cycle of losing
conflicts with their main enemy, India, which is far larger and
stronger. While the cramped, neo-colonial Pakistani economy is in
continual crisis, with ever more bitter misery and class conflict.
General Zia envisioned giving Pakistan âstrategic depthâ, enlarging it
economically and militarily by making Pakistan the center and leadership
of a new transnational Muslim empire styled after the historic Muslim
Central Asian empire of the Tartars. Uniting Afghanistan, Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Muslim China, Kashmir and the 150 million
Muslims of India itself, with Pakistan as the center. The mujaheddin
were to be the Brownshirts, the âStormtroopersâ, the mass popular armed
force, acting for the Pakistani army and local bourgeoisie.
When âliberatedâ Afghanistan disintegrated into mujaheddin looting, mass
rapes, killings and ethnic civil war so characteristic of menâs
religions, the Taliban became the Pakistan stateâs fix-it to unify and
hold down the country. Their sponsor was Lt-General Hameed Gul, the
c.i.a.âs former chief collaborator in their Afghan operation as head of
the feared Pakistan Inter Service Intelligence (ISI). He was the leader
overseeing the funding, training and arming of all the various
mujaheddin groups, and subsequently became the Talibanâs main sponsor.
Providing arms, intelligence and military âadvisorsâ to them.
The Taliban was financially supported by the large Pakistani smuggling
mafias (which they became part of). That is, the Taliban leaders are
little local bourgeoisie themselves, but of a special criminal kind.
Because of its central location and long borders in rough terrain,
Afghanistan has always been a hub where commercial traffic goes from
Pakistan and its ports across the borders into Iran or China and up into
the former U.S.S.R. via Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. And
back. Weâre talking about many hundreds of trucks a day loaded with
televisions, computers, silk clothing, food, diesel fuel, rifles and
ammunition, and especially drugs. All smuggled, and usually on stolen
trucks. Again, a corrosive trade worth billions of dollars a year.
The smuggling mafias are certainly businessmen, but what weâd call small
local capitalists. They donât care too much for NATO, the UN, the
multinational corporations and the WTO, for obvious reasons. What they
do care about is having a stable corrupt police over Afghanistanâs
highways. During the free-for-all period right after the pro-Russian
Kabul government fell in 1992 and before the Taliban took over in
1995â96, each local warlord and his gunmen set up roadblocks. A long
truck convoy might be âtaxedâ dozens of times. Violent chaos is bad for
real crime.
So the Pakistani smuggling mafias started not only backing the Taliban
financially and politically, but helping them join the business. The
Taliban, a new fascist movement of Pushtun nationalism, led thousands of
fresh but inexperienced fighters in a new jihad to unify all the armies
and end the fighting. Like a miracle, the Taliban marched on the capital
and beyond, sweeping armies before them by the simple expedient of
buying the loyalty of warlord commanders with cash supplied by their
mafia backers. Their forces swelled as they incorporated old warlord
forces into their new army of Pushtun unity, as well as being joined by
some 20,000 enthusiastic new recruits from the refugee camps in
Pakistan. This is the clerical fascist military regime that came to
temporarily rule Afghanistan.
There is widespread class antagonism towards the big transnational
bourgeoisie of Western imperialism among Muslim local capitalists and
the mafias of criminal capitalism, who see no advantage to their own
classes in having the big transnational corporations take over even the
smallest corners of the Third World. While modern society in the Muslim
world keeps turning out large numbers of declassed, educated and
semi-educated young men who have no prospects in their countries. And
there are elements in the neo-colonial State apparatus who see in
fascism the best solution for their class and social crises. Like
Lt-General Gul, formerly the c.i.a.âs âman in Afghanistanâ.
Lt-General Gul himself is now widely considered a supporter or member of
the pan-islamic fascist network. Since helping the Taliban into power
Gul has broken with the c.i.a. and the big imperialist bourgeoisie. Now
having left the army, General Gul is making well-received speeches
against the pro Western Pakistani military regime, calling the u.s.
bombing of Afghanistan part of the âZionist conspiracyâ that he alleges
did 911. The Trade attack, this former major c.i.a. ally says, was
merely a staged Jewish âpretext for a long-prepared, all-out
operation... for subjugation of the Muslim world. Jihad has, therefore,
become obligatory on all Muslims, wherever they are.â[39] You can
imagine the public ripple effect of having Pakistanâs connection to the
c.i.a. making anti-Western imperialist speeches like this.
The point is that fascism never has to fight alone. Why should it? Since
along that road, in the deepening crisis and tumult of transformation,
it attracts significant involvement from local or small bourgeoisie and
elements of the State apparatus. Whether covert or open, rogue or
official. We should see that in fascism now some of the local
bourgeoisie, declassed masses of men, criminal elements and part of the
State apparatus come together in a new way.
One of Fascism & Anti-Fascismâs conclusions is that the left and the
fascists are competing for the same people, especially in the white
working class. While this can be questioned, one place this could be
most dangerously true is in the Black Nation. Hamerquistâs analysis here
is controversial. Even the thought of any Black fascism sounds strange,
since the traditional humanism of Black politics and any fascism have
always been at opposite poles from each other. But in the 21^(st)
century everything is transforming. We already have seen a Chicano
nationalist website that defends the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
the most important single propaganda writing for world fascism. As well
as a Chicano community newspaper in Los Angeles that has similar
politics.
No nation in the world has undergone more radical change in the last
generation than the New Afrikan Nation. The previous New Afrikan
society, which was a semi-colonial one, where a stable Black working
class played a central role both in its community and in u.s. industrial
production. The democratic and humanist politics that we associate with
Black culture were due not only to that Black working class culture but
to the unusually democratic gender relationships, with Black women
having a power among their own that euro-amerikan women have never
known.
A continuing wave of integration has reshaped the class structure and
culture. While integration on a social level never happened (or was
greatly desired by anyone), integration of middle class employment has
created a large New Afrikan middle class. Counter-balancing that has
been the squeezing of the traditional New Afrikan working class, which
has seen its unionized industrial jobs disappear overseas while much of
the New Afrikan lower working class has been displaced by Latino
emigrant labor. The class nature of the poor has changed, from lower
working class to large numbers of declassed, in particular declassed
men.
This has has been the setting for the rise of authoritarian male
institutions in the old core New Afrikan communities. These
authoritarian organizations and subcultures have rightist politics, and
are unprecedented in the New Afrikan Nationâs history. We have already
seen the rise of various Black rightist-nationalist figures with a mass
following, most notably the late Khallid Muhammad. And the
regularization of what were once youth gangs, but now are sometimes
Black paramilitary mafias with even thousands of soldiers and many
millions of dollars in revenues. Who are de facto âBantustanâ
subcontractors of the u.s. empire, policing and perhaps semi-governing
small territories where poor communities of New Afrikans live. All
against the related background of amoral cultural trends where the
obsessive gathering of luxuries and violent preying of Black on Black is
celebrated.
This is a shock amidst the almost seismic changes in all of the u.s.
empire as it sheds its old continental form and becomes a globalized
society. It is hard to know at this moment what will eventually result.
To illustrate with but one example, the old New Afrikan struggle against
police repression and racist brutality has been at least temporarily
thrown off balance by sweeping security checks of everyone, as well as
widespread âethnic profilingâ in which Black people are for the first
time not the designated enemy but among those expected to do the
profiling.
Hamerquist starts by pointing out that new white fascist groups might
well find âworking relationships and alliancesâ with âvarious
nationalist and religious tendencies among oppressed peoples.â Here
Hamerquist puts his finger on one of the strangest and least explored
aspects of Black nationalism. That there is such a pattern of occasional
ties to white far rightists.
The most powerful Black nationalist organization in u.s. history, the
Honorable Elijah Muhammadâs Nation of Islam in the 1960s, definitely had
relations with various white far right and fascist groups. This was
public knowledge. Malcolm X himself said that he had been directed by
the N.O.I. leader to meet with Ku Klux Klan men to accept financial
contributions. One article on the N.O.I. noted that:
â...in 1961 at a NOI rally in Washington, DC, American Nazi George
Lincoln Rockwell sat in the front row with a few dozen storm troopers.
When it came time for the collection, Rockwell cried out: âGeorge
Lincoln Rockwell gives $20.â So much applause followed that Malcolm X
remarked, âGeorge Lincoln Rockwell, you got the biggest hand you ever
got, didnât you?â In 1962, at the NOIâs annual Saviorâs Day in Chicago,
Rockwell was a featured speaker. He stated, âI believe Elijah Muhammad
is the Adolph Hitler of the Black man,â and ended his speech by pumping
his arm and shouting, âHeil Hitlerâ. â
It isnât hard in retrospect to see what Rockwell was up to. At a time
when Freedom struggles were sweeping the u.s., when u.s. capitalism was
defensively promoting integration, some white fascists like Rockwell
pushed the line that a program of racial separatism had considerable
support from militant Black leaders. On his part, the Honorable Elijah
Muhammad might have viewed Rockwellâs visits as a public lesson: that
even those whites who thought the least of Black people were recognizing
the Nation of Islam as a power to be respected (to say that such a
viewpoint was at best very narrow is an understatement). As early as the
1920s, during the rise of the Ku Klux Klan to the status of a mass
nationwide organization of millions, there was a tentative but
well-publicized alliance between the K.K.K. and Black Pan-Afrikanist
leader Marcus Garvey. There again, the link was a common interest in
promoting the idea of national separatism (although the two sides meant
very different things by it).
All these were rare episodes, marginal propaganda events as opposed to
any actual alliance. So clearly out of step with the humanist beliefs of
the New Afrikan people that they quickly passed away into the history
books. But since then a major development has rearanged the New Afrikan
political landscape. For the first time, major authoritarian trends have
manifested themselves within the Black community.
We are used to thinking of national liberation movements as being
pro-freedom, of being a force for liberation. But all nationalist
movements have inherently both liberating and repressive possibilities,
based on different class politics within a broad mass movement. It would
be a mistake, for instance, to view the historic Nation of Islam as just
being around the politics of Malcolm X. He gradually became a radical
anti-capitalist, as he himself said many times. He wasnât a âMarxistâ or
an âanarchistâ in a European ideological framework, but identified with
the communal socialist ideas that had grown within many anti-colonial
revolutions. Malcolmâs Black nationalism was a nationalism of the
oppressed classes, which is to say it was internationalist at its heart.
When he famously cried out, âThe Black Revolution is sweeping Asia! The
Black Revolution is sweeping Latin America! The Black Revolution is
sweeping Africa!â , it was obvious that to him it wasnât about a race or
a nation but about the worldâs oppressed majority. And he lived what he
said. While it was the practice for the NOI to operate as a franchised
business, with the local minister being given property and the right to
keep all the revenues raised above the quotas assigned by Chicago,
Malcolm refused to accept personal wealth.
It is always said that Malcolmâs distinction was that he was the hardest
on white people. Which is the kind of falsehood that the oppressor
culture likes to slyly perpetuate. No, violently denouncing obvious
white racism is so easy that anyone can do it & just turn up the volume.
His distinction was that he was unrelentingly, harshly truthful about
his own people and their situation. For a generation Malcolm was the
teacher. When the Los Angeles police invaded the mosque there one night
in 1962, the Fruit of Islam security guards fought them at the entrance
to uphold the NOIâs policy barring the oppressor. Police gunfire killed
one man and wounded many others. As criminal trials and national
headlines grew, Malcolm X gave a fiery press conference at the mosque
with one of the wounded brothers, paralyzed in a wheelchair. After
accusing the police of being the only criminals and instigators, Malcolm
rebuked the Fruit of Islam. They had fallen down on their oath, he
reminded them. The oppressor should enter the mosque only if its
defenders were all slain. Resistance to the full, without holding
anything back, was necessary for the freedom of their people (soon after
that, police departments all over the country, including Los Angeles and
New York, quietly ordered that no units attempt to enter a mosque
without permission of the minister).
In contrast, some other NOI ministers pursued the development of their
church as a business opportunity while helping the u.s. government in
the programmed assassination of Malcolmâall covered up by polished
anti-u.s. speechmaking. In effect, the pro-capitalist wing of the Nation
of Islam became a âloyal oppositionâ to America. In return, they were
allowed to exploit Black people as much as they could. In at least three
cities after Malcolmâs death, ministers used the mosque and the Fruit of
Islam in the drug trade with cooperation from the police. A certain
pattern was established, where the u.s. government and police protect
and even financially support right-wing Black nationalists who used a
pseudo-militance towards White America to build followings.
We have to grasp the fuller pattern. These rightists were not an
outright puppet for white interests such as a Clarence Thomas is
(although right-wing Black nationalists publicly supported Thomasâ
Supreme Court nomination in their role as a âloyal oppositionâ). Their
class position is much more complex than that. They are bourgeois
nationalists, believing in the salvation of their Race through the rise
of a commanding bourgeoisie and its industries. In other words, instead
of working for white corporations the Black Man should build his own, as
every major capitalist nation had done. The reason that all capitalism
has historically been nationalistic is that to rise from nothing, a
bourgeoisie needs to start by having its very own people to exploit (how
can you exploit other nations if you havenât built some strength by
sucking on your own people first?). Most importantly, you need to
disempower and oppress women as a gender, to break up the communal
culture that is the barrier to capitalist accumulation. And deals and
cooperation with more powerful rivals are just business sense to
bourgeois nationalism, as when Minister Louis Farrakhan âexplainedâ the
divine revelation that Allah chose Malcolm for death as a warning to the
Black faithful not to directly oppose the u.s. government (so the
f.b.i./c.i.a. and Minister Farrakhan himself get off for killing Malcolm
X, while poor old Allah has to take the rap).
The defeat of New Afrikan revolutionary nationalism after the mass
uprisings of the 1960s opened the way for new developments, including a
nationalism dominated by rightist politics. These new authoritarian
trends manifested themselves most clearly in the rise of male
institutions unprecedented in the Black Nationâs history. Led by the
breakout of Black women, more and more New Afrikans reject a nationalist
separatism that would only produce a more repressed life than they
already had under u.s. capitalism.
But the struggle of oppressed peoples for liberation not only always
rises and ebbs, but always takes many new forms. It meets change with
change, with rethinking & mass creativity. The 1960s Black Revolution
changed the world but then was defeated. But that same spirit and energy
reemerged in new people, sidestepped into new cultural fronts. The fight
for political awareness vs. misogyny and amoralism in hip hop and poetry
slams is only the most obvious example. Davey D, talking about last
Aprilâs rap concert to raise funds for Jamil Al-Aminâs defense, reminded
young rappers how the new has many different roots in the old
radicalism:
âIn the meantime it is only fitting that the Hip Hop community has come
out in force to aid Al-Amin. While he is best known for all the work he
put in for the Civil Rights struggle, for many H Rap Brown had a
profound yet unintended connection to Hip Hop. In his autobiography Die
Nigger Die H Rap talked about his life and the things he did as a kid
growing up. Among the things he spends a considerable time talking
about, was the verbal rhyme games he played as a kid. H Rap got his name
because he had a gift for gab. In his book he showed that he was a
master rhymer, 30 years before Hip Hop made its way to the Bronx. He
participated in all sorts of verbal games ranging from Signifying to The
Dozens.
âAs quiet as kept, many of the early rhymes used by Hip Hoppers... can
be found in H Rapâs book. In his book he talks about the huge circles
people would form when rhyming against each other. Sometimes there would
be as many as 30â40 people verbally sparring each other in a rhyme game
known as The Dozens... long before modern day Hip Hop hit the scene cats
like H Rap Brown was putting down some serious rhymes. Itâs a shame to
see a brother who gave so much to the struggle in this current
predicament.â
And on the other hand, surely the mass advance of New Afrikan women by
the millions breaking out of old roles and trampling under old
limitations is going to change the future in ways no one can predict.
This may end up being the biggest grassroots change in this generation.
Even troubling trends the paper alludes toâlike the hostility to new
immigration and immigrant laborâmight be problematic but also are
complex and not the same as the familiar âKill Arabs!â racism seen after
911 in u.s. society at large. New Afrikans see very clearly that the new
tidal wave of immigrant laborânot just from South Asia and Mexico but
from Poland and China and other placesâis not just accidental but has
been encouraged by u.s. capitalism in part as a racist strategy to
undermine the leverage that Black workers had previously gained.
The discussion of internal fascism or other repressive authoritarianisms
has been blocked by a number of factors. Such as the strong feeling that
any such problem can only be insignificant, given that it goes against
the historic grain of Black society (as an example: a group like the
Hebrew Israelites may or may not be fascist, but there are few New
Afrikans interested in joining them today). Or that it only detracts
from the main focus on repression from White America and its government.
Another factor is the wince at even hearing the phrase âBlack fascismâ,
after decades of Black leaders and militants being denounced as
âracistsâ and âfascistsâ by the u.s. government and the zionists (One
1960s book on world fascism even had a section on Malcolm X). But the
New Afrikan Nation is not back in slavery days, in an oppressed
monoclass where there was essentially no political expression on the
right. A developed society of 40 millions, the Black Nation has a full
spectrum of classes and class politics just as any other nation in the
world. It has a far right as well as a left, whether people want to
recognize it or not. It certainly has some who are âwickedly greatâ, to
use a term coined by one major Black leader, now that capitalist
neo-colonialism has opened up startling possibilities never dreamed of
before.
Although this is not the place for any real discussion on Black gangs,
they have a place in future politics, too. Because theyâre all about
politics. Not that a criminal gang per se is a fascist organization,
although they can resonate along that line. But in the 1990s the u.s.
justice department named one particular Black gang as their ânumber oneâ
target for national investigation & prosecution. This sounded like a
strange choice, unless you know the details. The capitalist media talks
about gangs as a crime problem, when really itâs not about crime (since
theyâre only killing and destroying the lives of New Afrikans, which
isnât a crime to America). Although they are public, large and illegal,
few if any Black gangsâsuch as the Vice-Lords which date back to the
1930s or the El-Rukyns which has neighborhood courts where personal
disputes are settled and whose leaders were formally invited to
President Nixonâs inaugural ballâhave been ended by the police. Because
Black gangs arenât about youth and arenât about crime, although they do
crime. They are new violent institutions informally sanctioned by u.s.
capitalism, like death squads or drug cartels are, formed as capitalism
adapts to this new zone of protracted crisis.
Like many other gangs, this organization controlled a large territory in
which its thousands of armed members essentially ruled streets and de
facto much of the lives of the population (while it enrolled thousands
of youth, much of its structure and leadership were not only adult but
middle-aged). Nothing from selling drugs to anti-racist campaigns could
take place without their permission. It made and ran on millions of
dollars each year in criminal economics. This was tacitly approved of by
the police and government, as a âsterilizationâ to ensure that mass
Black revolt did not sweep the inner cities as in the 1960s. Situation
normal. Itâs not quite Betty Crocker, but it really is America as we
know it.
However, unlike most gang organizations, it had a leadership with as
much practical social-political vision as any George Washington. In the
ruthless u.s. counterinsurgency against the 1960s Black liberation
movement, their inner city territory had been left a devastated postwar
terrain of the type all too familiar to us. A vacuum deliberately
maintained by u.s. capitalism. This gang organization decided to fill
that vacuum, to become something like an underground dictatorial state.
Not only by building illicit ties with policemen and government
officials (and sending their own soldiers into the police and
correctional guards), not only by starting its own businesses & stores,
but by running popular Black anti-racist political campaigns and placing
its own electoral candidates in the Democratic Party.
So it wanted to have its own economy and its own share of local State
power, as well as violent control of the streets. When it started using
indirect federal grants to carry out successful mass voter registration
campaigns, with rallies of thousands of people cheering its leading
figures, red lights went off. This possibility of a Black quasi-state
inside a major u.s. city pushed all the buttons in Washington. This gang
organization is not a fascist party, of course. And neither the
organization nor the members have fascist ideologyâa mafia is a closer
example. But there are fascist precursors in the mass gang subculture. A
mass armed criminal organization of declassed men that wants not only to
have a rough control of the local population but have a linked economic
and political program of domination has taken a step towards fascism
(many white criminal gangs are already consciously pro-fascist, of
course). Such possible future fascist developments might take a
nationalist, âanti-racistâ or religious outward form.
From afar, from outside the New Afrikan Nation, it seems that Fascism &
Anti-Fascismâs analysis in this particular section is too hurriedly done
on too little knowledge (a criticism that i doubt the author would
disagree with). Still, the contribution here is that the paper opens the
door to questions revolutionaries need to deal with. The point the paper
is making is that Black fascist infectionsâsmall but troubling in the
changed light of new authoritarian trendsâare an ordinary reality just
as in many other nations.[40]
The onrush of events is forcing everyone not only to think about fascism
alone. What is most significant about rethinking fascism isnât that the
leftâs traditional view of fascism is outmoded; whatâs most significant
is finding that the leftâs view of the world is outmoded. Assumptions so
ingrained that they were never really discussed have been forcefully
overturned. As much as weâve tried to find new answers instead of just
repeating old left slogans, there is no shortage of obvious questions
that we havenât answered.
Depression to suddenly do a mass organizing job for us. And imperialism
shows no signs of collapsing on its own anytime soon. But there is some
glossed over infection in the blood, something critical happening within
the capitalist structures.
Like a positive lab test, the rise of fascism proves that world
capitalismâs intoxicating moment of historic triumph is not quite as it
seems. For it itself is in deep systemic crisis. The system is not
working as the big capitalists want it to. Even within the empire of the
affluent European Union, capitalismâs very development has led to a
twilight zone of protracted crisis that is, on a national level,
seemingly beyond either reform or ordinary repression. Will this come to
symbolize the system as a whole?
assumed that it could never be popular, especially in Europe where it
had such a disastrous track record in living memory. Yet fascism and the
associated far right now has a surging mass base, and is the
âdemocraticâ choice of millions of Europeans. In Austria, known fascist
elements are now in the ruling government coalition. It has pushed the
whole political spectrum to the right in Europe, as the ruling class is
forced to experiment Frankenstein-like with transplanting parts of
fascism into the body of European bourgeois democracy.
lifestyle, within world capitalism? Will we see new hybrid capitalist
societies, part bourgeois democratic and part fascist as societies
splinter into different zones? Just as in Germany now there is a gulf
between the cosmopolitan city of Dusseldorf, regional home to Japanese
and other transnational corporations, and the âno goâ zones of the
welfare state German East, where fascists gangs often own the street.
ruling class directing their national States now that they are also
outgrowing them? Is the relationship of classes changing within
capitalism? How autonomous can the State be in capitalist society? What
is the role of hegemony rather than direct hands-on control in
capitalism being maintained?
Although fascism is new historically speaking, we have yet to see a
stable fascist regime (in retrospect the Franco regime in Spain was
clearlyâas the Nazis privately complainedâa conservative Catholic
dictatorship rather than a fascist one, although there were fascists in
it). Is fascist rule only a temporary sterilizing interlude before the
big bourgeoisie has to reassert control? Fascism as a State power has at
least two obvious destabilizing attributes: By repressing or eliminating
sections of societyâsuch as Jewish scientists or educated womenâit
forecloses much of its own needed competitive development. Since it adds
new mass repressive layers of soldiers and administrators who produce
nothing & must feed off of an already weakened economy, fascism tends
towards aggressive wars, looting, and criminal enterprises which bring
it into conflict with other capitalist nation-states. There is an
underlying liberal attitude that fascism is so self-defeating that it
can be outwaited. What does this mean for us?
Third World, for that part of world capitalism that is the neo-colonial
periphery. Here the zone of protracted crisis cannot be hidden. How long
can this state of seemingly permanent crisis be maintained, unresolved?
A journalist from the N.Y.Times recently visited a Pakistani village, to
profile the men who had left as jihad volunteers to go fight the u.s. in
Afghanistan. One striking information was that none of the young men who
went had ever had regular jobs or any future expectation of having them.
Once these were the men who might have been recruited by left parties
and the national liberation movements, but the world failure of the
Marxist left has spotlighted the far right as a hope for social change
to many people who simply will not stay as they are.
The assumption that in fighting fascism we would automatically enjoy
majority support has crashedâjust look at India or Austria right now. As
has the delusion that fascism built its movements solely on bigotry and
violence. Even the Nazi movement not only strongly manipulated themes of
social justice and restoring civic order, but built its mass base by a
grassroots network of fighting squads, self-help groups and social
services. What fascists did crudely in 1930 is being done in a much more
sophisticated way todayâas we can see in the Muslim world. In place
after place, the far right is drawing on the energy of
âanti-colonialismâ and anti-Western imperialism. This is the more
complex rearrangement of the political landscape, the first new
political shape of the 21^(st) century.
And the zone of protracted crisis beyond reform or repression keeps
growing, deepening. Here in the metropolis, it is hard even for the
politically aware to grasp what this fully means. Here is some local
news from just one day, one issue of the respected Karachi, Pakistan
daily newspaper DAWN (for Thursday October 11, 2001):
A petty officer assigned to the naval destroyer PNS Dilawar was shot
dead in his apartment by unidentified assassins who broke his door in
and then fled.
Chairman Syed Hasan of the Sindh Board of Technical Education was killed
by assassins on a motorcycle as he was getting into his car.
âUnder cover of Anti-US protests certain religious extremists seem to be
busy settling old scores.â Mobs of men were led to attack the NGOs
serving the refugee areas. UNICEF and UNHCR offices in Quetta were
burned, and many smaller NGOs were attacked. DAWN reports: âThe
championing of causes such as human rights, rights of working women,
girls schooling and family planning by the NGOs had drawn the ire of
religious extremistsâ.
Former ISI Chief Lt-General Hameed Gul was invited to address the Lahore
High Court Bar Association, where he repeated his call for jihad, and
contributions to aid the fascist war effort were gathered from the
assembled lawyers and judges.
The Anti-Terrorist Wing of the Police arrested four members of a âgangâ,
seizing one Kalashnikov assault rifle, three pistols and four hand
grenades. The âgangâ had assassinated: Hussain Zaidi, Director of
Laboratories for the Ministry of Defense; Captain Altar Hussain,
divisional engineer of the Pakistan Telephone Company; Dr. Razi Mehdi
and Dr. Ishrat Hussan; religious teacher Pesh Imam of Northern
Nazimabad.
Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha, security analyst, reported that the number of
âtrained militantsâ who had gone through rightist military training
camps in Pakistan & Afghanistan had doubled in the past fifteen years
from one million to two million. She said that the former President
Ziaâs âdeliberate policy of encouraging the growth of militant groups in
the country had increased insecurity tenfold.â Just as with the Reagan
Administration in the 1980s, the capitalist States seemingly canât stop
themselves from making the precise decisions that keep undermining the
stability of their own societies.
military power, including levels of domestic surveillance and repression
not seen outside of the Black community since the 1901 Anti-Anarchist
campaign and the 1920s Red Scare (both, like todayâs anti-Muslim ethnic
profiling, directed officially at immigrants). While this has been
characterized by the left as a juggernaut of unchecked State power, it
might be just as accurate to term the government repression as a coverup
for their increasing weakness. To think of u.s.imperialism as the lone
superpower left standing might be expressed differentlyâas the gradual
decline of all imperialist nation-state powers. And now only one to go,
and it is crumbling not growing stronger. One Chicago position paper
after 911 reminded us of this:
âNow with this new âwar,â repression is being sold as an acceptable
compromise for safety and security... At the same time, the creation of
an âOffice of Homeland Securityâ and this public gloves-off approach to
domestic repression shows that 911 has weakened the government even as
it puffs itself up in cocky displays of supposed strength. We canât be
fooled by this. When they actually have to show force on such a broad
scale it means that the usual systems of control have temporarily
failed...â[41]
situation?
AFTERNOTE (Chicago March 2002)
Rereading this critique I find with some irony that it has much of the
same awkwardness as Fascism and Anti-Fascism. That is, it is ragged,
jump-cuts, is dense with story & ideas but is more interested in opening
new questions and changing the way people see than in settling issues,
is hard to read. If 911 changed America forever, one small way it did so
was in raising the bar for actual revolutionary understanding as opposed
to dusty, self-satisfied theories inherited from the past. One thing is
unfortunately certain: we will see that fascism is a player in the world
political agenda. The only question is when we will see it.
January 12, 2002, saw the first return to militant street action in the
US under this post-9/11 period of recession, repression and war. The
scene was the small, blue-collar city of York, Pennsylvania, where ARA
and other militants joined with local youth and clashed with a major
white supremacist rally. While the numbers were only a small fraction of
the crowds that swelled in Seattle to take on the WTO, we have a feeling
that York could well be as much of a turning point for the movement as
N30 was.
The neo-nazi rally was jointly sponsored by the World Church of the
Creator and the National Alliance and supported by Aryan Nations,
Eastern Hammerskins, WAR, the National Socialist Movement and other
fascists. They chose York to take advantage of the climate following the
arrest of the Democratic mayor for his role in a 1969 ârace riotâ there.
The mayor, then a local cop, is accused of leading a white power rally
(following the shooting of a police officer), urging attacks on the
Black community, and actually arming white street gangs.
The nazis hoped to stir up racial tensions in the city. What they got
was determined resistance from the anti-fascist crowd who largely
defeated the nazis in a hit-and-run battle over the course of the day. A
dozen fascist vehicles were damaged and at least that many fascists
pummelled. âIt was a definite victoryâthough something short of
decisiveâ for the anti-fascist movement, as a comradeâs article
describes it.
But victories are easily reversed if we donât take careful measure of
such âturning points,â deal honestly and constructively with our
weaknesses, and make real preparations for operating on a higher level.
Here are a few notes towards that effort.
Despite the usual huff and puff from Matt Hale and other fascists who
claimed a victory, the bulk of the fascist movement understood York was
a defeat for them. This was one of their largest mobilizations in years
and many had to flee in humiliation. Some fascist leaders claimed a
victory based on turnout and media attention alone, though even they
must understand that it hurts their organizing to lose confrontations
like this.
They are not happy with this outcome, and some form of retaliation is
headed our way. Aryan Nations is howling for blood and there is more
talk among the fascists of gathering intel on us and targeting ARAâs
perceived leadership. Surely the National Alliance knows that it needs
to win some decisive victories against us if they want their street
actions to gain strength. Some fascists are probably looking to deliver
large numbers of us (or at least our core activists) into the hands of
the state. The post-York discussion among fascists focused on how they
can be more prepared for confrontation in the future with weapons,
security, communication and tactics. They will be much more careful in
future planning and we should be cautious of set-ups.
One thing needs to be emphasized again. We are not bulletproof. The
fascists are very heavily armed, and it would be foolish to think that
they will never use them. In York, the nazis actually pulled out pieces
on three separate occasions when they were coming under attack. If one
of us wouldâve been shot it obviously wouldâve changed everything. Some
fascists may actually have in mind to stage another Greensboro (when
armed Klansmen drove up on and shot militant anti-racists), hoping to
achieve the street-level victory they need over us. We can be sure that
some of the fascists are informants, and just like Greensboro,
informants have state protection and so feel like they can literally get
away with murder. Our security and self-defense capabilities have to
match the level of struggle we are engaged in.
York was a unified action that pulled together many (often opposed)
fascist groups, partly due to the influence the National Alliance has
gained over the movement. But York also opened up divisions among the
fascists. Many were disgusted with the way Matt Hale was whisked away
under âZOGâ protection while the rank and file took it on the chin. We
need to understand these divisions and find methods of attack to further
exacerbate them.
An escalating conflict between white supremacists and radical
anti-fascists will not go unnoticed by the state. In fact, federal
police agencies have been following developments in our movementâand in
the fascist movementâfor some time. This project has undoubtedly
increased with the emergence of the miltant anti-capitalist wing of the
anti-globalization movement and was probably given a blank check in the
wake of the Sepember 11^(th) attacks.
The main thrust of the authoritiesâ repressive efforts towards
anti-fascism will be to isolate militants from our potential mass base,
co-opt and contain whatever section of the movement it can, and promote
a less troublesome, more loyal brand of anti-fascism. They will work
towards this through the media, through pressure from liberal
âanti-racists,â and through infiltrators in our own ranks who will
attempt to steer us in the direction the state wishes.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)
are already playing leading roles in this tack. The line they are
broadcasting, with the eager help of the mainstream media, is that there
is essentially no difference between ARA and the nazisâin their
characterization, we are both irrational, violent extremists.
If this kind of disinformation is allowed to take hold in the public
consciousness, it will be much easier for moderates to argue that our
radicalism is preventing us from reaching real people. A lack of popular
sympathy will allow any harder forms of repression (brutality,
imprisonment, dismantling of radical structures) deemed necessary or
advantageous to go more smoothly.
Our task is to be vigilant against these undermining attacks, to get our
undiluted politics out there, and to continue to develop a mass base of
support and participation for revolutionary anti-fascist ideas and
action.
The exceptional thing about the Battle of York was not the successful
physical confrontation of nazis (weâve done that before), it was the
active participation of large numbers of local Black, Puerto Rican and
white youth (and some older folks as well). This is what transformed the
action from a clash of politicos into an insurgent community defense.
ARAâs pledge of âwe go where they goâ ends up taking us places where the
rest of the Left does not tread. We need to reach out into all
communities where weâre active, attempt to set up ARA groups where we
can, and give concrete solidarity to other struggles: against police
brutality, for womenâs and queer freedom, in neighborhoods and
workplaces, against poverty, etc. It is important that we follow up
actions in York with community outreach and use these struggles to build
an even stronger movement.
We also need to make effective use of the media (including the corporate
mass-media) to counter the ADL/SPLC spin, remaining extremely wary of
media attempts to turn us into spectacle, or create âleadersâ over the
movement.
It is crucial we continue to develop an anti-fascist culture, truly
liberatory and in sharp contrast to the fascistsâ racist, patriarchal,
nationalistic and heirarchical vibe. It will be by those standards that
people will ultimately measure our differences with the fascists, not
simply by written programs or by military victories.
The Battle of York offers up many lessons and insights into the struggle
ahead. Letâs take full advantage of them.
by Mark Salotte
There is a general consensus in the movementâand in the broader society
todayâthat N30 in Seattle was the announcement of a new phase of
struggle for the left. One in which decentralization, anarchist and
anti-authoritarian ideas, and international âhorizontally-linkedâ
struggles would play a central role as common reference points for all
involved. While the âpost-Seattle landscapeâ to most observers, from
critics to police and the state to movement tacticians, refers primarily
to street tactics, these organizational and philosophical changes have a
comparable impact on all of us. Suddenly people are speaking our
language, some of whom we donât see eye to eye with on just about
anything, and those of us on the anti-racist, anti-capitalist,
anti-authoritarian âleftâ have been so stunned we havenât figured out
how to respond quite yet.
In the days of the Tower of Babel, a movement was effectively broken up
by confusing the peopleâs tongues so they spoke different languages and
could no longer understand each other. Whatâs happening today is the
process in reverse: now everyone speaks the same language and means
completely different things by it. When our enemies are using the same
terms to describe themselves as we do, how do we explain to people what
we stand for and how thatâs different from what our enemies offer?
âLibertarian communismâ and âanarchist communismâ look to a movement
where class war and working-class resistance can break the boundaries of
nationalist bigotry, while âlibertarian socialismâ looks to stir up
nationalist and ethnic rivalries to crush class solidarity. Some
anarchists identify as âanti-imperialistsâ and, with varying degrees of
integrity, take inspiration from and offer support to leftist and
anti-authoritarian currents within black, Puerto Rican, and other
nationalist struggles. While on the other hand, there are ânational
anarchistsâ who look for the right-wing elements in those same
nationalist struggles, and ally with those elements while organizing for
a right-wing white nationalist movement. It gets hard for a lot of
people to tell friend from foe these days.
Puzzling these questions out is essential if we hope to move forward in
any way. The defining line as we see it is the relationship between
class struggle and nationalism. While traditional terms like âleftâ and
ârightâ may not carry the same meaning to activists today they once
didâin some cases they barely have any meaning left at allâweâre not
ready to follow the lead of many in the âprimitivistâ and âdeep ecologyâ
scenes in abandoning them altogether. The vital contribution of
anti-fascism to the movement today lies in analyzing all the forces,
separating âfriendâ from âfoe,â and suggesting directions in organizing
and strategic alliances that would strengthen the anti-racist and
anti-nationalist tendencies of the movement and isolate the reactionary
tendencies.
An interesting historical document to compare against our situation
today is an essay by Wilhelm Reich called What is Class
Consciousness?âwritten from exile a year after the Nazi Party came to
power in Germany. Reich brings up many interesting questions regarding
the failure of the left to effectively oppose the politics of National
Socialism. He begins by analyzing the current situation:
âThe Sex-Pol working community believes that there are three main
possibilities. First, there is the possibility of an unpredictable
uprising in Germany in the near future. Since none of the existing
organizations is even remotely prepared for such an eventuality, none of
them could control such a movement or lead it consciously to a
conclusion. This possibility, however, is the least likely. Should it
happen, the situation would be chaotic and the outcome extremely
uncertain, but it would nevertheless be the best solution, and we should
support it and promote it from the very start. Second, the working-class
movement may need a few years before it rallies once more in terms of
theory and organization. It will then form an integrated movement under
good, highly trained, and determined leadership, will struggle for power
in Germany, and will seize it within, say, the next two decades. This
prospect is the most probable, but it requires energetic, unswerving and
tireless preparation beginning today. Third, the last major possibility
is that the rallying of the working-class movement under new, good and
reliable leadership will not occur quickly enough or will fail to occur
altogether; that international fascism will establish itself and
consolidate its positions everywhere, especially by reason of its
immanent skill in attracting children and youth; that it will acquire a
permanent mass base, and will be helped by economic conjunctures,
however marginal. In such a case the socialist movement must reckon with
a longâa very longâperiod of economic, cultural, and political barbarism
lasting many decades. Its task then will be to prove that it was not
mistaken in principle and that, in the last analysis, it was right after
all. This prospect reveals the full extent of the responsibility we
bear.â
We propose, so far as conditions permit, to allow for the first
possibility; to make the second the real target of our work, because it
is the more likely one, and to concentrate all our efforts on bringing
it about while doing everything within human possibility to avoid the
third.
As we know, the left failed on all three of these counts. No real
spontaneous uprising ever threatened the Nazis. Conservative Catholic
and monarchist groups tried a few half-hearted protests, but for the
most part the only people who even resisted the Nazis were working-class
street gangs who were very early on repressed and killed. The communist
movement never managed to regroup in any serious way. And even after
Nazism was defeated militarily by outside imperialism, it was still
rooted in mass culture a lot deeper than socialism. It took another
generation for the left to pull itself together as something more than a
middle-class academic fashion. And yet, still, it seems that Reich was
basically right in his whole analysis. Not that he could have led the
rebirth of the anti-fascist movement, but that in order to rebuild
itself, the movement would have had to be thinking in the way he was
trying to lay out.
This is particularly interesting to us today. From a revolutionary
anti-fascist perspective, we can similarly break down the possibilities
presented to us by the current situation. First, the âanti-capitalistâ
movement could continue to grow, overcoming the inevitable setbacks and
outflanking the stateâs attempt to contain us. In such a scenario,
autonomous zones created by insurrections or long-term organizing
projects would turn into liberated spaces. The movement could manage to
link up with ghetto, barrio, and neighborhood uprisings and organizing
in cities and with workplace struggles everywhere, manage to build
alliances with rebel militias in rural areas, and get to a point where
our autonomy seriously threatens the stability of the state. This, I
think should be obvious, is a very remote possibility. The necessary
links are just barely starting to be made and are hampered by a lot of
arrogance within the movement. The movementâs class politics may be much
too weak to really attract the allies we need, and our tacticians may
not have the experience necessary to out-think the professional police
just yet.
A more likely possibility is that in time, we may find ourselves
temporarily stalled or contained by the state. If our assessment of the
determination and interest that people have been showing in radical
politics lately is accurate, it seems very unlikely that anytime soon
our movement will be completely defeated or even forced back to
pre-Seattle levels of activity. But itâs easy to see a situation where
the state will be able to prevent us from mounting the kind of large
actions that have been the public face of anarchism over the past few
years. And at the same time that the stateâs political forces are
working to contain us organizationally and militarily, its conservative
and liberal supporters are also trying to defeat us politically by using
mass propaganda to push nationalist, xenophobic, religious, and racially
inflammatory attitudes among the American population. In such a
situation, the growing neo-fascist movement, which has enjoyed extremely
low levels of political repression for the past few decades, will find
itself in a position to pick up the initiative weâve built with our
organizing. Even the possibility of this situationâand we see it as
being quite possibleâdemands that anti-fascist work be made a priority
today. This work is important to both track and prevent the growth of
organizations that could play this role down the road. It can also, in a
more general way, counter the social attitudesâpromoted today by almost
every wing of the government, the church, and the mediaâthat provide
fertile ground for fascist organizing.
A third possibility involves the state managing to contain both the
anti-capitalist left and the fascist right, and move towards an
ultra-centralized authoritarian fascism on its own. This is the
possibility that the militias et al have been warning about for years,
although many of them havenât been able to read the signs that it has
become a real potential. The Bush coup last election, the
conveniently-timed war on terrorism, and basically everything thatâs
happened since show that this is on the agenda of at least some elements
in the ruling class. Who needs some outdated racial theories imported
from Europe when we have good old American jingoism, conservative
christianity, and a multi-culturalist gloss to hold together mass
support for a major change in the government? The task of the left in
this case is to consistently talk to people on the street, and point out
the obvious contradictions between these elements of the stateâs
âofficial religion.â For example, a little while ago there was a bit of
a scandal when one of Bushâs Secret Service men, an Arab-American, was
forced off a plane and questioned as a suspected terrorist. This
highlighted the contradiction between the classic xenophobia being
pushed to support the war effort and the illusion essential for
continued capitalist market growth that America is a color-blind âland
of opportunity.â Events like these usually get buried in the media
pretty quickly, but in the present situation, theyâre bound to happen
regularly, and they always leave at least a little opening for us to
point to and expose the stateâs plots behind the scenes.
The anti-fascist movement right now has a strong momentum and a clear
direction, at a time when much of the revolutionary anarchist scene is
regrouping its forces and questioning its politics. For that reason,
groups who identify with the revolutionary anti-fascist tradition have
an opportunityâand an obligationâto lead by example.
The January 12^(th) mobilization in York was a turning point for us. It
was a definite victoryâalthough something short of decisiveâin the
streets, but more importantly, it gave us back the upper hand
politically. For some time now, the white power movement has been
concentrating its forces in the mid-Atlantic area; we correctly
recognized that situation, picked a point to engage them at, and stopped
their momentum in its tracks. York was the firstâand far from the
lastâstreet showdown in this part of the country between the neo-nazis
and us. But the showing we had was strong enough to guarantee that the
streets will be ours unless the nazis win a major propaganda victory
over us that can change the balance of forces. So therefore, the terrain
this war will be fought on will be the world of public opinion where we
already have some groundwork laid, rather than the empty symbolism of
street demonstrations that the Nazis thrive on. This in and of itself is
a huge a victory for us.
So how do we move forward? Well, we should recognize that our politics
are a few steps ahead of the fascists right now. While we still need to
be on the ground stopping their organizing, we also have a chance to
move ahead and actually start organizing and offering solutions where
the fascists are still trying to sell images. This will mean talking
with people on the ground, organizing public events and building ongoing
peopleâs institutions where thatâs possible.
[1] Benito Mussolini. Opera Omnia. Florence. La Fenice, 1951â63. Vol. I
p. 184. Quoted in Simonetta Falasca-Zamboni. Fascist Spectacle. The
Aesthetics of Power in Mussoliniâs Italy. Berkeley & Los Angeles.
University of California Press, 1997. p. 45. This book is particularly
useful in understanding fascism because it approaches it from the
vantage of art, of created mass culture.
[2] These quotes were posted on fascist internet sites. Full texts in:
M. Edwards. âReports From the Homeland Frontâ. In ARA Research Bulletin
[3] Atiba Shanna. SWEEPING THE NOTEBOOKS 2: âGrainsâ. Informal document:
n.p., n.d.
[4] The basic facts about the Muslim Brotherhood as the original far
right islamist political movement based in the lower middle classes are
not controversial. R. Stephen Humphrey in his Between Memory and Desire:
the Middle East in a Troubled Age, University of California Press, 1999,
describes the Brotherhoodâs founder and first Supreme Guide, Hasan
al-Banna (a schoolteacher), as âa publicist and organizer of
genius...the real father of contemporary political Islam in the Sunni
world.â (see p. 190â193). Even if the Brotherhood had started as a
purely spiritual group that later grew into the realm of politics, as it
has claimed, we can still see those politics as inherent in that
worldview (islam, like judaism and roman catholicism, has no separation
between spiritual and secular). It could be easily argued that the
Brotherhood protected itself with a screen of sincere religiosity, but
that anti-colonial and anti-Western political impulses motivated it from
the start. It was a semi-clandestine, highly disciplined clericalist
political organization. Indeed, Humphrey writes that Hasan al-Bannaâs
âdismay at the degree of foreign domination... drove him in 1928â to
start the Brotherhood. Hasan al-Banna himself was killed in 1948 in
reprisal for his secret terrorist unitâs assassination of both the royal
police commissioner and then the prime minister. Since then the
Brotherhood took part in the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy in 1952,
and has attempted to seize state power in several countries, most
notably Syria.
An interesting account of al-Banna was given by former Egyptian military
ruler Gen. Anwar el-Sadat, in his autobiography, In Search of Identity
(Buccaneer Books, 1977). As a young officer in the Royal Egyptian Army
in 1939, he had joined the Free Officers conspiracy to stage a coup
against the Farouk monarchy and oust the British neo-colonial rulers.
Sadat started giving his signals unit cautious political lectures. To
his surprise, one of the unitâs men asked if he, too, could address the
soldiers. This man proved to be well-educated, explaining religious and
other matters in a reasonable and informative manner. He was none other
than Supreme Guide Hasan al-Banna himself. Sadat soon came to realize
that the Brotherhood had an effective mass organization, and was âa
power to be reckoned with.â As for al-Bannaâs religious goals, Sadat
comments (based on many private discussions) that âhis activity had
political ends.â (p. 22â23). Gen. Sadat obviously had his own axe to
grind in this account, but given that the Brotherhood and the Free
Officers Committee did make a secret alliance to overthrow the monarchy
together his account is not so improbable (The alliance and rivalry
between the Brotherhood and the Officers is discussed in Humphrey as
well as in William L. Clevelandâs A History of the Modern Middle East,
Westview Press, 1994. See p. 289).
The middle-class nature of the Muslim Brotherhood and similar early
islamist clerical political groups is explored at more length by Michael
Gilbert in his paper: âPopular Islam and the State in Contemporary
Egypt.â In Fred Halliday and Hamza Alavi. State and Ideology in the
Middle East and Pakistan. Monthly Review Press, 1988.
[5] Sara Lyall. âEnglish Town Whispers Of a Taliban Connection.â N.Y.
Times. February 3, 2002.
[6]
J. Sakai. âAryan Politics & Fighting the WTOâ. In
=> http://www.amazon.com/My-Enemys-Enemy-Globalization-Capitalism/dp/0973143223 My Enemyâs Enemy
. Montreal. Kersplebedeb, 2001. 2^(nd) edition.
[7] Don Hamerquist. FASCISM IN THE U.S.? A Discussion Paper. Chicago.
Sojourner Truth Organization, 1976. p. 3
[8] For an interesting photograph of this slogan used in the context of
Italian settler planned communities in colonial Ethiopia, see: Diane
Ghirardo. BUILDING NEW COMMUNITIES. New Deal America and Fascist Italy.
Princeton University Press, 1989. p. 103.
[9] Robert Block. âIn War on Terrorism, Sudan Struck a Blow By Fleecing
bin Laden.â Wall Street Journal. December 3, 2001.
[10]
J. Sakai. SETTLERS. The Mythology of the White Proletariat. Chicago.
Morningstar Press, 1989. 3^(rd) edition. p. 61â65.
[11] Hanna Batatu. âSyriaâs Muslim Brethren.â In Halliday and Alavi.
State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan. Monthly Review
Press, 1988.
[12] Internazionale Prese-Korrespondenz. December 27, 1922. Quoted in
Larry Ceplair. UNDER THE SHADOW OF WAR. Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and
Marxists, 1918â1939. Columbia University Press, 1987. p. 59.
[13] Reproduced in Ian Kershaw. HITLER. 1889â1936 Hubris. W.W.Norton,
1999. Illustration no. 38
[14] Otto Friedrich. BEFORE THE DELUGE. A Portrait of Berlin in the
1920s. N.Y. Fromm, 1986. p. 197.
[15] Popular radical accounts of this relationship, such as Daniel
Guerinâs Fascism and Big Business, lean heavily on examples from after
the 1930 elections and donât explain the significance of that. Some of
the major capitalists, such as the Krupp interests, before then gave
lump sums of money to right-wing figures that they trustedâGeneral
Ludendorff is one exampleâwho then doled it out between the different
far right groups and veterans organizations. These indirect
contributions were much sought after but not in any case strategic. Ian
Kershaw, in his brilliant biography of Hitler, points out that in
1922â23: â...as would be the case later, the partyâs finances relied
heavily upon membersâ subscriptions together with entrance-fees and
collections at meetings.â (p. 189) So we can throw out our received
image of the Nazi Party as the subsidized and mercenary creation of the
major capitalists. It was, in fact, popularly financed by its mass base.
It wasnât until after the Nazis took over the government in 1933 that
Big Business backed them. In an extraordinary meeting on February 20,
1933, Hitler as Reich Chancellor met with the major industrialists for
the first time. Arriving very late, Hitler lectured the businessmen on
the need to subordinate economics to politics (they must have loved
hearing that!), the fight to the death against communism, and other
favorite themes for an hour and a half. He then accepted brief
statements of support and quickly left the room. Herman Goering then
demanded large financial contributions, and the assembled corporate
barons agreed to give 3 million marks to the party. Kershaw sums it up
as âthe offering was less one of enthusiastic support than of political
extortion.â (p. 447â448) At this point the left propaganda about fascism
as the âpuppetsâ of big business is laughable. Only the mis-estimation
of fascism as a movement with its own class agenda had consequences that
were not so amusing.
[16] Otto Friedrich. p. 283â284.
[17] Kershaw. p. 334.
[18] F.L. Carlson. The Rise of Fascism. University of California Press,
1967. Third edition. p. 131â132.
[19] Quoted in Carlson. p. 137.
[20] Quoted in Carlson. p. 56
[21] Quoted in S.J. Woolf. European Fascism. Vintage Books, 1969. p.
43â44
[22]
R. Vacirca. Personal correspondence.
[23] Quoted in Max Seydewitz. Civil Life in Wartime Germany. N.Y.
Viking, 1945. p. 407. This is an interesting source because Seydewitz
was a revolutionary socialist, who was an elected social-democratic
member of the German legislature. He broke with the SPD in 1931 because
of their failure to fight the fascists. A founder of the small SWP, he
eventually escaped to exile in Sweden. His study is based on both the
German wartime press and reports from the underground. As a side benefit
we can see that the wartime Nazi press was essentially not any more
censored about politics than our own ABC News or Chicago Tribune.
Although, thanks to âdemocracyâ we have learned a lot about Monica
Lewinsky.
[24] Seydewitz. p. 408.
[25] A.J. Nicholls. âGermany.â In Woolf. p. 62â63. Although this quote
is not sourced by Nicholls, it probably comes from the former Nazi
leader Hermann Rauschning, whose work is considered unreliable by most
historians now because after he split with Hitler he wanted to paint him
in the most radical light possible so as to discourage conservatives
from supporting him. While his recollections of conversations with
Hitler may not be literally accurate, they evoke better than most the
violent inner essense of Hitlerâs fantastic worldview.
[26] Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf. Houghton Mifflin, 1971. p. 373â378.
Although Hitlerâs rep has required critics to always badrap his book,
itâs an exhilarating rip-roaring rant that easily roars past most left
political writers. It is overly long, but so is the much duller Das
Kapital. Supposedly a slimmed-down popular version, with the repetition
and long detailed discussions about specifically German issues omitted,
will be coming out next year.
[27] Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wipperman. THE RACIAL STATE: Germany
1933â1945. Cambridge and New York. Cambridge University Press, 1991. p.
295â298
[28] Ibid.
[29] Michael Burleigh. â...AND TOMORROW THE WHOLE WORLDâ. In History
Today . September 1990. ; Kershaw. p. 248.
[30] Kershaw. p. 278.
[31] Burleigh and Wipperman. op cit.
[32] Richard Brookhiser. Review of âTheodore Rex.â N.Y. Times Book
Review. December 9, 2001.
[33] Kershaw. p. 116â120
[34] Ibid.
[35] Kershaw. p. 124.
[36] Denis Mack Smith. Mussolini. N.Y. Alfred A. Knopf, 1982. p. 38
[37] Woolf. p. 46
[38] The account of Pakistani-Afghan events based on Ahmed Rashid.
TALIBAN: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New
Haven. Yale University Press, 2001
[39] Dawn. October 11, 2001. Karachi.
[40] i didnât footnote the entire Black Nation discussion because that
would be basically phoney. Most of this story comes from discussions
with participants, not from books. Other documents are legally tied up.
Readers interested in State-gang relations might want to consult Edward
Leeâs The Lumpenproletariat and Repression, which appeared in a number
of Puerto Rican MLN publications. On Farrakhanâs complicity in the
assassination of Malcolm X, this is obvious to all those who donât deny
reality. Even former Farrakhan boosters like the cultural nationalists
of Third World Press now admit he was guilty. For the George Lincoln
Rockwell & the Nation of Islam quotes, see: Chicago Reader April 11,
1986.
[41] Commander Josh. Into What World We Fall? Toward an anarchist
perspective on 911 and its aftermath. (a Chicago discussion paper,
October 2001)