Anti-communists, for all their faults, are correct in criticizing socialists for using “fascism” too broadly. The term is thrown at any form of reactionary politics, or identified arbitrary characterizations of the Third Reich and Fascist Italy unique to their historic contexts. This “view” of fascism is not worth engaging. Yet, even the dominant theory of fascism among socialists is riddled with problems. Fascism is often theorized among socialists as a social form corresponding to “capitalism in decay,” based on a remark often misattributed to Lenin.
To them, fascism is the big bourgeoisie’s emergency measure, one which it resorts to when capitalist crisis threatens to throw them from power. Fascism’s mass character, we are to believe, is a result of “false consciousness,” of finance capital maneuvering to trick the proletariat, the peasantry, and the petite-bourgeoisie into following their commands. What we wish to do here is to challenge this view, and to offer an alternative. Before we can begin the critique and work toward an alternative view of fascism, however, we must give the podium to the view that is to be critiqued in depth.
Georgi Dimitrov and the Comintern’s Explanation of Fascism:
Georgi Dimitrov was a Bulgarian Communist and major figure in the Comintern, serving as General Secretary to it from 1935 to 1943 and Head of the International Policy Department of it from 1943 to 1945. He was the primary figure responsible for formulating its theory of the fascist threat which was boiling across Europe. Dimitrov’s theory overturned the previous theory of “social fascism,” originating with Grigory Zinoviev, which identified social democracy as apparently being the left-wing of fascism, and thus rejected a united front policy. While the theory of fascism as resulting from capitalist decay remained, its origins were outlined more specifically, and the Comintern’s response changed. Rather than condemn social democracy, the Comintern now called for a united front with it against fascism. From Dimitrov’s The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism:
“Fascism is the power of finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations.
This, the true character of fascism, must be particularly stressed because in a number of countries, under cover of social demagogy, fascism has managed to gain the following of the mass of the petty bourgeoisie that has been dislocated by the crisis, and even of certain sections of the most backward strata of the proletariat. These would never have supported fascism if they had understood its real character and its true nature. [emphasis my own]
The development of fascism, and the fascist dictatorship itself, assume different forms in different countries, according to historical, social and economic conditions and to the national peculiarities, and the international position of the given country[…]
The accession to power of fascism is not an ordinary succession of one bourgeois government by another, but a substitution of one state form of class domination of the bourgeoisie — bourgeois democracy — by another form — open terrorist dictatorship. It would be a serious mistake to ignore this distinction, a mistake liable to prevent the revolutionary proletariat from mobilizing the widest strata of the working people of town and country for the struggle against the menace of the seizure of power by the fascists, and from taking advantage of the contradictions which exist in the camp of the bourgeoisie itself[…]
Comrades, the accession to power of fascism must not be conceived of in so simplified and smooth a form, as though some committee or other of finance capital decided on a certain date to set up a fascist dictatorship. In reality, fascism usually comes to power in the course of a mutual, and at times severe, struggle against the old bourgeois parties, or a definite section of these parties, in the course of a struggle even within the fascist camp itself[…]
What is the source of the influence of fascism over the masses? Fascism is able to attract the masses because it demagogically appeals to their most urgent needs and demands[…]
Fascism acts in the interests of the extreme imperialists, but it presents itself to the masses in the guise of champion of an ill-treated nation, and appeals to outraged national sentiments [emphasis mine], as German fascism did, for instance, when it won the support of the masses of the petty bourgeoisie by the slogan ‘Down with the Versailles Treaty.’
Fascism aims at the most unbridled exploitation of the masses but it approaches them with the most artful anti-capitalist demagogy, taking advantage of the deep hatred of the working people against the plundering bourgeoisie, the banks, trusts and financial magnates, and advancing those slogans which at the given moment are most alluring to the politically immature masses. In Germany — ‘The general welfare is higher than the welfare of the individual,’ in Italy — ‘Our state is not a capitalist, but a corporate state,’ in Japan — ‘For Japan without exploitation,’ in the United States — ‘Share the wealth,’ and so forth.”
Dimitrov’s analysis is certainly on the correct path. We agree with his characterizations of fascism’s behavior when in power, of its struggle with the old, established powers, of its character being different corresponding to different national conditions, and in its contradictions in trying to serve both the laboring classes and the big bourgeoisie (i.e., industrial capitalists, generally the capitalists who are involved in larger scales of production). However, where we disagree is in the origins of fascism as a movement. We disagree with the idea of fascism being constructed first by the big bourgeoisie, and then the masses being drawn to it like moths to a flame. Instead, fascism has independent origins, and is co-opted by the big bourgeoisie instead of entirely fabricated, and can (if temporarily) in fact have an independent, quite radical existence.
Capitalist Decay and Loss of Status
For an elucidation of our view of fascism’s class composition, basis, relation to the big bourgeoisie and so on, we turn to Clara Zetkin. Zetkin was a highly prominent theorist in the German socialist movement, in the Social Democratic Party of Germany and later the Communist Party of Germany. Let us quote her analysis of fascism, from The Struggle Against Fascism:
“[…]we view fascism as an expression of the decay and disintegration of the capitalist economy and as a symptom of the bourgeois state’s dissolution. We can combat fascism only if we grasp that it rouses and sweeps along broad social masses who have lost the earlier security of their existence and with it, often, their belief in social order. Fascism is rooted, indeed, in the dissolution of the capitalist economy and the bourgeois state. There were already symptoms of the proletarianization of bourgeois layers in prewar capitalism. The war shattered the capitalist economy down to its foundations. This is evident not only in the appalling impoverishment of the proletariat, but also in the proletarianization of very broad petty-bourgeois and middle-bourgeois masses, the calamitous conditions among small peasants, and the bleak distress of the ‘intelligentsia.’[…]
As a result there are countless thousands seeking new possibilities for survival, food security, and social standing. Their number is swelled by lower and mid-level government employees, the public servants. They are joined, even in the victor states, by former officers, noncoms, and the like, who now have neither employment nor profession. Social forces of this type offer fascism a contingent of distinguished figures who lend it in these countries a pronounced monarchist hue. But we cannot fully grasp the nature of fascism by viewing its evolution solely as a result of such economic pressures alone, which have been considerably enhanced by the financial crisis of the governments and their vanishing authority.
Fascism has another source. It is the blockage, the halting pace of world revolution resulting from betrayal by the reformist leaders of the workers’ movement. Among a large part of the middle layers — the civil servants, bourgeois intellectuals, and the small and middle bourgeois — who were proletarianized or were threatened with that fate, the psychology of war was replaced by a degree of sympathy for reformist socialism. They hoped that, thanks to ‘democracy,’ reformist socialism could bring about global change. These expectations were painfully shattered. The reform socialists carried out a gentle coalition policy, whose costs were borne not only by proletarians and salaried workers but by civil servants, intellectuals, and lower and mid-level petty bourgeois of every type[…]
In addition, in order to be fair, I must add that the Communist parties as well, setting aside Russia, are not without responsibility for the fact that even within the proletariat there are disillusioned people who throw themselves into the arms of fascism. Quite frequently these parties’ actions have been insufficiently vigorous, their initiatives lacking in scope, and their penetration of the masses inadequate. I set aside errors of policy that have led to defeats[…]
Masses in their thousands streamed to fascism. It became an asylum for all the politically homeless, the socially uprooted, the destitute and disillusioned. And what they no longer hoped for from the revolutionary proletarian class and from socialism, they now hoped would be achieved by the most able, strong, determined, and bold elements of every social class. All these forces must come together in a community. And this community, for the fascists, is the nation. They wrongly imagine that the sincere will to create a new and better social reality is strong enough to overcome all class antagonisms. The instrument to achieve fascist ideals is, for them, the state. A strong and authoritarian state that will be their very own creation and their obedient tool. This state will tower high above all differences of party and class, and will remake society in accord with their ideology and program.
It is evident that in terms of the social composition of its troops, fascism encompasses forces that can be extremely uncomfortable and even dangerous for bourgeois society. I’ll go further and assert that these elements, if they come to understand their own best interests, must be dangerous for bourgeois society[…]
What we see here is analogous to events in other revolutions. The petty-bourgeois and intermediate social forces at first vacillate indecisively between the powerful historical camps of the proletariat and bourgeoisie. They are induced to sympathize with the proletariat by their life’s suffering and, in part, by their soul’s noble longings and high ideals, so long as it is not only revolutionary in its conduct but also seems to have prospects for victory. Under the pressure of the masses and their needs and influenced by this situation, even the fascist leaders are forced to at least flirt with the revolutionary proletariat, even though they may not have any personal sympathy for it[…]
The bourgeoisie naturally welcomes its new allies with joy. It sees in them a major increase in its power, a determined pack prepared for every form of violence in its service. The bourgeoisie, accustomed to rule, is unfortunately much more experienced and wise in judging the situation and defending its class interests than the proletariat, which is accustomed to the yoke. From the beginning the bourgeoisie has clearly grasped the situation and, thus, the advantage that it can draw from fascism[…]
The bourgeoisie can no longer rely on its state’s regular methods of force to secure its class rule. For that it needs an extralegal and nonstate instrument of force. That has been offered by the motley assemblage that makes up the fascist mob. That is why the bourgeoisie offers its hand for fascism’s kiss, granting it complete freedom of action, contrary to all its written and unwritten laws. It goes further. It nourishes fascism, maintains it, and promotes its development with all the means at its disposal in terms of political power and hoards of money.”
As Zetkin asserts, while fascism enters into coalition with the big bourgeoisie to institutionalize itself, it is not fabricated by them, as Dimitrov’s position would have us think. Fascism emerges as an independent force, an alternative to revolutionary socialism. The Fasciti originally formed out of proletarians who were figures in the Italian socialist movement, Mussolini included, who adopted a nationalist line during WWI. They did not immediately have the support of the bourgeoisie and landed estates until they began to provide services to them in class struggles, such as breaking up strikes and defending property. The NSDAP, originally the DAP, was formed by a group of workers and veterans, and was even viewed with suspicion by the bourgeois state (Hitler originally became acquainted with them as a spy). The NSDAP did not emerge already with the endorsement of the Krupp family, they built to that. Most of its early members, such as Hitler, Röhm, etc were those who had lost their status following Germany’s defeat in WWI. Fascism, in fact, can even be a revolutionary movement, one which challenges the power of the big bourgeoisie and old forces of society. It does, after all, first start as a coalition of the proletarianized and pauperized masses of society, whose loss of status is the responsibility of finance capital. In this, we find an explanation for the anti-capitalist elements of fascism, including third positionism, essentially a synthesis of revolutionary socialism with fascism.
As it is a response to a loss of status, a humiliation, as many liberal analysts, such as Michael Lind, correctly identified, fascism is most popular among groups who once had status to begin with. This means that, in Euro-patriarchal society, men are the primary group in fascism, as women are typically excluded from valorized production or independent status in general.
This means feminists and those who fall outside the “official” gendered division of labor, the LGBT community, are targeted for attack by fascism. It is not well known, but there was a major LGBT movement in Germany, centered in Berlin, before the NSDAP took power. The NSDAP frequently attacked it, and when it took power, destroyed the Institute for Sexology, burning its documents on the LGBT community. Finance capital disrupts the reproductive labor division allocated to women in some contexts, such as where women must become wage-laborers, including in “masculine” professions, to support themselves and/or their families. Fascism reacts to this as an example of moral degeneracy and a threat to the purity of the nation.
Fascism is also closely identified with imperialist and colonial (in some cases pre-capitalist colonial) ideology. Fascism endorses the dominant ideology around race and nation of imperialism and colonialism, seeing them as pseudo-biological essences, with the strong races rising to the top and the weak races sinking to the bottom.
Compromise With Finance Capital and Institutionalization
Fascism, however, is not necessarily correctly described as conservative, in the sense of seeking to reproduce or restore the prevailing social order, but can even be revolutionary. It becomes conservative, in some cases a tool of the old powers, when, as it enters into coalition with the old powers, the mass composition is weaker by comparison.
For example, in post-WWI Italy, there was a lack of a large and strong composition of labor aristocracy and petite bourgeoisie, since Italy was not a major imperialist power. The Fasciti were largely composed of proletarianized and pauperized veterans, incensed at Italy’s exclusion from the spoils of WWI, despite its losses in the course of the war. When the Fasciti became institutionalized following the March on Rome and King Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini Prime Minister, they lacked significant independent power as a movement, compared to the landed estates, monarchy, big bourgeoisie, and old army bureaucracy.
Thus, they relied heavily on the existing power structure and class coalition, meaning that Mussolini’s reign much more resembled typical big bourgeois-landed estate dictatorships, such as Miguel Primo de Rivera in Spain. The old army, monarchy, bureaucracy, and economic structure largely remained intact under Mussolini. This was why the Fasciti particularly failed to fulfill any of their proposed anti-capitalist policies, with the class collaboration of corporatism being plainly corporate welfare for the big bourgeoisie. This blatant bias toward the big bourgeoisie fueled significant mass discontent with the Fascist regime, contributing to support for the anti-fascist Partisans.
The NSDAP, by contrast, held a significant mass base. Germany, which had been through a far greater scale of industrial capitalist development than Italy, and had been a significant imperialist power, had large swathes of labor aristocracy, petite-bourgeoisie, petty bureaucrats, professionals, and and lumpenproletariat behind it, particularly veterans from various classes of society who had been cast into severe poverty by Germany’s defeat in WWI. With this mass bass, the NSDAP grew from a small group of conspirators into a major party rivaling the SPD in the Reichstag. The NSDAP as a movement was also more fiercely anti-capitalist than the Fasciti, with the third positionist factions being represented by the Strasser brothers and Ernst Röhm, head of the SA. Let us quote from the NSDAP’s 25 Point Programme, highlighting demands which correspond to the radical elements of the party:
“3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the sustenance of our people and colonization for our superfluous population[…]
7. We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to nourish the total population of the State, then the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) must be excluded from the Reich[…]
10. The first obligation of every citizen must be to productively work mentally or physically. The activity of individual may not clash with the interests of the whole, but must proceed within the framework of the whole for the benefit for the general good. We demand therefore:
11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
12. In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice of life and property that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment due to a war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. Therefore, we demand ruthless confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand nationalization of all businesses which have been up to the present formed into companies (trusts).
14. We demand that the profits from wholesale trade shall be shared out.
15. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
16. We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.
17. We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
18. We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race[…]
20. The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the state must be striven for by the school [Staatsbürgerkunde] as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the state of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.
21. The state is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.”
The NSDAP sought to transform society, and to stifle the power of finance capital. The third positionist elements, while not dominant in the party, represented a sentiment common to party members. The broad swathe of classes in the party all faced major loss of status due to policies of the big bourgeoisie.
The NSDAP’s policy, however, was not revolutionary socialist development. Instead, it was class collaboration. Instead of abolishing class distinctions, it carved out a cohesive system which they thought would abolish the antagonistic interests of classes and ergo unify them. It is what the NSDAP referred to as the construction of a volksgemeinschaft [people’s community]. This policy would become solidified once the NSDAP took power with the 1933 Enabling Act, as per the wishes of the Hitlerite faction of the party. The faction favored allowing the big bourgeoisie and old powers into their coalition and becoming institutionalized, as opposed to the revolutionary faction which sought to destroy the old order. To ease the trepidations of their big bourgeois allies, and to make their hold on the party concrete, the Hitlerite faction organized the 1934 Night of the Long Knives, assassinating Ernst Röhm and the SA leadership along with Gregor Strasser and the other third positionists.
Fascist Empire and the Distribution of Spoils
With the revolutionary faction destroyed, the pro-institutionalization faction could now make concessions to the bourgeoisie without fear of internal strife. They were not, however, simply tools of the big bourgeoisie. The class elements represented by the party began their colonial project of seizing lebensraum, the means by which they would stifle class conflict. For a synthesized society, they had to use as a model the labor aristocracy, which arose in the late 19th and early 20th century as a section of the working class which gained a higher living standard through a cut of imperialist superprofits. The labor aristocracy was pro-imperialist, and was the social element behind the revisionism of the Second International.
To ensure collaboration between German laborers, petite-bourgeoisie, petty bureaucrats and others with the big bourgeoisie, the Third Reich had to unite their interests in imperial profit-seeking. If the fascist movement emerged from a loss of class status, its draw was a promise of renewal, and more, of class status. This was to be done by the seizure of new capital in the form of aggressive colonization of surrounding regions, by colonization and elimination of internal sections of society, and the forcing of women into a strictly reproductive gendered labor division. Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia, though it had little success elsewhere. The Third Reich, of course, moved from central Europe to western and eastern Europe. I will focus on the Third Reich as a clearer demonstration of this process.
The Reich settled the conquered regions with “Aryans,” using raw materials from them to aid in the rapid development of Germany. The “Aryans” in Germany gained jobs and status not only from this outward exploitation, but inward as well.
The Holocaust was part of this class collaboration project. Jewish people, Roma, and those who challenged the existing order broadly were eliminated not only to create national homogeneity as part of a nation-building project, but so that their jobs, property, everything they had could be expropriated and distributed among the “Aryans.”
The primary laborers of society under the Reich were now those colonized within and without the concentration camps, the women who were compelled to birth and raise children, to reproduce their husbands’ capacity to work. “Aryan” women, however, were not innocent victims. They, too, had long participated in the movement, and now offered a major base of support for the Reich, as they gained some status through their husband’s ascendancy.
The NSDAP, like the Fasciti, lost mass support in proportion to their failure to realize the promises they made to the masses. However, their movement had a much stronger mass character, and so it took the old bourgeois-imperialist countries and the revolutionary proletarian USSR to defeat it. Fascism, however, did not die with the NSDAP.
American Fascism: A Brief Outline
As was hinted at earlier by both Dimitrov and Zetkin, there is very much a history of fascism in the US. Fascism in America must be understood within the context of settler-colonialism. Large swathes of white American society have had their livelihood rely on the replacement and elimination of Indigenous peoples and the suppression and exploitation of the Black nation as well as other colonized groups. Due to this antagonism at the core of American society, the earliest roots of fascism can be found in colonial conflicts. The first and second waves of the Ku Klux Klan, for example, were formed as reactions to the Black nation seeking to combat white supremacy, and to the influx of new European migrants who represented more mouths at the watering hole of America’s colonial spoils.
American fascism proper’s earliest roots were with the Grange and People’s Party, which formed as a reaction to the proletarianization and pauperization of petite-bourgeois farmers by the big bourgeoisie. This movement was ambiguous and internally varied, wavering between aligning with the revolutionary proletariat and pursuing proto-fascistic policies. A truly fascist movement would emerge with the Great Depression, as huge sections of society were pauperized. Charles Coughlin was the first figurehead of a radical reaction to this crisis of finance capital. He condemned the big bourgeoisie and called for redistribution, while promoting racist internally colonial policies and later aligning with the Axis Powers. The Silver Legion of America and, before WWII broke out, the leadership of the American Legion would offer mass support for fascism in America and abroad.
Fascism’s bourgeois allies in the US were quite visible, such as Henry Ford and Prescott Bush. Sections of the big bourgeoisie, including Bush, even planned to stage a coup against President Roosevelt, although this was exposed and never came to fruition. The fascist movement in the US was not as taboo before entry into WWII as popular perception may assume. President Roosevelt sought to avoid war with the Axis Powers at any cost, and allowed sections of finance capital like Texaco to support the Nationalists while suppressing supporters of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. The press was strongly pro-fascist, seeing Hitler and Mussolini as holding back the threat of Communism. Open fascism would only become taboo when the imperial interests of the old bourgeois countries and those of the new Fascist countries came into conflict.
Fascism in America would be relatively quiet once the US entered WWII, with some fascists being prosecuted for treason and espionage. After the war, and once the Cold War broke out, however, outright fascism would see some semblance of a renewal. The third wave of the Klan, the John Birch Society, and, most obviously, the American Nazi Party all positioned themself as a more conservative form of fascism, focusing largely on anti-Communism and opposition to challenges against the colonial order and gendered division of labor. They would be most visible in their terrorization of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s, with the coming 1960s representing a split of the movement between the conservative and the radical factions.
The radical factions were much more in the spirit of the Strasser brothers, seeking to entirely overturn “degenerate” American society in favor of a new one, rather than restoring an old order. They broke from the American Nazi Party, with William Luther Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries, being a prominent figure among them. Pierce represented a third positionist form of American fascism, coming from the position of the petite-bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. He promoted anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and pro-Soviet politics in conjunction with antisemitic, white nationalist, and pro-US-colonial politics.
Pierce’s positions would influence the new, radical factions of fascist Americans, with figures such as James Mason, author of Siege, former member of the National Socialist Liberation Front, and now-collaborator with Atomwaffen Division developing his tendency of fascism. Instead of a defense of the old America, these fascists sought to overthrow finance capital’s power, even in an apocalyptic manner, in favor of a new order which essentially fulfills the old settler-colonial image of a nation of petite-bourgeois yeomen.
In the 1970s and 1980s, this faction would grow, with movements like Aryan Nations, the Creativity Movement, White Aryan Resistance, the Hammerskins, National Socialist Movement, and so on rising. The radical fascists played a major part in the rise and growth of the militia movement, with many creating compounds to essentially build dual power and challenge the strength of the old bourgeois American state. The concept of “leaderless resistance” would grow popular among them, partially as a response to the shortcomings of the American Nazi Party and older Klans and their susceptibility to Federal repression. Their movement would engage in lone-wolf terrorism, most visibly in the Oklahoma City Bombing, using it as a tool of terror and to attract those angered at their loss of status and wishing to lash out.
This branch of the movement is very much in continuity today, particularly in the sense of lone-wolf terrorism. It seems as if mass shootings happen every week now. In 2018, fascist and semi-fascist movements played an extremely visible role in this form of terrorism, as noted by the ADL report “Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2018.” In the contemporary context, beyond the continuity of older groups like the Hammerskins we see newer movements such as the National Socialist Movement (NSM), League of the South, and the now-defunct Traditionalist Workers’ Party (TWP) recruit primarily among former labor aristocrats, such as in the former automobile manufacturing center of America, Detroit. There is continuity of fascist influence among militias and doomsday preppers. There are also more petite-bourgeois, professional-composed movements like Identity Evropa, Proud Boys, Patriot Front, and the particularly radical factions like Atomwaffen Division and The Base. These movements in particular play to frustration at the “tightening up” of superprofits distribution which takes the form of a smaller availability of professional jobs, as well as the failure of small capital in the face of monopoly capital. Further, they are a reaction against the neocolonial tactic of recuperating sections of colonized nations, seeing it as bringing the colonized into places which are meant to be status symbols for white people, such as professional jobs.
Contemporary Fascism and Loss of Status
Contemporary fascism in Europe, European settler-colonies, and the US must be understood as a reaction against not only finance capital, but anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal, and Communist movements. Who do these primarily affect but white men, particularly those of the petite bourgeoisie, labor aristocracy, and professionals who feel this threat to their status much more than big bourgeois white men. The declassed labor aristocracy particularly play a large part in modern fascist movements, as superprofit distribution is confined to smaller and smaller sections of the working class, particularly with crises like that of 2008. Even white proletarians, lumpenproletarians and paupers play a major part in these fascist movements, seeking to gain or restore status through the reaping of superprofits which fascism entails. Fascism thrives particularly strongly in settler-colonial countries like the US, New Zealand, and Australia, as the recent fascist mass shootings have shown us. Read any of their manifestos and you will see that they are responding to those who dare to challenge colonial and patriarchal status, even the finance capitalists who disrupt it among classes below them.
I would not necessarily consider, for example, such politicians as Jair Bolsonaro to be fascist. Rather, he is a typical colonial demagogue in a history of colonial demagogues in Latin America who express strongly racialist sentiment toward colonial ends. While he certainly has popularity among fascists, as his support of the reaping of profits and lands from Indigenous people offers something akin to a lebensraum vision, he is not himself fascist. Rather, he is more accurately termed a reactionary. I would say something similar of Donald Trump, although the colonial context which he is operating in is of course not the same Iberian colonial caste system as that of Brazil. They certainly disrupt the typical bourgeois status quo to some degrees, but this is more due to demagoguery than due to independent origins. In the case of both, independently arisen fascist movements offer them support in view of some of their desires being met in their policies, but they realize that they do not go as far or in the exact directions as they desire. They are in some manners radical, but they are not radical to the degree or in the facets characteristic of fascism.
Fascism is not solely a white phenomenon. Fascism very much has a presence among non-white people in Latin America, in East Asia, West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, in North Africa and so on. Fascism is a response to a loss of status, one alternative to reactionary upholding of the prevailing order and tot revolutionary socialism. We would make the case that fascism even emerges in populations under the yoke of colonialism and imperialism, though they are not, of course, emerging from the same dynamics as in the imperial core. For example, al Qaeda and ISIS are primarily composed of petite-bourgeoisie, intelligentsia, and patriarchal authorities, opposed to national bourgeois states, to imperialist states, and to socialist states alike. While they each express a desire to restore a long-gone order, this does not make them non-fascist. The NSDAP and Fasciti both did this, as do fascists the world over. Fascism still does not literally restore the prevailing order, but create a new one which it legitimizes with imagery and rhetoric of national or regional history.
In the colonized world, the world under the yolk of imperialism, fascism is usually an expression by dominant ethnic and national groups of antagonisms with origins older than Euro-colonialism and the establishment of capitalism in the regions. For example, in India the RSS and BJP rage against Kashmiri Muslims, fronting the settler-colonial offensive into the region. While the current antagonisms are as severe as they are primarily because of how the British Empire split India, they are older than British colonization of the region. They tend to express resentment for challenges to these traditional forms of authority and social structures by capitalist imperialism, while not seeking a mere reactionary restoration-as-it-was solution. For example, the BJJ and RSS, along with affiliated President Narendra Modi, seek a radical redirection of Indian foreign and social policy, including the ascendancy of India into a place among the Imperialist powers. The RSS’s origins are primarily among the petite-bourgeoisie and professionals, with its founder, K. B. Hedgewar, being the latter. The BJJ essentially rose as its political arm.
Anti-Fascism Must Be Anti-Colonial
We have identified that fascism expresses colonial interests, often those of the mass of settlers seeking a more “equitable” distribution of the spoils of conquest. Given this, anti-fascism cannot ignore the question of decolonization. Anti-fascism cannot only be anti-racist. Anti-racism does not identify the origins of racism in the material relations and conditions of society, often expressing the liberal view of racism as a result of ignorance. Anti-colonialism identifies the roots of racism, and puts one on the correct path toward combating it. Anti-fascism must be connected to, equivalent with, decolonization movements. If anti-fascists of the colonizer populations are not willing to lend their support to anti-colonial movements, then they don’t really care about combating fascism. Instead, all they are really fighting for is the old bourgeois-colonial order.
Further, climate catastrophe, which is for a large part not only driven by capitalist extractivist production, endless expansion in a finite world, is also in part driven by associated interruption to the application of Indigenous knowledge in sustainable productive techniques. Indigenous peoples have learned, through generations of practice and theory, how to successfully cultivate the means of subsistence in the long term in accordance with the needs of particular ecologies. This knowledge must be incorporated into production, and this cannot successfully be done without a decolonized social order. The continuity of capitalist imperialism spells extinction and continuously worsening climate catastrophe, which will strengthen apocalyptic-radical fascist movements and their aims of rupture with the old order even more. Strains of have already long ago, even as far back as the völkisch movements which coalesced in part into the NSDAP, recognized capitalistic devastation of ecology, and sought to combat it within their own framework. Today, most of the aforementioned USAmerican neo-fascist movements have similarly ecological outlooks, and the “deep green” movement in this country is strongly intertwined with ecofascist rhetoric around overpopulation, “decadence,” and so on. It is very likely that with worsening catastrophe, this strain will gain popularity among those who have material interests in contradiction with a socialist, decolonized solution. Fascism poses a danger for we socialists because it is a distorted, “funhouse” image of us; it typically grows during the same periods which we do.
The Demands for Anti-Fascism
Clara Zetkin earlier identified that the failure of Communist Parties to seize sufficient tangible gains for the masses, and to correctly educate them in theory in conjunction to that, led to sections of the population gravitating to fascism as an alternative. For the US, it is imperative that we understand settler-colonialism’s part in the dynamics of fascism. The section of the population here which has the most revolutionary potential is the colonized and the lower classes of those displaced by imperialism. If we Communists wish to build a mass base here, we must do work for these people. The Communist movement must not only align with their movements as an exterior white body, but be a result of their movements, emerge from them.
This does not mean we should not work among the white laboring classes, but that we must understand that their condition as settler citizens stifles any revolutionary potential, as colonial profits buy them off. In a December 10, 1869 letter to Friedrich Engels, Marx said:
“[…]quite apart from all ‘international’ and ‘humane’ phrases about Justice for Ireland — which are taken for granted on the International Council — it is in the direct and absolute interests of the English working class to get rid of their present connexion with Ireland. I am fully convinced of this, for reasons that, in part, I cannot tell the English workers themselves. For a long time I believed it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime by English working class ascendancy. I always took this viewpoint in the New-York Tribune. Deeper study has now convinced me of the opposite. The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland. The lever must be applied in Ireland. This is why the Irish question is so important for the social movement in general.”
From an April 9, 1870 letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt:
“And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the ‘poor whites’ to the Negroes in the former slave states of the U.S.A.. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.”
The sections of the laboring classes whose living standards are bought with colonial superprofits cannot be revolutionary until those colonial relations are destroyed. The primarily revolutionary section of the laboring classes is the colonized, to whom the contradictions of capitalism and the need to overthrow it are most immediately evident. Communism broadly, and anti-fascism specifically, must favor these groups. The part played by those of the colonizer population in the anti-fascist movement must be to defend the colonized against violence inflicted by the colonizers. In short, the colonizers must become race traitors. Communists must also struggle against the patriarchal gendered division of labor, and support movements against it, if we seek to break the power which lends so much to the base of fascism. If we ignore that this issue is very much material rather than solely ideological, we concede it to bourgeois liberalism, and allow patriarchy and its ideology to continue to craft loyal fascist footsoldiers.
Beyond issues of the existing anti-fascist movement witth regards to colonialism, there are also broad issues of rhetoric and organization. The current movement is obsessed with liberal pluralism and anarchist decentralization. Because it lacks unifying organization, and encompasses liberals who seek to defend the prevailing bourgeois-colonial order, anarchists, utopian socialists, Marxists and so on, there is no unified definition of fascism. The liberal view is that fascism is a result of ignorance, and can be defeated in the long term by debate and debunking. While this practice has some merit, it is not the be all end all of anti-fascism. It bases itself on an idealist understanding of fascism, instead of an identification that fascism results from material interests and dynamics. This view of fascists as simply deluded is adopted by anarchists, socialists, and even some Marxists. Others adopt the prevailing Comintern view, while others adopt obscure psychological explanations of, for example fascism as a result of sexual repression, or of an “authoritarian personality type.”
As a result of this extreme pluralism of theories, there is pluralism of practice in anti-fascism. Without unifying theory or a unifying organization, there cannot be effective coordination of anti-fascist actions, or coordination of them in conjunction with revolutionary base-building. As long as anti-fascism is decentralized and pluralistic, it will continue to be limited within the realm of vigilante action. It may occasionally lead to a change of tactics, of rhetoric, etc of the fascists, maybe even drive them temporarily underground, but it cannot destroy the movement, or offer an alternative to the society which births them.
Fascism will continue to rise as long as the global imperialist and colonial order exists. Only when the conditions for its rise are destroyed, and a dictatorship of the proletariat holds the power necessary to both suppress the fascist movement and to eliminate the social dynamics which give rise to it, will fascism be defeated. The USSR never saw a neo-fascist movement rise within its nations. Neo-fascist movements only emerged in formerly socialist countries after the socialist states fell and were replaced by bourgeois states. This was because the bourgeoisie restored to power was eager to empower footmen against the Communists, and because the sections of society that had been declassed by capitalist restoration had been driven against Communism by various dynamics, and now turned to fascism as an alternative.
Anti-fascists cannot delude themselves into bourgeois rhetoric of free speech, of fascism being against the bourgeois nation, and so on. Bourgeois idealism only drives one to make concessions which favor fascists. The proletarian dictatorship does not conceal its character as a class dictatorship, as it is the state of a mass class instead of a minority one. So, we cannot lie to ourselves about freedom of speech etc. being automatically “good.” Instead, we must recognize that no state can reliably repress fascism unless it is a revolutionary socialist state, and unless it is anti-colonial. The future of anti-fascism must be guided by scientific socialism and practical concerns, not liberal moralism and idealism.
