On fascism's historic triumph (was Re: [Marxism] Re: Massive bombings and civilian populations

["Carlos A. Rivera" <cerejota@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Einde O'Callaghan" <einde@xxxxxx>

> The possibilities of this scattered unorganised resistance attempting a
> mass uprising against the Nazi state were always minimal - and the
> policies of the allied governments (all of them) actively discouraged and
> hindered the development of such a resistance.

I quote only this part, but this is exemplary of why I consider a mistaken,
sectarian, take on the victory of fascism in Europe.

I will not alledge that my views are the Truth, but I do want to critique
many of the prevailing views, including the, quite frankly Einde, dribble of
sectarian trash you sell as a history of fascist development. Let it be
clear, I admire the work you do in the MIA, I admire you personally as an
honest leftists, but time and again you repeat a party line on fascism that
is neither factually correct, nor is politically defensible in a braod
sense.

In other words, it is sectariana of the worse kind.

I might be guilty of such things myself, but usually in questions I
ultimately regard as historical artifacts. Fascism is a living, breathing,
murderous monster, and the continued sectarian approach towards its history,
its methods, and its politics serves no practical purpose, and worse, it
continues an infortunate tradition that we both can agree was partly
responsible for the triumph of fascism in the first place!

In theory, I find that all attemps at an explaination from a marxist
perspective of the fascist phenomena in Italy, Germany, and Spain, and of
the development of neo- and post-fascism that I have been exposed to
insufficient, plagued with inconsistencies, and while understandable in the
political climates of the past, highly unuseful for the struggles we face
today.

They simply play around too much with the facts, are to full of
"told-you-so" and "blame-the-other-guy" sterile polemics, and provide no
serious guideliness to confront actually existing fascism as we know it
historically and as it develops today. They are guilty of taking fascism and
explaining it as we think it is or was and not fascism as it actually was.
Fascism is not something of the past, like the USSR, it is a living thing.
Hence cheap sectarian politics in the face of this monster is criminal,
regardless of who perpetrates the crime.

It is of course, beyond this media to do a comprehensive outline, but I will
at least attempt a framework that is simple enough to be understood and
complex enough to not be shallow, of why I fervently oppose simplistic
views, such as those expressed by Einde (but by no means limited to him or
his tendency, everybody and their Auntie Annie is guilty what I critique,
including to some extent myself).

This are some of my structural elements in facing the question:

I. Actually existing Fascism vs. Fascist ideology -

I have yet to see sufficient research on this, for me obvious, difference. I
am told constantly that this is because the difference is trivial, specially
by people who do make such differences regarding socialism or communism. I
belive that in order to approach the question of why fascism won and held
power for so long, but also why fascism failed in many other places (such as
the UK with Mosley's group), and the continued existence of a variety of
fascist, neo-fascist, and post-fascist ideologies and movements, such as the
FN, BNP, NBP, etc. It also creates questions regarding the similarities and
disimilarities of the imperialist country repressive regimes with fascism as
known to history.

If Einde's recurring over-simplifications were true, then fascism couldn't
be considered an ideology, but rather a method of holding totalitarian
power. It would be an expression of pure power play on the part of evil
individuals. Such liberalism gets called marxism!!!

This suits their anti-Soviet line perfectly, because it allows for the
ideological construction of the Soviet regime and the Nazi regime as just
two different refference points of the development of State Capitalism as a
way for imperialism to escape recurring crisis. Yet, besides this
opportunisticaly sectarian point score, it proves insufficient to explain
the existence of out-of-power fascism, and furthermore, the incredibly large
sectarian fauna that populates fascism (and for that matter, marxism). It
doesn't explain why Spanish and Italian fascism were so different from
German fascism. It doesn't explain why Hitler murdered the only truly loyal
follower he had, I guy he himself recruited into the Party. It doesn't
explain why in East Germany fascism was so readily denounced while West
Germany only addressed the question by continuing with the Final Solution by
other means in the thinly veiled "voluntary" deportation of Jews to
Palestine, with the open support of the Zionists.

Fascism as an ideology, Fascism as a concrete political movement, and
fascism in power are all different things, which must be treated as such. I
say to Einde that he must honestly examine the aspirations, thoughts, and
actions of the vast majorities of Germans today to see just how easy it was
for Fascism to win over at least passive support of even "progressive"
Germans.

II. The nature of actually existing fascism - Italy, Germany, and Spain.

This is a more common differatation, because it one that is both obvious and
poltically useful to all sides in the debate.

For example, with Spain, Neo-fascists can divorce themselves from the
Holocaust, post-fascists can claim that fascism is not genocidal and doe
shave good things, liberals can claim Franco wasn't fascist but
anti-communist, trotskyites can claim a more real example of "Stalinist
Machinations" as so can Stalinist decry "Trotskyite Complots" while both can
blame the Anarchists for being "ultra-left traitors".

Yet all of those things are insufficient.

When I mean a separation of the 3 experiences, I mean it much in the same
way a comparative literature critic might critique Modernist poetry. The
experiences have many things in common, but the things that separate them
are much more important. Some quick explamples are the fact that Spain had
to fight a very bloody civil war, yet both German and Italian fascism took
power with relative ease. That Mussolini, while repressing political
dissent, and being as bad as the next dictator, didn't setup extermination
camps, and the ICP remained a formidable force to the point it led the
resistance with such importance the modern italian state is based upon the
ICP's work. That in Germany racialist issues were much more important than
real nationalist issues (Spain saw black moors on the side of fascism, in
Italy Jews were in positions of power until it became a German colony in
content). Etc Etc Etc.

I belive that one of the keys to understanding fascism lies in an honest,
fact-based, open-minded, comparative analysis of all three experiences, with
marxism (ie historical dialectics) as a basis.

(Louis Proyect's article on the comintenr in germany, which I hadn't read
(while guilty of the blame-the-comintern sectarian approach) does point in a
concrete direction, even trotskyites over-estimated the appeal of socialist
ideas in Germany. I found it very interesting because it is of the few
examples of academic comment on pre-fascist germany in which while in form
exhibiting a Trotskiyite slant, in content exhibits a lucid understanding of
the complex stituation in germany, something not even Trotsky could see. )

III. Fascism as a world-wide movement, as an international of
ultra-nationalism.

This is one of the lesser noted facts about fascism, except, lo and behold,
in the middle east, were Zionists & Co are always very quick to point out
the Mufti's "friendship" with Hitler, or the Bosnian Muslim's Waffen SS
brigades.

(To begin with, this obscures the fact that the Irgun/Stern Gang, which
would latter become the core of the Likud, actually propossed to Hitler as
an alternative to the "Final Solution", the deportation of Jews to Palestine
and the entering of the resulting "Jewish Palestine" into the war on the
side of germany. I might be mistaken, but Einde's site "The Reds" has the
original source material on this)

Fascism as an ideology, a aesthetic, and a method, spread like wildfire.
Even in Puerto Rico, the nationalist party of Don Pedro Albizu Campos had
huge internal strife between their fascist (Led by Buitrago) and
anti-fascist wings (led by party secretary and later anti-revisionist
communist J.A. Corretjer). The Cadets of the Republic had an uniform that
sported a Black Shirt with white pants in the style of Mussolini. There are
copies of WWII nationalist newspapers with Swastikas as decoration. This is
but one example. Things get wierder.

In Chile, the nazis called themselves "Nacistas", and actually broke their
links with Germany, did some ill fated attempts at insurrection, and went on
to join into the, gasp!, Popular Front as a minor partner. They later left
and continue to exist, with a wierd racial politics that says that the
Master Race is the mix of Aryan men with Mapuche women!

In Bolivia and Peru, huge nazi parties with legacy to these days existed,
and were heavily repressed. To this day LatAm fascists commemorate the
massacres that were done to them.

ANd so on, and so forth. There is no comprehensive study, that I know of, of
the development of fascism world wide. There is some story of the
international relations of the "Ausland Org" of the nazis, but mainly for
spy buffs, or to study Canaris as a hsitorical figure. Nothing political,
nothing marxist.

Einde's simplified view on fascism, in blaiming his ideological rivals on
the left, or the "totalitarian strength" of the enemy for our defeat against
fascism, fails to see fascism as a politcal, counter-revolutionary movement,
with political, mass support in many places. In other words, these weren't
mislead people, nor people who were tricked or pressured into being
fascists, but people who actually WERE fascists, who belived in fascism in
exactly the same way we belive in communism. This subjective strength, while
of course wong from our perspective, is problematic for those who denounce
the "excesses" of the Red Army, or the Bombings of Cologne or Dresden as
criminal. While I agree they were ethically dubious, I disagree that they
can be discounted as unecessarly cruel as Einde and others do. After all,
the only good fascist is a dead one.

IV. Fascism as more than just an extension of capitalism, but as a
neo-feudal imperialism.

Actually, Max Schatman, in his Bureaucratic Collectivist critique of the
USSR, did hit upon a great metaphor, one I belive he was mistaken to apply
to the USSR, but is highly useful to understand the ideological undercurrent
of fascism. This I will admit to not have elaborated or read much about, but
I am very interesting, from a marxist or historical materialist perspective,
which is my view that fascism is nothing but an attempt to recreate
feudalism in the mass age. It is anti-capitalist in content, not an extreme
form of capitalism, although in form it is obviously a extreme form of
capitalism. But it is anti-capitalist in a nostalgic, anti-progressive way.
It is very similar to certain veins of anarchism, such as Kropotkian
anrcho-communism, and to certain forms of syndicalism/guildism. The very
name of National Socialism speaks of the anti-capitalist content of fascism.
It if of course, a very different form of anti-capitalism, but I consider it
a great error of analysis that we take as a given that fascism was
pro-capitalist, when in reality it was seeking a synthesis of modern mass
industry with pre-capitalist modes of production, which is a form of
anti-capitalism

This seems to be supported by many facts, including the most obvious one,
which is that fascism won in places were the mainstream body politic was
anti-capitalist, were social-democracy and revolutionary socialism
participated as important, and in the case of germany the most, important
political players. Places were anti-capitalism was a main theme of politics,
and hence attacking capitalism, from any and all angles was something seen
as good by a huge number of people.

I believe that a large part of the triumph of fascism was related to
subjective factors of an identification of rudimentary capitalism, coupled
with a nostalgic appraisal of the pre-capitalist forms, which at the time
were not to far away in memory. This is of course not negating other
factors, such as actual big capitalists taken opportunity, or other more
objective factors such as economic depression, a weak capitalist class
structure, and the survival of certain feudalist features (aristocracy,
landed gentry, etc).

Einde's and his tendency's shallow description of fascism, while politically
useful to their sectarian  views, serve not to clarify but rather obscure
this question. Ironically, they excercise the same totalitarian stiffness
they so wholeheartedly decry.

On the concrete, certain features of this neo-feudalist imperialism are
evident in the current behaivior of the USA and its political elite. The
repercussions in the current struggle against fascism should be obvious.

Again, these are but notes, but are a large part of why I joined this list
in the first place after years and years of reading it. I was even debated
without being a member some years ago, and on this very question no less!!!

Please excuse my stream of conciousness style, and how big this is, but hey,
I don't want to continue posting 10 posts on the same thing every day. Lou
is watching me.

sks

ps

EXTRA! - I have drawn a lot of flak for saying this, but I belive than on
the tactical questions of how to deal with fascism, Trotsky was completely
and utterly correct. I disagree with his naive, self-agrandising strategic
notes. But his writing on tactics, and on military affairs regarding
fascism, and his dire warnings on why fascism had to be destroyed, are
correct to this day. Eat me.

The funny thing is that Einde's tendency has taken the opposite stand, with
their repeated purge and opposition of "Squadism" in the Anti-Nazi League,
and their criminal cooperation with the State (via Searchlight) regarding
Anti-Fascist Action.


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