Fascism is a reactionary movement that rises in the imperialist stage of capitalism, based on policies that favor the ever-growing concentration of capital.[1] As a political movement, it is marked by pervasive anti-communism, a profound aversion towards democracy, the justification and glorification of class society through class collaboration, and chauvinistic tendencies, namely ultranationalism, racism and sexism. Fascist ideologues usually promote conspiracy theories, irrationalist myths and manipulative distortions of truth to gather support of their popular base.
Throughout history, the fascists promoted policies that caused even more exploitation of the working class than capitalism was ever able to, allowing the so-called free market to take over every aspect of society. So much so that The Economist magazine introduced the term privatization in 1936, unseen in political discourse at the time, to describe Nazi Germany's economic policies.[2] The most well-known historical examples of fascism are Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, but there has been various historical examples of fascism, such as Shōwa Japan, Francoist Spain and Salazarist Portugal.
History
Origins
The term "fascism" comes from the Italian National Fascist Party,[a] a party founded by Benito Mussolini in 1921, whose practices and ideology would later define this reactionary movement as a whole. Mussolini inspired his fascism on the cult of Roman civilisation who, although they had no concept of fascism and did not care to predict the future two thousand years after their height, provided him with a perfect excuse to call back to the Roman empire, which stretched far and wide and started in modern-day Italy. Thus the name fascism was based on the fasces, an axe that is surrounded and bound to a bundle of sticks and was carried by officials (lictors) in political and military demonstrations. This was a symbol of power and authority that Mussolini repurposed for fascism.
The origins of fascism as a counter-revolutionary movement, however, can be traced as far as the French far-right French Action,[b] which was an openly anti-Marxist political organization established in 1899 proposing an "integral nation" for French society through class collaboration.[3]
In Discourse on colonialism[4], Aimé Césaire exposed the old colonialist mindsets that, he claims, would later inspire fascism and survive after it (as decolonisation was undertaken after the end of the second world war). This prompted him to write in that same essay that "fascism is colonialism applied to the coloniser".
German fascism
Not only did the German fascists allow the virulent exploitation of the working people and concentration of capital,[5] they adopted a settler-colonial model coupled with exploitation colonialism and mass terror applied to the European continent.[6] The ideological justification for colonization of European peoples by Nazis was promoted as Lebensraum,[c] and was directly influenced by Statesian genocide of Native peoples through Manifest Destiny.[7]
The Nazi Party was beaten into dissolution by the Soviet Union after the Battle of Berlin in May 1945.
Italian fascism
Japanese fascism
Portuguese fascism
Spanish fascism
Following the victory of the United Front in 1936, a fascist revolt led by General Franco and assisted by invading Germany and Italy, tacitly backed by the rest of the allies, broke out. A civil war lasting three years followed, culminating in the crushing of Republican forces. The regime went on to last three more decades and it is said that the current "reformed" Spanish state is a continuation of the same regime. Notably, Franco reintroduced the king of Spain in 1956 (whose parent was deposed in 1931), and to this day Spain remains a monarchy.
Modern fascist movements
Bolsonarism in Brazil
Trumpism in USA
2019 coup in Bolivia
President Evo Morales of Bolivia was reelected to this office in October 2019 with 47,08% of total votes. Soon after, opposing fascists called the results into question, helped by fraudulent reports from the Organisation of American States (OAS), which led to their paramilitary wing causing violence in the streets. After three weeks, Morales agreed to step down and left the country.
Later, accusations of electoral fraud were completely debunked by the same journals that initially reported on them, trusting the OAS.
The new government, led by Jeanine Añez, established a military junta in the country so as to dismantle popular support for MAS (Morales' party). They pushed elections back three times, eventually having them take place in November 2020, a full year after the coup. Their efforts failed, as MAS won the presidential election in 2020 with 55% of all votes (under candidate Luis Arce).
Since his election, Arce's government has announced that they would effectively purge the military's leadership, as their treason was pivotal in letting the coup succeed.
Ideology and practice
According to Communist writer and politician Rajani Palme Dutt, fascism was simply the result of a 'negative approach to marxism' with borrowing some tenets from older reactionary schools and ideologies in the respective country. Fascism aims to violently defend decaying capitalism, differing from other capitalist parties only in its methods.
References
- ↑ “No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. 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.”
Georgi Dimitrov (1935). The fascist offensive and the tasks of the Communist International in the struggle of the working class against fascism: 'The class character of fascism'. Main Report delivered at the 7th World Congress of the Communist International. [MIA] - ↑ Germà Bel (2006). Retrospectives: the coining of “privatization” and Germany's National Socialist Party. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(3), 187–194. doi: 10.1257/jep.20.3.187 [HUB]
- ↑ Ernst Nolte (1966). Three faces of fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism (German: Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche: Die Action française, Der italienische Faschismus, Der Nationalsozialismus). New York: New American Library. ISBN 9780451008619 [LG]
- ↑ Aimé Césaire (1950). Discourse on colonialism (Discours sur le colonialisme). [PDF] France: Réclame. ISBN 1583670254
- ↑ “The party, moreover, facilitates the accumulation of private fortunes and industrial empires by its foremost members and collaborators through "privatization" and other measures, thereby intensifying centralization of economic affairs and government in an increasingly narrow group that may for all practical purposes be termed the national socialist elite.”
Sidney Merlin (1943). Trends in German economic control since 1933 (p. 207). The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 57. doi: 10.2307/1882751 [HUB] - ↑ “Hitler's writings and speeches, public and private, left no doubt that Lebensraum, or living space, was to be gained on the continent rather than overseas. The German equivalent of British India or French Algeria was not Cameroon, Togo or German Southwest Africa but central and east Europe, as some scholars have reminded the advocates of the salt water colonial paradigm.”
Thomas Kühne (2013). Colonialism and the Holocaust: continuities, causations, and complexities: 'German colonialism and German peculiarities' (p. 343). Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 15. doi: 10.1080/14623528.2013.821229 [HUB] - ↑ “Many of the Lebensraum justifications that Hitler and Nazis used directly echoed the justifications given for American Manifest Destiny. (...) National Socialists took on the mantle of noble colonizers who were fighting against ignoble savages. Not surprisingly, scholars recognize that these Nazi ideas on Lebensraum were largely modeled on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century understandings of American expansion.”
Robert J. Miller (2020). Nazi Germany's race laws, the United States, and American Indians (p. 14).