In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Chris
Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>Could anyone give an example of real fascism in the former socialist bloc,
>or describe what it would look like if it arrived?
>
>Or is there no real danger of this at all?
I should think that the emergence of a fascist movement was pretty
unlikely in the former communist bloc. After all, what need is there for
the capitalists to mobilise a fascist movement when Stalinism has
already destroyed the working class?
Ten years ago the papers were full of articles about the 'rise of
fascism' in Germany, France, Britain, Italy and everywhere else. These
movements all fizzled out. Over here anti-Nazi protesters demonstrated
outside the Italian embassy on the spurious grounds that Italy's
government was 'Nazi'. The only remaining far right group of any
influence is France's and it is just about to implode.
The error that the press and the left made was to expect history to
repeat itself (it never does). Just because a few right wing thugs start
seig-heiling doesn't meant that fascism is on the rise again. By and
large the brief flowering of the far right in the early nineties was
evidence not of the *rise* of the right wing, but of its *decline*. With
the patriotic-right losing direction, it could no longer contain its
more atavistic element from committing small outrages. But the decline
of the right also meant that the far right could not make a big impact,
being more and more out of tune with the times.
The one place that the left had a field-day projecting their fantasies
of emerging Nazism was in Eastern Europe. But even here they
misunderstood what was taking place. The re-emergent nationalisms of EE
were far from the aggressive imperialistic fascism of the inter-war
years. On the contrary - these were mostly defensive ethnic
identifications that emerged because of the collapse of centralised
power in the Eastern bloc. They had no great social base and have mostly
collapsed.
The one thing we ought to lean from Marx is the method of historical
specificity - looking at things as they are now, rather than trying to
impose a template derived from past experiences onto the present.
--
Jim heartfield
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