The rise of Europe's far right
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPhil HearseTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
IN RECENT elections far-right organisations like the Vlaams Blok in Belgium, the Freedom Party in Austria and the Lombard League in Italy have made spectacular gains. What lies behind the rise of the far right, and how can it be fought? Socialist Outlook spoke to OLIVER MACDONALD, a member of the New Left Review editorial board.
For forty years many people thought that fascism and the extreme right was dead. What lies behind its new rise?
The essential background is the economic and social crisis of the Western economies which started in the 1970s.
This includes, of course, the growth of mass unemployment, the housing crisis, the growth of poverty, the fiscal crisis of the state and other well-known crisis symptoms.
This has two connected consequences for bourgeois politics; the imposition of harsh austerity and anti-welfare policies involved the gradual emergence of more authoritarian types of bourgeois governments, like Thatcherism in Britain, and led to a reorganisation of capitalist politics.
This was an attempt to insulate all government decision-making from pressures from below and force official politics into a narrow right-wing straight-jacket.
But as part of this, and in line with the generalised cynicism about the mainstream parties, was a reorganisation of the right wing of capitalist politics.
It is a mistake to see new parties, especially pro-capitalist parties, as emerging simply 'from below'. New capitalist parties are generally the result of the mobilisation of elites, or influential groups of intellectuals, around new projects.
Thus we see in the alliance around Le Pen in France the crucial role of people organised in the Club D'Horloge, whose origins were in the Gaullist RPR. Or the people around the Schoenhuber, the leader of the Republicans in Germany, who came out of the CSU – the Bavarian wing of Kohl's party.
These people were able to link up with more sinister forces, namely the semi-submerged fascist and neo-fascist currents who had been marginalised, or kept their heads down, since the defeat of fascism in 1945.
The crux of the question is the merging of 'hard right', authoritarian, neo-liberal currents, with the old fascists. So in Germany the Schoenhuber crowd linked up with people from the NPD, a neo-Nazi group founded in the 60s; the same happened with the German Peoples Union, an organisation with much clearer fascist links than the Republicans.
In the 1970s the French Front National was more of an openly neo-Nazi current than today. It was a very small minority current on the French far-right, which was mainly led at that time by the 'Party of New Forces'.
The Austrian Freedom Party is one of the most important parties of the new far right. But Austria is the one country where there was never any systematic purge of Nazis after the second world war. These unreconstructed Nazis, often in powerful positions in society, have now come forward in Haider's Freedom Party.
As for the Belgian Vlaams Blok, here again we see how the traditions of post-war Flemish nationalism, which had made an accommodation with liberalism and the Belgian state, have been replaced by the inter-war neo-Nazi and Catholic reactionary traditions.
The MSI in Italy goes right back to people from the Mussolini movement, and has been more or less openly fascist since its foundation after the war. But this is a special case; it is not one of the 'new' parties.
Another factor we should mention is the revival of the Catholic right, given its impetus by the election of the Polish Pope Jean-Paul, which has spawned a whole network of Catholic reaction across Europe.
Finally we should mention the influence among the new far right elites of the thinking of 'Conservative revolutionaries' of the 1930s. I have in mind people like Carl Schmitt, people who were not open Nazis, but very definitely part of the January 1933 coalition which brought the Nazis to power.
Why is there in a period of crisis the growth of the far right and not the far left?
The far left suffers from any retreat of the labour movement as a whole; it is of course part of that movement.
The crisis of the labour movement starting in the 1970s involved the tremendous dislocation of the social democratic forces, and the fantastic crisis of the Communist parties.
In that situation the forces of the far left were simply too weak to play the role of genuine alternative leaderships to which the working class could turn; that is the essence of the labour movement crisis.
As a subsidiary point I would argue that the far left didn't understand the dynamic of the emerging crisis in Europe, from the viewpoint of the internationalisation of capital, and the need for internationalist responses. This would have meant a socialist programme to reunify the continent and generate economic growth, a programme for a united socialist Europe.
In a situation of growing nationalism, the 'natural' defenders of nationalism, the far right, come to the fore. And we see this in the growth of anti-federalist currents in most of the parties of the right in Europe.
The traditional petty-bourgeoisie has declined. Doesn't this rob fascism of a mass base, the kind of mass base that the German and Italian fascists had?
Yes, but we are not having a simple re-run of the German and Italian fascist movements.
If we call these parties 'neo-fascist', we mean they are the functional equivalents of the inter-war fascist parties. Anti-labour movement, anti-progressive, the new parties of the counter-revolution.
But are they the real equivalents? Surely inter-war fascism was characterised by its role as the organised armed gangs which physically crushed the labour movement?
This raises the question of the political programme, the political essence of these movements.
One of the problems in analysing this is that much of the traditional thinking of the left is that the fascists were simply a defensive reaction by the ruling class to conquer the revolution.
Of course the fascists and Nazis were that; but not only that. One part of their base was the frenzied petty-bourgeois crushed between the working class and capital. But they got strong support from sections of the bourgeoisie who had never accepted liberal democracy.
But today there is no insurgent, revolutionary labour movement like the old Communist parties in their revolutionary period. So the programme of the counter-revolution is carried by different types of parties with a different social base.
It is by no means clear that today the bourgeoisie wants to destroy the formal trappings of liberal democracy in its drive to defeat the working class. The experience with dictators led to some curious results, if you look at the overall balance sheet of Hitler and Mussolini for their respective ruling classes!
A resort to dictators is unlikely, if for no other reason than the forms of liberal democracy give fantastically good access to the bourgeoisie in controlling governments.
Traditional petty-bourgeois layers are not the only possible source of support for radical right populist capitalist parties. If the crisis deepens they can win support in new middle class layers, and even demoralised sectors of the working class, especially the unemployed – as did Hitler of course.
What is unclear is what the final programme of the far-right parties will be.
But if the Front National came to power in France through the ballot box, would it really be anything but a rather nasty right wing capitalist government? Would it be real fascism?
If the Front National came to power, it could have a different appearance to the one it has now. What I'm saying is that you can carry out the essential programme of the counter-revolution, imposing massive historical defeats on the working class, without resorting to an openly Nazi-type of state.
You could maintain competing bourgeois political parties, but utilise a feature of 'democracy' the Nazis were very keen on – the plebiscite.
Don't forget that frequently after 1933 the Nazis resorted to plebiscites to get popular support for their measures. And with the structure of mass communications today, you can imagine how Le Pen, if he were president could use the press and TV to organise plebiscites.
You already have within Western 'democracy' fantastic anti-popular legal powers. We have already seen these legal powers used against the labour movement, but not as yet to deport immigrant workers en masse.
But of course Europe does have one 20th century experience of mass deportations of ethnic minorities – the mass expulsion of the Jews from Germany and central Europe. The extermination programme really got under way in 1941. Until then, Himmler was merely expelling the Jews. This kind of thing could easily happen if a Le Pen-type government came to power, irrespective of whether it conforms with the classical model of inter-war fascism.
The great danger is that the left, on the grounds that the Front National or the German Republicans are not classical fascist movements, will underestimate the massive damage that authoritarian government of these new extreme right parties would do.
In my view the complete prostration of the social democrats and liberal democratic forces before the neo-liberal, anti-welfare state offensive of the right and far right is disastrous, and can play into the hands of the far right parties.
Le Pen and those like him have a programme of gutting the essence of the post-1945 consensus, of social and democratic rights, even if they preserve some of the forms.
Is what you're saying then that the form which the fascist movement took in the inter-war years was determined by the existence of a revolutionary wing of the workers movement which had to be militarily crushed? And that today the same programme can be implemented without recourse to the
That's exactly what I'm saying. Except that the form of inter-war fascism was not entirely determined by the need to crush the Communist parties.
It was also because important sectors of the ruling classes had never committed themselves to liberal democracy, and saw it as a weak form of government which opened itself up to a revolutionary challenge.
Many of these sectors were not modern capitalist forces at all.
Another factor was the need to unify the different fractions of the ruling classes, which were pulling in so many different directions. The emergence of dictators was a coercive way of doing that.
But of course the experience of fascism in its old form was an important learning experience for the ruling classes. The problem with dictators is that they can have cranky kitchen cabinets which make all kinds of irrational decisions from the point of view of capital accumulation. That's why ruling class support for old-style fascism is unlikely.
How should the left respond? Is it a matter of street demonstrations to expose the fascist core of these movements? Or fighting against racism? Or more generally advancing a socialist programme to build an alternative?
All these are valid approaches which need to be integrated into a coherent socialist response. But demonstrations and other mobilisations against the new fascists are very important. All of these movements, while not being based on storm troopers, do have their semi-military,street-fighting wings.
In Germany we have the great threat to immigrant workers represented by the skinhead movement; and in France the Front National youth do engage in attacks on immigrant workers. So I am very much in favour of an activist approach towards demonstrations and mobilisations against the far-right parties.
Mobilisation against the far right is directly linked to the question of self-defence of the black communities. So, while in Britain the fascist parties are relatively marginal, the level of racist attacks in the 1980s has being going up and up. Self-defence of immigrant workers needs to be linked directly to mobilisation against fascist provocations, like marches through black or immigrant areas.
Exposure activity against the fascist hard core of the far right is also important. In 1991 the German Republicans were increasingly split over revelations that their deputy chairman had made a speech about concentration camps for the reds when they came to power.
But of course, in the end the approach which says we need to fight for a socialist programme and a socialist alternative is correct. That's quite obvious, and was the bedrock of Trotsky's approach to fascism, and indeed any form of counter-revolution. Unless there is a regeneration of the fighting spirit and socialist left wing of the labour movement, then the door will be more and more open to the new far right parties.
Official politics in Europe, given the complete prostration and bankruptcy of social democracy, is being reduced to competition between the far right and different brands of pro-capitalist technocratic politics. That is a complete disaster.
So the socialist forces have to ram this massage home among all those who can be mobilised against racism and the new right. A united front against the far right is a good step forward; but the final defeat of the far right depends on building the socialist alternative.
Interview by Phil Hearse