Who are the new fascists?
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPaul ClarkeTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
LAST AUTUMN, the new European fascists made important electoral gains. The Lombardy League won around 10 per cent in a by-election in the northern Italian town of Brescia.
In Antwerp, the Vlaams Blok ('Flemish Bloc') won a staggering 25 percent of the vote. The far-right Austrian Peoples Party won more votes than the mainstream Tories of the Freedom Party. And Jean-Marie Le Pen's party is consistently given over 20 per cent in opinion polls.
Dramatic images of German skinheads giving the Hitler salute do not give an fully accurate impression of the reality of modern European fascism. The serious far-right forces are very different types of organisations to the German Nazis and Mussolini's fascists in the 1920s and '30s.
Classical fascism was built in the aftermath of World War 1 in a head-on battle with the labour movement, in particular the mass Communist parties. Mussolini and Hitler fought to win the allegiance of ruined sections of the middle class, and especially the unemployed, away from the alternative of socialism. This affected the form of the movement.
Fascism of course is a form of extreme reactionary capitalist dictatorship. But the fascists had the ideology and appearance of a 'revolutionary' movement, employing an anti-capitalist as well as 'anti-Bolshevik' rhetoric.
For tactical reasons the Nazis supported strikes, especially those against the Social Democratic government in Prussia. The Nazis were thus a movement for the revolutionary overthrow of liberal democracy, utilising the methods of terror and 'storm in the streets'.
How does this compare with the new fascists? By far the biggest far-right organisations are those who disavow the old-style methods. The French Front National, the German Republican Party and the German Peoples Union, the Austrian Freedom Party, the northern Italian leagues and the Flemish Vlaams Blok present themselves as parties operating within liberal democracy.
It is true that all these parties use strong arm methods and have their own goon squads. But there is nothing remotely resembling the Nazi storm-troopers or the Italian squadistri. Anti-capitalist themes are totally absent form their propaganda.
Traditional fascism constructed a 'corporate state' and politically expropriated the capitalist class, replacing its parliamentary rule with the gangster-fascist bureaucracy. For the ruling European ruling class, not least that part in Germany and Italy, it had disastrous consequences.
The most successful new fascists like Le Pen are keen to curry favour with capitalist elites who have no intentions of supporting another Hitler experiment. The Front National is recruiting heavily among young technocrats and high-flying civil servants, something the Nazis didn't do until they were on the verge of taking power.
Of course their policies are anything but 'liberal'; the coming to power of these parties would mean massive repression against immigrant workers, black people, women, lesbians and gay men – and of course the labour movement. And it is true that these parties are evolving; at a future and more intense stage of the class struggle they could take on characteristics of the old fascist parties.
Knowing the new fascists are different from their old-style parents shouldn't lead us into complacency – they are no less dangerous. But old-style fascism had different opponents and different tasks. Most importantly the Hitlerites confronted a labour movement with a strong revolutionary component, which is not true today.
To deal with strikers and other 'disorderly' elements the ruling class in Europe has constructed special riot police and repressive units. Storm-troopers are unnecessary and potentially dangerous.
Nowhere in Europe are the new fascists on the verge of taking power. But they act as a permanent pressure, dragging the political spectrum to the right, most spectacularly in France. Exposing and defeating them is an integral part of the fight against racism.