Anti-fascism
December 13, 2006After nearly two years of research, I’ve finally started working on some draft sections of what I hope will become a manuscript for the long (if not hotly) anticipated book. Of course, my research is ongoing as well (as is my day job, and my parenting responsibilities), which means I have even less time than previously for writing things that get posted here. So, while I will try to maintain my more or less monthly efforts to update the blog, new posts may become even less frequent in the new year.
At the same time, I wanted to alert people to one of the newer items up over at the STO web archive: the collection called Fascism in the US?, which gives a good sampling of the group’s thinking on fascism and anti-fascism. In many ways, the pieces in this document help shed light on some of the more interesting developments in anti-fascist theory and practice over the past two decades. One could argue that STO’s work around developing anti-fascist strategies has had more long term influence on radical activism than anything else the group was involved in during its nearly two-decade history.
One particularly important essay is “Fascism: Some Common Misperceptions” by Noel Ignatin, which draws some sharp lines about what fascism is and is not (eg. it’s not just a synonym for “very bad” politics). Even today, this piece, now nearly thirty years old, should be required reading for anyone on the left who wants to talk about fascism and anti-fascism with any degree of clarity. The following selection, for example, challenges notions of fascism that are still common on the left:
“Suppose, for a moment, a situation where the bourgeoisie was exhausted, divided, unable to command any longer the respect of the population, but where the working class is not sufficiently conscious and organised to rule as a class. Could a mob inflamed by radical slogans without class content come to power and proceed to expropriate the bourgeoisie while retaining the essential feature of bourgeois social relations, namely the domination of the living laborer by previously accumulated, congealed, dead labor? Perhaps "fascist" would not be the best term to apply to such a regime, but would it not exhibit many of the features of the fascist state? How would such a regime stay in power? Most likely, it would combine violent denunciations of the old system of private property, resting on the masses’ bitter memories of private exploitation, with constant appeals for vigilance lest the old way be restored. It would strengthen the state apparatus, and scornfully dismiss appeals for free speech and press as opening the door for the class enemy to return. Lastly, it would mobilize the population by means of a constant and deafening clamor of propaganda, officially approved mass organizations in every sphere of life, public rallies and demonstrations, supervised collective study and character re-molding, perhaps through some device like the Catholic confessional or ritual group discussions of individual errors.”
In 2006, I think it’s safe to say that "the proletariat is not sufficiently conscious and organized to rule as a class" in most of the world, while movements that look much like Ignatin’s description have sprung up on all continents, although they are in power almost nowhere. But in a context where the left looks for fascism in the white house rather than in insurgent resistance movements, the possibilities outlined by Ignatin are too easily dismissed.
And, while we’re at it, people should check out the blog threewayfight, which was inspired in part by the continuing legacy of STO’s approach to anti-fascism, and which extends many of these insights into the new terrain of the twentifirst century.
