FASCISM: A FALSE RVOLUTION
by Michael Parenti
Fascism is a false revolution. It makes a revolutionary appeal without making
an actual revolution. It propagates the widely proclaimed New Order while
serving the same old monied interests.
Before World War I, Benito Mussolini was a socialist, but the minute the
wealthy classes in Italy offered him financial support and power, he didn't
hesitate to switch sides. (We know about people who switch sides, don't
we?) And with the huge sums he got from wealthy interests, Mussolini was
able to project himself onto the national scene as the leader of a movement
that specialized in attacking unions, peasant farm cooperatives, socialists,
communists, and anarchists. After World War I, to maintain profit levels,
the large industrialists and big land owners had to slash wages and raise
prices. The state, in turn, had to provide the big owners with massive subsidies
and tax exemptions. To finance this corporate welfarism, the populists had
to be taxed more heavily, and social welfare expenditures drastically cut.
(Does all of this sound familiar?) But the government wasn't completely
free to apply harsh measures because many Italian workers and peasants had
their own unions and fairly strong political organizations. With demonstrations,
strikes, boycotts, factory takeovers, they won substantial concessions in
wages and work conditions and the right to organize and were able to defend
their standard of living. To roll back that standard of living and to get
the economic changes that the plutocrats and tycoons wanted, the ruling
interests had to abolish the democratic rights that helped workers and peasants
defend that standard. The solution was to smash their organizations and
their political liberties. The leaders of industry, along with top bankers
and agribusiness associations, met with Mussolini to plan and finance the
so-called "Fascist Revolution." Within two years after seizing
state power, Mussolini had shut down all opposition newspapers and crushed
the socialist, liberal, Catholic, democratic, and republican parties, which
together had commanded about 80% of the vote.
In Germany, there was a very similar pattern of complicity between fascists
and capitalists. German workers and farm laborers had won the eight-hour
day, unemployment insurance, the right to unionize. They had built very
powerful political organizations, but heavy industry and big finance were
in a state of near total collapse. Business wanted to cut wages and get
tax-cuts and massive state subsidies to revive profit levels. The German
tycoons greatly increased their subsidies to Hitler, and the Nazi party
was propelled onto the national stage.
Who did Mussolini and Hitler support once they seized state power? In both
countries a strikingly similar agenda was pursued. Labor unions and strikes
were outlawed, union property and publications were confiscated, farm cooperatives
were handed over to rich private owners, big agribusiness farming was heavily
subsidized. In both Germany and Italy the already modest wages of the workers
were cut drastically; in Germany, from 25-40%; in Italy, 50%. In both countries
the minimum wage laws, overtime pay, and factory safety regulations were
abolished or turned into dead letters. Taxes were increased for the general
populace, but lowered or eliminated for the rich and big business. Inheritance
taxes for the wealthy were greatly reduced or abolished. Both Mussolini
and Hitler showed their gratitude to their business patrons by handing over
to them publicly owned and perfectly solvent steel mills, power plants,
banks, steamship companies ("privatization," it's called here).
Both regimes dipped heavily into the public treasury to refloat or subsidize
heavy industry (corporate welfarism). Both states guaranteed a return on
the capital invested by giant corporations and assumed most of the risks
and losses on investment. (Sounds like S&Ls, doesn't it?)
As in all reactionary regimes, public capital was raided by private capital.
As a result, in Italy during the 1930s the economy was gripped by recession,
a staggering public debt, and widespread corruption, but industrial profits
rose, and the armaments factories busily rolled out the weapons. In Germany,
unemployment was eased somewhat because of the massive arms program and
the arms spending. But generally, poverty increased. But from 1935-1943,
the net income of German corporate leaders rose 46%. In both countries,
the conditions of labor deteriorated greatly: speed-ups, dismissals, imprisonment
for workers who complained about unsafe or inhumane work conditions, longer
hours for less wages.
Much of politics is the rational manipulation of irrational symbols. In
fascism, these irrational, atavistic appeals go back to the mythical roots
of the people: for Mussolini, back to the grandeur that was Rome; for Hitler,
the ancient volk. Then there's the cult of the leader: Il Duce, the Führer.
With leader worship and state worship came the glorification of militarism,
war, and conquest-basically conservative symbols to get people distracted
from their own immediate political/economic class-interests and get them
galvanized into war, the conquest, militarism.
Fascist doctrines stress one people, one state, one leader. The people are
no longer to be concerned with class divisions, but must see themselves
as part of a harmonious, authoritarian whole, a view that supports the socioeconomic
status quo. In contrast, a left agenda advocates a sharpened awareness of
class injustice and class struggle, the articulation of popular demands
and the self-generated participation of popular forces.
Fascism, especially the Nazi version, had an explicit commitment to racism.
Human attributes are said to be inherited through blood. Genetics and biology
are said to justify the existing class structure (just as our academic racists
today are doing with their bell curve theories and their warmed over eugenics
clap-trap.)
Fascism also supports sexual inequality and homophobia. The oppression of
gays was criminal and homicidal; the oppression of women was traditionally
patriarchal. "Women's greatest calling is to tend to the needs of her
husband and children, producing as many [children] as she can for the state."
In Nazi Germany, racism and anti-Semitism were used to rechannel some legitimate
grievances to irrelevant enemies (scapegoating). Many middle-class Germans
knew they were victimized by powerful economic forces, but they were too
bound up in the conventional social order to adopt a revolutionary course,
so they went in a fascist direction and started voting for the Nazi parties.
Anti-Semitic propaganda was very emotive and irrational, but cleverly crafted
to appeal to certain groups. Workers and peasants were told, "It's
the Jewish capitalists, the Jewish usurers, who are doing this." The
middle class was told, "It's the Jewish trade union leaders and the
Jewish communists who are doing this." The superpatriots were told,
"The Jew is the enemy alien, an internationalist." This is the
rational use of irrational symbols and arguments.
What distinguished fascism from ordinary right-wing autocracies was the
way it attempted to cultivate a revolutionary aura and give the impression
of being a mass movement. Fascism offers a beguiling mix of revolutionary
sounding mass-appeals and reactionary class politics. The Nazi party's full
name was the National Socialist German Workers Party. Both the Italian fascists
and the Nazis consciously tried to imitate the left: youth organizations,
mass mobilizations, rallies, parades, banners, symbols, slogans, uniforms.
And I think for this reason, too, many mainstream writers treat fascism
and communism as totalitarian twins. But most workers and peasants could
tell the difference. Industrialists and bankers could tell the difference.
And certainly the communists and the fascists could tell the difference.
Western capitalist states have tolerated and cooperated with fascism. After
World War II, the Western capitalist allies did little to eradicate fascism
from Italy or Germany except for the Nuremburg trials, but the police, the
courts, the military, security agencies, the bureaucracy have remained largely
staffed by those who had served the former Nazi regimes, or their ideological
recruits, and that remains true to this day. How do you murder six million
Jews, a half million Gypsies, several million Ukrainians, Russians, Poles,
and others, and thousands of homosexuals, and get away with it? The only
way you get away with it is that the very people who are supposed to look
into these crimes were themselves complicit.
What happened to the U.S. businesses that collaborated with fascism? Corporations
like DuPont, Ford, General Motors, ITT, owned factories in these enemy countries
that produced fuel, tanks, and planes that wreaked havoc on Allied forces
during World War II. After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason,
ITT collected $27 million from the U.S. government for war damages inflicted
on its German plants by Allied bombings. General Motors collected $33 million.
Since the war, U.S. leaders have done their part in keeping Italian fascism
alive, giving millions of dollars to right-wing organizations and neo-fascist
organizations in Italy.
A coalition of neo-fascist and separatist groups headed by media tycoon
Silvio Berlusconi won the 1994 elections in Italy. Their platform: a single
tax rate for rich and poor alike, school vouchers, a stripping away of the
welfare state, the introduction of private retirement accounts, and, of
course, the privatization of just about everything. The Italian neo-fascists
are learning from the American reactionaries how to achieve fascism's goals
under democratic forms with democratic facades-use an upbeat, Reaganesque
optimism; convince people that government is the enemy (especially its social
democracy aspects); strengthen the repressive capacities of the state; instigate
resentments against the newly arrived immigrants; and preach the imaginary
virtues of the free market.
The political center is always described as a kind of moderate place between
the extremes of left and right. A closer reading of history should tell
us that the center is more inclined to make common cause with the right
against the left, because the center and the right share a commitment to
corporate capitalism and the free market mythology. In the United States
consider how gently, for generations, the murderous, lynching night riders,
the Ku Klux Klan was treated by federal authorities in this country. Compare
that to the way the Black Panthers were treated. Consider how the right
is investigated, compared to the left. When the Center for Cuban Studies
in New York was bombed by a right-wing Cuban group, which boasted, admitted,
they did the act, the FBI didn't have a clue, couldn't find them.
Far from being moderates, as they're always labeled, people in the political
center are quite capable of the most immoderate and extremist acts imaginable.
It was the Democratic party who gave us the loyalty purges of the late 1940s.
It was the Democratic party that gave us Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Vietnam.
It wasn't the John Birch Society that tried to bomb Indochina into the Stone
Age. It wasn't the American Nazi Party that perfected napalm. Napalm was
developed at Harvard. It wasn't the Nazis who put thalidomide in the defoliants
used throughout Indochina. And today, it's not the skinheads or the Klan
or the militia that maintains the death squads and other homicidal operations
throughout so much of the Third World. It's the best and the brightest of
the political center, with plenty of help from the right wing. The way the
mainstream shades off into the fascist right can be seen quite clearly in
the Republican Party. The GOP agenda today is really not much different
from the kind pushed by Mussolini and Hitler; it's fascism without the swastika,
it's fascism in a pinstriped suit. First, break the labor unions, depress
wages, impose a rightist ideological monopoly over the media.
The rest of the GOP agenda is to eliminate cultural dissidents and the arts,
attack the rights of women and gays, abolish taxes for the big corporations
and the rich, eliminate government regulations designed for worker and consumer
safety and environmental protection, privatize and plunder public lands
and enterprises, wipe out public services-and cloak this whole reactionary
agenda in a kind of a revolutionary sound. Newt Gingrich talks about the
GOP "revolution." Some revolution! It's the same old reactionary
class agenda. And today in the United States, some middle class Americans,
like the middle class Germans of yore, beset by real economic difficulties,
turn their anger toward irrelevant or imaginary foes: the immigrants, the
Jews, the poor, the welfare mothers, people of color, feminists, gays, atheists,
and others.
Growing numbers of us have lost our skepticism that "it could never
happen here" because it is happening here. We are facing the Nazi-like
Omnibus Counter-Terrorism Bill of 1995, which in effect suspends all Constitutional
rights for anyone designated by the President as a terrorist, and anyone
giving aid to those labeled terrorists. If you give money to an organization,
it might go to their radical wing and you can be labeled a terrorist.
Something else explains the speed-up of reactionism in America today. For
years the United States leaders and political and economic elites saw themselves
in mortal combat with communism for the allegiance of peoples at home and
abroad. They argued that U.S. workers enjoyed a higher standard of living
than their counterparts who lived under communism. That was always a theme.
"Our workers earn more, our workers live better than anybody under
communism, so stick with capitalism." Competition with an anti-capitalist
system sets limits on how far to mistreat the working populace. Long before
the collapse of communism they tried to break unions, they tried to depress
wages, but now they're dropping all pretenses at capitalism with a human
face.
The potential threat of workers getting radicalized wasn't the only restraining
factor. It was also the working class's ability to fight back, to win democratic
victories, the eight-hour day, Social Security and various benefits. When
the communist nations were overthrown in Eastern Europe, a very interesting
querulous and irate note began to appear in some of the conservative publications.
It went like this: "Eastern Europe is now moving toward a total free
market, so why must we here in the United States still have to tolerate
these collectivistic, liberal regulations and restraints that are put upon
us? Now is the time to sock it to the public. There's no reason why masses
of people in this country should have a middle class living standard. It's
time these people lower their expectations, work harder, and be satisfied
with less.
With the collapse of communism, there's been a shift in policy toward the
Third World too. "You're not going to turn to Moscow now, Moscow's
in our pocket." So they're hitting them hard. The IMF, the World Bank,
GATT, NAFTA, are undermining the sovereignty of Third World nations, plundering
their markets, drastically cutting non-military foreign aid, and in some
cases directly invading them and destroying the government that had any
reformist tendencies or was maintaining economic development. U.S. leaders
are making war against economic nationalism in countries like India, Brazil,
Mexico, Iraq, Panama, South Korea, Taiwan and so forth.
A lot of people on the left still don't get it- that these guys are playing
for keeps, that they are going after you, that they are not going to leave
any little bit for you. There's only one thing that the ruling circles throughout
history have ever wanted-all the wealth, the treasures, and the profitable
returns; all the choice lands and forests and game and herds and harvests
and mineral deposits and precious metals of the earth; all the productive
facilities and gainful inventiveness and technologies; all the control positions
of the state and other major institutions; all public supports and subsidies,
privileges and immunities; all the protections of the law and none of its
constraints; all of the services and comforts and luxuries and advantages
of civil society with none of the taxes and none of the costs. Every ruling
class in history has wanted only this-all the rewards and none of the burdens.
The danger of fascism comes not from skinheads or the militia or the Christian
right fanatics. It comes from the ongoing practices of the National Security
State and its various enforcement agencies; it comes from the boardrooms
of corporate America. But before we pronounce ourselves doomed, keep in
mind that at the present time, there are people who are demonstrating and
getting arrested and raising hell to protect the environment and the forests;
there are others who are doing the same at nuclear submarine bases; there
are people who are demonstrating for justice and against racism in the judicial
system as the national protests for Mumia Abul-Jamal show. There are people
protesting against nuclear testing in the South Pacific, against Medicare
cuts and family assistance cuts, against the suppression of the homeless,
against the anti-immigration laws, and for affirmative action. There are
large majorities in this country who even support welfare, if you don't
call it welfare, if you say "Should government help the poor, should
government do more for the poor?"
We have to get a lot angrier and a lot more determined. They want everything,
and everything is at stake. Many people are getting angry; our job is to
see that they direct their anger at the real perpetrators of their misery,
and not against the very people who want to make common cause with them.
When the power of capital is increasingly untrammeled, all of us are put
at risk: the environment, the sacred forests, the beautiful and mysterious
creatures of the sea, the ordinary people who, with their strength and brains
and inventiveness create community and give to life so much that's worthy
of our respect. The real burden to society is not the poor, but the corporate
rich. We simply can no longer afford them.
Conservatives complain whenever we fight back; they say we're engaging in
"class war." Well, I believe it is class war, but I also have
another name for it. When people unite against the abuses of wealth and
privilege, when they activate themselves and militantly attack the hypocrisies
and lies of the powers that be, when they fight back and become the active
agents of their own destiny, when they withdraw their empowering responses
and refuse to toe that line, I call that "democracy." Their first
loyalty is to the dollar; our first loyalty is to democracy and to the well-
being of our society and our Mother Earth.
NCY Feb Mar 1996
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