THE BETHUNE INSTITUTE FOR ANTI-FASCIST STUDIES Research Director: David Lethbridge Web: http://bethuneinstitute.org E-mail: [log in to unmask] - June 2002 - ----- ____________________________________________________________________ THE UNDERBELLY OF NOSTALGIC FASCISM BENEATH THE POST-FASCISM OF CONTEMPORARY IMPERIALISM ____________________________________________________________________ David Lethbridge http://www.bethuneinstitute.org/documents/underbelly.html Sometimes a single image says everything; it remains only to unpack its contradictions. Case in point: there is a photograph of David Duke, the former Nazi, the former Klansman, and now leader of the white racist National Organization for European American Rights, standing beside Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the French fascist party, the Front Nationale. Le Pen's arm is around Duke's shoulder, each man smiling broadly for the camera. What is the meaning of this image? What political reality does it so concretely represent? On the one hand, it speaks to the loosely aligned network of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, antisemites, reactionary ultra-nationalists, and racist populists that stretches from the USA through Canada, Europe, and Russia; the hundreds of organizations led by David Duke, Don Black, Paul Fromm, Marc Lemire, and so many others; the Klans, the neo-Nazi groups, the British National Party, the Front Nationale and dozens of similar parties in all quarters of Europe. These are the organizations and leaders so often simply identified with the phrase "contemporary fascism." But this network, this political formation, is not at all the face of contemporary fascism. On the contrary, it is a nostalgic underbelly of a fascism that is far more dangerous for being so rarely identified as such - the technocratic, heavily militarized, post-fascism of contemporary imperialism. This underbelly of nostalgic fascism looks resolutely backward; its dystopia lies always in the past. The heart of its demagogic propaganda is the "pure nation" - the pure white nation - of the nineteenth century. Allied around this central concept, are a series of other concepts, sometimes hidden, sometimes nakedly revealed, but always oriented towards a politics of time past: white racism, antisemitism, homophobia, clericalism, Christian Identity, Strasserism, Hitlerism, Holocaust-denial. Nostalgic fascism unites the imperialist project of the nineteenth century with the classic fascist horror of the 1920s to the 1940s. Which is not to say that nostalgic fascism can simply be written off as a descending moment, a collapsing termite-ridden structure, in the overall movement of history. The recent elections in France are evidence enough of that. Suddenly faced with a choice between the fascist leader Le Pen, and the reactionary right-wing Chirac, the vote went overwhelmingly for Chirac, (not least because the large French Left failed to unite around an alternative.) So that now Chirac - quite fraudulently - claims to speak for all of France. And Chirac has made it clear that he intends to do away with many of the progressive positions the French working class had won decades ago. French workers, for example, had won a 35 hour work week. But soon that 35 hour week will be gone. The constraint over capital that French workers commanded, partial though it was, is being actively eroded. The nostalgic fascism represented by Le Pen, and by the whole international network that stands behind him, pushes the political center ever further to the right. And yet, why Le Pen? Why Duke? Why Fromm? The most powerful card in their hand, the one they play repeatedly and which they hope can trump all others, is the immigration card. "Hordes of non-white immigrants are swarming into the white homelands," they declare. Asians, Moslems, Africans are alleged to be overwhelming Europe and North America. "The white birth rate is dropping! The tide must be stemmed! Soon the great nations of white European civilization will become nothing more than foul third-world slums inhabited by diseased and sullen mongrels!" This racist diatribe is repeated a thousand times daily by the propagandists of nostalgic fascism. Nevertheless, and despite its horrendous racism, in the present political juncture it cannot be said that this is a losing strategy. Indeed, anti-immigrant politics is the primary force behind the relative successes of the far-right. And it is a politics to which the liberals have no answer since to face the question squarely would reveal nothing but the post-fascism of contemporary imperialism. Why are relatively large numbers from Asia and Africa emigrating into Europe and North America? The answer reveals a scandal that the ruling classes are not eager for the masses to hear. Centuries of colonialism, and the more recent phenomena of neo-colonialism, the political and military crushing of national liberation struggles, the deliberate policy of under-development, the policies of corporate globalization, and the conscious undermining of the economic and political power of the so-called Third World, has led to a situation of on-going starvation and poverty, misery and hopelessness. The prosperity of the imperialist nations is predicated on the poverty of the rest of the world. Post-fascism is still a fascism. But it resembles hardly at all the underbelly of nostalgic fascism. Post-fascism can do away almost entirely with antisemitism; it no longer requires it. Post-fascism can do away with overt Hitlerism, and Holocaust-denial. Even racism, sexism, and homophobia, while still notoriously and extensively practiced, are no longer, strictly speaking, required elements of post-fascism. All that is required in post-fascism is the essence of fascism - the destruction of working class power, the ruthless elimination of every movement toward socialism, and global tyranny backed up by an increasingly vicious and automated military machine. Nostalgic fascism and the militarized technological post-fascism of contemporary imperialism (and, in particular, US imperialism) are sometimes moving in the same direction; sometimes they are in opposition; but always they are operating within the same problematic. They are - in the profound sense of materialist dialectics - existing in a hesitant unity fraught with contradiction. There are other images, ones which exist only in the imagination. It is possible to see, behind the smiling united image of Duke and Le Pen, the ghost of George W. Bush, embracing these monsters with one arm while pushing them aside with the other. And there are still other images, which hold now an almost clandestine power: the Winter Palace on the evening before the insurrection, the snow falling lightly from the sky, red flags gathering far from view, but moving closer... Copyright © 1998-02, The Bethune Institute for Anti-Fascist Studies ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to: [log in to unmask] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~