Fascism In Europe

[stromboli]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100273640/european-fascism-has-returned-it-never-went-away-and-it-probably-never-will/

We used to kid ourselves by saying, “It couldn’t happen here”. Fascism in 21st century Europe was surely dead â€" rendered null and void by memories of World War II, greater wealth, multiculturalism, growing tolerance and our faith in social progress. Yet, last week a significant number of Europeans voted for far-Right movements that bear comparison with 1930s fascism. The Front National in France (25 per cent), Golden Dawn in Greece (10 per cent), the Danish People’s Party in Denmark (27 per cent), Party for Freedom in the Netherlands (12 per cent), Freedom Party in Austria (20 per cent), and Jobbik in Hungary (15 per cent). Members of Jobbik have called for Jews to sign a special register, on the grounds that they might pose a “national security risk”.
What went wrong? It’s partly the very specific circumstances of this election cycle. The focus of anger is the EU itself, which contains the mix of social liberalism, financial tyranny and internationalism that are traditional targets for the far-Right. In many countries, the centre-Right has been discredited, while the Left has either colluded with austerity or lost its proletarian soul. Fears of Islamic domination seem to have influenced the outcome of Benelux countries, although it’s tempting to link this militant secularism to the liberalising of laws on euthanasia to create a sort of “soft-eugenicist” programme that is uncomfortably close to the quest for biological purity. Moreover, there is also a case for saying that we should not panic. Establishment parties did do well (in Germany), as did the hard Left (Greece) and the anti-corruption centre (Italy).
But it’s still difficult to digest the fact that a quarter of the French voted for the Front National, a party that is essentially a descendant of Vichy collaborationist fascism. This unpleasant truth suggests two things about both history and human nature.
First, a failure to confront history might lead to repetition. The countries that voted for the far-Right are generally those that have never fully admitted guilt or sought redemption for what happened in the 1930s and 1940s. French history is clouded by the myth of the Resistance, of which practically every Frenchman claims to have been a member â€" yet the dual loyalties of figures like Francois Mitterand speaks to an altogether more complex story. The Austrian Freedom Party finds its origins in National Liberalism, which was largely subsumed into the Nazi movement under the Anschluss and today capitalises on the feeling in some parts of the country that there is nothing shameful about the country’s pan-Germanic idealism. It is the kind of place where Kurt Waldheim could be elected president; later revealed to have been a lieutenant during the war who was attached to Germany units that killed partisans and deported Greek Jews. In Eastern Europe, meanwhile, the anti-fascism of the 1950s was associated with communist imperialism. It was something imposed by the Soviet Union â€" upon, say, Hungary â€" rather than something the people wanted or felt they needed to go through for themselves. In Scandinavia and the Benelux, liberal parties dominated at the ballot box while eugenics quietly continued in the medical field: in to the 1950s, Holland was castrating people for homosexuality. Most disturbingly of all, some nations have actually witnessed a collusion between the state apparatus and neo-fascism. In post-war Italy, the Christian Democrats consciously appropriated the Mussolini vote as part of a national coalition against communism. There is even evidence that the Italian state tolerated the activities of far-Right terrorists as part of a strategy of tension â€" of contrived social anarchy â€" deemed necessary to justify the persecution of the Left.

One exception to this narrative might well be Germany, where the contemporary far-Right is very small and the centre-Right is healthily moderate and dominant. Germany has confronted its past and, crucially, accepted personal responsibility for what it once did. But critics insist that its development towards democracy was still conditioned by fascist-influence. That’s most obvious in the East, where socialism took on a parody of Prussian militarism. But in the West, the willingness to allow America to dictate the terms of German democratization, the eclipse of soul-searching by bourgeois consumerism, the political power of industries that did very well under Hitler and the overreaction of the Social Democrats to Left-wing violence in the 1970s all acted, said the New Left idealists, to suppress/disguise rather than expunge fascist tendencies. As for Germany, so for most of the rest of Europe. Both western and eastern halves of the continent, pre and post-Cold War, saw materialism as their liberation from the ghosts of Nazism. They allowed themselves to be plugged into a global economy that replaced national culture with the worship of growth. Unsurprisingly, this experiment in distraction failed. When the system collapsed, many Europeans reverted to type.
Perhaps this historical approach to understanding the elections is at once too broad and too convoluted. The vast majority of Europeans stuck with the Left or the centre and did not drift backwards; the EU project is arguably strong enough to absorb a little protest and recession has sped integration rather than slowed it. Moreover, it could be wrong to seek to understand through history something that is more easily comprehended through human nature. When poor and desperate, some people turn to the extremes. Progress is an illusion not in the sense that history sometimes lurches backwards but rather that we are all held in a moral stasis by our basest fears and desires. The New Left was wrong: consumerist capitalism is not a facet of fascism but rather both are a symptom of Original Sin.
How does Ukip fit in with this thesis? Awkwardly. Ukip attracts racists but is not a racist party. Its antecedents are the Right of the Tory Party â€" culturally reactionary, yes, but essentially libertarian and lacking a “blood and soil” definition of nationhood. They are much closer in spirit to the US Right, which defines itself by loyalty to a Constitution rather than a skin tone. Britain does have a fascist past, but it was never a mass movement and today only exists on the margins of society. It’s more like organised crime than a serious politics. Not that Britain is unsullied; we still have the legacy of imperialism properly to confront.
The bottom line is that here in the west we like to imagine that our society is superior to all others; that “western values” automatically translate into democracy and human rights. But the reality is that Enlightenment exists alongside fascism, that our history is one where good and evil are finely balanced â€" with an occasional, and devastating, advantage to evil. The return of fascism in Europe is no surprise because it never went away. It probably never will.

It is ironic to me that any fascist or right wing group would be both anti Islam and anti Jewish. Any hatred against the Jews is, as the author stated, probably a holdover from pre-WW2. Anders Breivik, the notorious white supremacist mass murderer, is strongly anti Islamic but pro Jewish. He is also apparently a Mason and even claims connection to a new version of the Knights Templar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik

In his manifesto and during interrogation, Breivik claimed membership in an "international Christian military order", which he calls the new Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici (PCCTS, Knights Templar). According to Breivik, the order was established as an "anti-Jihad crusader-organisation" that "fights" against "Islamic suppression" in London in April 2002 by nine men: two Englishmen, a Frenchman, a German, a Dutchman, a Greek, a Russian, a Norwegian (apparently Breivik), and a Serb (supposedly the initiator, not present, but represented by Breivik). The compendium gives a "2008 estimate" that there are between 15 and 80 "Justiciar Knights" in Western Europe, and an unknown number of civilian members, and Breivik expects the order to take political and military control of Western Europe.

I don't think Breivik specifically identifies with Fascism, but his version of a racially pure Christian Right militarism amounts to almost the same thing.

Germany, because of its past, has less of a showing than other countries in Europe. The author connects French fascism to the Vichy fascism of occupied France in WW2. He also notes that post war, the French heavily identified with the French resistance, but in fact there was a good deal of support for the Vichy government, a la anti Jewish sentiment. It was strong in Europe, not just Germany, prior to WW2. 

[Shiranu]

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And this is why I think we need to be very critical of any speech that puts the in-vogue minority of the day in a black and white box of sweeping generalizations. Because it can "happen again", and it's been "happening again" since WW2 ended in various countries and against various minorities.

Note: That does not mean ban that speech, simply discredit it and call it what it is when it's used.

[jonb]

When I was in France, there was a strong identification as to what your politics were by the cigarettes you smoked.  Many from outside the country do not realise the deep divisions within, which are held together by strange communal laws and taboos, such as it is often stipulated what sort of swimwear can be worn in a swimming pool. Budgie smugglers yes, bathing shorts no.

Hatred of the other which is the driver of fascist groups, has never been particularly confined to what sort of other, and at the end of the day through a single nazi's eyes everyone is other.

Lastly I think those xenophobic movements are becoming more voluble in continental Europe, but just because they were quite does not mean they were not festering away with more or less the same numbers as they have now.

[Baruch]

Being some kind of Nazi isn't just one place and time, it is part of the collective unconscious (Id) of all people, and has appeared repeatedly (in some violent xenophobia or excessive militarism).  This is why I think that progress is impossible ... regardless of technology.  The majority of people is unconscious nastiness, just like the majority of matter is "dark matter".  We can barely manage consciousness ... we are all playthings of our Id.  Today, in Europe, even before the recent refugee crisis, I regarded Muslims there as the new Diaspora Jew ... though one can't tell which century, the Gentiles are going to become feral.