If fascism arose again in Europe, what would the British response be?

[redsquirrel]

The book makes Hitler sound like a reckless, suicidal gambler whose luck inexplicably paid off.

Well I don't know about suicidal but Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler paints a similar portrait.

 

[butchersapron]

Not surprisingly since Kershaw was rather strongly influenced by Mason's marxist interpretation.

 

[Casually Red]

[quote="ViolentPanda, post:

The French hard right holds entire city councils and parliamentary seats. It's a little more of a concern than the BNP.

former communist strongholds too , more worryingly

WW2 "only started" because Hitler, after successfully annexing Czechoslovakia and reintegrating various parts of the 2nd Reich into his 3rd Reich by bullying and political and military manouvering, pushed a bit too hard. He got away with five years of moving "outside Germany" before Poland, and there was a reasonable chance that Chamberlain would have forgotten British promises to Poland just like they did to Czechoslovakia. He could easily have gotten away with Poland too if he hadn't pushed quite so hard so quickly.

if he'd just have manouvred into russia as Churchill et al had wanted all along theyd probably all have been on the one side .

 

[Casually Red]

I'm willing to bet a very considerable amount of money that you are wrong about this.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

p.s. and before any smart Alec says anything, I'm not drawing on personal experience...or that of a 'friend'.

i borrowed a Ushanka the other week to attend a fancy dress party , but it was immediately assumed i wanted it for bedroom purposes.

If i was ever going to get into that stuff it would be the helga/herr flick scenario , sadly

although those young ladies pioneer uniforms look quite fetching though.

 

[Casually Red]

So we can't really compare Hitler's Germany to a democratically elected far right regime then? Ok, the op just speaks of a democratically elected extreme right wing government I think. I doubt that government would murder sections of its population so I guess the answer is that our government would work with them if it was in UK interests to do that.

Hitlers Germany started out as a democratically elected extreme right wing government .

 

[SpineyNorman]

Posted without reading whole thread - d'oh.

 

[frogwoman]

the revolutionary right came to power as a direct result of the failure of liberal capitalism , which is on the verge of another catastrophic failure . It was encouraged by liberal capitalists as a bulwark to a then strident left . The difference today though is that the european left is so utterly and absolutely shit and no threat to anyones interests whatsoever that theres no need for liberal capitalism to sponsor a hardline alternative to it .

Thats not to say that a combination of a failure of massive proportions within european markets , a derisory european left wing and annoyance with mass immigration wont cause some very hairy far right stuff right accross europe.
Its very very eaasy to get people to hate each other if thats your agenda . The dangers cant be overlooked .

I also think that just because a government isn't technically fascist, it doesn't mean that it can't behave in a way which is often associated with fascism.

 

[Casually Red]

their current resource wars against the underdeveloped world from libya to Iraq are a direct product of a militarist and master race mindset . The Obama/Clinton bypassing of congressional approval to launch war is the mindset of those who believe they are born to a higher purpose and dont feel the need to be constrained by either law or democratic checks and balances .

Put more simply if it was our towns they were dropping their bombs on and not someone elses i suspect our opinions of how fascist they are might be a bit different . But no less valid to the overall debate.

That was Hitlers and nazisms biggest crime in europe . To adopt the idea that it was fair game to treat white europeans in the manner white europeans treated the rest of the world - the actual vast majority of humanity .

 

[ViolentPanda]

Hitlers Germany started out as a democratically elected extreme right wing government .

With Hitler's party as part of a governing coalition which Hitler then manouvered and coerced into dissolving itself while leaving the NSDAP with a simulacrum of legitimacy.

 

[frogwoman]

The NSDAP never had a majority.

 

[DotCommunist]

that fire was dodgy as fuck too-blamed on the commies as per.

 

[frogwoman]

Anyway, I said earlier that the threat from the far-right was the extent to which their policies have been co-opted by mainstream politicians. However, I'd also say that more organised far-right terrorism a la Breivik etc is definitely a possibility.

 

[ViolentPanda]

The NSDAP never had a majority.

Nope. Only 32% at the final election, hence the coalition.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The underlying assumption of the question - that Fascism is somehow something that isn't British - is false.

If anything, Britain may be more susceptible to falling to a regime with some fascist features than other countries precisely because it has never experienced such a thing in the past. One thing that we can be damned sure of is that Germany won't become a fascist regime again in the foreseeable future. I can't see it happening here either, but I see it as even more inconceivable in Germany.

 

[butchersapron]

Pretty clearly no such assumption in the OP at all - hence the question. That was its whole reason, the lack of any such assumption.

So what would the British response be to such an event? Prior to WW2 the far right had a prominent presence in the form of the BUF, but eventually we fell on the side of liberal democracy. Would the same happen again?

 

[Pinette]

That's not that controversial these days is it? I thought it was largely agreed that Germany had to be expansionistic.

Red Squirrel - how old are you? Who agrees that Germany 'had to be expansionistic' and from which sources do you glean your misinformation? And your desecration of the English language makes me puke.

 

[butchersapron]

Red Squirrel - how old are you? Who agrees that Germany 'had to be expansionistic' and from which sources do you glean your misinformation? And your desecration of the English language makes me puke.

You've totally misunderstood what he means i believe and think he's in some way justifying the actions of the nazi regime. He's not, he's pointing out that many scholars and specialists in Nazi germnay have argued that due to number of dynamics the Nazi regime's was internally unstable and that external conquest was one of the few ways to deal with this instability (amongst other things). The author we were talking about who did the most to develop this approach has arguably been the most influential writer on Nazi Germany of the post-war years. His thesis is totally respectable and is in no way in justifying the Nazis actions. It would have been odd if he did what with him being a marxist and all.

Now, where is this 'misinformation' you are talking about?

 

[frogwoman]

The underlying assumption of the question - that Fascism is somehow something that isn't British - is false.

If anything, Britain may be more susceptible to falling to a regime with some fascist features than other countries precisely because it has never experienced such a thing in the past. One thing that we can be damned sure of is that Germany won't become a fascist regime again in the foreseeable future. I can't see it happening here either, but I see it as even more inconceivable in Germany.

Good point - but I think that if a fascist government in the classical sense appeared, in germany, the UK or elsewhere, it will not be recognised as such by the bourgeois political establishment precisely because it has happened before - they will look at it think that because it's not WWII it isn't fascism.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Good point - but I think that if a fascist government in the classical sense appeared, in germany, the UK or elsewhere, it will not be recognised as such by the bourgeois political establishment precisely because it has happened before - they will look at it think that because it's not WWII it isn't fascism.

Yeah, maybe. Tbh, I find this whole line of reasoning fruitless. This isn't the way to understand today's Europe.

 

[frogwoman]

Yep. It wasn't the way to understand 1930s Europe either. Gotta keep an eye on the buggers though.

 

[Pinette]

You've totally misunderstood what he means i believe and think he's in some way justifying the actions of the nazi regime. He's not, he's pointing out that many scholars and specialists in Nazi germnay have argued that due to number of dynamics the Nazi regime's was internally unstable and that external conquest was one of the few ways to deal with this instability (amongst other things). The author we were talking about who did the most to develop this approach has arguably been the most influential writer on Nazi Germany of the post-war years. His thesis is totally respectable and is in no way in justifying the Nazis actions. It would have been odd if he did what with him being a marxist and all.

Now, where is this 'misinformation' you are talking about?

Sorry, Butchers. Don't want to hurt people. But a post like Red Squirrel's didn't exactly set out what, if any, argument they were defending, or not. And whatever sympathy you may hold and however many books you may have read the thesis that any country 'has' to pursue such a hateful and inhuman policy just beggars belief.

 

[redsquirrel]

Who agrees that Germany 'had to be expansionistic' and from which sources do you glean your misinformation?

I was asking Phil (and the board in general) a question, because I was surprised when he called Mason's argument mad. I thought that the idea that Germany was forced to be expansionistic was quite widely accepted nowadays, but I'm not claiming to be an expert in the area.

As for sources, I've got most of my knowledge of subject from the work of Ian Kershaw, and I've read a little bit of Tim Mason.

 

[ayatollah]

Sorry, Butchers. Don't want to hurt people. But a post like Red Squirrel's didn't exactly set out what, if any, argument they were defending, or not. And whatever sympathy you may hold and however many books you may have read the thesis that any country 'has' to pursue such a hateful and inhuman policy just beggars belief.

The posters who point to the extremely unstable nature of the Hitler regime are quite correct. Fascism , in Germany, Italy, and everywhere else, has always been VERY unstable - certainly in the early years in power - as the aspirations of the working class and lower middle class "brownshirt" supporters who supported the fascist cause because of its very significant pre assumption of power pseudo anti capitalist rhetoric have to be "dealt with" - usually physically. Remember that the very sizeable Brownshirt fighters expected there to be a "Second (anti-capitalist) Revolution" after the Left had been suppressed. Mussolini had similar problems with the more anti capitalist of his supporters. Fascist regimes do come to power in states riven with class warfare after all.

Also the very "New Dealish" public works programme (and rearmament of course) of the Nazis was rapidly bankrupting Germany, so they literally had to overrun Europe to get hold of these countries gold reserves and resources before they ran out of cash.

And over everything else the only things that welded the disparate social groups together in Germany, Italy, etc , was expansionist nationalism, anti communism, (and in the German case) rabid anti semitism. This violent ideological predisposition to expand and conquer is part and parcel of fascism , and these regimes are like trick cyclists on a high wire .... to keep restive, deeply divided internal populations in check, they HAVE to pursue wars against perceived internal and external foes.

That is Fascism - the Hitler regime was driven by poisonous internal ideological, political, and economic dynamics to do precisely what it did. It could have been no other way, once Big Business decided to try and ride the fascist tiger in the face of the threat from the Left.

 

[frogwoman]

Sorry, Butchers. Don't want to hurt people. But a post like Red Squirrel's didn't exactly set out what, if any, argument they were defending, or not. And whatever sympathy you may hold and however many books you may have read the thesis that any country 'has' to pursue such a hateful and inhuman policy just beggars belief.

It's not that they "have" to, it was the right thing, it was necessary, etc. It's the fact that fascism is so unstable that they couldn't do anything else. I think ideology formed a huge part of why the regime behaved as it did. However, there was a terrible logic within the regime which pursued these policies for personal and not just ideological ends. As Ayatollah points out the war in Europe was necessary for the rearmament etc to continue, for high(ish) living standards to be maintained (although sa Tim Mason describes in his book some people in Nazi Germany were practically starving up untl the war). Fascism despite its outward appearance of "national unity" and a unified totalitarian state was riven with internal conflicts especially at the higher levels of the regime, in fact its "organised chaos" organised by Hitler and perhaps one or two others in playing different departments up against each other, responsible for the same areas of policy.

It's almost unthinkable tbh, I agree and it doesn't explain the organised mass industrial genocide which sucked resources away from the war, the experiments, the revolting anti-semitism which didn't just develop as a response to the war but formed one of the main planks of Nazi policies (although often a hidden one) right from the beginning (if you look at early Nazi propaganda from around or just before when Hitler came to power, it's full of anti-semitic crap, sometimes subtly disguised but always there). But quite honestly i think that was because the Nazis were either ideologically committed to that or simply didn't give a fuck tbh

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Talking about today's Europe (including the UK in that term), the kind of ideologically driven fascism that emerged in the 1930s will not happen. Racism, for instance, will not rise again as an official ideology anywhere in Europe. Bits, nasty little bits (not so little if you're its victim, I admit), such as persecution of Romanies, will arise. Bits, nasty little bits, will be coopted from extremist racist parties to be enacted as policy by those in power. (This happened with Thatcher, who neutralised the far right as a result. We must not forget that the UK is as much a part of this process as anywhere else.) The NF will not win the presidency in France, for instance, but if they gain significant votes, the likes of Sarkozy will continue to play to the prejudices that they see in NF voters.

And the rest of us will continue to fight it, naturally. That is the process. We aren't progressing gloriously to an ever more enlightened future. But equally, we are not going to regress to a previous state. The future is up for grabs, as it always has been, and there is every reason, imho, to think that it does not belong to the political right. There is most certainly no inevitability about it.

Arthur Miller said that every generation must win its freedom anew. I think this is the right way to think about it, but the struggle is the struggle of now. The battles are also new. Old battles may need refighting, such as fighting for our rights to health, education, housing and jobs. But some old battles, such as fighting for racial or sexual equality, don't need to be rewon - we need to continue to fight to win the current battles properly, but the gains in this kind of issue made in the past will not be revoked. There are lessons from history, yes. But times also change.

 

[iROBOT]

"Lebensraum" I belive was a key key world in Germany at the time.

From Mien Kampf (pretty evident the direction he'd take Germany as far back as 1925)

Without consideration of "traditions" and prejudices, it [Germany] must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation.​

 

[iROBOT]

One thing about the previous rise of fascism in Europe was the aspect of Hitler himself. I cannot see anyone that comes close to his (in todays language) "media savvy" personality anywhere on the right in Europe. Although I must admit I've not looked hard.

 

[frogwoman]

I don't think it's going to happen either.

 

[ayatollah]

I think it's hard for (most of) us today to quite grasp how "conventional" the, what now seem unbelievably barbaric , ideas which underpinned Nazism were at the time. Remember "Eugenics" as a poisonous belief system had pretty general hegemony in Europe and the USA - so the Eugenics Institute which carried out the mass murder of the handicapped in Germany from 1934 onwards was a transplant from the USA, and funded by many big US corporations. Similarly anti semitism was incredibly widespread - and the belief that the Jews and Finance Capital were one and the same allowed the Radical Right to neatly divide off "healthy" productive capitalism from "Jewish parasitic" finance capitalism. Also remember Imperialism/colonialism with both its contempt for "Lesser subject races" , and the idea that every Great Power had to carve up its share of the world as a captive market and raw material supply, was accepted as quite normal by the rulers in every state, and hence most of their citizenry too. Hitler deeply admired British India as a model of "White Race" domination - and he saw the conquest of Russia in terms of creating a German version of British India.

So OK the exact ideological superstructure of the early 20th century is mainly gone on a mass level now, but I'm afraid that I DONT share the belief of some posters that some of the worst pogromist, genocidal, aspects of fascism couldn't arise in Europe again IF the economic and political situation became unstable enough. Just think what happened in the states of the old Yugoslavia just a few years ago - truly chilling stuff - neighbour murdering neighbour on a mass scale.

Let's not kid ourselves that our society doesn't harbour an awful lot of atavistic inter communal hatreds just beneath the surface, not likely to break surface in conditions of reasonable social peace ... BUT get an economic collapse on the scale of the Great Depression and all bets are off - communal tensions could well take on very alarming forms. I'm not for a moment suggesting this is imminant - but we all have to remain vigilant. Remember that in the catastrophe in Yugoslavia some of the worst mass murderers had previously led blameless lives as things like icecream sellers or sports coaches.

 

[LLETSA]

The underlying assumption of the question - that Fascism is somehow something that isn't British - is false.

If anything, Britain may be more susceptible to falling to a regime with some fascist features than other countries precisely because it has never experienced such a thing in the past. One thing that we can be damned sure of is that Germany won't become a fascist regime again in the foreseeable future. I can't see it happening here either, but I see it as even more inconceivable in Germany.

Fascism is unlikely anywhere in the developed capitalist world, as too many people no longer seem to believe in political solutions. The far right have to pretend they're not fascists in order to gather support from anywhere but the nutter fringe, while most of the opposition to capitalism no longer seems to know what it stands for, hence the incoherence of the protests against what's going on in the world economy.

One thing we can probably be sure of is that neither fascism nor 'socialism' are going to be victorious anywhere and that managerial politics (whose adherents are, in reality, far more politically astute than the obsessive politicos of far left and far right) is here to stay.

The disaffection with political solutions may well turn out to be a symptom of the drift towards some kind of collapse of the world economy and many of the current political setups.