German fascism is back in the headlines - sixty years after Hitler first took power. What are the differences between fascism today and the Nazis of the 1930s? RAY SPILLANE reports. AS LONG as capitalism exists there will always be space for far right groups to function (and to be used by the state when required).
Trotsky identified the nature of fascismas a movement of the petit-bourgeoisie aimed like a battering ram against the working class'.
He predicted that the fascists could only come to power through violent struggle - at which point the party would become incorporated into the state and would lose its character as a social movement.
And it was Trotsky who set out the correct tactic, that of the united front, which would have been the only method to unite an ideologically divided working class against the fasdist threat.
When Trotsky theorised what National Socialism was, others fiercely contested his analysis.
Divided
While the Stalinised Communist Parties were still claiming the German CP had done nothing wrong in its suicidal Third Period' turn, which had divided the German working class by branding social democracy as the main enemy, and arguing any tascist government would be short February 13, 1993 No. 37 that this will only be as a last resort.
In Germany after the defeat in vyvyi tnere was conanuous political turmoil until the Nazis silenced any debate after coming to power in 1933. Only after right-wing Bonapartist government had failed to curt he strength of the working class did the bourgeoisie tum to Hitler to save them from the threat of revolution.
The experience of bourEurope under fascism was of political instability which meant that any profits were far from guaranteed.
The concrete question, therefore is whether any bourgeoisie currently sufficiently desperate to risk playing the fascist card. Today this is not yet the case.
Of course this does not mean that the far right can simply be ignored. Uniess fascism is stamped out in its infancy, it can bide its time building slowuntil fresh onset of capitalist crisis opens new opportunities.
Meanwhile, the media's focus on fascist attacks, and not the huge anti-racist mobilisations which are also growing in Germany also plays into the hands of the far right by implying that there is little resistance and that fascism is going from strength to strength. similarities can be seen with the Meanwhile, the media's focus on fascist attacks, and not the huge anti-racist mobilisations which are also growing in Germany also plays into the to strength. 30s is in the willingness of social democracy to accept increasingly draconian measures daiming that it is in an attempt to save "democracy bulwark against the far right.
In this context the decision of the SPD in Germany to restrict the right to asylum can onsy play into the hands of the racists and fascists.
This process of tightened immi gration controls is closel inks with the Maastricht Treaty. The creation of"Fortress Europe, with its secret agreements on refugees worked out by both the Trevi and Schengen groups, will only fuel the fires of rising xenophobia and the far right.
Serious damage has already been done. Regardless of whether Maastricht is ratified, the Ad hoc Group on Immigration has approved a policy under which refugees should at best be relocated within their original connent, and their own state authority for protection.
without any massive far right breakthrough, their violence is growing in Europe and in Britain. The Campaign Against Racism and Fascism in a recent press release identified a minimum of 59 people killed in 1992 as a result of either fasThe situation in Britain is if anythins we excepoon tater than the rule compared to the rest of Europe. It does not dishands of the far right by implying that there is little resistance and that fascism is going from strength