Right wing authoritarianism could open the door to fascism and war

Phil Hearse continues the debate on Trump, Brexit and the dangers from the right.

Neil Faulkner (This is what modern fascism looks like on this site) is right to sound the tocsin about the dangers involved in the new surge of right wing authoritarianism. But his article includes formulations about fascism and the stage we are at that are not necessarily implied by his analysis and could lead to misunderstandings – in particular using the title “This is What Modern Fascism Looks Like” and the formulation “I fear that the election of Trump in 2016 may turn out to have the significance of Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933.” I think this telescopes the argument somewhat and implies the danger of fascism has already become a reality.

Neil details the threat from the far right across a range of European countries. In particular there is the likelihood that Austrian Freedom Party leader Norbert Hofer, already installed as interim co-Chancellor, will win the re-run Presidential election next year, and the growing possibility that Front National leader Marine Le Pen will win the presidential election next year in France.

It’s now obvious that the Brexit vote in Britain and the Trump victory in the United States are part of, and will further deepen, a right wing trend in world politics. The immediate reason for this is the 2008 economic crash and its aftermath, which further damaged the economic prospects for millions already hit by decades of neoliberalism. In the United States the growth in poverty and inequality is dramatic. It’s not just the Mid-West rustbelt workers who feel they’ve been left behind, but millions in the urban centres are suffering the same demoralising crisis.

Take New York. The richest city in the world (probably not quite). The city that never sleeps (true). A centre of untold riches for a few (also true) and comfortable affluence for most. That last bit is definitely untrue. Nearly 50% of New Yorkers live in poverty or near poverty. Huge sections of the population, many of whom have two or three jobs and who almost literally never sleep, are struggling to survive.

Poverty has taken a specific form in New York, paralleled in many desirable urban centres – rack renting. In Brooklyn it is reckoned that the typical household will spend 67% of its income on rent. In the Bronx it is 54%. For the millions on low wages, the city is becoming unaffordable.

The crushing effects of neoliberal austerity, combined with the decades-long decline of manufacturing industry, have created a new audience for the far right. In addition to the reactionary sections of the middle class, right wing authoritarianism has built a base in poorer sections of the working class that feel they have been ignored and forgotten.

This of course is the case with UKIP in Britain, where UKIP has garnered support even in former mining and steel-working strongholds in South Wales and Yorkshire, but also in France and the United States. This kind of electoral bloc, between the reactionary petty bourgeoisie (and bourgeoisie) and deprived sections of the working class reproduces the social and political base of fascism in the 1920s and ‘30s.

Every major crisis of capitalism tends to produce a political polarisation, with the strengthening of the militant left and the far right, and a squeezing of the discredited ‘centre’ – like the Democrats in the USA and the Socialist Party in France. So of in the United States’ presidential election there was the huge support for Bernie Sanders on the left as well as for Trump. In Britain there is Corbyn as well as UKIP and the Tory right. Realistically today you have to say the polarisation is mainly to the right, despite developments like Sanders, Corbyn, Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece.

To put it another way: right wing authoritarian parties have seized the ground of critical opposition to the status quo that should be occupied by the left. And once your enemies take over your political space it is often very difficult to win it back. One thing obvious in the responses to Brexit and Trump is that liberals are in utter shock that such things could happen (watch Jon Snow on Channel 4 News or read Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian). What Marxists have warned about for years, rejected as catastrophist and alarmist by liberals, is actually coming to pass.

The victories of the xenophobic and racist hard right have dashed many illusions. In 2013 Sunny Handal wrote an optimistic article in the Guardian claiming that “Multiculturalism has won”. Quoting a Lord Ashcroft survey that found that 90% recognised Britain was now a multicultural country and 70% thought that was a good thing, Sunny Handal claimed:

“The first point to note is that the continuous war waged by the rightwing press against multiculturalism has utterly failed. Public opinion has in fact moved in the opposite direction and become less hostile to people of different cultures and ethnicities living in the UK. In other words, interacting with ethnic minorities and watching them contribute to the UK (in sport, business, academia etc) has easily overcome tabloid scaremongering. This doesn’t just illustrate the limited impact of the press and politicians, but the power of everyday experiences in changing opinions.” (Guardian 22/4/13)

Nobody could write those words today, just three years later. It probably painted a rosy picture in 2013, but after the flood of refugees in the last two years the right wing press and TV have indeed sustained a discourse that enabled the racists and xenophobes to seize the initiative.

What explains the fact that the hard right has so outdistanced the left? As Neil Faulkner points out successive defeats of the workers movement by neoliberalism over decades – with the consequent destruction of working class industrial ‘bastions’ – have gravely weakened trade unions and the left. But this has been topped off by a massive reactionary ideological offensive in today’s hugely powerful mass media, something that is very difficult for socialists to fight.

This offensive has succeeded amongst big sections of the population in advanced countries in creating a reactionary ‘common sense’, what Foucault called a ‘regime of truth’. This includes, depending on the country concerned, an admixture of hostility to radicalism and the workers movement, with huge dollops of racism and xenophobia thrown in (the cutting edge of which today in Islamophobia). Look at the media operation against Jeremy Corbyn. Look at the hysteria over the new waves of immigration coming from the Middle East and Africa.

Xenophobic nationalism is the crucial cement holding up the authoritarian rightwing parties. It has deep roots in the history of imperialism and slavery in the advanced countries. And crucially it is recycled constantly by the mass media, for example by the repeated TV appearances of Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage, ‘normalising’ their reactionary discourse and making them ‘mainstream’ political figures.

Does the success of the extreme right mean they represent a modern form of fascism and are we indeed on the verge of fascist victories?

Modern right-wing authoritarianism shares many features with classical fascism, but there is a major difference between (most of) them and the Hitlerite and Mussolini movements. In Italy and Germany fascism used massive levels of violence to completely destroy the militant workers movement. Trump, Farage and Le Pen do not yet represent such a development, and in many ways they don’t need it. For example Donald Trump doesn’t need to create a movement of street thugs, because one already exists – the heavily armed US police forces. In any case an enormous layer of armed reactionary militias, Klansmen, bikers and other degenerate low life exists in the US if he ever needed to mobilise auxiliary thugs.

In addition the mass militant workers movement either doesn’t exist (USA) or is severely weakened and diminished, as in most European countries. There is no need for a brownshirt type movement to crush it.

If classical fascism of the 1930s type has not taken power anywhere since 1945, then there have been governments that were the functional equivalent. The 1973 military coup in Chile did crush the workers movement with extreme violence, but the fascist Patria y Libertad movement played only a minor auxiliary role. What one might expect of fascism – the closing down of all opposition parties, the destruction of press freedom, thousands of extra-judicial killings, the subordination of the judiciary and all other parts of the state to the will of the military junta – all this was faithfully reproduced in Chile. Economically though Chile adopted neoliberalism, not classical fascist state capitalism.

In Indonesia in 1965 the military coup, backed by the right-wing Muslim party, butchered a million communists and their supporters, maybe more. It installed a military dictatorship, not classical fascism. As Trotsky pointed out, once in power fascism trends to degenerate into military dictatorship as the street-fighting squadristri are demobilised or integrated into the regular army. Once again the military were the functional equivalent of fascism.

What would be the scenario if an authoritarian right-wing party came to power in a major European country? Would it gradually grow into full-scale fascism? Would bourgeois democracy be at risk? A good way of looking at this issue is to study what’s happened in Turkey.

There, until at least the general election of June 2015, it could be argued that multi-party bourgeois democracy existed, albeit with an authoritarian government and a tough military-police apparatus. Once President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamic AKP (Justice and Development) party failed to gain an overall majority in that election, a systematic assault on democracy was launched from within the state apparatus, and the war against the Kurds restarted, to try to re-cement a majority around nationalist sentiments.

Especially after the July 2016 attempted military coup democratic rights have been systematically shut down. Up to 100,000 civil servants, judges, teachers, journalists and military officers have lost their jobs. Thirty thousand oppositionists have been locked up. The left-Kurdish HDP (People’s Democratic Party) has been in practice banned and all its key leaders arrested. Torture of prisoners is routine.

Up till now though the tens of thousands of AKP supporters have not been used as a street-fighting militia. Repression of the Kurds and the Left has been left to the police and army.

The Kurdish rebel movement the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) routinely calls the Erdogan government ‘fascist’, but this is an exaggeration. It is a dictatorial right-wing authoritarian government that could at a future date install a fascist-like regime.

Similarly, in my view the installation of a Front National government in France or a UKIP-led government in the UK would not in itself signify the victory of fascism. But it would be a big step towards it. A real regime of terror would be launched against immigrants in an attempt to deport millions; major attacks on democratic liberties would occur simultaneously, doubtless including a purge of state employees. The road to fascism would be open.

Hitler’s movement came to power in 1933, with Hitler being installed as Chancellor in January. The Nazis gradually purged and took over the state apparatus from within, but also using their street fighters to terrorise opponents. Are we in such a situation now? Not yet, but we are in a situation where further victories of the authoritarian right could lead in that direction.

Nigel Farage’s decision to try to organise a march of 100,000 in an attempt to intimidate the High Court over launching Brexit via Article 50, represents a first stage in the Mosleyisation of his movement. Marine Le Pen has a very efficient and exceptionally violent stewarding force at her disposal. Right wing authoritarian governments could rely on both police repression and their own street fighting mobs.

If we are not yet in a 1933-type situation, then it would be foolish to assume that it could not occur. We have considerable resources in the workers movement, left and pro-democracy forces. Unfortunately many of these are today sleepwalking, deluding themselves about the Brexit vote and even the vote for Donald Trump.

Sunny Handal’s argument on multiculturalism is certainly true of young people. If the radical left and the workers movement wakes up and launches a massive anti-racist movement including a fight for free movement in Europe, there will be huge numbers of young people won to the fight.

One thing that the surge of the super-nationalist right seems to imply is the increased danger of war between major powers. Donald Trump has promised not just to withdraw from trade treaties like NAFTA and TTIP, but to slap double-digit duty taxes of Chinese imports. Brexit plus Trump plus right wing victories in Europe would probably see s sharp rise in protectionism, the collapse of the EU and trade wars.

Socialists don’t support anti-working class trade treaties, but neither do we support nationalist protectionism. In the past wars between major powers have always involved economic conflicts. Never mind Trump’s admiration for Vladimir Putin. A world of nationalist trade wars in which resource wars – in the Artic, in the South China Sea, in Central Africa and in the Middle East – are also ongoing, is a world in which the danger of an armed clash between major powers is massively increased. Time to sound the tocsin!