There’s a diary that has made the Rec list that purports to explain how the “extreme” Left was responsible for the triumph of Fascism in the 1930’s. It uses this claim as a spring board for asserting that the present day “extreme Left” threatens to do the same for the Trump regime. It proclaims that this is what “History tells us”.
One of the historical causes of the rise of the far right was the collapse of the central left and the rise of far left. In Germany, communists engaged in street fights with fascists organizations that often-left dozens dead and spread fear and confusion. This violence, along with calls for revolution by the left (often sponsored by the USSR), had horrific effects. Firstly, they often drove established business and military interests into the welcoming arms of the fascist right. Secondly, they helped to legitimize extra-legal political action and spread the very fear upon which fascists thrive. General strikes and riots also proved to be no match for the armed, militant far right. The organized left failed catastrophically when it came to stopping the European far right in the 1930s, we must learn from their mistakes.
This claim is, in a word, bunk.
To begin with, Fascism didn’t arise in the 1930’s and its immediate target was not the extreme Left but Democracy itself. While Fascism did indeed exploit anti-Communism, it was itself a movement that sought to destroy the existing Parliamentary systems in favor of a totalitarian State. This can be clearly observed from Mussolini’s siezure of power in 1922 onward.
Likewise, the roots of Fascism in Germany are found in the immediate aftermath of WWI and predate the founding of the Nazi Party. The organization of the paramilitary Freikorps by the German Army had as much to do with limiting and eventually undermining the Weimar Republic as it did with any fear of communism.
No one familiar with the actual historical development of Fascism could accept the caricature that the diarist presents as fact.
The Fascist elements in Italy and Germany did not engage in violence as a response to violence by the “extreme Left”. Violence was integral to Fascism from its inception. From the beginning Fascists aimed at the overthrow of the existing political order and the violent suppression of all opposition and dissent. This is easily demonstrated by their actual use of violence against anyone they perceived as an opponent, regardless of their political coloration, including the assassination of elected Office Holders and Government Ministers.
The claim that such violence was in any way a reaction to violence by the “extreme Left” amounts to a credulous embrace of the very propaganda the Fascists used to justify their own brutality.
Moreover, the 1930’s was the decade when the “extreme Left”, as defined by the diarist, was pushing for a Popular Front against Fascism and a policy of Collective Security among European Nations opposed to Fascism.
Whatever else may be said about these positions, they certainly weren’t arguments for “ ideological purity” or division.
Nor was it the “extreme Left” that adopted the policy of appeasment that led to the Western European Democracies failure to defend the Spanish Republic against forces backed by Hitler and Mussolin,i or their betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich. That was the work of the supposed moderates in the governments of Britain and France.
The failure to effectively confront and defeat Fascism in the 20’s and 30’s can’t be laid solely at the feet of the “extreme” Left without departing from an accurate depiction of the reality those times. That failure was common across the political spectrum.
The suggestion that the rise of Fascism can be attributed to the extremism of the Left amounts to nothing more than an attempt to obscure the general culpability of Democratic forces and existing Institutions. It cannot do other than divide and weaken the resistance to the Fascist impulses currently confronting us. It could hardly be otherwise, since it essentially rest on the same propaganda points that the Fascists used for that very purpose in the 20’s and 30’s.
That’s the actual lesson that history teaches us.