Tag Archives: fascism

David Gray

How do we deal with this epidemic of Nazi salutes?

By David Gray | Sat 22nd February 2025 - 11:43 am

Steve Bannon has become the latest high profile political figure to give a fascist salute, with this one coming during the increasingly extreme CPAC convention.

I suspect that if a decade ago, you told someone that we would be having a debate on whether or not this is acceptable, you would have been met with incredulity, yet here we are. Of course, it all originated from Elon Musk. And if this had been an isolated incident, followed by a swift apology, then I could probably accept it. Perhaps I am being generous, but I honestly don’t believe Musk deliberately gave that salute – I believe he is a physically awkward individual who got carried away and performed a gesture that is, unfortunately, pretty much an exact replica of a fascist salute. Any reasonable person, on having this pointed out to them, would apologise immediately and pledge to be more careful in future.

But Musk, who seems determined to build his entire public persona around trolling his political foes (and I use the word ‘trolling’ very deliberately – most of his views are derived from internet memes and viral content with scant regard for factual accuracy), is not a reasonable person. Instead, he gave the impression of finding the furore it caused rather funny. In a more sensible political age, his supporters would have been keen not to shine a light on this most injudicious of actions, but we are so politically polarised now that they felt they had to not just back him but copy him. It reminds me of one of the very few true statements to have been uttered by Donald Trump – that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and (he) wouldn’t lose any voters”. Although ostensibly joking, there was sadly more truth in this than perhaps even he realised. The same is now broadly true of Elon Musk.

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Steve Trevethan

Seeking indicators of totalitarianism and democracy?

By Steve Trevethan | Wed 14th December 2022 - 12:35 pm

In comment to his recent important article The army should not be called as strike breakers, Mr Boddington asserts that “We are not a totalitarian state but the direction of travel is to restrict freedoms”. If so, this is serious and demands that we seek indicators/bench marks of totalitarianism.

Totalitarianism concentrates power, wealth, status and so on and so does Fascism. Like all forms of totalitarianism, fascism contrasts with and opposes democracy. Consequently, the more Fascism flourishes and grows, so Democracy diminishes and becomes more vulnerable. What makes democracy yet more vulnerable are generally accepted attitudes to the effect that, “We are a democracy, so it can’t possibly happen here!”, “We defeated Fascism in World War II.”, “It’s only a temporary thing!”

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington lists 12 Early Warning Signs of Fascism:

  1. Powerful and continuing nationalism
  2. Disdain for human rights
  3. Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
  4. Rampant sexism
  5. Controlled mass media
  6. Obsession with national security
  7. Religion and government intertwined
  8. Corporate power protected
  9. Labor power suppressed
  10. Disdain for intellectual and the arts
  11. Obsession with crime and punishment
  12. Rampant cronyism

Using  the classic “Happy Form” rating system whereby a nothing rating gets a 0 and a severe rating gets a 10, as the writer did,  you get an informative reasonably accurate, if personal, calibration of where we, the citizens, and various ingredients of our society and its governance are in relationship to Democracy and Fascism. You also have a tolerably legitimate indication of where we and the organisations which represent and protect us, are on a spectrum or continuum between the contrasting poles of Democracy and Fascism.

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Flo Clucas

Contagion

By Flo Clucas | Thu 3rd October 2019 - 1:54 pm

Canvassing is one of those things that many of us take for granted. It is part of what we do. Occasionally a meeting on a doorstep will echo down the years, coming back into the mind and setting a scene.

Such a meeting happened to me some years ago. It was in a Labour Ward in Liverpool, at the height of the Militant Tendancy regime. I knocked at a door in a Council estate and asked the gentleman who came to the door if he would vote for us. As I anticipated, he said no, he wouldn’t. So I asked who he would be supporting, expecting him to say, ‘Labour’.

But no. He looked at me and said: ‘ I’m voting Conservative.’ I couldn’t resist and asked him why.

‘Well, they’re born to rule, aren’t they’.

It is a picture that has stayed with me ever since. An old man, probably without two pennies to his name, supporting Mrs Thatcher. It has been a puzzle that has come back to me time and time again.

And here we are, in 2019, with the Brexit party soaking up Tory supporters and members, appealing to working class voters and the Tories through Boris Johnson, an old Etonian for Heaven’s sake,  trying to capture Labour seats.

Selling the vision that Britain won the war so can ‘get Brexit done’ is an advertising slogan that has been bought in to. If it was an advertisement, the ASA would soon smack those responsible down! But, in politics, there is no standards authority.

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Edwin Black

Liberal Anti-Fascism

By Edwin Black | Thu 17th January 2019 - 3:30 pm

The death of Pawel Adamowicz marks a turning point.

With the rise of the right there has been a spike in political violence in Europe and in the US. Bombs are being thrown, people threatened, and people killed in the name of so-called “populism”. The moment Adamowicz’s killer linked his actions with allegations levelled at the Civic Platform group of politicians is the moment when it became a political act.

The same goes for the murder of the MP Jo Cox. These are symptoms of the augmentation of what we deem as populism to a far more reactionary line of thinking, which will end, organically, in all out fascism. These exact paths have been trodden before.

What can liberals do about it? Adamowicz’s life was one of political action. As a student he organised protests and strikes across Poland during the time of Soviet occupation. He was a champion of minority rights and those of the LGBT community. He was, for all the things he did and said, a good man. I say that we ought to follow his example.

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Edwin Moriarty

A new propaganda

By Edwin Moriarty | Wed 18th January 2017 - 11:55 am

Very nearly every political movement since the late 18th century has its roots in the enlightenment, from American constitutionalism to the rational imperialism of Napoleon. It is hard to overstate its influence on every strand of modern political thought, from conservatism to socialism to liberalism. All built on this revelation: that facts matter more than faith, and reason is greater than fear.

The fascism of Italy, that spread like wildfire across Europe and then the rest of the world, was not built on the foundations of the enlightenment. It was instead a rejection of the values espoused by it, a direct reaction to reason and humanism. Fascism dictates that acting as one is more important than what is actually true, and that the truth dictated by those in power is supreme to any other, no matter what evidence might say. As Sartre said: “ have chosen hate because hate is a faith to them; at the outset they have chosen to devalue words and reasons.”

I recently finished reading Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev, a harrowing account of the post-Soviet media under Putin’s regime. He describes how the propaganda under Putin, like that of the Nazi Party and the Italian Fascists before it, works not by espousing a single version of the truth, but by undermining the very concept of truth. It calls into doubt all sources, until the public believes none, and instead sees all truth merely as an act of faith. Evidence is not of intrinsic worth in a such an environment, but is instead perceived to be a rhetorical tool like any other.

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Daniel Furr

Opinion: Britain has become a corporate state, not a free society

By Daniel Furr | Fri 24th August 2012 - 8:52 am

In the months after the financial crisis in 2008, I recall a conversation with an American friend of mine; we discussed the fallout and numerous rescue packages by countries. Financial media outlets, such as Bloomberg and CNBC, described the capital injections into financial institutions as a sign we are “all socialists now” – according to my American companion, this was far from the truth. In reality, Western economies have turned the page to fascism, not socialism.

When he mentioned this to me, I confess, it was rather amusing to listen to; very sceptical of such claims, until the request to research the facts myself led me to a worrying conclusion. The truth of matter is that we are not far off from what British fascists in the 1930s thought the financial sector should administrate to the rest of society.

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