[Hitler was satirised in the clubs of Weimar Berlin. It didn’t
stop him. We need to understand what’s happening, to physically
confront it, and, through struggle build an alternative politics that
can win back vast swathes of working people. ]
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THIS MAY FEEL LIKE THE 1930S, BUT HISTORY DOESN’T HAVE TO REPEAT
ITSELF  
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Nick Dearden
June 5, 2022
Equal Times
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_ Hitler was satirised in the clubs of Weimar Berlin. It didn’t
stop him. We need to understand what’s happening, to physically
confront it, and, through struggle build an alternative politics that
can win back vast swathes of working people. _

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In the 1930s, capitalism needed a ‘Plan B’. Faced with mass
disaffection after the financial crash of 1929, and a growing
communist movement which threatened to nationalise property and
expropriate profits, capital faced an unprecedented, existential
crisis.

Fascism provided the escape route. Sure, some of the individual
‘strongmen’ of fascism might be crude, distasteful and erratic.
But on the positive side, many leaders of finance and industry
reasoned, at least they carried with them the power to crush
resistance and put the state at the service of their economic
interests.

Today, history is repeating itself. Of course, we don’t have a
left-wing movement on the verge of taking power across the developed
world. But capitalism is nonetheless threatened as it hasn’t been
for 80 years, brought to its knees by its own logic. The burning of
the planet to make ever greater short-term profits cannot continue
without catastrophic consequences
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which most people will not tolerate. Even the very mild steps that
have been taken to address climate change are bad news for
profit-seekers.

The looting of public resources – be it public space or public
services, for example – is reaching its current limit. The result is
the worst inequality
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world has ever seen. Levels of debt, which have hitherto disguised
this inequality, are at breaking point. It can’t last forever.

A technological revolution is in progress which promises mass
automation
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adding many millions of workers to the hundreds of millions of small
farmers and peasants for which capitalism has no use. And people are
already angry.

What to do? The role which was previously taken by the fascists is
today filled by a group of authoritarian strongmen of whom Donald
Trump [[link removed]] is
the kingpin. Out-and-out fascists are in government again in Italy
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Hungary is essentially run by a fascist too, and these forces made
some gains in last month’s European elections
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But look at countries more important to the future of capitalism.
India is run by Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist whose time in
office has seen a rapidly rising wave of hate crimes, murders,
lynchings, public beatings and gang rapes, especially aimed at Muslims
and low caste groups. Brazil, once an anchor for the ‘pink tide’
of left-wing governments, is today run by Jair Bolsonaro
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an apologist for military dictatorship, a homophobe, a racist and a
misogynist who calls activist groups ‘terrorists’. The Philippines
is run by Rodrigo Duterte
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responsible for the killing of 20,000 drug users, who has compared
his war on drugs to Hitler’s extermination of the Jews
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Super-charged exploitation

Like the fascists of the 1930s, all of these strongmen rose to power
by fermenting social division. Migrants, Muslims, gay and trans
people, ‘street people’, low caste groups are demonised, as fear
is whipped up that such people are becoming too powerful and
threatening the power of dominant lower middle-class and working-class
groups. Feminism is a prime target for all these leaders; just witness
the revival of the anti-abortion message.

Once in power, just as in the 1930s, these strongmen set about
undermining and dismantling the institutions of liberal democracy –
courts, parliaments and the media. For all their inadequacies, these
institutions provide a block on the power of the Trumpists and allow
us some space to organise resistance. But the economic system can’t
withstand real resistance at this point and so these spaces must be
shut down if capitalism’s Plan B is to succeed.

And then comes the heart of the programme: super-charged exploitation
of people and planet. Whether it be Trump opening all US coastal
waters to offshore oil drilling, or Bolsonaro throwing open the Amazon
to mining, or Modi liberalising the Indian economy, undermining small
farming and traditional economies. Whether it be unprecedented
corporate tax cuts, or massive financial deregulation, or the
semi-criminalisation of climate activism. It all points in the same
direction. And it’s the reason why stock markets have been so
positive about these new strongmen.

Perhaps Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t care for Trump’s
rhetoric. I would believe it. But if Big Tech titans want the fourth
industrial revolution to benefit their bottom line rather than leading
to radical, democratic restructuring of the economy, there is a logic
to Trump’s policies – and to any rhetoric which allows him to
carry out those policies.

True too, there are massive eccentricities and contradictions in the
way these leaders behave. That’s the danger of strongmen – by
their nature you can’t control them. But the claim is not that this
is the form of society which most capitalists would ideally like to
live in. It’s that world capitalism increasingly needs this form of
society to thrive and survive.

These politics of Trumpism aren’t limited to countries already
mentioned. They are poisoning the body politic globally. Last month in
the United Kingdom, an opinion poll suggested that 54 per cent of the
public agreed with the statement: “Britain needs a strong ruler
willing to break the rules.”
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23 per cent disagreed. Across much of Europe, Asia and Latin America,
these politics are seeping into the public discourse in places where
we’d thought they were consigned to the past. And Trumpism is giving
new rhetorical cover to oppressive rulers across Africa and the Middle
East.

But Trump is the king – the symbol of how these politics can
succeed, the lynchpin of a network of funding and research. That’s
why we must oppose him when he makes his first official state visit
to the UK today. [[link removed]]

Sure, we can laugh at him, and we should. But Hitler was also
satirised in the clubs of Weimar Berlin. It didn’t stop him. We need
to understand what’s happening, to physically confront it, and,
through that struggle, to build an alternative politics that can win
back vast swathes of working people. Most of all, let’s learn a key
lesson from the failure of Germany’s left in the 1930s. We can’t
assume Trumpism will fail and will be followed by ‘us next’.
Duterte has around 80 per cent approval ratings. Modi won the Indian
elections by a landslide. Trump and Bolsonaro, while not as popular,
can’t be written off for their second terms. The left needs to end
its sectarianism. Broad alliances and radical policies are required
urgently.

We can beat climate change, use artificial intelligence to build a
better world and restrain corporate power. But we can only do so by
forming networks, locally, nationally and internationally. We are in a
weaker position than the left was in the 1930s. But we have won space,
we’ve won moderate reforms to deal with climate change, we’ve won
some long-awaited civil rights. It’s possible that the 1930s won’t
be repeated. But it won’t be easy.

_Nick Dearden is the director of Global Justice Now, a UK-based social
justice organisation working to challenge the powerful and create a
more just and equal world.  Twitter : @nickdearden75
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_Equal Times is a trilingual news and opinion website focusing on
labour, human rights, culture, development, the environment, politics
and the economy from a social justice perspective._

* Fascism
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* Authoritarianism
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* Trumpism
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* capitalism
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