Rise of a new fascism or bankruptcy of the Old “Left” ?, Takis Fotopoulos, The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 9, Nos. 1/2 (2013)

The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 9, Nos. 1/2 (Winter-Summer 2013)

Abstract: An unprecedented mass movement “from below” is currently spreading throughout Europe, challenging the EU directly but also neoliberal globalization indirectly. This movement is essentially comprised of the victims of globalization who are driven to mass unemployment and poverty, as well as to homelessness, starvation or even suicide. These popular strata sooner or later become aware of the fraud of the degenerate “Left,” which consciously misleads them by claiming that the current disaster could be overcome even within the EU, despite the loss of economic and national sovereignty that it directly or indirectly imposes on its members. Inevitably, these strata turn to nationalist movements of all kinds, since these are the only ones that raise the anti-EU flag: from patriotic to neo-Nazi movements ― depending on the local conditions. Then, the same “Left,” instead of leading the struggle of workers and unemployed against the EU, accuses these movements as “fascist” and leads a bogus “anti-fascist” movement, which paradoxically does not include also the present government in Ukraine that is fully supported by the Transnational Elite.

A new political phenomenon, which characterizes the New World Order (NWO) of neoliberal globalization and, at the political level, the parliamentary junta, is the effective abolition of the old political divide ― established formally during the French Revolution ― between Right and Left.

Traditionally, on the Right, were all those political forces that supported the continuation and reproduction of the “establishment,” which, since the emergence of the capitalist market economy, about two centuries ago, was represented by the ruling class that was running bourgeois parliamentary “democracy” and the (national) capitalist market economy. At the same time, on the Left, were those who advocated the overthrow of the establishment in the above sense, i.e. the antisystemic Left (which included Marxists, anarchists and more recently antisystemic ecologists ― unlike today’s completely integrated into the NWO Greens of the Cohn-Bendit kind), as well as social democrats, who, before the Second World War expressed a radical middle position between the Right and the antisystemic Left. So, by definition, the Right supported “law and order” and whatever that implied in terms of inequality, hierarchy and the privileges of the advantaged social strata, while the Left fought for either the overthrow of the “status quo” or, at least, the drastic reform of the system with the aim to improve social welfare, ameliorate inequality and so on.

The fundamental characteristic of this political divide was that the main arena in which the struggle between Left and Right was taking place was the nation-state, even if the Left (particularly the Marxist but also the libertarian Left) was traditionally internationalist, until it adopted in practice the strategy of “socialism in one country” because of the objective conditions it faced, although in theory it remained internationalist. However, it is precisely this arena that is being eliminated by the current NWO, which is literally "pulling the rug" from under the traditional Left-Right divide. The consequences are the seismic changes that we see today across the whole political spectrum.

As regards the Left, what we see today is the political bankruptcy of the traditional Left, both in the narrow sense of its electoral percentages, and, most importantly, in the broader sense of its role as a hegemonic force at the political, ideological and cultural levels. Thus, the antisystemic Left has mostly eclipsed,[1] while the liberal “Left,” even though it continues surviving politically, it has been fully integrated into the NWO, as its demands are anything but subversive, see Die Linke in Germany and SYRIZA in Greece. On the other hand, the part of the Left which belongs to the communist Left, although it does raise subversive demands, they remain purely theoretical, if not rhetoric, as long as they are not accompanied by a transitional programme and a corresponding subversive political action (see e.g. the Greek Communist Party, KKE, perhaps the most orthodox CP in Europe). Finally, most anarchists have either abandoned any antisystemic project within the framework of a postmodernist kind of pseudo-anarchism, or have simply converted into a kind of life-style anarchism.[2]

So, in the globalization era, parties and organizations may define themselves as Left, communist, anarchist, “Green,” etc, but they do not challenge ― both in theory and in practice ― the NWO itself, i.e. globalization and the main international institutions implementing the neoliberal policies, such as the EU. Furthermore, they do not question in effect the ideology and culture of globalization but instead adopt most of its agenda (identity politics, human rights etc.). No wonder what passes as “Left” today (from the intelligentsia up to the political parties expressing it) has lost its ideological hegemony, incapable of defining anymore the political agenda for radical change. Inevitably, the Left in the globalization era seems no longer capable of attracting the popular strata ― who are the main victims of globalization ― on a mass scale. Yet, this was the role of the Left in the past, when the Left was still a subversive mass movement that mainly attracted the popular strata, and not just the privileged “caviar Leftists,” who seek minor reforms through the degenerate “Left,” as is the case today. Unsurprisingly, most of these popular strata turn to the nationalist Right at present, as we shall see next.

Therefore, seismic changes can also be seen on the Right. The traditional conservative parties of today have only survived thanks to the social strata that have clearly benefited from globalization and which therefore sustain them. But, at the same time, the traditional parties of the Right have been losing support from the popular strata which went through a process of embourgeoisement during the period of social democracy but are now getting poorer because of the mass unemployment and poverty that globalization brings with it! However, these popular strata that are being crushed by globalization and are now leaving the established Right do not cross the floor to the degenerate “Left,” which has also been fully integrated into the NWO. Crucially, these popular strata do not join either the communist, let alone the pseudo-libertarian Left, forces that are supposedly fighting for self-management but which “fail” to see the strangulation of the popular strata by globalization, the EU etc! Particularly so, as most of these forces keep parroting the mantra of a Paleolithic “internationalism,” which ends up supporting the present globalization and its institutions, like the EU! Instead, these masses of people which are disgusted with the EU and the economic catastrophe brought to them by it move to support various nationalist movements and parties flourishing all over Europe at the moment.

The events in Ukraine have been instructive, even though the mass media of the Transnational Elite (TE) have created the false impression that there has been a popular “revolution” there by cretins fighting for their right to become the TE's slaves within the EU, so that they may starve like the Greek people! But I will not dwell here on the orange “revolution” that has just been staged in this country by the pro-western bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie of Kiev, with the decisive assistance of the provocateurs of the TE's intelligence services who organized it[3] but rather on the two main lessons to be learned from it, which are especially important for all European peoples and, in particular, for the Greek people.

Firstly, social struggle in the era of neoliberal globalization can no longer be just a struggle for social liberation, as obsolete Marxists still believe today and some Trotskyites have always believed even during the Nazi occupation when they called upon German workers in the Nazi army to fraternize with occupied workers, while some “Marxists” and “anarchists” today still call for similar fraternization between the Zionist occupiers in Israel and the occupied Palestinians! The struggle for social liberation today must, first and foremost, be a struggle for national liberation. This becomes obvious when one considers the fact that, when a country (not belonging to the TE, i.e. mainly the “G7”) is incorporated into neoliberal globalization, it loses every trace of economic and, consequently, national sovereignty. This is why the struggle for social liberation today is inconceivable unless it has already gone through national liberation. The occupying troops that are now destroying and plundering Greece (or Portugal, Spain and Italy) and its weakest social strata (with the full cooperation of a small, local privileged elite which controls the media, the political parties, the “Left” intelligentsia etc.) are not a regular army in uniform and with lethal weapons of physical violence at their disposal, but an economic army in suits, possessing equally lethal instruments of economic violence, as well as the means to justify it.

Secondly, the target of social struggle today can only be neoliberal globalization, which is managed by a TE ensuring that only its own bogus revolutions succeed (the orange “revolutions” in Eastern Europe in the past[4] and today, or the pseudo-uprisings in Libya,[5] Syria, etc.) while even the attempted uprisings of the TE's victims in Greece and elsewhere are suppressed in the most brutal way as soon as they occur - and yet Baroness Ashton finds nothing wrong with this, nor does she detect any violation of human rights occurring. Similarly, the peoples who resist being integrated into neoliberal globalization are condemned to remorseless slaughter, as the Libyan and Syrian people have been. Nevertheless, the impudent Barroso did not hesitate to declare that human rights had been violated in Ukraine when the police dared to beat "protesters" who attacked government buildings with bulldozers, “forgetting” that such conduct in any other “democratic” EU country would have sent many to the morgue!

In other words, contrary to the misleading propaganda of the degenerate “Left,” globalization is not a chimera, or just a continuation of the internationalization of the market economy taking place at the beginning of the last century, but, rather, a systemic phenomenon which can only be neoliberal within the capitalist system, as can easily be shown. Similarly, neoliberalism is neither a doctrine (of “shock” and similar fairy tales)[6] nor the bad policy making of certain "bad" neoliberal politicians and economists. It is simply the ideology of globalization. Neoliberal globalization is, in other words, the necessary institutional framework that ensures the opening and liberalization of the markets (capital, goods and labor), which is required for the effective operation of the transnational corporations that currently control the globalized economy.

On the basis of this analytical framework it is not surprising that an unprecedented mass movement "from below" is currently spreading throughout Europe, challenging the EU directly but also neoliberal globalization indirectly. This movement is essentially comprised of the victims of globalization who are driven to mass unemployment and poverty, as well as to homelessness, starvation or even suicide. These popular strata sooner or later become aware of the fraud of the degenerate “Left,” which consciously misleads them by claiming that the current disaster could be overcome even within the EU, despite the loss of economic and national sovereignty. Then, these strata inevitably turn to nationalist movements of all kinds, since these are the only ones that raise the anti-EU flag: from patriotic to neo-Nazi movements ― depending on the local conditions. But this nationalism, which both the Transnational and Zionist elites condemn with such disgust (at the very moment when the strongest nationalist state today is the Zionist one!), has little to do with the prewar aggressive nationalism that led to two World Wars. It is a new kind of nationalism which is fundamentally defensive and does not aim to conquer new “vital space” etc. like the pre-WWII nationalism. Above all, it aims to "protect" national sovereignty (national culture, domestic labor, etc.) that is under threat from the opening and liberalization of the markets imposed by globalization.

The main reason that these popular strata have been turning to nationalist movements is, therefore, not that they have suddenly become fascist (as the TE claims in an attempt to defame them); it is the bankruptcy of the degenerate "Left" which, rather than raising the anti-EU flag in place of the nationalists to promote a struggle for social and national liberation, is engaged in “antifascist” struggles together with privileged “leftists”. It is not surprising, then, that this “Left” implicitly consents to the passing of “anti-fascist” legislation, as required by the Transnational and Zionist elites, so that it may effectively ban such movements that threaten its hegemony. In Greece, for instance, a so-called “anti-racist” bill is now being passed through Parliament, which effectively bans freedom of thought (not action!). This bill means, for example, that if somebody supported the national liberation struggle of the Syrian Baathist leadership against the TE and the criminals, pretending to be rebels, who have destroyed this country, s/he might end up in jail for supporting war crimes against humanity. This is based on a very recent utterly biased report by the well known instrument of the TE, the UN Human Rights Commission, which asserted that as Navi Pillay, the UN's human rights chief, said there is “massive evidence ... [of] very serious crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity" and that "the evidence indicates responsibility at the highest level of government, including the head of state.”[7] Of course, neither this committee nor Navi Pillay who once said that “the Commissioner is the voice of the victim everywhere,”[8] nor its blood brothers among the NGOs for human rights (Amnesty International, Human Right Watch, etc.) have ever dreamed of declaring the arch-criminals Bush, Blair et al. to be guilty of war crimes, even though they are responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Presumably, the millions of people killed or maimed by war criminals like them are not victims, according to Mrs Pillay's definition of a victim!

However, the Greek “Left,” i.e. the SYRIZA party, instead of mobilizing the people against this unashamedly fascist law, has quietly consented to it by merely abstaining from voting (only the Greek Communist Party and the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party voted against it). It should be noted that SYRIZA, together with its leader, Alexis Tsipras ― who has been heavily promoted by the media of the TE ― is destined by the same elites to succeed the present parliamentary junta in implementing the same policies but under a “Left” cover. Yet the sordid professional politicians who voted in favor of this openly fascist law dare to speak of democracy and the fight against fascism. This blatant bankruptcy of the “Left” is yet another major reason why a mass popular Front is needed in Greece and in all other countries which have fallen victim to the TE that administers neoliberal globalization, as I stressed in my last article.

[1] Takis Fotopoulos, “The End of Traditional Antisystemic Movements and the Need for A New Type of Antisystemic Movement Today,” Democracy & Nature, Vol.7, No.3 (November 2001), pp. 415-455.

[2] Murray Bookchin, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism (Edinburgh: AK Press, 1995).

[3] See e.g. Stephen Lendman, “Ukraine: Orange Revolution 2.0?,” Global Research (6/12/2013).

[4] Takis Fotopoulos, “The Ukrainian Crisis and the Transnational Elite,” The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol.1, No.4 (July 2005).

[5] Takis Fotopoulos, “The Pseudo-Revolution in Libya and the Degenerate Left,” Part I & Part II, The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter-Spring 2011).

[6] See e.g. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine (Penguin, 2007).

[7] Ian Black, “Assad implicated in Syrian war crimes, says UN,” The Guardian (3/12/2013).

[8] Jonah Fisher, “Profile: New UN human rights chief,” BBC News (28/7/2008).

The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 9, Nos. 1/2 (Winter/Summer 2013) ; Contributors ; Editorial ; Rise of a new fascism or bankruptcy of the Old Left? Or, how the anti-EU movement spread all over Europe...apart from Ukraine, Takis Fotopoulos ; The real causes of the catastrophic crisis in Greece and the “Left”, Takis Fotopoulos ; The Italian slap to the transnational elite, Greece and global governance, Takis Fotopoulos ; NSA and PRISM: myths of parliamentary democracy and culmination of a parliamentary coup, John Sargis ; Baghdad Roof, Dave Hamra