“Alerta! – Snapshots of Europe’s Anti-Fascist Struggle,” by Patrick Strickland, 2018
This book is a journalistic trip through 5 European
countries’ anti-fascist and fascist movements in 2016-2018. While dated, it confirms basics of the
anti-fascist struggle. The countries he
visited are Germany, Greece, Slovakia, Italy and Croatia, with asides about
Hungary, England and France.
The generalizations:
1. The
conservative/rightist/authoritarian parties have over-lapping politics with the
neo-fascists groupings. They are
symbiotic.
2. Fascism,
like any ideology, spreads across national borders.
3. The
police and media especially enable the far right.
4. Anarchists,
communists, anti-fascist and anti-racist forces deal with them through direct
confrontation.
5. Neo-fascist
ideology in Europe is the typical mix of anti-Semitism, racism,
ethno-nationalism, sexism, anti-communism, anti-Romani attitudes, homophobia,
Islamophobia, Euro-skepticism and Christianity.
6. The
neo-fascists laud Putin, Brexit, Orban, Le Pen and from the
past, the Greek military dictatorship, the Croatian Ustaše, Hitler, Mussolini, the
Slovak Nazi collaborator Tiso, the Italian fascist philosopher Evola and
others.
7. While
some U.S. leftists seem to be supremely ignorant of this tactic, and think they
have ‘allies,’ fascists make appeals to backward workers with class-angled rightist
and populist slogans. Duh.
8. Refugees,
asylum seekers and immigrants from the Middle East and Africa are now the main
targets.
9. The
election of Trump encouraged European neo-fascist formations.
10. Neo-fascists
gain electoral support when there is no class-based, left-wing mass alternative.
11. Pan-Slavic
neo-fascists in Slovakia have recruited volunteers to fight for Russia in the
Donbas for years.
12. Fascists
combine electoral work with physical attacks in each country. Every group forms militias.
13. In
Italy, neo-fascist groupings like Forza Nuova and CasaPound are linked to the
Mafia and Spada Clan criminal groups.
14. These
European groups promote endless and nonsensical conspiracy theories, Holocaust
denial, Pepe the Frog and ‘fake news’ charges.
15. In
Croatia the government or sabotage has destroyed around half of the anti-fascist
memorials in the country.
16. The liberalization
and destruction of the Yugoslav workers’ state sparked far-right nationalism
and ethnic hatred in all its component parts. This was also true in eastern Germany and other former workers' states.
In many ways, the development of fascist movements is more
developed in Europe than in the U.S. so a reader might learn something from
this book. Strickland seems to be most sympathetic to anarchist / antifa
methods of confrontation, mutual aid refugee squats in Greece and anti-fascist
gyms, while citing individuals confronting fascism. He includes short histories of the rule of
fascist organizations in the past, and details the present groups building upon
that history and some of those opposing them.
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box,
upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive, using these terms: ‘Anti-Fascist
Series,’ or Fascism Today, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate; Against
the Fascist Creep; Fighting Fascism (Zetkin); The Real Red Pill; No Fascist
USA; The Ultra-Right; It Can’t Happen Here (Lewis); Anti-Fascism, Sports,
Sobriety; The Coming Storm; A Fascist Edge; Clandestine Occupations;
Charlottesville, Virginia; What is the Matter With the Rural U.S.?; Angry White
Men.
And I bought it at May Day’s excellent used/cutout section!
Red Frog
July 9, 2022
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