It’s the 75th Anniversary of the Holocaust. So How Come Fascism’s Rising Again?

I found myself confronted by a difficult and strange question today. It’s the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz — one of humanity’s grimmest chapters. And yet here we are — watching fascism rise again.

We say — civilized people — “Never again. It can’t happen here.” So what did we fail to learn? Everything, I think, is the only reasonable answer to that question.

The answer that great minds had to the question of fascism’s origins was this. Capitalism implodes into fascism. I paraphrase. And yet from Keynes to Polanyi to Orwell to Arendt to Adorno, this thread was woven tightly in the history of modern ideas. And yet here we are. Having not learned a thing from history — we’re precisely those dunces who are doomed, as the proverb goes, to repeat it.

Today’s capitalism isn’t imploding into fascism theoretically — it’s happening quite literally, every single day. It is happening as a global system, which is why fascism is on the rise in every corner of the globe. There is a pattern to fascism’s grim resurgence in the 21st century, and the pattern is precisely the same as the 20th: it is rising in the ashes of a failed capitalism, just as Weimar Germany became Nazi Germany. “It” is happening here, only this time, “here” is every corner of the globe. I’ll come to all that, step by step.

The most obvious example is America, of course. You don’t have to look very hard to see it. America checks off all the boxes of textbook fascism today — and helps us remember precisely those elements. Concentration camps? Systematic human rights abuse? Check, check. Demagoguery and hate speech — coming from the head of a state and senior government officials? Demonization of minorities as a way to place blame for economic failure? Check. Dehumanization of the most powerless in society — the legal removal of personhood? Check. Violence as a noble and necessary aspiration to replace democracy with? Check.

In case you didn’t think that was enough, the last living Nuremberg Prosecutor says all the above is the textbook definition of crimes against humanity. He should know — he helped invent it. There’s not a single element of fascism, in fact, that’s missing in America today.

(Think about it. If all the above isn’t fascism, what needs to happen for it to be? Auschwitz? Paramilitatries executing Jews on the streets? You see, a bar that absurd makes a mockery of the point of the concept itself — which is to warn us of horrors. If we have to wait for the atrocity to begin…then the idea of “fascism” is a useless and empty one.)

And yet American intellectuals and politicians go on debating whether all the criteria being met above so copiously…really “is” fascism. LOL — wait, what”? Think about the absurdity of it for a second — the last Nuremberg Prosecutor warns of crimes against humanity, and American intellectuals pretend like…he doesn’t exist.

And yet it’s as if the American leadership class is trapped in some kind of ontological twilight zone. That’s philosophy-speak for: being unable to see what’s happening right before your eyes, because you just can’t bring yourself to admit it or believe it.

That brings me to yet another crucial element of fascism — perhaps the last and most necessary one: denial. The constant atmosphere of “is it or isn’t it?” that pervades the American mind — while the man who helped prosecute the Nazis warns that it is — is in fact fascism, too. The bizarre haze of performative uncertainty, this strange fog of being unable to see the obvious that clouds the eyes of the American thinking and political class — that too is fascism. Because fascism cannot proceed without the camouflage of the denial of elites, especially politicians and intellectuals. And yet taking their cue from their leaders, Americans go on asking — “is it? Could it be fascism? No, of course not!” They, too, are a crucial ingredient in any proper fascist collapse: the silent majority, who, like all those good Germans, appears unable to see what’s happening right before their eyes.

It can’t happen here is the recipe, in other words, for it to.

But you’d be sorely mistaken to think capitalism imploding into fascism is just an American phenomenon. The real story of this neo fascist wave goes like this.

America built a global capitalist economy — and all the key engines of this machine are now melting down into fascism. Yes, all of them. It’s not a coincidence that China, India, and Britain have all gone neofascist. China: the goods of the machine, India, the services, Britain, the global financial hub. Bang! Do you see the obvious link? Global neofascism’s pattern is a relationship, and the relationship is the damning proof — to any thinking person — that yes, capitalism really does collapse, and fascism is the grim result.

Let’s begin with India. Perhaps you didn’t know, but India recently passed a bill outlawing an entire religion from gaining citizenship. Wait, what? Yes, really. Think about that. Imagine that your society passed a bill saying Jews or Muslims or Christians or Hindus couldn’t become…citizens. Wouldn’t that be…well….extremely fascist? Sure it would. Because what we are doing when we say that a whole religion can’t attain citizenship, period, is using the institutions of governance to literally dehumanize a hated minority — prevent them from ever attaining full personhood. After all, if I’m not a citizen, what am I? I guess I must be a permanent “alien.”

Now, interestingly, Indians did something Americans haven’t — they’ve been protesting en masse against all this. The result has been waves of violence, as neofascists clash with those who want to be citizens of a modern society.

Then there’s China. China’s got somewhere north of a million — a million — people in camps, because they are hated and feared minorities. People of precisely the ethnic background, Uighurs. Is that fascist? Wait — how can it not be? Duh. That’s about as fascist as a government can hope to get. It’s buttressed by a kind of strident nationalism, which uses technology as a tool of iron-clad social control. What does it say when a nation-state puts something north of a million people of the same ethnicity — a million — in camps, because they’re “dangers to society”? When it begins to say that this society really belongs to the ethnically pure — and always will, and the only way that you can be a part of it is to be dehumanized, stripped of your beliefs, history, personality, individuality, heritage? Come now. It shouldn’t take a genius to understand that’s fascism.

And then there’s the weirdest and strangest example. The UK. Where Brits woke up one day decided to blame all their problems on…Europeans…the very people who were investing in them…their good friends and gentle allies and friendly neighbors and democratic partners. Those horrible Europeans were the ones responsible for a sudden, sharp decline in the UK’s living standards. It couldn’t have been the fact that the average Brit decided foolishly to vote for a government which then viciously slashed investment in every single public institution which kept life sane, decent, and healthy — like the NHS, BBC, transport, or retirement — right after a colossal bank bailout. Nope — must have been those Europeans! But wait — they were the one pouring billions into all those abandoned industrial towns…regenerating decrepit town centers…building factories…how could they have been responsible for British decline? Never mind. Easier to invent a hated enemy, and then blame them, than to admit your own mistakes. Even if, it turns out, that enemy was a great and gentle friend, like Europe was to Britain.

(That, too, is fascism. It’s not fascism as violent and extreme as in India and China. But it is a kind of nascent fascism, nonetheless. To blame those from a whole continent for your own troubles…which are so obviously self-created…just because they are not “really from” your society? Perhaps you see the point. Brexit was very much driven by a kind of proto-fascist belief — only the pure-blooded should prevail in this land of the true, because all the others are the parasites responsible for our troubles, even if, until yesterday, they were our friends.)

As an aside, in the examples of India, China, Britain, and America, then, we see the full spectrum of neo-fascism. In America, it skyrocketed into the Oval Office — where it built camps, put kids in cages in them, incited violence, preached hate, declared journalists and intellectuals enemies of the state, and so on. In China, it’s built camps, and begun the surreal process of “re-educating” a whole ethnicity of people. In India, it’s declared that a whole religion are not really people, in the eyes of the law. And In Britain, it’s masked by a veneer of polite, clumsy, funny British restraint — beneath which twists the snarl and judder of the one who believes the land only belongs to the pure. In India, the subhumans are Muslims, in China, Uighurs, in Britain, Europeans, and in America, Latinos and Mexicans. But the thread is just the same.

None of these are fascist societies to the level of a Nazi Germany, and an Auschwitz, with its millions turned into ashes, that horrific crime of history, one so grave it demanded a whole new category of justice — the crime against humanity. But the point of our understanding of fascism — economic, legal, cultural social — is to prevent such horrors, not for us to stupidly crow: “It’s not fascism until they’re incinerating people in the ovens!!” That makes us not just fools — but complicit fools, too.

That brings me back to the reason for all this.

It would take someone very, very naive — beyond the point of credulity — to believe that all these countries imploded into fascism simultaneously, for no connected reason. And further, that these countries, which are the linchpins of American capitalism — India providing it’s services, China it’s goods, and Britain a conduit for its capital…well, their role as the key components of global capitalism’s machines…had nothing to do with their implosion at all. Nope! Just one of history’s biggest coincidences. That’s all! My friends, anyone that says the above is just a coincidence shouldn’t think in public— because they can’t connect dots blinking before their eyes.

What drove fascism in all these societies was precisely the same cause. Capitalism failed, just as it did in Weimar Germany. It promised working classes and middle classes better lives. But it only delivered for elites. Economically speaking, these societies all became mini-Americas, economically: riven by inequality, sapped of mobility, drained of social bonds, emptied of optimism and faith in the future, frustrated, ready to embrace regress and the tribe’s violence over progress and civilization.

In America, of course, the middle class became the new working class, and the working class became the new poor, and the old poor…well, it was just abandoned to die, more or less. What happens when each of those classes finds itself bitterly struggling just to make ends meet? The idealistic answer proposed by generations of older thinkers was — a socialist revolution! Unfortunately, as it turns out, that answer is wrong. All the above tells us that what really happens is: each class begins to punch down on the next, since at least you can maybe grab something from someone less powerless than you. You can prey on someone more helpless than you. Those elites? You can’t touch them. But that poor minority — how about him, whispers the demagogue. He’s a dirty, filthy, subhuman, really, it’s he? And what about his kids — those parasites?

That is the pattern of what happened in every society which eagerly pledged allegiance to America’s global capitalist dream. In India and China, sure, “middle classes” grew nominally richer. But they never attained anything remotely resembling financial security or economic stability or social mobility. As their incomes rose — costs only rose higher, just like in America. That is because, of course, capitalism needs to skim off the top for profits to rise, so if it pays you more, it must charge you even more than that, or else profits will fall, and the system will buckle and break.

Capitalism’s rule is exploitation, every single day, each more vicious than the last. Yet without financial security, economic stability, and social cohesion slash solidarity, lives never really flourish much higher. Bang! The seeds of fascist implosion are thus sown. Americans became Neo-serfs in the land of the free, while Chinese and Indians never really became more than glorified serfs toting smartphones at all — they never became middle classes as we should genuinely think of them, people with rights, resources, freedoms, and mobility. Instead, like Americans, whatever gains they won proved to be illusory: they came at the cost of rights, resources, freedoms, and mobility.

Capitalism denied the proles exactly what it promised: money, power, dominion, the right to exploit as they were exploited. It laughed at their stupidity, for believing such an obvious lie — why would capital ever give the prole anything more? But the proles, now, are demanding all that they were promised — with violence against hated subhumans, if they can have it no other way.

Let me put that to you another way. In all the societies which were part of America’s dream of a global capitalist empire, what happened, at the simplest and highest level? Labour’s share of the economy shrank, while capital’s grew. And so while people were told they were growing richer — that was an illusion. Their portion of the economy increased — for 90 to 99% of people, just like in America. Meanwhile, billionaires were becoming multi-billionaires, taking most of the gains. Translation: capital skimmed off the top only ever increased. That meant that over time, people grew indebted, their lives stagnated, and their societies were unable to develop genuine and expansive public goods, like healthcare, transport, education, and so on.

In all these countries, foolishly, nobody ever asked a fundamental question. Just why should we join America on this exercise to build a system of global capitalism? Do we really want to end up like…America? What’s in it for our society? Because if you think about it at the most basic level…what else was capital going to do, though, except increase capital’s share of the economy…just as it had in America? But that meant that labour’s share would never really grow, which meant that a nation would never really develop or mature into a true democracy, or a modern society with a social contract based on mutual investment, collective action, and public goods….just like America ended up: a failed state, the world’s first poor rich country.

The bargain these nations were striking — turning their whole societies into cheap labour for America’s capitalist machine — was one that was never going to go anywhere from the beginning.

The obvious flaw in the system is this: capitalism produces long-term and widespread stagnation for many — something like 90% of a society in America, 75% in Britain, and perhaps 60% in China and India. So what was bound to happen? The pure would find someone weaker and impure to hate — and try and take everything they had, so that they had enough. What happens when people realize that the gains of the economy are going to a tiny few at the top, whom they can never, ever touch, displace, check, or remove? Fascism does. Because then you must punch down. The scraps and morsels you need to survive must come from those even less powerful than you. The middle class punches down on the working class — “I won’t give those filthy, dirty people healthcare and education” — the working class punches down on the poor — “I won’t give those lazy, worthless people retirement and an income!” — and the poor punch down…wait, who’s left? Only the truly powerless and vulnerable. They become defined as subhumans, who are there for everyone to hate, exploit, abuse, and dispossess.

Think of the brutish SS officer taking the fine home of a wise and gentle Jewish merchant, artist, intellectual. Finally, finally — he had all that he had been promised: fortune, finery, possessions, a mansion, servants. Now think back to the economics of what fascism’s really about. When Brits rage “Europeans are stealing our jobs!” Or Americans cry “Mexican babies are parasites and monsters!” Or Chinese say “Those Uighurs, all five million of them, are dangerous!” Or Indians say “Muslims are our blood enemies!”…the political economics are precisely the same. More for us, and less for them — even if we have to take it from them, whether it’s our jobs, our schools, or dignity, belonging, worth, and personhood itself.

Fascism is a kind of theft. When capitalism steals away what little you have, which is less than you deserved — money, belonging, dignity, worth, purpose, strength, happiness — fascism is a way to take it back. But by taking it from others. With force. Through violence. Ennobled as the rule of the mighty and strong over the weak. Triumphalized as the heroic victory of the persecuted ones over their persecutors. Who, paradoxically, were the most powerless people of all.

Think about it. How can the very tough, macho Americans who wave guns around be frightened of…babies…just because they’re Mexican?What the? How can the same Brits who celebrate a thousand years of progress suddenly be afraid of…poor Eastern Europeans? How can Indians who call themselves the world’s largest democracy suddenly throw it all away? Why would the Chinese who see themselves as the world’s newest superpower suddenly be afraid of their most penniless, powerless minority?

Perhaps you see the common thread. The fascists are the real victims, and the powerless ones they dehumanize have always been their all-powerful oppressors and persecutors. It’s they — the powerless — who have stopped the true and pure from their rightful destiny: power, money, belonging, dignity. All that capitalism stole from them with one hand — while cleverly promising it to them with other. Poverty grows. Stagnation spreads. Life never seems to get much better. And then, suddenly, no one can say quite how or why — bang! — the fascist spark is lit. The persecuted victims are bravely rising up to claim their destinies! The Brexiters…the Trumpists…India’s neofascists. All the good people have to do is put a few hundred thousand people in concentration camps. Or maybe a few million. And then perhaps there is a need for a Final Solution. To this question of who is to blame for our misfortune.

Ah, my friends. But the answer to that question is always the same. Our calamities bear the signature of our own hand. Americans, Brits, Indians, Chinese, have nobody to blame for their own collapse — but themselves. And yet who can admit that? How much easier to find an enemy to hate. One powerless and already demonized. A scapegoat — who soon enough, becomes the monster who must be eliminated, annihilated, put in ghettoes, forced onto trains, sent to camps…

Turned to ashes. Just like history is turning to ashes now, as we, the dunces of modernity, stumble backwards into its grimmest chapter, laughing in glee, pointing at each other. It can’t happen here!!

That, my friends, is the story how capitalism implodes into fascism. It was the tale of the Weimar Republic in the 1930s. And today, almost exactly a century later, it’s the story not just of America — but the world it made. Of all the nations who believed, perhaps a little naively, a little foolishly, in the glittering dream America promised them, like India, China, and Britain: that by becoming components in the capitalist machine, they’d get rich, just like Americans. But Americans never got rich. They mostly just became fascists, of the vocal and violent kind, or the ones of the other kind, the ones who still don’t quite know it yet: the ones in denial.

Will the world learn the lesson of history repeating itself this time around?

Tell me again, friend, how it can’t happen here.

Umair
January 2020