Unmasking fascism’s fake claims to be ‘revolutionary’

Hitler used false radicalism to appeal to the masses and build fascism

Fascism seeks to annihilate working class organisation and obliterate any sort of genuine democracy. But in order to attract supporters it always puts forward a fake revolutionary veneer.

It denounces the present set-up as corrupt, elitist and dominated by “unpatriotic” elements.

Its solution is usually to use racism as a pathway to a “purified” state purged of foreigners and scapegoats such as Jews or Muslims or Roma or disabled people.

The German revolutionary Clara Zetkin summarises fascism as “an amalgam of brutal, terrorist violence together with deceptive revolutionary phraseology, linking up demagogically with the needs and moods of broad masses of producers”.

At a time of deep social and economic crisis, fascists advance by offering a critique of what exists at the top.

 The clearest example is how the Nazis built their organisation in the 1920s and 1930s.

They denounced the parliamentary set-up as rotten and deceitful and promised a better future for the German worker.

One wing of the Nazis, grouped around Gregor Strasser, took this further.

In a speech to the German parliament in 1925 he said, “We National Socialists want the economic revolution involving the nationalisation of the economy.

“In place of an exploitative capitalist economic system a real socialism, maintained not by a soulless Jewish-materialist outlook but by the believing, sacrificial, and unselfish old German community sentiment.”

This “anti-capitalism” was always false. Historian Robert Paxton highlights that “even at their most radical, early fascist programmes and rhetoric had never attacked wealth and capitalism”.

 Adolf Hitler had an uneasy relationship with most bosses in his early days. But he always craved the support of big capital—and their money.

He was horrified by Strasser’s rhetoric that alienated corporate titans who feared for their cash and privileges under a Nazi regime.

Strasser was, for a time, useful to Hitler because he offered a way to win over workers.

But if they take power, fascists serve the interest of capital. They exterminate or absorb the “radicals”.

On the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934, Hitler’s henchmen murdered Strasser and similar figures who were identified with a critique of aspects of capitalism.

The Nazi secret police shot Strasser and left him to bleed to death.

In Italy Benito Mussolini seized power and then had to deal with his shock troops who expected a “second revolution” against the old order.

In June 1924 fascists killed Socialist MP Giacomo Matteotti. Facing unpopularity and horror at the violence, Mussolini wavered on how to react. At one point the fascist thugs occupied the leader’s office and demanded he come out openly against the former set-up.

In January 1925, he took full responsibility for the murder, abandoned any plan of working with the existing parliament and created a totalitarian state.

Socialists need to unmask the fascists’ fake claims to revolution.

As Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote, “The Nazis call their overturn by the usurped title of revolution. As a matter of fact, in Germany as well as in Italy, fascism leaves the social system untouched.”

It is the greatest danger for the left to give any sort of radical gloss to fascism.

This is what the German Community Party (KPD) in the 1930s, guided by the rancid ideas of Joseph Stalin, did at points.

While refusing a united front with the social democrats to defeat the fascists, the KPD sometimes adopted similar slogans to the Nazis and campaigned alongside the fascists.

Fascism today peddles the same lies as its predecessors in the 1930s. Marine Le Pen in France and Giorgia Meloni in Italy claim to be for “the little man” against the forces of international capital.

As part of our assault on the fascists we need to show how they stand up for the bosses and the capitalist state.

• This is part of a series of articles on fascism. To see them all go here