The likelihood of a fascist/far right government coming to power in the UK in the near future

I doubt the near future will bring us a fascist government. Firstly the liberal state is stable and is not under any serious assault from our class and is not facing massive prolems in the economy at this time. Also the fascists are not creating any credible opposition at the moment except in a few isolated places were the BNP has managed to achieve some successes in local elections.

Fascism in the sense of the organised British fascist movement has about as much chance of gaining power as I do of taking a dump and producing the collected works of Herman Goerring.

that being said, the current tendency of the government is towards mass micro-management and control, combined with laws and state bodies restricting resistance (which although currently restricted to a certain groups could easily be expanded - thinking of the attitude taken towards the AR movement for example). as such, if a state of higher militancy *did* come about, the infrastructure would already be in place for a massively more repressive state. what's more, as these things have become and are becoming so normalised, they would come as much less of a shock to most people.

whether that would be identifiably "fascist" per se is debateable, I'd go with not likely.

anyone read the new Sue Townsend book? the state it represents is a lot more close to where I see the UK going than some vague "fascist" vision.

You also have to appreciate that we are going through trends which just arent accounted for in the model suggested by Germany. Namely immigration is becomming and will probably remain a central theme within politics for some time, this coupled with the rise of the far-right and the absense of any genuine political alternative are slightly worrying trends.
We may lurch towards greater authoritarianism, and fascism may indeed grow along side this, but I cant see a mass movement on the horizon for some time.

I'm with JonnyT on this. It's not going to happen.

What is likely however, is the growth of the repressive liberal democratic state where everyone is increasingly

People are implying here that fascism is used by the state against a powerful working class. I think that if you look at the history of fascism, you find that in Germany, and Italy at least, it actually came to power on the back of a defeated working class, a class defeated by democracy.

Maybe the anarchists are looking through their 'Spanish glasses' again. I think that it is debatable whether Francoism was actually fascism.

Devrim

Wasn't it more the disenfranchised middle classes - small shop owners, professionals and the like who'd suddenly found themselves proletarianised? I can't remember where I saw it, but some demographic study of German voting patterns showed the poorest were more attached to the communist party (the second biggest party, by a whisker, in 1932 and 33) and it was labour aristocracy and professional types who went to the Nazis in their droves. Obviously there's a significant working class element, especially in the SA, but Nazism is not an unambiguously working class movement.

Even if it were, I'm not sure how significant that is. There were still significant left working class movements in Germany and the maneuvrings of the ruling class against these were crucial in defeating it (Hitler never won an election, blah, blah, blah).

What I meant by that line was that it came to power after an attempt at working class revolution had been defeated, not with the support of the working class in opposition to this:

Devrim

Hedging my bets, I'd say it's used by capital against a powerful or recently defeated militant working class. If I'm not mistaken, the working class in Italy was still pretty strong some time after Mussolini's 1919 march on Rome. Though in Germany, I'm inclined to agree that the working class was in defeat. Spain was another matter, Franco walked in when the class struggle was reaching its high point.

Yes, if you take a narrow view of fascism, then proper fascism really only existed in Italy (though it's even debateable how much the Italian state was really an example of the fascist corporate state), but if you take a broader view of fascism, then Francoism does fit the bill.

i dont think that theres a great risk of the BNP being elected and theres even less chance of their being some sort of military coup. However i dont think that this is the only danger associated with the increasing popularity of the BNP and the popularity of the idea that problems such as poverty, alienation and unemployment are a result of immigration and people of different race or ethnicity. The most disturbing thing about the popularity of these ideas is that they offer an indication of how far class politics and revolutionary ideas have slipped from the agenda.

The BNP doesnt need to get into power to undermine our fight for better conditions and attempts at promoting equality and workers control, they do this simply by sewing seeds of racial division, which in turn is indicative of the ebbing away of working class organisation and power.

isn't this getting needlessly caught up in the specifics of whether certain governments and movements can be described as "fascist" per se, when the more pressing concern would be the increase in social control and regulation which, even if not "fascist" in the historical sense, are still a bit shit all round?

exactly.

Got it in one, every step for them takes us further away from where we want to be.
Whether the BNP in power equates to fascism again is negative, but it opens more doors for them and while they might fit some peoples definition of a strictly fascist group, something more horrorific and supportable from the ruling classes point of view, may emerge from them in the future.

In this country, there is no risk of that happening in the near future.

Unless of course things go our way and our class starts getting confident, militant and seriously threatens the state and capital

I think that this is the crux of the discussion of fascism rests here. We have to take account of the fact that we are in a significantly different stage of history than Italy and Germany were in. I agree that the defeat of the working class movements in Italy were primary reasons that fascism was able to rise there. That's why I've been trying to get ahold of Fabbri's work on fascism. His understanding of it was quite prescient.

The form of fascism can be through liberalism -- the rational approach to the defense of private property and wealth. I don't think that it's impending within the next 5 years, but maybe in 10 or so, we may see it.

I'm wondering what's going to happen with the US elections next year, as the ruling class doesn't play nice, and I don't know if the Republicans can steal three elections in a row and get away with it.

I think the question on Pinochet and South America helps us to qualify exactly what fascism is. I think that as anarchists we should also recognize that the fight is against capitalism and the state, and not to be obfuscated by fighting against fascism. The state can easily survive a defeat of fascism, but it can not survive without racism, nationalism, sexism, and capitalism.

Thanks for the apology. Much appreciated.

I agree with those who say that fascism is not on the horizon, because the working class has not been defeated. Devrim and others point to the fact that fascism arose on the back of the defeated working class. A defeat inflicted by the Social Democrats and the unions, not the fascists.
The role of fascism in Germany was to act as the front to the German bourgeoisie's desperate efforts to build a war economy, on the backs of a crushed working class.
As for the BNP posing a threat, what threat do they pose compared the democratic strengthening of state repression under this present government, or those before it? Our caring, sharing and fluffy democrats have brought the level of state control to those of the most draconian states, but with a friendly face. The level of state surveillance is the same as China or Russia. China and Russia would probably like to have the sophisticated CCTV that the British State is happily going about installing all over the country. Now they are flagging up the idea of micro-chipping us all!
As for the BNP, what can they say that is a lot different from what the democratic government and opposition are saying? It is not the BNP that is imposing ever more draconian laws against immigrants or that has made racism, in the form of anti-immigration, an acceptable part of the 'political process'. Your average anti-immigrant speech by the main stream parties today would have been unacceptable 20 years ago. Norman Tebbit and his cricket test seem rather quaint now compared to the daily horror stories of the threat of immigrants flooding us, Eastern Euorpeans stealing our jobs and women etc etc.
The danger to the working class does not come from the BNP but the democratic state and its mystications, as others have pointed out on this thread.

Most CCTV cameras are useless when it comes to identification. I'd be shocked if more than 1% of them are being watched.

Hi

Maybe. If it is, then leftism (anarchism and left communism included) is too weak in terms of meaning and content to counter it.

Love

LR

I must disagree here. The process of revolution is organic. At this stage of the social revolution, the anarchist communist left is not able to assault the capitalist state. That's easy to agree with. But, it is crucial that we organize and build during the lulls so as to be able to mobilize the working class to assault fascism when it comes, and in the form that it comes in.

I think that the liberal state is the new form of fascism. neo-liberalism, neo-colonialism, and now, neo-fascism is the essential content of liberalism.

Hi

Worse still, at least for anarchist communists, it’s not demonstrably able to assault the capitalist state regardless of whatever stage one might postulate we inhabit. Fascism is as much a product of communism as it is of liberalism.

Crucial for whom? Anarchist communists. The “lull” is a problem only for leftists, not the working class themselves who are not activists' property to be mobilized against this or that.

Love

LR

So if some are saying, the rise of fascism (as an ideology) takes place off the back of a defeated working class, then aren't we currently defeated? Or have i just missed something, in more than one sense.

Also, does fascism need to crush whats left of us, within the current slow grinding destruction of neo-liberalism. (cor fuck me, happy, happy, joy, joy!)

Oh what the hell are you talking about now

bingo.

and we've got it already, over here. explosive increase in surveillance public and private, increasingly autocratic executive and police, and above all a well-developed rightwing rhetoric in which people can say (or splutter) that freedom requires less freedom, and really be serious.

I presume that this refers to my post. I don't see how anyone can deny that fascism came to power on the back of a defeated working class, the defeat of the German revolution, and the Italian factory councils movement. Of course, if you want to characterise any nasty right wing government as fascist, which obscures the point.

I said it as some people seemed to believe that historically fascism was used by the bourgeoisie against a militant working class.

The defeats that the working class suffered in the 80's were not comparable to the defeats of the twenties.

I am not sure what Madashell's point relates to.

Devrim

As Devrim says the defeats suffered by the working class in the 1980's were not the same as those of the 1920's. In the 1980's the defeats were part of an international process of waves of struggles that had been taking place since 1968. In the 1990's the working class was thrown onto its back foot and the levels of strike reach historical lows faced with the collapse of the Eastern bloc, the bourgeoisie's campaign about the death of communism and the mounting imperialist chaos and bloodbaths. The whole international situation had been thrown into the air so no wonder the working class was left confused and some what dazed. However, it has not been defeated as in the 1920's. Then the working class around the world had thrown itself into a series of revolutionary struggles beginning with 1917, but had to endure the terrible pain of seeing each of its revolutionary efforts crushed. These defeats were not simply physical, 10,000s of workers were brutally slaughtered around the world, but above all ideological. Whilst the class dreamt of revolution and socialism it was unable to break out of illusions in the unions, democracy and social democracy on a mass level. It thus had to struggle with one armed tied to the capitalist states main bulwarks against the revolution. As the Italian Communist Left said in the 1930's it was democrcy that defeated the proletariat and allowed the rise of fascism in Germany. In Russia the counter-revolution was even more brutal. Whilst in the democratic victor countries the proletariat did not suffer mass physical defeat it was not able to break from democracy and thus ended up following democracy into war against fascism i.e., slaughtering each other inorder to defend democracy against fascism.
BB I hope that explains why we think the defeats are different. And as you say there is no need for fascism when libral democracy is doing such a good job, though it has not defeated the class. To fully defeat the class the bourgeoisie has to take it own and defeat it both physically and ideologically. The miners' strike was certianly an attempt by the ruling class to defeat the class but not on the level of that of the 1920's, rather to knock the stuffing out of the developing wave of struggles that was developing in Britain and internationally. However, whilst they defeat the miners and delivered a very heavily blow to the class in Britain and internationally the wave of struggles continued.

I think this is very true and the posts on here so far are using very outdated ways of measuring the potential of fascism to work organically outside of a revolutionary situation against workers. Historically yes, fascism is a reaction to revolutionary workers movements, but if they are presented with a climate which is favourable to them, then why would sections of the ruling class not support this emerging movement?

You cant just tie the growth of fascism constantly with how well working class militancy is.

Dev, that would indeed make me somekind of Fascist/history denier, which would be weird.

What i'm trying to get a grip on is whether there's the likelihood of a strong resergence of a fascist movement and if so where it would come from, as the thread title suggests.

I'm in agreement with what october says above.

I think that a lot of this comes down to how one defines fascism. I think that you would certainly agree with me that fascism has become a leftist ‘buzzword’ for any regime that they don’t approve of. So what is fascism? Does it refer to a particular moment in European history, or is it a more general tendency. There are certainly movements in Turkey, the MHP, and the Işci Partisi (Workers Party) which I would describe as fascist, much more so than I think the British BNP are.

To a certain extent the labels that we refer to these groups by don’t really matter. The MHP were a part of the coalition in the government before this one, and will probably there in the next Government.

Are they fascist? I don’t really care. I know how they behave in certain universities where they have power, for example beating up people who refuse to stand when their leaders walk into the room. I also know that the sort of ‘anti-fascist’ squadism which is popular in some countries in Western Europe would see a small group like ours physically wiped out very quickly, and by that I mean killed.

Possibly something that was very influential on our political development was the experience of the ‘left’ before the 1980 coup (just as a point of information none of our members were politically active at this point though some of our supporters were) when the ‘left’, and the ‘right’ fought each other in a virtual civil war until the military stepped in. By fought each other I don’t mean the little set piece battles between fascists, and anti-fascists that you see in the west. There were on average 30 political murders a day in İstanbul alone.

One of the most important points for us in this whole period is that the ‘left’ was completely divorced from the working class. This is still the situation in Turkey. The left hate the working class because it is ‘backward’, ‘Islamicist’, and ‘uneducated’. The last time that I was on a workers demonstration in Ankara, we were the only ‘left wing’ group there except for the ODP (aligned to your Militant Tendency) who turned up near the end.

I think that it is right to see fascism as a historical European phenomena. I think looking at it that way our analysis is correct. I don’t think that any right government should be described as ’fascist’. I don’t think for example that ‘Thatcherism’ in the UK was fascist.

Whatever, if the MHP are in the next government, or even if they are in the majority party in the next government, we will continue our political work.

To conclude, I wouldn’t see you as a historical revisionist. Though I think that a bigger danger from the ‘right’ comes from the social democratic, and conservative parties, who have certainly enacted more anti-immigrant, and anti-working class legislation that parties like the BNP could even fantasise about, and I think that certain ‘anarchists’ have fetishised anti-fascism to the point where they become unidentifiable from the common rejection of ‘fascism’ coming from every mainstream bourgeois party in the UK.

Devrim