© The Indian Express (P) Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
British journalist Paul Mason’s book opens with an uneasy prospect: If a group of Nazis from the 1930s were to time travel to contemporary times, what would they see?
From the storming of the US Capitol by right-wing followers of Donald Trump to the rise of the far-right Vox party in Spain with its diatribe against migrants, feminists and the Left, turns out the world they’d find wouldn’t be all that unfamiliar to them.
“Fascism”, Mason contends, “is back” — even though it now manifests in newer variations. “The core of fascism’s belief today is clear: that majority ethnic groups have become the ‘victims’ of migration and multiculturalism; that the gains of feminism should be reversed; that democracy is dispensable; that science, universities and the media cannot be trusted; that nations have lost their way and need to become ‘great’ again; and that there will soon be a cataclysmic event which sets things right,” he writes.
Mason goes about examining this premise through a detailed historical analysis of how fascism emerged in Germany and Italy in the wake of the economic crisis engendered by the Great Depression.
High inflation and mass unemployment gave legitimacy to the arguments of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler as they worked their way up to Parliament, exploiting democratic structures such as elections and the absence of liberal intervention to explain or address the economic and political crisis. Once in power, these men subverted all democratic edifices.
Mason traces the contemporary rise of the global right to the economic crisis of 2008, which created a similar leadership vacuum and economic concerns in many nations worldwide. It also generated, he says, a distrust for the elites and for liberalism, which had failed to safeguard public interests. Right-wing ideologies proliferated over the last decade, amplified by social media and aided by the availability of easy, anonymised online platforms to spread conspiracy theories, violent threats, and neo-myths.
But history also provides a blueprint for containing fascism. In France, the 1936 elections were won by the Popular Front, a coalition of socialists and the left against broader Republican coalitions. In Spain, the left-wing Popular Front coalition won over the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right.
Mason advocates something similar now — an alliance between centrist and left forces to defend democracy and “win the battle of ideas, and well in advance of its electoral breakthrough”. A key element in this resistance, he says, would be the realisation of the centrality of the climate crisis and its bearing on politics.
An activist and a self-avowed Marxist, Mason’s account is an unorthodox look at the rising tide of authoritarian politics through the lens of left-wing ideology and an examination not just of fascism’s work but also of the failures of the left to counter it effectively — and what it needs to do to make amends.
Title | How to Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance
Author: By Paul Mason
Publisher: Allen Lane
Pages: 298
Price: Rs 699
Explained Books appears every Saturday. It summarises the core content of an important work of non-fiction.
