Social Europe

  • EU Forward Project
  • YouTube
  • Podcast
  • Books
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Democracy, activism and the rule of law—key weapons against fascism

Paul Mason 8th June 2021

Fascism is not just sepia images of yesteryear but a contemporary threat. A liberal-left alliance is needed to counter it.

fascism,anti-fascism,militant democracy
Paul Mason

If you search the database of white-supremacist Discord channels, leaked by the monitoring group UnicornRiot since 2018, the word ‘genocide’ appears more than 10,000 times. Often it is in the context of ‘white genocide’—the core concept of the Great Replacement theory, which claims that migration into the advanced world is a form of genocide against white people.

Sometimes, however, there are lists of modern genocides—Rwanda, Myanmar—suggesting more to come. Sometimes the users—there are 158,000 anonymous identities in the database—simply exclaim ‘GENOCIDE!’ Whichever way you want to interpret these memetic and subtextual conversations, it is safe to conclude that the modern far right is obsessed with the mass murder of ethnic groups.

This, in itself, should be a measure of the risk we are taking if we refuse to defeat modern fascism through militant, democratic means.

Firewall on fire

The genocidal logic of the volkisch anti-Semitism prevalent in Germany in the 1920s is clear in retrospect but it was rarely spelled out in advance. Few on the left, even as they confronted the horror of fascist totalitarianism in the interwar period, understood its inevitably genocidal conclusions. And, even after the event, the first journalists to encounter the liberated Majdanek concentration camp could not process what they had discovered.

Since the rise of the populist right, political science has comforted mainstream policy-makers with the suggestion that—noxious though they are—men like Donald Trump, Matteo Salvini, Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orbán and Nigel Farage could act as a firewall against the return of the real thing.

But the firewall is on fire. The modus operandi of right-wing populism is now to gain power and eviscerate democracy, creating space on the streets, the media and online for the fascists to operate. It is even—in the case of Trump—to turn official conservative parties into the willing hosts of fascism.



Don't miss out on cutting-edge thinking.


Join tens of thousands of informed readers and stay ahead with our insightful content. It's free.



In turn, the far right does not yet seek power. It wants to operate in the space provided between a fragile judicial system and a mercurial presidential leader. Even when it is massed on the streets of Charlottesville, or ‘protecting’ the statue of Winston Churchill in London, its main activity remains ‘metapolitics’—the creation and propagation of a coherent myth.

But in their minds the fascists believe their ‘Day X’ will come. On that day they will brush aside today’s populists, just as easily as Adolf Hitler swept away Alfred Hugenberg and Benito Mussolini Gabriele d’Annunzio.

International movement

Faced with this rising threat we must all become—and proudly—anti-fascists. Five hundred prisoners escaped from Majdanek. None would escape a facility built for the same use today. It would be Guantanamo with death chambers, equipped with autonomous lethal weapons, biosurveillance and impassable fences.

Combating modern fascism effectively means understanding it better. This is not the ‘tribute band to Nazism’ we were dealing with up to around 1990. Its project is no longer formed around violent national rebirth.

It is an international movement, highly adapted to the conditions of a networked, non-hierarchical and globalised society. It is fascism regrown from its pre-1914 philosophical root-stock: from Nietzschean anti-rationalism, scientific racism and the power-worship embodied in the writings of the now-fashionable Carl Schmitt.

Everything fascists do is designed to propagate a myth: a global ethnic civil war is coming, from which will emerge ethnically ‘pure’ continental powers; to prevent ‘white genocide’, western societies must be rid of ethnic and religious diversity; all forms of liberalism and democracy are—in reality—Marxism, and western society will endure a cataclysmic end, from which a pre-enlightement society will emerge.

Over the past ten years I have watched this new thought-architecture of fascism colonise the minds of people who were once only motivated by racism, ignorance and xenophobia. They have backfilled their prejudices with theory. And that’s why the danger has increased.

Political alliance

To defeat the new fascism there are three lines of action. The first is obvious—active anti-fascism. Whether it be through monitoring, infiltration or outright opposition on the streets, there is no substitute for mobilising progressives, trade unionists and members of minority communities to deny fascism an active space in civil society. Since civil society has moved online, that also has to mean forcing the ‘social media’ monopolies to remove, suppress and deter fascist content. The price, unfortunately, will be limits to anonymity.

Secondly, we need an overt political alliance of the centre and the left. Liberalism and socialism have been at war, for justifiable reasons, throughout the 21st century. Now we face a bigger mutual enemy. The lessons of both Italian socialism and German communism, faced with the interwar fascist threat, are that not even a strong, politically educated proletariat could defeat fascism alone.

Hannah Arendt described fascism as the ‘temporary alliance of the elite and the mob’. Only twice—in the Popular Front electoral coalitions of Spain and France in 1936—was it stopped in its tracks, by a temporary alliance of the centre and the left. Today, every left-wing activist is taught that the Popular Fronts were a disaster. They fell apart, for sure, but without them there would have been no left governments.

More importantly, the Popular Fronts created a strong, anti-fascist cultural ethos in the back half of the 1930s, which became the default ideology of the resistance movements of the 1940s. It was created in the movies of Jean Renoir, the plays of Clifford Odets, Bertolt Brecht and Federico García Lorca, and the journalism of George Orwell, Martha Gellhorn and Robert Capa. And it lived in people’s minds as an unspoken premise long after 1945.

Weaknesses manipulated

Karl Loewenstein understood that fascist movements manipulate the weaknesses built into democracy. Democrats, in response, must exploit the weaknesses built into fascism—which are that you cannot stage a torchlit march if you are in jail, you cannot receive money from a crowdfunding site if you have no bank account and you cannot anonymously advocate genocide if anonymity is engineered out of ‘social media’ platforms.

Countries where the rule of law is strong, protected by a depoliticised judiciary and explicitly anti-fascist laws, begin this task from a strong basis. The country that begins from the weakest basis is the one most at risk—the United States, the first and second amendments to whose constitution are a licence for fascist activism and violence, and whose separation of power, and federal system, allowed a fascist mob to storm its legislature.

This three-point programme—anti-fascist activism, a new Popular Front and, following Loewenstein, Militant Democracy 2.0—will find ready opponents within both liberalism and the left. I understand their reservations.

It’s just that, having peered into the innocuous brick outhouse that still stands at Majdanek—the turquoise stains from Zyklon B still on its plaster walls—I don’t want to take the chance.

Paul Mason
Paul Mason

Paul Mason is a journalist, writer and filmmaker. His latest book is How To Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance (Allen Lane). His most recent films include R is For Rosa, with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. He writes weekly for New Statesman and contributes to Der Freitag and Le Monde Diplomatique.

Harvard University Press Advertisement

Social Europe Ad - Promoting European social policies

We need your help.

Support Social Europe for less than €5 per month and help keep our content freely accessible to everyone. Your support empowers independent publishing and drives the conversations that matter. Thank you very much!

Social Europe Membership

Click here to become a member

Most Recent Articles

u4219834dafae1dc3 2 EU’s New Fiscal Rules: Balancing Budgets with Green and Digital AmbitionsPhilipp Heimberger
u42198346d1f0048 1 The Dangerous Metaphor of Unemployment “Scarring”Tom Boland and Ray Griffin
u4219834675 4ff1 998a 404323c89144 1 Why Progressive Governments Keep Failing — And How to Finally Win Back VotersMariana Mazzucato
u42198346ec 111f 473a 80ad b5d0688fffe9 1 A Transatlantic Reckoning: Why Europe Needs a New Pact Beyond Defence SpendingChristophe Sente
u4219834671f 3 Trade Unions Resist EU Bid to Weaken Corporate Sustainability LawsSocial Europe

Most Popular Articles

u4219834647f 0894ae7ca865 3 Europe’s Businesses Face a Quiet Takeover as US Investors CapitaliseTej Gonza and Timothée Duverger
u4219834674930082ba55 0 Portugal’s Political Earthquake: Centrist Grip Crumbles, Right AscendsEmanuel Ferreira
u421983467e58be8 81f2 4326 80f2 d452cfe9031e 1 “The Universities Are the Enemy”: Why Europe Must Act NowBartosz Rydliński
u42198346761805ea24 2 Trump’s ‘Golden Era’ Fades as European Allies Face Harsh New RealityFerenc Németh and Peter Kreko
startupsgovernment e1744799195663 Governments Are Not StartupsMariana Mazzucato
u421986cbef 2549 4e0c b6c4 b5bb01362b52 0 American SuicideJoschka Fischer
u42198346769d6584 1580 41fe 8c7d 3b9398aa5ec5 1 Why Trump Keeps Winning: The Truth No One AdmitsBo Rothstein
u421983467 a350a084 b098 4970 9834 739dc11b73a5 1 America Is About to Become the Next BrexitJ Bradford DeLong
u4219834676ba1b3a2 b4e1 4c79 960b 6770c60533fa 1 The End of the ‘West’ and Europe’s FutureGuillaume Duval
u421983462e c2ec 4dd2 90a4 b9cfb6856465 1 The Transatlantic Alliance Is Dying—What Comes Next for Europe?Frank Hoffer

Eurofound advertisement

Ageing workforce
The evolution of working conditions in Europe

This episode of Eurofound Talks examines the evolving landscape of European working conditions, situated at the nexus of profound technological transformation.

Mary McCaughey speaks with Barbara Gerstenberger, Eurofound's Head of Unit for Working Life, who leverages insights from the 35-year history of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS).

Listen to the episode for free. Also make sure to subscribe to Eurofound Talks so you don’t miss an episode!

LISTEN NOW

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Spring Issues

The Summer issue of The Progressive Post is out!


It is time to take action and to forge a path towards a Socialist renewal.


European Socialists struggle to balance their responsibilities with the need to take bold positions and actions in the face of many major crises, while far-right political parties are increasingly gaining ground. Against this background, we offer European progressive forces food for thought on projecting themselves into the future.


Among this issue’s highlights, we discuss the transformative power of European Social Democracy, examine the far right’s efforts to redesign education systems to serve its own political agenda and highlight the growing threat of anti-gender movements to LGBTIQ+ rights – among other pressing topics.

READ THE MAGAZINE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI Report

WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

The trend towards significant nominal minimum wage increases is continuing this year. In view of falling inflation rates, this translates into a sizeable increase in purchasing power for minimum wage earners in most European countries. The background to this is the implementation of the European Minimum Wage Directive, which has led to a reorientation of minimum wage policy in many countries and is thus boosting the dynamics of minimum wages. Most EU countries are now following the reference values for adequate minimum wages enshrined in the directive, which are 60% of the median wage or 50 % of the average wage. However, for Germany, a structural increase is still necessary to make progress towards an adequate minimum wage.

DOWNLOAD HERE

S&D Group in the European Parliament advertisement

Cohesion Policy

S&D Position Paper on Cohesion Policy post-2027: a resilient future for European territorial equity

Cohesion Policy aims to promote harmonious development and reduce economic, social and territorial disparities between the regions of the Union, and the backwardness of the least favoured regions with a particular focus on rural areas, areas affected by industrial transition and regions suffering from severe and permanent natural or demographic handicaps, such as outermost regions, regions with very low population density, islands, cross-border and mountain regions.

READ THE FULL POSITION PAPER HERE

ETUI advertisement

HESA Magazine Cover

With a comprehensive set of relevant indicators, presented in 85 graphs and tables, the 2025 Benchmarking Working Europe report examines how EU policies can reconcile economic, social and environmental goals to ensure long-term competitiveness. Considered a key reference, this publication is an invaluable resource for supporting European social dialogue.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Social Europe

Our Mission

Team

Article Submission

Advertisements

Membership

Social Europe Archives

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Miscellaneous

RSS Feed

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

BlueskyXWhatsApp