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Fascism (as adopted by Hitler’s Nazis, Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain) was a mass movement of the middle class and so-called “lumpenproletariat” (a Marxist term for the lower levels of the working class, consisting of unemployed people and workers in low-waged, non-unionised jobs, who are often wrongly categorised as the “underclass” in modern terminology). Because the Nazis were a mass movement, they were much stronger than military-police dictatorships such as Chile under Augusto Pinochet, Iraq under Saddam Hussein and Saudi Arabia under the Royal Family supported by the West, which have relied or rely on a much smaller base of informers.
The main fascist parties nowadays, including the British National Party (BNP), and the much more successful Front National in France and National Alliance in Italy, are sometimes called “neo-fascist” (where the term “neo” means “new”) because they distance themselves from violent activities nowadays because they want to appear to be respectable political parties. They concentrate on electoral politics – although there is a large crossover between such organisations and those that indulge in street-fighting, such as C18 (where “C” stands for “Combat” and the numbers 1 and 8 stand for the initials of Adolf Hitler, since A and H are the first and eighth letters of the alphabet).
The Second World War and Spanish Civil War
The Nazis were funded by big business to stop a socialist revolution from happening in Germany. The Russian Revolution had caused mass revolutionary movements to develop across the world, and Germany was the country where it was most likely to spread to. However, the German Communist Party were rather naïve and the two best revolutionaries, Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknicht were assassinated by the German state. Rosa and Karl were great revolutionaries, but they made a big mistake by not building a faction within the Communist Party around their ideas. [Some suggest that Venezeulan President Hugo Chavez has made a similar mistake, but I now advocate “revolutionary platforms” within broad socialist organisations (rather than those based on a set of Marxist ideas) as promoted by my “revolutionary-platform-of-ssp” and “revolutionary-platform-of-democratic-socialist-alliance” discussion groups. In these days of the internet, keeping Marxist ideas going is not the problem it once was.]
The Nazis called themselves “national socialists” to try to pretend that they were opposed to big business, but the gullible socialists who had joined their party were killed in one night, dubbed “The Night of the Long Knives”.
Most of the media coverage of the Holocaust centres on the fact that about six million Jews died. Being a quarter Jewish myself, I empathise with all the suffering caused by the Nazis and indeed by other anti-semites throughout history. However, the Jews were mainly playing the role of scapegoats, just as black people were and Muslims now are the main scapegoats of the British National Party.
The main targets of the Nazis were socialists and trade unionists, because they were the real threat to the rule of big business in Germany. It is they who were targeted first, and they were followed by Jews, gypsies, and disabled and homosexual people
On my page about Marxism, I express the point of view that Trotsky’s influence, as an agent of big business, wrecked the Fourth International that he led (until his assassination by an agent of Stalin using an ice-pick in 1940) to the extent that they called the Second World War (which started in 1939) a struggle between rival imperialisms for control of the world’s markets, which was a correct analysis of the First World War. Fascism was qualitatively different, and genuine socialists in that International, including the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP, which was no relation to the organisation of the same name that was created later and sold the awful magazine Living Marxism putting forward right-wing views on many issues despite the name) in Britain, should have supported Winston Churchill. Their failure to do so meant that they collapsed to a tiny organisation, and the Fourth International failed to take off on an international basis.
Trotskyists, including those in Militant in retrospect, argued against a so-called “popular front” with Churchill in favour of a “united front” involving only working class organisations. A popular front was disastrous in the Spanish Civil War – the crucial difference being that socialists were very weak in Britain compared with British capitalists and German fascists, whereas the capitalist Republicans in Spain had no base within the population.
The Spanish Civil War started off as a revolution which failed due to the betrayals by the leaders of the main working class organisations, socialist, “communist” and anarchist alike. This was the time in history when anarchism was strongest and the only time they have stood in elections to the best of my knowledge (certainly the only time they have become part of a governing coalition). For more information about anarchism, visit my page on direct action. These parties all entered a coalition government with the capitalist Republicans, which restricted the politics that they were prepared to put forward to those acceptable by capitalists. In particular, this ruled out redistribution of the land to win support of the peasants and undermining Franco’s base of support in Morocco by supporting independence for the Moors.
Franco also won the Spanish Civil War due to the betrayals of the Stalinist regime in the USSR, which failed to send weapons to the front for the Communist Party. Stalin was worried about a revolution in Spain, which would have led to revolutionary movements in his own country, probably bringing about his own downfall and that of the rest of the ruling bureaucratic clique.
A much smaller party called the POUM, which partly arose from Trotskyism, was much better but not big enough to win the Civil War. For more information, visit my discussion group for socialist film director Ken Loach’s brilliant film “Land and Freedom”.
Franco’s regime started off as a fascist one, with a mass movement supporting him, but gradually became a military-police dictatorship relying on a network of informers. The legacy of Franco’s rule is still evident today; when I visited Barcelona (in Catalonia, in which most people want independence from Spain but which the methods of terrorists employed by some people supposedly in favour of independence, specifically ETA in the Basque Country, have ensured that the Spanish state has remained in one piece) for a series of mass anti-capitalist demonstrations a few years ago, people were very hostile when I spoke the odd word in German (obviously because that language is associated with the Nazis).
My experience of opposing racism and fascism
The Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), the international organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated, set up Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE) to unite young people against racism and fascism across Europe. That organisation was particularly strong in Belgium (where it was known as the BlokBusters and it was proving itself effective at stopping the Vlaams Blok) and Germany (where a layer of anarchists got involved). The YRE was also reasonably successful in Britain, although the Anti-Nazi League (ANL), which had been re-established by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), was much bigger because it had a well-known name. However, the SWP ran the ANL from their own branches, leading to many people who had got involved through the ANL’s anti-fascist activities becoming disillusioned. In contrast, YRE branches were set up (in most areas where YRE activities took place at least) and national conferences took place.
I took part in the first demonstration against the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, during which we protested outside the fascist BNP headquarters in Welling (London), the opening of which had caused a big rise in racist attacks. It was jointly organised by the YRE in conjunction with Panther, an organisation of black and Asian socialists also set up by Militant.
Panther managed to mobilise a lot of black youths on that demonstration, and went on to organise a large rally (again in London) at which Bobby Seale (who founded the Black Panther Party in the USA along with Huey Newton, and who wrote the book “Seize the Time” which had just been reprinted) spoke. However, Panther later disintegrated due to a faction fight between those who were happy with the dominance of Militant members and those who wanted independence from them. The pro-independence faction won, and I think they just printed one issue of the Panther newspaper before winding themselves up. The severe shortage of black and Asian members of Militant was a “chicken and the egg situation” – because there were so few members already, it was easy for organisations on the side of big business (such as MI5) to plant a few infiltrators within Militant who could play a disgraceful role alienating new black and Asian people when the time was right.
The YRE organised a 30,000 strong Europe-wide demonstration in Brussels, which I could not attend but I cannot remember the reason. I did attend a YRE summer camp in Eastern Germany shortly after the reunification of West and East Germany. The camp was held near a training centre for a fascist grouping and someone had been spotted in a field with a Kalashnikov! We therefore had to take precautions, and I played my part by helping keeping an eye out for fascists in the woods one night – there were the occasional glimpses of torches in the distance, but no-one came anywhere near.
The YRE recognised that direct action against fascists by small numbers of people are sometimes useful, as well as the sort of activities the ANL tended to restrict themselves to – mass demonstrations, leafleting, getting people to sign petitions and waving their yellow “lollypops” in city or town centres. When the YRE led a fairly small but large enough number of people behind police lines to attack the BNP, they stopped them from holding a paper sale on Brick Lane in London, which was a major setback for the fascists. On one occasion in a Lancashire town, YRE and Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) members and supporters confronted the BNP in a field, taking united action to prevent them from holding a meeting but the ANL went back to the town centre. When BNP members/supporters were spotted at the bottom of the field, AFA took the lead (since their strategy for defeating fascism relied on physical attacks) and did Nazi salutes as they walked down the field to approach the fascists. Some YRE members joined in, but I could not bring myself to follow their lead. AFA’s strategy worked, however, and many of the fascists were beaten up after the walk down the field turned into a charge. The YRE’s other strategy, which was not emulated by the ANL or AFA, and is not being emulated by Unite Against Fascism today, is in countering the fascists’ arguments politically by putting forward a left-wing alternative. The YRE was not explicitly socialist but it put forward socialist arguments against the BNP and other fascist organisations.
Incidentally, handing in petitions is a bad idea, since that informs our enemies who their enemies are, and they are generally used by socialist organisations as a means of starting to talk to people and collecting details of “contacts” (people who may join the organisation or receive the organisation’s newspaper regularly) rather than being handed in to anyone. It is particularly dangerous to collect addresses in an anti-racist or anti-fascist campaign since fascists in organisations like C18 and the BNP have been known to firebomb people’s homes. Email addresses should be collected instead, or leaflets handed out with details of internet discussion groups at www.yahoogroups.com on them, so that anybody who is interested can join the suggested group and/or access its archive of previous messages.
Infiltration to keep socialist organisations mainly white
One of the black infiltrators within Militant and Panther was Phil Frampton, who was Regional Secretary (for the Manchester/Lancashire region) of the Militant Tendency at the time I joined. He was an excellent public speaker, and I acknowledged (in chapter 3 of my autobiography “Transition”) that he made some of the most inspiring speeches I have ever heard and that he was one of the people who recruited me to Militant. However, when he got himself into a position of power he abused it. I don’t know what damage he caused to Panther, but he caused a massively destabilising faction fight within the region of Militant by playing off one branch (Wythenshawe) against another (Withington), saying that members of the former branch were more working class than the latter. Whereas there was undoubtedly much more poverty in Wythenshawe, and Withington branch members tended to be better educated, that does not mean that Withington branch members should be written off!
In fact, having a better education can enable you to build a better model of the world in your head and play a bigger role than somebody who was less educated. In my case, my PhD in Computer Science (including Artificial Intelligence), and my later role developing the modelling language SDML (click here for a socialist page on this website about that language), have been very useful in building up a very accurate model of the world which I have needed to out-manoeuvre people on the side of big business.
One member of Withington branch at that time, Paula Mitchell, went on to become the sole full-timer for all branches of the Socialist Party (as Militant became known as) in the London region. Ten members of Manchester District Committee, dubbed the “DC10”, who had witnessed divide-and-rule comments made by Frampton or one of his allies, formed a faction to try to make him change his methods (rather than insisting that he was deposed by the national leadership, i.e. the Executive Committee, but this is what happened eventually) but people who had not witnessed any such comments tended not to believe the DC10. I tried to play a unifying role, and it was not until Frampton’s main ally Maureen Reynolds (who is white and was the Treasurer of the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation – the book “Uncollectable” which was supposedly written by her was actually written by Frampton) shouted out at the top of her voice about me wasting the organisation’s money outside the venue where the launch rally of Militant Labour was about to take place (when Militant left the Labour Party in England and Wales emulating the successful launch of Scottish Militant Labour) that I fully took the side of DC10. The incident in question arose when I left a trestle table with a bunch of Militant members in Frampton’s faction (with Stuart Ward in particular) at the Moss Side carnival who had just sat around doing nothing while we were doing some political activity. All for a trestle table that cost less than a tenner, and Reynolds had plenty of time to say something about it in the coach on the way down – she was clearly a big business infiltrator as well!
There were also two specific incidents that suggest that Frampton was an infiltrator – on one occasion he “lost” a huge list of names and addresses of “contacts” that had been collected at university freshers’ fairs, and at a demonstration outside Hall Lane police station in Wythenshawe where we were taking up the case of police violence (particularly against a black man called Shaun Morgan but many other cases came to light) he appealed to the police as “workers in uniform”! Frampton’s comments alienated a lot of the young people that our organisation had gathered around us due to serious activity around that issue. [The term “workers in uniform” is usually used to refer to working class people in the army, many of whom are likely to revolt if the ruling class attempts to use them to crush the working class – this can also happen within the police force but it happens far more rarely, and the police had been regularly used against demonstrations in recent years.]
Infiltration by the BNP and National Revolutionary Faction
Manchester University student Joe Finnan and Manchester Metropolitan University student Diane Stoker are both members of the fascist British National Party (BNP) who infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) for the whole of the last academic year (Autumn 2003 – Summer 2004), and played leading roles in the SWP’s student wing, the Socialist Worker Student Society (SWSS). Both of the infiltrators attended the SWP’s national conference, and they were seriously involved in the most important organisations the SWP got involved with: Respect from its formation, the Stop the War Coalition, Manchester Against Racism, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) and Globalise Resistance. BNP infiltrator Finnan became the treasurer for Respect North West (which has perhaps incidentally accumulated a large debt from the European elections). The SWP allowed them unlimited access to membership lists, petitions, email groups and other internal information of all these organisations at quite a high level, and put them in charge of recruitment for the anti-capitalist organisation Globalise Resistance at the SWP’s summer event Marxism 2004. UAF national secretary Weyman Bennett regarded them as close friends and often contacted them for advice, according to the BNP.
I got most of my information on the BNP’s infiltration of the SWP from the internet, since I am not aware of ever meeting them. Visit pages on the Socialist Unity Network and the Workers Power websites for left-wing perspectives on their infiltration: (in the archives of www.socialistunitynetwork.co.uk and at www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=26,101,0,0,1,0) and a page on the BNP's website gloating about their achievement ( www.bnp.org.uk/articles/left_infiltration.htm). [Some anti-fascists may object to me providing a link to a page on a fascist website, on the basis of “no platform for fascists”, but it is important to know your enemy and it is so straightforward to search the internet that anybody who wanted to could search out this page (which is actually informative enough to be worth looking at). Besides, I cannot imagine anybody except the most die-hard agent of big business reading my material and becoming converted to fascism by reading the BNP’s simplistic policies.]
Both of the fascists have returned to university this year and they must be prevented from building a BNP branch in Manchester. Both lecturers’ unions, the AUT and NATFHE, are opposed to teaching fascists, but whether the local branches of those unions or of the National Union of Students are able to take strong action against them remains to be seen. The main aim of fascism is to attack organisations of the working class, which is why the Nazis in Germany were funded by big business.
I am a life member of Manchester University student union, and I have therefore got involved in the Unite Against Fascism branch at that university.
Although the BNP have toyed with a bit of infiltration, quite possibly for the first time, another fascist organisation called the National Revolutionary Faction (NRF) have been doing it extremely seriously for years. A few years ago, it was revealed on the “UK Left Network” mailing list that two members of London Socialist Alliance, who were leaders of the South London Republican Forum and called themselves revolutionary socialists, had been collaborating with the NRF for about a year. Somebody else on the list found a page on their website (which has since been removed) giving advice to fascist cadres for infiltrating organisations in society, including those of the left (but also others in society such as the police, the NHS and education). The NRF had (and presumably still has) a complicated hierarchical structure with several layers corresponding to different depths they had reached within the organisations they were infiltrating. I produced a draft resolution against state/fascist infiltration based on the discussion, which you can read by clicking here). This discussion proved very useful in starting to publicise my ideas about the infiltration that takes place in society and I wrote the first version of my “Socialism and Conspiracies” document soon after. Unfortunately, I have since been chucked off that list (and another list on which the discussion took place). If you have enjoyed reading this message, and want to read more of my views about infiltration by conspiratorial organisations on the side of the two key classes: big business (to try to stop a world socialist revolution) and the working class (to neutralise those on the side of big business enabling a revolution to take place), as well as other vested interests such as fascism, the middle class and Islamic fundamentalism, you can read the most recent version (5) of that document by clicking here.
Opposing racism in football
I have put some information about opposing racism in football, which
Show Racism the Red Card (an organisation to oppose racism in football) has done a lot to combat in Britain but that is very strong in Madrid as shown in the match between Spain and England in the Spanish capital, in my page on Sport and Games.
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