| by Amber Poole |
Odilo Globocnik. Operation Reinhard. Everybody Comes to Rick’s. Colonialist
Imperialism. Sub-human Slavs. Boogaloo; I’m having great difficulty selecting an exact title for this book review:
HOW TO STOP FASCISM
by Paul Mason
Not since Matthew Desmond’s book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016) have I been so taken with a book that outlines in such rigor the return of fascism to our geopolitical landscape. And it’s not your grandmother’s brand from the 1930’s. Fascism today sports a different look: it’s slick, sophisticated and sneaky. According to Mason, “It does not take mass unemployment to produce it. It is not reliant on defeat in war or the existence of state-run radio stations. It is a recurrent symptom of system-failure under capitalism.”
Today’s fascism does not focus on class struggle as it did in the 20th Century but on ethnicity; an obsession with preserving white America. Mason follows the trail of the modern Traditionalists who follow the works of the Nazi legal scholar Carl Schmitt, who believed democracies are only as successful as their ‘homogeneous’ citizenry. Can this pernicious, political romanticism actually take shape, form and organize itself into law?
Mason lays out the five myths of modern fascism which are detailed in his book and I list them below. I will not define each of these entries for the sake of time. The material is extensive and there are other points yet to make, but I consider these myths worth noting.
- The Great Replacement Theory
2. Liberalism is the Main Enemy
3. Cultural Marxism is destroying the West
4. The primacy of metapolitics
5. Day X
Every country comes complete with its own complex history. What it’s proud of manifests in its flag, its national anthem, celebratory parades, a show of patriotism and loyalty to its government and its land. What it doesn’t boast is its shadow; what’s it not so proud of. This aspect of its complex history is white-washed, hidden, obscured, intentionally muddled and guarded within an inch of its life so as not to disturb the status-quo. Let’s face it. It’s a dangerous game. Nobody wants to look at ugly, not in oneself, not in one’s country. This unwillingness to look at ourselves is the perfect atmosphere for bacteria to grow. This bacteria is also known as fascism.
When we are attached to an outcome at all costs, without any application of a moral code, to an ideology without checks and balances, this determination can drive an entire country into a psychosis such as it did during WWII.
Mason writes: “Traditionally, historians have studied fascism from three vantage points: as an ideology, a movement and a regime. The premise of this book is that, though each of these viewpoints is valid, fascism can be fully understood only as the outcome of a process: specifically a process of socio-economic disintegration that leaves millions of people’s lives in turmoil, their self-mage in doubt, longing to believe a pack of lies, and indeed to take an active part in creating and spreading the lies.”
In March, 1942 the Epstein twins (Philip and Julius) were handed a script called, Everybody Comes to Rick’s. Their task was to make an anti-fascist movie funny. The first draft was rejected. The studios brought in Howard Koch and Casablana was born. This move is about resistance. “The moral lesson of Casablanca is that, in the face of fascism, nobody can stay neutral.” The directive here is to use history as a guide. We know what happens when we don’t resist; the result what Hannah Arendt would have called ‘radical evil’ under a totalitarian regime.
One of the ways fascism can take strong root is by their ability to demoralize/dehumanize an entire group of people, usually minorities. The poor are a target, women of color, refugees, the homeless, all are humiliated under the political trajectory of fascism. Odilo Globocnik was the director of Operation Reinhard between 1941 and 1943. Operation Reinhard was the code name for the intention to commit genocide against the Jewish people. But long before Globocnik took charge, he was obsessed with the desire to repopulate southern Poland with Germans and ‘then to encircle the entire Polish population’ with the aim of ‘gradually throttling them both economically and biologically”. Globocnik considered the Poles ‘sub-human Slavs.’
This kind of ‘radical evil’ starts out looking benign. It always starts by casting doubt upon the victim, by convincing them they are less than a specific standard. By making them buy into the belief that they are a victim. The perpetrator warms you up to the idea by creating systems of disadvantage, inconvenience, and discomfort until finally committing acts of violence against you.
Mason tells the story about a Pogrom in India. It began in 2019 with the “...Indian parliament passing a law granting citizenship to all undocumented migrants – except Muslims.” Overnight, the 172 million strong Muslim population were compromised, by one law, exposing religious intolerance. There were student protests, Muslim women protested by blocking traffic, calling out for freedom. Azadi. (Freedom) Soon followed a well-organized anti-Azadi movement which led to the deaths of 53 Muslims with 250 more hospitalized for their injuries. This mob mentality set fire to mosques, schools, shops, homes, and copies of the Quran. Hindu shops were left undamaged amid the destruction. This reign of terror lasted three days.
“All over the world the main driver of far-right extremism is the fear that people who are not supposed to be free might achieve freedom, and that in the process they might redefine what freedom means.” Mason.
They chanted in the streets that night, “Take Azadi, we are giving you Azadi.” Blinding their victims with acid, taunting them by dropping their trousers to Muslim women shouting: “You want Azadi, we’ll give you Azadi.” This is how it works: Fascism. It starts slow, insidious, almost subtle until it builds upon itself into genocide. Genocide is always the final outcome. But it starts by declaring an entire group of people superfluous.
This is what’s happening in Gaza, make no mistake. Study your history. Read. You can’t develop as a free thinker by getting your information from media sources. Read. Arm yourself with education. Stop buying into the lies and think for yourself. Read and then read more. We have power in cultural resistance: art, music, poetry, understanding history, theater. But we must arm ourselves with the intelligence to think critically. Educate yourself. The system is not going to do it for you.
I urge you to start with Paul Mason’s: How to Stop Fascism.