-Caveat Lector-
From http://www.civnet.org/journal/issue5/revwart.htm
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[civreviews]
januaryfebruary 1998 vol 2. no. 1
Alona Wartofsky on the
resurgence of fascism.
The Beast Reawakens
By Martin A. Lee
Little, Brown $24.95; 560 pages
in the desolate German city of Hoyerswerda, a crowd of angry young Germans
throws rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails at a hostel housing people considered to
be ethnic undesirables. The young hooligans then march along the city's streets,
waving Third Reich flags. Some of the undesirables try to escape but are beaten
mercilessly by the mob. Days later, as the victims of the attack are evacuated by
officials, townspeople throw stones at their departing buses. In another German
town, the Baltic seaport Rostock, police stand by and watch as a group of thugs sets
fire to a shelter for unwanted outsiders. As the shelter burns, the crowd sings
Tannenbaum and Deutschland Üuber Alles. Within days, the government orders
all outsiders to leave Rostock.
The sharp escalation of neofascist activity constitutes one of the most dangerous
trends in international politics, writes Martin A. Lee in The Beast Reawakens
These events did not take place under the auspices of the Third Reich. The
Hoyerswerda pogrom, directed toward Asian and African guest workers, occurred in
the fall of 1991. Rostock's victims, Romanian Gypsies, were attacked during the
summer of the following year. More recently in the news, a grainy homemade video
broadcast on German television revealed that such exercises in Nazi nostalgia are
not limited to fringe groups. The footage recorded German army troops preparing for
deployment to the Balkans in 1994; some of the soldiers raised their arms in Nazi
salutes and made disparaging remarks about Jews.
The sharp escalation of neofascist activity constitutes one of the most dangerous
trends in international politics, writes Martin A. Lee in The Beast Reawakens, his
instructive survey of the post-World-War-II fascist and neo-fascist landscape. The
growing clout of far Right political parties in Europe; the emergence of a Red-Brown'
alliance' in Russia; the rise of the U.S. militia movement; the mounting pattern of
violence against refugees, immigrants, guest workers, asylum seekers, and racial
minorities throughout much of the Northern Hemisphereall are manifestations of a
widespread neofascist resurgence.
a vibrant democratic culture is not conducive to the growth of fascism
Fascism is generally defined as a political movement embracing rigid one-party
dictatorship, private economic enterprise under government control, and belligerent
nationalism, racism, and militarism. Generally defined, because historians and
academics have failed to agree on its precise definition, in part due to the protean
quality of fascism itself. Mussolini's fascism differed from Hitler's, and as The Beast
Reawakens reminds us, while some contemporary fascists shave their heads, wear
swastikas, and engage in paramilitary and terrorist training, others present
themselves as ordinary politicians, toning down their racist views and recasting
themselves as national populists in order to establish themselves within the political
mainstream. It is, of course, part of the burden of democracy to withstandto some
degreeodious views as well as benevolent ones. Indeed, Lee quotes Frankfurt
School philosopher Theodor Adorno, who viewed the continued existence of
fascism WITHIN democracy [as] more threatening than the continued existence of
fascist tendencies AGAINST democracy. Yet as Lee also argues, A vibrant
democratic culture is not conducive to the growth of fascism.
like their predecessors, today's neo- Nazis resort to jumbled distortions of history to
suit their purposes
The Beast Reawakens documents how, during the Cold War, unrepentant Nazis
campaigned both covertly and openly to stoke the fires of fascism, bequeathing it
and its accordant hatreds and irrationalities to a new generation in countries
throughout the world. In later chapters, Lee notes that recent global
developmentsparticularly the reunification of Germany and the collapse of Soviet
Bloc Communism have resulted in the kind of uncertainties that right-wing
extremists have successfully manipulated to their advantage.
Like their predecessors, today's neo- Nazis resort to jumbled distortions of history to
suit their purposes. Various permutations of far-right extremists deny that the
Holocaust ever took place; others believe that it did, and that it was a glorious
event.
In the words of one American neo-Nazi, When the people can no longer tolerate the
Jews, those people who don't believe in the Holocaust will want one; and those who
do believe in the Holocaust will want another one.
As the violent incidents at Hoyerswerda, Rostock, and in dozens of other cities from
Seattle to Moscow have demonstrated, contemporary far-right extremists hardly limit
their rancor to apocalyptic predictions. Remarkably
