Oppressive Forces Enable Fascism

And fascism returns the favour

In western countries, the anger is palpable and understandable.

Housing and food are unaffordable for many, our costs of living are skyrocketing as our standards of living plunge. And we watch helplessly as our western governments spend billions on NATO, Israel and senseless military adventures.

It’s frustrating, humiliating and makes us feel powerless.

Unfortunately, this is neoliberalism functioning as it was designed to function. A very few people have become extremely rich at the expense of the rest of us. This is by design; design of our laws, treaties, tax structures, and economics.

And following the money is very interesting. I hope you’ll take a look at this article from Counterpunch about AIPAC and the military industrial complex.

“AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) and other supporters of Israel built a sophisticated and far-reaching public relations machine that promotes US politicians who support Israel and punishes those who don’t.

Conceived this way, rich supporters of Israel finance public relations campaigns whereby American politicians are (legally) bribed and coerced into giving US foreign aid to Israel. This aid is then delivered to the nation of Israel, with a preponderance of the money being spent on weapons produced by American weapons producers. To the extent that the goal of ‘the Israel lobby’ is to maximize US foreign aid to Israel, it is also maximizing funding for the American MIC (military-industrial complex).

According to data on political lobbying (charts below), the Israel lobby has spent about two percent (2%) of US foreign aid to Israel on political persuasion inside the US since 1948. In US dollar terms, this is $6 billion spent by the Israel lobby to get $280 billion in US foreign aid for Israel. And while this ratio isn’t far from what the US ‘defense’ industry and other corporate pleaders get for their ‘investment’ in American politicians, most of the money that Israel receives from the US is used to buy weapons and materiel from American suppliers.”

This kind of economics often leads to fascism.

I’ve been reading material by Clara Zetkin who wrote about fascism when it first appeared in Italy in the 1930s. To quote from an article about her:

“We must make efforts to address the social layers that are now lapsing into fascism and either incorporate them in our struggles or at least neutralize them in the struggle. … In my view, it is extremely important that we purposefully and consistently carry out the ideological and political struggle for the souls of those in these layers, including the bourgeois intelligentsia.”

Usually the working class is blamed for fascism. I was surprised to learn that fascism is actually a phenomenon shared by all classes, and tends to appear when economies tank and people’s quality of life and societal privilege diminish.

I’ve been thinking about the race riots in Britain lately, and want to share an excerpt from this article about Tommy Robinson from the Palestine Chronicle. To quote:

“ …an aspect that almost no one has focused on is how the far-right influencers who motivated these race riots are trying to link the anti-immigrant cause to Israel and how most of them are paid advocates for the Israeli war on Gaza.

At the center of the ongoing racist riots that are taking place in the United Kingdom is the anti-Muslim campaigner Tommy Robinson. He contributed to sharing a made-up Muslim name for a 17-year-old British-born Christian who stabbed 3 children to death in an area called Southport, claiming that he was an asylum seeker. 

It wasn’t long before the fake name released and promoted as if it was evidence of a problem with violent Muslim Asylum seekers in the UK, was proven false, yet this key piece of disinformation was the catalyst for the riots that were to come.

After stirring up tensions, attaching a horrible mass stabbing event to “illegal immigration” and urging something to be done about it, the likes of Tommy Robinson quickly jumped online to distance themselves from violence, but justified the riots. Interestingly, the first point that Robinson made in his video addressing the riots was not about illegal immigration, but about Hamas. 

This comes from a man who was taken on an Israeli military tour, posed for photos in Israeli army t-shirts and on top of tanks operating on occupied territory, he even once remarked that he would fight in a war for Israel. But why is the self-described “English patriot” so obsessed with making every issue about Israel and October 7?

Tommy Robinson rose to infamy when he co-founded the explicitly anti-Islam ‘English Defence League’ (EDL), known for racist riots and marches. However, it is little mentioned that the co-founder of the EDL was a man named Paul Ray, who had worked for Israeli intelligence to infiltrate and spy on the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).”

Jonathan Cook has this to say about British race riots in his recent article:

”The British establishment has every incentive to continue channelling public anger over economic issues – such as shortages of jobs and housing, crumbling services and the rocketing cost of living – onto scapegoats, such as immigrants, asylum seekers and Muslims.

Were it not doing so, it might be much easier for the public to identify who are the true culprits – an establishment that has been pushing endless austerity policies while siphoning off the common wealth. 

A “senior Labour source” told reporters that the party welcomed the resignation of dozens of councillors from Labour over Starmer’s comments in support of Israel starving Gaza’s population. It was, the source said, the party “shaking off the fleas”.

A related narrative was advanced by Starmer loyalists ousted in last month’s general election by leftwing independents, including Corbyn, running on a platform to stop the slaughter in Gaza.

Jonathan Ashworth, who lost his Leicester South seat to Shockat Adam at July's general election, accused supporters of his Muslim rival of failing to abide by democratic norms – through what Ashworth has termed “vitriol”, “bullying”, and “intimidation”.

No evidence has been produced for his claim.

Palestinian flags have been all too visible at what politicians and the media have been calling “counter-demonstrations” – anti-fascists reclaiming the streets from the far-right, as they did last Wednesday.

The Labour right, which like Starmer is keen to see the left disappear from British politics, had insisted that anti-racists stay at home to let the police deal with the racist rioters.

But it is precisely because the anti-racist left has been forced onto the back foot through a bipartisan campaign of smears – painting it as extreme, antisemitic, un-British, traitorous – that the racist right has felt emboldened to show who is in charge.”

Here’s what Lowkey says about Tommy Robinson. It’s worth eight minutes of time to listen to this.

This quote from Craig Murray’s article, We Are the Bad Guys onConsortium News resonates with me:

“The West are not the good guys. Our so-called “democratic systems” give us no ability to vote for anybody who may get into power who does not support the genocide and imperialist foreign policy.

It is not an accident and it is not genius that makes a man-child like Elon Musk worth $100 billion. The power structures of society are deliberately designed by those with wealth to promote massive concentration of wealth in favour of those who already have it, exploiting and disempowering the rest of society. 

The rise of the multi-billionaires is not a fluke. It is a plan, and the misallocation of more than adequate resources is the cause of poverty. The attempt to shift blame onto the desperate constituents of waves of immigration forced into life by Western destruction of foreign countries, is also systematic. 

There is no longer any free space for dissent in the media to oppose any of this.

We are the Bad Guys. We resist our own governing systems, or we are complicit.

In the United Kingdom it falls to the Celtic nations to try to break up the state which is a subordinate but important imperialist engine. The paths of resistance are various, depending where you are.

But find one and take one.”

As the west continues to fund and arm Israel and Ukraine in their never ending violence, as this drags on, we’re seeing how complicit our governments and media are in continuing this violence.

Citizens have to resist, these forces that encourage us to ally ourselves with them through fascism; through blaming immigrants and minorities for what is a structural problem.

Dismantling this immoral and violent structure will take all of us working together.

So, please, direct your rage and frustration in ways that will disempower the systems that are killing us. Boycott corporations that support Israel, refuse to vote for politicians and political parties that support Israel, and don’t be fooled by their words — pay attention to what they do. If they’re sending arms and money to Israel, if they’re calling pro Palestinian rallies anti-semitic or saying that Iran is funding them, if they give Israel diplomatic cover and refuse to acknowledge the genocide Israel is committing, they have not earned our vote. Speak out, go to demonstrations, share on social media.

We can’t let this senseless genocide in Gaza continue, and we can’t allow these destructive forces to convince us that fascism is the answer to our problems.

It isn’t. We’ve seen where it leads and I don’t think it’s where any of us want to go.