Part One, Dr Hubel’s analysis of fascism in the last century, can be viewed here.
The rise of right-wing extremist movements since 2008
The disintegration and collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the definite end of the East-West conflict which had lasted since the late 1940s. To be more precise, it was the Soviet Union’s General Secretary of the Communist Party and later Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev who actually ended the ‘Cold War’ during the late 1980s, because he tried to reform the Soviet economy and sought reconciliation with the West by stopping the arms race and finally agreeing to the liberation of Eastern Europe including the German Democratic Republic.
Putin’s revanchism and expansionism
The years of Boris Yeltsin’s Russia (1991-99), aiming at becoming a ‘Western country’, turned out as only an interlude: Vladimir Putin, at the helm of the secret services which had survived the Soviet and post-Soviet period, quickly seized control of his country’s economy and society and then pursued his ultimate goal of re-creating not only the Soviet Union but also imperial Russia. Bolstered by the billions of Euros and US dollars from his sales of oil, gas and other mineral resources, he undertook his strategy with care and clever camouflage. Western countries, united Germany in particular, fell into Putin’s trap of making themselves dependent on his energy resources, while ignoring his revanchism.
As I argued in a previous article, there is a clear parallel between Hitler’s revanchist goal of reverting to a Europe prior to the Versailles treaty and Putin aiming to bring back all ‘lost territories’ and particularly all Russian-speaking people under his control. He famously called the disintegration of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century”. Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine since 2014 became his first victims. In contrast to Germany’s grave socio-economic problems in the 1920s, the Russian dictator could support his aggression with a full war chest thanks to Russia’s energy sales.
What an irony: Germany, led by the chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel believed in ‘interdependence’ – that close cooperation would make Russia a reliable partner. Instead, Putin’s oil and gas sales made Germany’s economy increasingly dependent on the Kremlin’s goodwill. In consequence, Russian politicians like Dmitry Medvedev and experts like Sergey Karaganov spoke and wrote about creating a “Eurasia from Vladivostok to Lisbon” – a project of Russian dominance over the whole of ‘Eurasia’. As explained in my April 2022 article, ‘Vladimir Adolfovich Putin: not only revanchist but also expansionist’, this is Putin’s counterpart to Hitler’s ‘Lebensraum im Osten’ (living space in the East).
Right-wing parties all over Western Europe like the AfD in Germany, the Front National in France, several parties in Italy, Hungary’s Victor Orban and others, propped up by Russian disinformation and money, openly admired Putin’s ‘strong hand’ and defended his aggression particularly against Ukraine, thereby undermining the efforts of Western countries towards stopping the Russian aggressor.
Socio-economic troubles in Europe and the United States
There are many similarities between the bank crashes of 1929/30 and 2007/08. The unregulated capitalism in both cases caused tremendous economic and social problems: the near break-down of economies, growing unemployment, spiralling state deficits and the resulting inability of Western governments to act responsibly.
Fascism in UK?
If we first take the UK as an example, we can see that the government of David Cameron reacted to the state’s financial constraints by significantly cutting back social expenditure, trying to save money instead of pursuing a Keynesian policy of borrowing more to invigorate the economy and thereby invest in the future – as US President Roosevelt had done in the 1930s. The result was a widening social gap between England’s South and the poorer rest of the UK.
The outcome of the Brexit vote of 2016 could be understood as the consequence of the increased frustration, which a large segment of the population felt about their situation. The ‘Leave’ campaign was clever enough to declare immigrants and the EU as culprits. In 2019 Prime Minister Boris Johnson won his landslide parliamentary victory by promising that having ‘got Brexit done’, the poorer parts of the UK would get a ‘levelling up’. Some four years later all this turned into a very hollow promise and, arguably, a deliberate betrayal of UK voters. Right-wing ultra-nationalist politicians have used Hitler’s demagogic instrument of finding scapegoats (“foreigners and immigrants”) and making them responsible for the UK’s self-made crisis.
Fascism in Germany?
In the case of Germany, it was Russia’s war against Ukraine which created major problems in the energy sector. Even before the invasion started in February 2022, the Gazprom company, controlled by the Kremlin, had reduced its gas exports to Germany – an indication of how well Putin had prepared this war. After the Russian oil and gas supplies had largely stopped, the government in Berlin had to find alternative sources of energy suppliers within an extremely short time, such as deliveries from Norway, the Netherlands, liquid gas from the United States and others. The German public and its energy-dependent economy only got through the winter of 2022/23 without severe shortages, because the weather turned out relatively mild and the appeals for saving energy were followed to a considerable degree. Nevertheless, the energy crisis consumed significant financial resources and aggravated the government’s difficulties in financing its ambitious goals for modernising the country and battling climate change.
All this was a very welcome boost for the right wing groups and particularly the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), which managed to unite all kinds of popular dissatisfaction and frustration and turn it into aggression against ‘foreigners and immigrants’ (all the more while Germany accepted more than a million of Ukrainian refugees), the ruling government or even the democratic system as such. As I discussed in my previous article on the rise of the AfD, Germany’s incomplete unification process contributed to this problem particularly in the eastern federal states.
Fascism and electoral systems
In the case of the UK, the widespread popular dissatisfaction will probably only lead to a change of government in 2024, whereas the situation in Germany seems more volatile and worrisome. The UK’s electoral system of ‘First Pass the Post’ (FPTP) leads, in most cases, to a two-party system, which provides a certain stability in times of crisis. (This was Haffner’s argument when he criticised West Germany’s electoral system, after he had returned to Berlin in 1954.) After centuries without a revolution, the UK political system does not seem to be endangered by public frustration, although this could be changing, as many people do not accept that their political preferences are not taken into account.
Germany’s proportional representation (PR) system enables more parties (beyond the 5% threshold) to be represented in parliament and necessitates (in most cases) a coalition government. In addition, the federal system with devolved state parliaments, guaranteed by the Grundgesetz (‘basic law’, another word for constitution), dilutes the power of the central government. PR can also allow an extremist party which manages to overcome the 5% threshold to secure a place in a federal state government. For example the state elections in Thuringia and Saxony (both on 1 September 2024) could bring the AfD into government in Erfurt or in Dresden, if current polls prove correct.
Fascism in the USA?
In the United States the election of Donald Trump in 2016 was mainly due to widespread frustration with the decline of the economy and the ensuing social problems. Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) says it all. The despair among voters was so strong that they were ready to accept a ‘strong leader’ despite his dubious character and all his well-known scandals. Trump’s presidency managed to corrupt major parts of the Republican Party, who even accepted his proto-fascist coup attempt of trying to prevent the announcement of the newly elected President Joe Biden on 6 January 2021, as I documented at the time. The outcome of the presidential elections in late 2024 will tell whether the US democracy is still functioning.
While Trump turned out to be a proto-fascist domestically, he revived the tradition of US isolationism in international affairs: he stopped the Western involvement in Afghanistan and didn’t start another major global military intervention. He also showed his readiness to downgrade or even abolish NATO, thereby putting US security guarantees for the Europeans in question – and encouraging Putin’s further aggression.
Will history repeat itself and fascism return?
Basically, it seems that Heraclitus was right: there are too many differences between the years 1929 and 2024. After 1999 the world has lived in a period of relative ‘global peace’, marred ‘only’ by local wars (in post-Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria etc.). Up to the year 2007/08 public mood in Western countries was rather optimistic – no comparison with the decade since 1918. People enjoyed the ‘peace dividend’.
Yet, the negative impact of the global financial crisis of 2007/08 was to a minor degree comparable with that following 1929: public mood in Western societies turned sour and the ultra-right-wing movements got a significant boost.
In the case of Putin’s Russia we have to record a clear return of domestic fascism and external revanchism plus expansionism. Here there is indeed a significant, dangerous parallel with Hitler’s Germany.
In the United States the presidential elections of 2016 have brought a ‘proto-fascist’ leader into power, who in 2021 clearly tried to subvert the outcome of the next presidential elections, thereby gravely endangering the country’s political system.
The year 2024 will give us answers (welcome or otherwise) to our basic question: “Will there be a return of fascism?”
- Can Putin win his war against Ukraine and carry on endangering the West?
- Will Trump manage a political come-back and further destroy the US political system and NATO?
- Will elections in Germany bring a Nazi-like party into power (on a federal or even a national level)?
We want to hear your views. Please send any comments to editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk
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