by Theo Russell |
| the forum begins |
The Second International Anti-Fascist Forum which took place last month in Moscow was a very timely gathering of the best elements of the world’s communist and workers parties.
To be at this event it wasn’t enough simply to be aware of the resurgence of the far right and fascism in the advanced capitalist countries; in practice the parties present had to have good relations with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), the Forum organisers, and also be prepared to attend an event in Moscow. This in turn means a correct analysis of the war in Ukraine since February 2014 and of the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO) which began in February 2022.
Like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 and the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-40, a correct Marxist Leninist assessment of the Russian intervention in Ukraine requires a sufficient knowledge of the events leading up to it and the overall strategy of Western imperialism in the world today.
Unfortunately, some of the world’s largest communist parties have, in fact, failed this test. Led by the French communists and the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), many parties declared the SMO an ‘imperialist’ operation.
This was an abject failure to understand how the Nato alliance had deliberately created a situation which effectively forced Russia to act.
First, by 2022 fascist and specifically anti-Russian Banderite thinking had spread throughout Ukraine including the armed forces and police. Ukraine had become a living example of a 1930s-style fascist state, and in practice only an external military intervention could eradicate the resulting dictatorship.
Second, this dictatorship unleashed horrific atrocities and caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people, especially in the Russian-speaking regions, long before February 2022.
Third, Nato blatantly used the Minsk peace talks to pump weapons into Ukraine and train an entirely new ‘Nato standard’ military, all the while falsely claiming that the Donbas forces and Russia were breaking the agreed ceasefires. When it became clear that the placing of long-range missiles in Ukraine was the next step, the puppet regime became a mortal threat to Russia. In other words, Nato’s plan all along was to force the Russian Federation into a war.
Thus, a Marxist-Leninist analysis shows the current war in Ukraine is not between Russia and Ukraine. It is a war directed against Russia, and backed by 55 Nato and allied states.
From a Marxist-Leninist position, the Russian intervention, and the war fought before that by the Donbas People’s Republics, is a just war. It is in fact a war of liberation from the tyranny of a fascist dictatorship.
For these reasons, the Moscow Forum was an opportunity for the best elements of the world communist movement to gather and prepare tactics for the inevitable future clashes with the rising fascist tide and the threat of new wars – the products of the deepening capitalist crisis.
Leading members of the CPRF themselves made major theoretical contributions to the Forum, including general secretary Gennady Zyuganov as well as Dmitry Novikov and Yuri Afonin from the Central Committee.
During the Forum discussion on Nazism and Fascism as a Natural Continuation of Colonial Capitalism, Afonin described how fascism first arose as capitalism's reaction to the Great October Socialist Revolution, which he said “resulted in a colossal strengthening of the communist and labour movement across the planet. Capitalism found itself on the brink of historical collapse. Its response was fascism”.
He argued that the bourgeoisie of the richest capitalist countries such as the USA, Britain, France and the Netherlands, were able to maintain their rule without abandoning bourgeois democracy, due to the enormous financial resources available to them. “But in the poorer countries of the semi-periphery, the capitalists began to solve this problem with the help of fascism” – a reference to Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal.
“After 1945” he continued “fascist practice and fascist regimes became the lot of the periphery of the world capitalist system. The Western imperialist powers in suppressing national liberation movements in the colonies was practically no different from the practice of mass terror that Hitler's Reich conducted in the occupied territories”.
Afonin said the Western powers established a kind of "export" of fascism to the countries of the Third World, now known as the Global South. “In the Third World they contributed to the establishment of fascist regimes dozens of times, and supported them for decades”.
He described the ‘special structures’ which were created, such as the USA’s ‘School of the Americas’ created in 1946 to train military and police officers from Latin American countries in large numbers. “Graduates of this ‘school’ took part in many coups d'état, after which fascist regimes were established” with the creation of “death squads, mass kidnappings, torture and murder”.
“In 1965-66, during the establishment of the fascist regime in Indonesia, according to various estimates, between one and two million people were exterminated. And in Guatemala, the fascist regime, supported by the United States, exterminated about 10 per cent of the country's Indian population in the 1980s, with Indian villages being destroyed along with all their inhabitants and burned.
Afonin paid tribute to Cuba’s outstanding role in the fight against fascism in the second half of the 20th century. “Cuba gave every possible support to Latin American liberation movements that fought against fascist regimes. And this was one of the reasons why Latin American fascist dictators were eventually either overthrown by rebels or forced to resign and give way to democratic governments.
“And in Africa, Cuban internationalist warriors helped the peoples of Angola and Mozambique defend their independence in the face of aggression from the racists of South Africa, whose regime pursued a truly fascist policy towards black Africans”.
“In the modern world”, Afonin continued, “fascism is a form of neo-colonialism used by Western imperialism. The closest example to us geographically is Ukraine. After the collapse of the USSR, it effectively fell into neo-colonial dependence on the West.
“Today, the form of this Western domination is the Zelensky regime, which meets all the signs of a fascist one. Now this regime is busy preparing to transfer all the natural resources and all the most profitable assets of its country to the United States. It is difficult to find a more obvious example of outright neocolonialism”.
He then turned to the Middle East. “Here the State of Israel is pursuing a policy towards the Palestinian people that is confusingly similar to the policy of Hitler's Reich towards the peoples it declared ‘inferior’.
“It is also worth taking a closer look at armed radical Islamism. These groups usually say they want to return society to the times of the first caliphs. But we understand that this is impossible. It is impossible to revive the social order that existed almost one and a half thousand years ago.
“Behind this reactionary utopia lies a completely different reality. We must not forget that radical Islamism in its current form was created by Western intelligence services in the 1980s to use against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. And now we see signs that Western imperialism is using radical Islamism against its opponents.
“The economy of ISIS territories continued to be integrated into the system of global capitalism. Oil extracted in ISIS territories somehow ended up in Western tankers, which transported it around the world. In the territories where radical Islamists established their power, polygamy, marriages with little girls and slavery were legalised. Ancient cultural monuments were barbarously destroyed and mass terror was unleashed”.
Dmitry Novikov, Deputy Chair of the CPRF Central Committee spoke at the section "Lenin's teaching on imperialism and fascism". He emphasised the new aggressive approach of the collective West in the form of the war against Russia unleashed by the hands of Ukrainian neo-Nazis, adding other examples such as Israel's bombing of Palestine, the use of Taiwan in the fight against People’s China, and the new American trade war. He warned of the danger of economic conflicts escalating into military ones.
He recalled that the capitalist crisis after 1918 led to a powerful struggle by the labour movement. In Italy Mussolini banned strikes and reduced workers' wages, while the ‘democratic’ countries supported the regime. In Germany the Nazi party was “turned into a fist of the bourgeoisie to strike blows at the communists and the labour movement”, while American and British monopolies helped the Third Reich to rebuild military production.
Today, he said “Nato has put the supply of various types of weapons to the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime on stream. Thus, the imperialists play a key role in the formation of fascist regimes”.
Novikov pointed out that “Lenin was the first and most outstanding anti-fascist. He saw the threat of fascism back in the early 1920s and warned the European workers about it. He revealed the essence of imperialism, which is the progenitor of fascism.
“Vladimir Lenin created a party that, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, became the grave-digger of fascism and created the Comintern, whose parties took up the first battle against the brown plague”.
He recalled that after the Soviet victory over the Third Reich, many Nazis went on to serve in government structures and intelligence services of the ‘democratic’ countries, while the West supported the power of the colonels in Greece, the Pinochet junta in Chile, and other reactionary regimes.
Novikov spoke of the latest ‘innovations’ of global capital, such as using global social networks to suppress dissent (what the Cuban Communist Party calls “digital colonialism”). “In the US and Europe, people who criticise the policies of the ruling circles are subjected to moral terror by the authorities, fired from work, and banned from professions and publication in the media”.
“At present world capitalism is reviving Nazism. The threat of a new world war is growing. In these conditions, the duty of progressive forces, honest people, is to consolidate in the fight against dangerous tendencies.”
Novikov referred to the fascist tactic of “playing on the social moods of the people, to exploit the workers' desire for justice, their rejection of corruption, and the dictates of capitalist monopolies. As a result, many workers become victims of Nazi demagogy”.
Viktor Tyulkin, leader of the Russian Communist Workers' Party, declared his party’s support for the special operation in Ukraine.
He described the collective West, led by the United States, as “the most predatory imperialist force in the world. To achieve its goal of world hegemony, the Western imperialists are striving to dismember Russia. All this began not in 2022, but in 1991,” he said
“We should not remain silent about Nato approaching the borders of our country, about the imperialists cultivating Banderites in Ukraine. Repeating the fate of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya in Russia is contrary to the interests of the working class of our country and the whole world”.
Tyulkin also mentioned the responsibility of the Russian ruling class, since the roots of the current situation lie in the liquidation of socialism. “The abolition of Soviet power put Russia in a vulnerable position, and the unleashing of anti-communism continues to this day. Only under socialism will it be possible to completely eliminate the threat of fascism”.
Tyulkin also spoke of “a campaign in our country to rename settlements, squares, streets, and to glorify reactionaries, including fascist philosophers.”
Many other speakers condemned the US and Nato for the Ukrainian Nazi regime, Israeli aggression against Palestine, and American pressure on China and Cuba, and said it was unacceptable for countries which took an independent position to be branded "sponsors of terrorism" and "enemies of democracy".
The representative of the People's Socialist Party of Mexico declared that socialist and genuinely democratic forces should create a World Anti-Fascist Front.
I N Makarov, of the Russian Scientists for Socialism movement, spoke of the struggle against bourgeois counter-revolution in Russia in the 1990s, and “the unleashing of fascist terror in Russia” in October 1993. “After tanks fired on the House of Soviets” he said, “the Yeltsinites killed hundreds of protesters defending the USSR Constitution at the Krasnaya Presnya stadium and the Ostankino TV Tower”.
Makarov referred to the work of Gennady Zyuganov, Russia under the Gun of Globalism, which he said “asserts that the phenomenon called ‘globalism’ is simply a new form of imperialism, but has not changed its essence in the slightest. Consequently, Lenin's definition of imperialism remains relevant.”
He said that today “Russia has the mission of defeating fascism for the second time in the past 80 years. He predicted that “if the USSR's victory over Hitlerism in 1945 was followed by the collapse of colonialism, then the current defeat of Banderism will serve as a prologue to the fall of the imperialist system”.
Speakers in the section Fascism – a threat to security and cooperation in Europe spoke of the resurgence of fascism in Europe today, arguing that the European Union has, to some extent, become “the forerunner of the Fourth Reich” in which the renewed fascist movements actively use the difficult situation that has often developed in the sphere of migration policy in different countries.
Many speakers expressed alarm over the ongoing distortion of historical truth and called for a complete rejection of all forms of decommunisation in state ideology and policy.
Emilio Lasada Garcia, head of the International Department of the Communist Party of Cuba, said “fascism in Latin America has not gone away. With its subversive actions against Venezuela, Washington today seeks to establish a fascist regime in this country, betting on the ultra-right, fascist forces.
“In the United States itself, very disturbing processes are also underway. The slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ is reminiscent of the fascist slogans of the past. In today's USA, concentration camps have been revived, where many thousands of migrants are thrown.”
Marcelo Rodriguez of the Communist Party of Argentina, said that the right-wing Argentine president Miley’s ideology – “anti-communism, racism, and open hatred of the indigenous Indian peoples actually make it neo-fascist”.
Delegates from several Middle Eastern parties said the Zionist regime is pursuing a fascist policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, where every thirtieth resident of the Gaza Strip has already been killed and 20 per cent of residents have been expelled from their homes, most of which have simply been destroyed.
Benedict Martins of the South African Communist Party noted that the armed struggle in the Donbas did not begin in 2022, but eight years earlier. And the root of this conflict is that neo-fascism has once again raised its ugly head in Ukraine in the form of an openly Nazi Bandera ideology.
This view was echoed by Konstantina Kartsioti, a Greek communist in the Anti Imperialist Front, who said the huge Western imperialist propaganda machine was now spreading lies about Russia around the world, but that thanks to the activities of progressive forces, more and more people are beginning to understand the essence and roots of the conflict in Ukraine.
