If this is not fascism, then what is? : The Tribune India

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If this is not fascism, then what is?

PRAKASH Karat''s recent declaration that the Bharatiya Janata Party can at best be called authoritarian but never fascist, at least at this stage of its evolution, may seem at first like a very superficial stirring of an old semantic debate on the nature of the Indian right wing.

If this is not fascism, then what is?

Activists of a students organisation hold placards against the attack on JNU students and teachers at Patiala House court in Delhi. AFP



Apoorvanand

PRAKASH Karat's recent declaration  that the Bharatiya Janata Party can at best be called authoritarian but never fascist, at least at this stage of its evolution, may seem at first like a very superficial stirring of an old semantic debate on the nature of the Indian right wing. Such a formulation, however, does have implications for many aspects of the Indian left movement, including its ability to mobilise a broad section of the Indian public against the jingoist and chauvinist politics of the Sangh Parivar. 

According to Karat, it would be premature to name the present BJP regime as fascist and therefore, there is no need  to go for the broadest united political front against it. In other words, we are a normal competitive parliamentary polity and the BJP is only one more of its participants, that can be contained by the rules of the current system

Karat happily quotes the definition of fascism, forged in the Thirteen plenum of the Communist International, as the “open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital”. Yet he denies, in the same breath, the idea that we are indeed in an era where the rule of finance capital is at its destructive worst, both globally and also nationally. 

As Georgi Dimitrov,  well-known leader of the Communist International, said a few years before the Nazis marched into the rest of Europe, the rise of fascism in Germany was in no small measure due to the complacence of the German communists. Karat, by denying its fascist characteristics, is playing a similar role — of making the Indian public complacent about the Sangh Parivar-backed BJP regime.

It would be useful to recall Umberto Eco's essay “Ur-Fascism,” in which he asks us not to look for historical parities while recognising political movements like the RSS or BJP as fascist because “...fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of  different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions.” The signs are all around, the jobless growth of the last two decades, pauperisation of both manufacturing and agriculture, the diversion of productive funds to pure speculation through the stock and real estate markets, the looting of public funds by business houses in cahoots with politicians.  If one were to even casually observe the levels of misery India's working classes and ordinary citizens have been pushed to by economic policies meant to benefit only the top  1per cent of the country's population — it is not difficult to see the similarities between current-day India and Germany of the 1930s. 

Finance capital in its purest form  has no relation with the objective world, production processes or even markets as was the case with industrial capitalism.  It operates on the principles of pure magic — appearing and disappearing at will — manipulated by a handful of money managers who have the power to  whimsically define what is money itself or what is worth.

In the process, the tsunami of global capital swirling around the world both seduces and atomises us at the same time. It evokes greed at one level but also injects a deep sense of insecurity that we might lose the ground beneath our feet anytime without notice. Since our  regular economic activity has now lost meaning or the power to be the definitive source of our identity, it has to be something else.

Struggle gives us dignity  but it seems impossible to struggle against the phantom of finance capital. Organisations of the times of industrial capital start dissolving under the glare of finance capital and new sources of associations are to be found. Powerless and lonely, we feel trivial, insignificant and impoverished in all senses. This is the time when the impoverished masses are supplied with an identifiable source of their privation. 

In Germany, the  Jews became the enemies of the German people and now in France or the USA it is the immigrant. In India of our times, it is the figure of Muslim or Christian, Bangladeshi infiltrators or anti-national at large who are the enemies. Be it Hitler or Le Pen or Donald Trump, it is largely the subalterns who form their support base.  Also, one has to understand that these social groups who are otherwise treated as subhuman gain respectability by enacting violence on behalf of those who want these "vermin" liquidated  but would not like to soil their hands. Fascism becomes a real movement, through which large groups achieve an agency and even larger groups  a sense of satisfaction. In India, the cow-protectors are the kind of  people who would never get respect other than by “protecting” the Hinduness of Indian society and getting elevated as its patrons. Economics does give us a background of the rise of fascism but in itself it is not an adequate explanation of the seductive power of the idea of fascism. Fascism is a sublimating force. It pulls the masses out of their state of morass, giving them a sense of purpose. A permanent state of violence, passive in long stretches, becomes normal and the victims themselves are held responsible for this.

It has been observed historically that a great human cost has to be paid to pull the masses out of this spell of violent movement called fascism.  Post-fascist societies keep suffering from a sense of guilt for the decisions of their predecessors. It is therefore important that we keep vigil and at the slightest sign of emergence of such a political force, gather all our resources to keep it at bay and not let it get injected into the organs of the body politic.

It is this wisdom, gained out of experience of genocide and holocaust, which motivated all  political parties in France to sink their differences, withdraw their candidates and ask their constituencies  to vote for a much-loathed President Jacques Chirac in 2002. Or, more recently, a Bernie Sanders, despite his radical  economic views very different from those of Hillary Clinton, to appeal to all his voters to rally behind her to keep Trump away from the White House.  

In his study of the Indian fascism, Jairus Banaji says that here the number and scale of pogroms has far exceeded what Germany saw in the Weimar period. Through a series of violent acts against Muslims and Christians, which has now acquired an everydayness sans the theatricality of mass-murders, the culture of communalism is now  as widespread as was anti-Semitism in Germany and as insidious. Active state legitimisation and patronage of this culture of violence makes it vicious and unbeatable. From the point of view of the persecuted communities, there can be nothing more urgent than to take state power out of the hands of this politics and all political forces to immediately unite against the BJP.

Who are they then, who do not share this sense of urgency?

The writer is a Professor in the Department of Hindi, Delhi University.

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