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January 4, 2006
Where the Fascists Went
A couple of years ago, Jim Bennett wrote an excellent article about European politics, Where Have the Fascists Gone. In the article, Bennett tied the long strands of anti-Enlightenment movements that sprung up in the late 1800s together, and noted how they survive in European politics today — not just the radical neo-fascists, but the superficially liberal statist politicians running the EU and the nations of "old Europe". But there are two other places that the fascists went, where a warm reception was to be had. One of these, of course, was Egypt, where Qutb grafted fascism to Islam to create the Islamist ideology (which, by the way, is why some call the enemy Islamofascists). The other, though, is not widely talked about other than as a joke.
Fascism went to South America, as fascists (notably many NAZI leaders) fled to Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere. Conveniently, the nations of South America have long had a self-destructive tendency, that flies from the Right to the Left with equal vigor, and similar results. These nations were very welcoming to the fascists, and undoubtedly were also influenced by them, leading to the rise of several right-wing fascist governments and several left-wing fascist governments. (Fascist, in both cases, in the sense of state control of industry, the destruction of personal responsibility while nominally maintaining personal property, blatant racism and violent nationalism.)
In the 1980s, most of these fascist states fell (or in some cases, were pushed by the US), along with Communist states like Nicaragua (sadly, not Cuba), and democracy finally looked to have a chance. Lately, though, the left-wing fascists are starting to stage a comeback in South America. I'm not talking about Brazil's Lula, though he could potentially fall into that mold if things go wildly awry in South America. Rather, I'm thinking of Evo Morales and the very, very up front Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. (He should learn to mouth liberal statist platitudes if he wants to be fêted by Western liberals, rather than ranting about the Jews, which will only get him.... Actually, never mind. Forget I said that.)
Now, it's every country's right to drive itself into economic stagnation, political corruption, genocide, international conflict and even totalitarianism. If that's what they want, they need merely be willing to accept the consequences. Sadly for us, though, we are unlikely to write off and ignore those countries in South America who choose the fascist route. Instead, we are likely to find ourselves intervening, again, to fix the broken nations that will be left when Chavez' madness has run its course.
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