Against Rightwing Demagogues

AGAINST RIGHTWING DEMAGOGUES

PDS Resolution on the Sixtieth Anniversary of Liberation

[This March 12, 2005 resolution in Weimar near the former Buchenwald concentration camp a few weeks before the 60th anniversary of liberation on April 11, 1945 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.jungewelt.de/2005/03-23/004.php.]



We remember the victims and thank the liberators. In the 60th year of Europe’s liberation from barbarism, we remember the victims of fascism. We bow deeply before the soldiers of the anti-Hitler coalition, before the partisans and fighters of the illegal resistance and before forced laborers and German army deserters. We bow reverently before the eleven million murdered bestially in the concentration camps, prisons and torture chambers of the Gestapo, before those who survived hell and swore on May 8, 1945: “Fascism never again! War never again!”

We bow in great thankfulness before the Soviet people and its Red Army – before the country that bore the main burden in shattering fascism. We declare our indescribable disgust about the racial mania of the Nazis to which six million Jews and six hundred thousand gypsies were sacrificed. We do not forget the abused, those who ran behind Hitler, who at least tolerated him and – serving him – died for German capital interests. Five to seven million Germans fell and died in the torrent of bombs or in flight. However we cannot stop – here and today – at remembering. We must say with Brecht: “The bosom is fruitful from which they crawled.”

EXTREMISM OF THE MIDDLE

The number of persons who feel handed over to social dislocation grows. Political engagement appears increasingly meaningless to them. Anxieties overwhelm them. Thinking beyond the day does not occur to them. The chances of right wing demagoguery grow in times of social polarization. Their slogans increasingly fall on fruitful soil given the lack of perspective of many people. Rightwing parties often enjoy growing popularity. If the field is left to the Nazis, we can expect a future with the Nazis. This is not only true for the street. Nazis gain ground when the reasons for their actions are glossed over by public opinion.

The social situation may not be the decisive humus for increasing Nazism. The unemployed and youths without apprenticeship did not flock to the Nazis more often than skilled workers and apprentices. Nazi influence also grew among intellectuals. This is glossed over. No automatism exists between social situation and ideological position. However there is a close connection between the social atmosphere supported by social factors and marked political tendencies.

There is a close connection between the conventional association with history and the present effect of the evil Nazi spirit. When Nazis plan to march May 8, 2005 under the slogan “Enough of the Liberation Lie – Enough of the guilt cult,” they “invent” the exaggeration. However the thesis that the matter should be considered closed at least regarding the German casualties comes from the so-called middle of society…

Recall the countless remarks in the press, radio and television aiming at relativizing the crimes of German fascism. Remember the increasingly disastrous German asylum- and refugee policy and the stigmatization of millions of Muslims under the flag of combating terrorism that have become part of our everyday life like increasing state repression. Recall what was held to be inconceivable: the re-strengthening of anti-Semitism. That is the climate in which Nazis thrive.

NAZIS ARE MORE BRAZEN THAN EVER

Nazis are more impudent and brazen than at any other moment since the crushing of Hitler fascism. They began their disastrous work with public coordination. Their goal is to enter the Bundestag (German parliament) in 2006. Their social demagoguery is like the demagoguery of the Nazis before 1933. The slogans are similar along with the scapegoat theory. With racist slogans like “Good journey home,” foreigners are stylized as our disaster. The Nazi appeal is tied to the most vulgar instincts and the most primitive views of people. Nationalism, chauvinism, racism and anti-Semitism are the ideological connections of their activities. They are becoming increasingly aggressive verbally and physically. Where their word is not prohibited and the street is left to them, it is no wonder that hardly a week goes by without attacks on foreigners, leftists and the disabled or desecration of Jewish cemeteries, anti-fascist memorials and graves of fallen Soviet soldiers.

RE-INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY

To the so-called social middle, historical revision is seen increasingly as less than a harmless crime or national sport. Hardly a historian, politician or the mass media opposes the massive re-interpretation of history. They are part of this re-interpretation. Sixty years later, the victims of German bombs should be forgotten. Those German soldiers who fell as occupiers should be repressed. On the other hand, allied soldiers are repressed as defenders of their countries and later liberators. What happened in the German settlements in Poland and Czechoslovakia should be forgotten. Before women in Germany were violated, the most beautiful Jewish women were forced in the hell of the concentration camp brothel. In a notorious declaration accepted by the CDU/FDP majority (German conservative parties) January 19, 2005, the relationship of cause and effect was completely reversed by the historical revision that occurred invisibly for a long time and now is increasingly open.

That country with the main burden in crushing fascism stands “for the horror and suffering of the population for which the Red Army is responsible from East Prussia to Berlin.” This revision bristles with political depravity. Twenty million Soviet citizens were victims of German fascists and their allies. The blockade of Leningrad alone cost the lives of over a million. In Byelorussia, 628 villages were razed to the ground; the inhabitants were murdered bestially. The fascists left behind 600,000 square miles of burnt earth… If the Soviet army had taken revenge, it would have razed to the ground 628 villages in Germany. The whole Soviet occupation zone would be a single mass grave. Rapes are horrible; no one wants to experience this. However a horrible war does not first produce individual noble-mindedness. The question should be raised: Who caused all the suffering? What were the reasons? Reflection about all this is repressed. “German interests” are “defended” beyond German borders, for example in Hindukusch. Nazis and those who pursue historical revision by their calling know exactly what they do. At best humanity should completely forget that fascism is inseparably connected with capital interests.

That the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dealt the decisive blow against fascism should be forgotten. The climate of forgetting thrives. Anti-anti-fascism has long been anchored in the so-called middle of society – anchored in the swamp of anti-communism. Whoever equated the “totalitarian Nazi regime” with the Soviet army engages in historical revision. This selective perception should be rejected. May 8 has always had a European focus on the Nazi time. That is a selection. While the selective perception of the fascist war should be rejected, the selections on the ramps of Auschwitz should be forgotten.

LEFTIST FORCES AGAINST THE RIGHTWING

A relativization of the fascist crimes occurs increasingly in the media and in art as in recent films like “Untergang” (The Downfall). That Nazis could develop into an option did not disturb the increasingly brutal capitalism acting ever more aggressively outwards. The social dislocation resulting from capitalist globalization should be controlled when the instruments of parliamentary democracy are no longer sufficient. Was that a crazy idea? After Auschwitz, no one imputed crazy ideas to the Nazis any more. “The Weimar republic has ended,” the NDP head Udo Voigt said after his party entered the Saxony parliament.

Leftist parties as consistent parliamentary and non-parliamentary opposition were the most crucial protection from the spread of the Nazis, their ideology and structures… The struggle around the role of the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialists) has strategic significance. Germany will not become more anti-fascist or more peace loving without the PDS. The PDS will lose effectiveness in the struggle against social cruelties, war and fascism with every grain of anti-communism that spreads in it and every abandoned step of oppositional politics.

In our anti-fascist work, the following main areas are vital:

1. Political confrontation with the former and present roots of fascism. We do everything to reveal the backgrounds from which old and new Nazis expand and deepen their influence: social dislocation, the “defense of German interests in Hindukusch” and an historical revisionism penetrating all pores of society with its indispensable companion anti-communism.

2. Unmasking the totalitarian doctrine as an irresponsible trivialization of fascist mass murder. Whoever equates the Soviet Union and communists of other countries including Germany, that raged on the Soviet earth like no one else, with those who hated (and hate) communists like no other political opponent –makes use of Nazi ideology behind the smokescreen of pseudo-theoretical drivel. “Hostility to democracy” marks this epoch… The “prevailing comparison of the NS- and the SED (East German) dictatorship trivializes the latter.” Thus things are turned upside down.

Let us straighten matters: The DDR (East Germany) was a state deeply committed to anti-fascism. In the DDR, the Potsdam settlement was realized and the socioeconomic roots of fascism were pulled up. Anti-fascist resistance fighters and hundreds of thousands who returned from prison as anti-fascists influenced public opinion in the DDR. Art and literature made enormous contributions to anti-fascist education in educational institutions, factories, state institutions and elsewhere.

Was Nazi ideology rooted out? Obviously not. At least old or new Nazi followers feared state power. They rightly feared that power. No Nazi demonstrations and no Nazi delegates in the parliaments were conceivable. Notorious haters of communists and their informers want to forget this and hide the horror of the pogroms.

3. Combating Nazis politically and administratively. Approving free space for Nazis can hardly be an expression of democracy just as allowing murder to murders is hardly an expression of tolerance. According to Article 139 of the German constitution, the NPD and other Nazi-oriented parties and organizations should be dissolved.

4. Anti-Semitism is the worst crime after Auschwitz. Communists are enemies of anti-Semites who conceal their anti-Semitism behind criticism of Israel. At the same time anti-Semitism is used more and more as a killer argument. “Under the banner of anti-Zionism and anti-imperialism, alliances can arise that were not even dreamt years ago. Rightwing extremists have long used these slogans with part of the left, Islamists, globalization critics and peace activists from all classes who accept open forms of anti-Semitism in their ranks as a kind of minor contradiction. Kurt Goldstein commented: “Every opponent of the Iraq war is an anti-American and an anti-Semite..”

Our solidarity is due to the Palestinians struggling for their legitimate rights, the Iraqis fighting against the imperialist occupation and our friends from the Israeli peace movement. We admire the courage of all who opposed the ever more aggressive imperialist forces. Racism – of whatever color – has no place in this struggle.

5. Our anti-fascist and anti-racist activities should be strengthened through collaboration in alliances. Our solidarity is due to migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees who suffer under the restrictions of the new immigration laws. Migrants did not only serve Nazis as scapegoats. This must be said clearly. As the fascists declared the Jews scapegoats, their grandchildren today blame foreigners for unemployment and social cuts. Political illiterates are found who fall for this demagoguery. We need a literacy campaign against the social demagogues of the rightwing.