Re: ... I hope Portugal continues to resist.
Not only is Portugal likely to "resist" but the whole of Europe is likely to resist as well.... And, as my Orwellian pastiche(*) shows, the dramatic outcome of such a wild Kulturkampf will be Neo-fascism --or, in Tamas' words, Post-fascism.
(*) Subject 33609
Racism and fascism in Europe today
Part Three: The heirs of Breendonk
By John Tully
Once again, as Leon Trotsky put it, Europe is objectively 'rotten ripe' for socialism. However, the failure of the revolutionary Left to develop an alternative working class leadership has fuelled a significant and frightening growth of fascist and extreme right wing parties across the continent. Whilst there is no basis for talking of an immediate fascist takeover in Europe, in country after country these parties have emerged as a real force in politics for the first time since World War II -- and this isn't just a matter of rampaging skinheads, dangerous as these are to Blacks and Asians. In the highly-industrialised countries at the core of the European Union, only Britain has not seen fascist or neo-fascist representation in national parliament. However, one suspects that a few years of Tony Blair's 'alternative Thatcherism' will generate disillusion enough to translate into electoral support for the British fascists. Across the channel in Belgium, however, the fascist threat is highly developed.
The fortress at Breendonk
In 1906 the Belgian military built a fort at Breendonk, on the road from Brussels to Antwerp. During the German occupation in World War II, the gloomy pile became a Gestapo 'reception centre' for members of the Resistance captured by the Nazis. It was soon entrusted to Belgian Nazis, one of whom would greet new prisoners with the words 'This is hell and I am the devil.'
The SS man wasn't exaggerating. Breendonk was a medieval torture house, replete with pulley blocks, thumb screws, red-hot iron bars, wooden wedges, head vices and as a modern touch, electric needles. If the victims survived torture, they were shipped off to the death camps in the East.
After the war a number of Belgian Nazi collaborators were executed or imprisoned. The top Walloon (French-speaking) fascist, Léon Degrelle, died in exile in Franco's Spain [actually, he died in King Juan Carlos' Spain a couple of years ago]. Belgian Nazism was as good as dead, reduced to tiny bands of fanatics skulking in well-deserved oblivion. The heroes were Belgian worker-militants such as the Trotskyist who saved the lives of a trainload of Jews by cleaning their poor, starving and tortured bodies when everyone else looked the other way. After this, fascism stank in the nostrils of the people.
Re-emergence of the Belgian Nazis
Yet over the past decade the fascist Vlaams Blok (Flemish Bloc) has emerged as the largest party in some sections of the Dutch-speaking Flemish region in the north and west of the country. This was particularly the case in the large, depressed port city of Antwerp, where the Blok's vote rose to 28% in the 1994 council elections, largely at the expense of the Socialist Party. This made it the largest single party in the city's council chamber. The Blok also has 18 parliamentary deputies and averages around 17-20% of the vote in the Flemish areas.
Most ominously of all, 1994 polls showed that 21% of the membership of the Social Democratic trade union federation in the Dutch-speaking areas supported the Blok, along with 15% of the Christian union federation. The fact that significant numbers of Belgian unionists support the fascists, at least as a protest, should be borne in mind.
Belgian fascism feeds off the disillusionment and despair of middle and working class people alienated by the austerity policies of Socialist governments. It is able to point to highly visible Black immigrant populations and say 'These people are the cause of unemployment and poverty.' Not content with inciting the ignorant to pogroms, the Blok attacks gays and other minorities, often physically, and its leaders regularly threaten to 'clean up' the Antwerp red light district. There are no sterner moralists than these thugs who would deny masses of people their humanity - and even their lives if they had half a chance.
Heirs of Breendonk torturers
The Blok has its origins among Nazi collaborators who sent a Flemish SS division to fight on the Russian front in World War II. They are the true heirs of the torturers of Breendonk. It is a signof the times that 50 years later they have re-emerged from the political wilderness with a new generation of leaders, brazenly peddling their message of hate. Until recently the Blok has maintained that it has no connection with fascist paramilitaries and large numbers of voters have been gullible enough to vote for them. There are signs now that the Blok now feels strong enough to come out openly and supplement ballots with boots. It considers that all Leftists and even the liberal human rights activists of Amnesty International are fair game for physical attack. Blok [honorary] leader Karel Dillen regularly reviews Stormtroop detachments of goosestepping followers, who are believed to include former mercenaries with military experience in Africa and the Balkans. Dillen himself is a convicted thug with a history of violent assaults on immigrants and gays.
Walloon fascism
The Blok has its counterparts in the Walloon regions, where the National Front and its rival racist party, AGIR! (literally Act!) poll up to 20% of the vote between them in elections. The two groups are divided on attitudes to the Belgian national question. (Belgium is a multi-national state comprising Dutch and French speakers with a small German population around Eupen in the eastern Ardennes.) AGIR! advocates a separate French-speaking state in Wallonia, and perhaps unity with France. FN supports the unity of the Belgian state. It is just as well that AGIR! and the Belgian FN hate each other, given the size of their combined vote.
Whilst the recent upsurge of industrial struggle in the Walloon region has cut into the fascists' base of support, there can be little doubt that the moral bankruptcy of Belgium's mainstream 'political class', as demonstrated in the paedophilia scandal, will benefit not just the revolutionary Left, but the extreme right as well. Nevertheless, it was heartening to see the families of children murdered by the paedophile gangs marching at the head of mass demonstrations of Walloon steelworkers and miners.
History has shown that the fascists are weakest when the organised working class is strong and united.
Excerpted from:
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