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  8. Nationalism and Fascism after WW2

Nationalism and Fascism after WW2

The following is not limited to Limburg: it is about the resurgence of fascism after the war, although most people thought we had learned that lesson by now. Apparently not, we must remain vigilant at all times. Because fascists learn too.
For better understanding, here is a brief and very incomplete overview of that development since the war, especially in Europe.
But even here we cannot go into everything. Left out of consideration, for example, are the autocracies of Hitler’s friends Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal, remnants of another time.

  • Decolonization and state terror 1: Indonesia
    After the Netherlands was liberated, many in then’s Indonesia felt their country should be free as well. Suddenly the roles were reversed. The Netherlands was no longer an occupied country but the country of the occupiers. The state was not openly racist, but a not insignificant part of the occupying army was.
  • Decolonization and state terror 2: Algeria
    In Algeria the same picture. But in addition, extreme right-wing violence reared its head here: the OAS.
  • Foundation of Israel
    A “people without a country” wanted never to experience something like the Shoa again. Unfortunately, the place, where they wanted to go, was not a country without a people.
  • Nationalism and fascism: Yugoslavia
    As long as Marshal Tito lived, they managed to keep the nationalist hotheads in Yugoslavia apart. After that, it turned out here too, that nationalism and fascism are not far apart.
  • Neo-Nazis and other forms of fascism
    Fascism can come in many guises: for examle as an organized state, as we know from Hitler Germany; as part of state power, as we know everywhere in some parts of the police and army; as parties that may or may not put on a democratic mask; as terrorism of small groups or individuals.
  • Internet and Social Media
    Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler were well aware of the significance of a new medium. Which in their time was the radio. The masses were manipulated with it; Volksempfänger (people’s receivers) were produced on a large scale as early as 1933.
    Today the new media are social media, especially via cell phone. Why is it, that especially fascists of all kinds are very successful with this?
  • Assassinations
    The logical consequence is the attacks on synagogues, mosques, asylum centers, individual people. The perpetrators, of course, also publicize their “heroic deeds” via social media and successfully incite people to imitate them.
    Victims of right-wing extremist terrorist violence in Western Europe, 1950-2004
    On this site you will find two racist assassination series in Germany. Not that more of these attacks happen there than in other countries. But the connection to their National Socialist examples is more evident there.
    • The terror of the NSU. Between 2000 and 2007, this group murdered nine migrants and a policewoman, carried out 43 attempted murders, three bomb attacks (Nuremberg 1999, Cologne 2001 and 2004) and 15 robberies.
    • The murders in Hanau 2020
  • Putin, Trump, Xi
    The frightening triumvirate. Is Putin getting his way in all the countries he has had flattened, and in those where he is still working on it? Donald Trump, whom you are not allowed to call rapist, is the 47th president of the USA. Are these two gentlemen actually fascists too or narrowly off?


Decolonization and state terror 1: Indonesia

After the end of World War II, the war of independence began in Indonesia. So the Netherlands immediately needed an army, which could deal with such a thing. And by what could they better fight a resistance movement, than with people from the former resistance? The Stoottroepers had participated in the resistance for various reasons and now suddenly had to fight against just such a movement in another country, where they themselves were the occupiers. Some realized this, others did not. Some defected to the liberation movement, but most did not. As in any war, the usual crimes were committed, which in turn were usually covered up. It wasn’t done to call the war like that, too. Russia talks about a special operation in Ukraine, the Netherlands was talking about police actions. [wikp.1]


Decolonization and state terror 2: Algeria

The French tried to prevent an independence movement in Algeria. In September 1947, a law on the status of Algeria was promulgated, which introduced a half-hearted form of democracy but was unable to prevent the struggle for independence against France. Tensions and repression increased. In November 1954, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) declared war on the French rulers. [wikp.2]
During this war, a completely new phenomenon emerged: the revolt of the French colons (colonists), who considered Algeria to be their homeland and made up around 10% of the population. They regarded any concession to the FLN as high treason. The political attitude of these “black-footed” (pieds-noirs) was often racist and fascist. [wikp.3]
It reached its nadir in the terror of the Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (OAS).
Another nadir was the deadly outcome of a demonstration against the Algerian War on February 8, 1962, in which nine people were killed by police violence in the Charonne metro station in Paris. [wikp.4]
Algeria became independent in the same year.


Foundation of Israel

Long before the war, many Jews longed already for a safe haven, a place where they would be safe from pogroms. The idea of Zionism had already arisen for this purpose in the 19th century. Palestine was to be the solution for this “people without a land.” In 1917, the British government stated in the Balfour Declaration to the Zionist Movement, to be in favor of it. Balfour later admitted, that the interests of the Palestinians had been ignored in doing so. The British also offered the same territory to three other parties: the Turks (if they would withdraw from World War I), to Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca, as a reward for his revolt against the Turks [wikp.5], and to the French, who already had a large area north of it under their control, as part of the Sykes-Picot Treaty. The revulsion in the Arab world against this example of European colonialism and the opinion, that Jewish immigration was part of it arose at that time. [wikp.6]

After World War II with the horror of the death camps, many survivors wanted to go to Palestine, as the whole area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was then still called. It was still under British rule. The British wanted to curb this rampant influx of Jewish immigrants, but eventually the state of Israel was proclaimed. War upon war followed with the surrounding Arab countries: 1948, 1967 (Six-Day War), 1973 (Yom Kippur War) so that now the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights are occupied by Israel. This was followed by the First and Second Intifadas. Mutual hatred grew and grew. The Palestinians see Israel as a colonial power, the Israelis see the Palestinians as anti-Semitic haters and a Palestinian state as perilous.
After the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister who negotiated the Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat under the watchful eye of Bill Clinton, peace between these neighbors seems further away than ever. Religious fanaticism is growing on both sides. Many Palestinians who used to consider themselves leftist anti-colonialists have become fanatical Muslims and are suddenly fighting a holy war. Even the Jewish founders of the kibbutzim were mostly leftist in the early days of Israel. Now there is a growing number among the settlers who can be considered outright fascists. They undertook, since they have been part of the government, attempts to abolish democracy.
That process has been stopped for the time being by the most brutal eruption of violence in that part of the world, which is the result of that sad past history. In the words of the Secretary-General of the UNO, this did not come out of the blue. On October 7, 2023, under the leadership of Hamas, killer gangs came across the border from the Gaza Strip and murdered one and a half thousand Israelis and took hundreds as hostages. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom this is a way to escape prison for corruption, had the Israeli army bomb and enter Gaza with the aim of destroying Hamas. They destroyed tens of thousands of Palestinian lives [2]
But even if they succeed in defeating Hamas militarily, this kind of peace policy will ultimately only strengthen Palestinian hatred and thus Hamas. This will last for generations to come, thanks to the religious fascists on both sides.


Yugoslavia, 1981



Nationalism and fascism: Yugoslavia

The largest resistance movement in Yugoslavia during World War II was the communist one led by Josip Broz (better known by his pseudonym as resistance fighter: Tito)
There was also a royalist resistance movement, initially supported by the British. With his partisan army, Tito succeeded in liberating the country under his own steam. He enjoyed great respect among his compatriots. He was a Croat, but the country had been dominated by the Serbian part of the population since its founding in 1918. The capital (Belgrade) was at the same time the capital of Serbia. Tito, with his charisma and because he was a Croat himself, managed to keep the antagonism between Serbs and Croats at bay. That was one of the reasons for his popularity. Moreover, the economy was running better than in the other socialist countries.
Yugoslavia was the only country in the world, where the only basis for one’s nationality was religion. Not even in Israel. There is no Israeli nationality by a Supreme Court ruling, only citizenship. Moreover, people groups there are also distinguished by their language. The six state-forming nationalities (narodi) in Yugoslavia were the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Macedonians and Bosniaks, people who all speak Serbo-Croatian. The Bosniaks can as well be called the Muslims. The Kosovars too are also mostly Muslims, but formed their own minority nationality (narodnosti) and are now independent. The narodnosti also include the Romani people.
Things went well until the death of President for Life Tito, in 1980. But no one was able or intended to continue his politics. The rotating presidency arrangement designed for the post-Tito era did not work because it was sabotaged from the beginning. Nationality divisions continued to surface. Serbia was becoming increasingly dominant. Yugoslavia collapsed and so did the dreams of Serbian nationalists such as Slobodan Milošević. Horrific wars followed, in which neighbors slaughtered each other because they were now nationalists. A term was invented for something, which had occurred many times throughout history: ethnic cleansing. Extermination and mass murder as a major cleansing. The name of the town of Srebrenica (ˈsrɛ.brɛ.ni.ʦa) gained sad fame all over the world due to the murder of around 8,000 men and boys. [wikp.7]
We are not going to explain here in detail, how that war went on, you can find that in many places on the Internet.
We only want to establish here that nationalism and fascism in this and many other wars are two murderous siblings.


Neo-Nazis and other forms of fascism

Neo-Nazi Parties and groups and other racists were at work all over Europe almost immediately after the war. In Germany they are called the Ewig-Gestrigen, the “stuck in the past”. But we must also not forget all those politicians who, by means of populist election propaganda, hope to take a few more votes from the right side, when they are actually promoting the less open protofascism, also called right-wing populism.
The first right-wing populist party in the Netherlands was Hendrik Koekoek’s Boerenpartij (Farmers Party), which is why he was also called Farmer Koekoek. [wikp.8]
This was not yet a fascist party, but it was a right-wing populist party. Some splits and a new name followed: in 1981 the party entered the elections under the name “Rechtse Volkspartij” (RVP), but failed to win any more seats.
Meanwhile, all over Europe, but also elsewhere, right-wing populists sit in parliaments, their popularity is growing and they participate in government in more and more countries. Not only in Eastern Europe. They are increasingly difficult to distinguish from hard-core Nazis. In fact, they are their parliamentary arm. When Hitler came to power, he suddenly tried for a while to play the civilized and moderate politician, and many fell for it. It was assumed, that now all those proposals of persecution of Jews and annexation of areas with a German-speaking population would cease or at least would be put into the fridge. [3]
And what does Mr. Wilders say, the self appointed boss of a club that falsely calls itself a party? He had managed to form the largest group in the House of Representatives, so they had to talk to him now. And Mr. Wilders wanted to govern. So suddenly he said that all those anti-democratic plans should be put in the fridge. Because he would not be the one to blame. Even the plans, which are not really anti-democratic, do show an extremely narrow view of who is allowed to participate in our democracy.
There are also right-wing parties in Europe, which make no effort to hide their fascist roots. Giorgia Meloni, prime minister of Italy, makes no secret of her admiration for Hitler’s buddy Mussolini. But we must also see the differences between the fascists of then and, for example, the Fratelli d’Italia of today. For they too move with the times. The glorification of violence is no longer so prominent. Also, they no longer say they want to abolish democracy, but rather to convert it, following the example of Orban and Putin, which of course amounts to the same thing. But unchanged in comparison to the classical fascists is that all right-wing populists claim, like Mussolini, to be the vanguard of the people in the struggle against “the elites”. And those elites, they say, are destroying the country. For example, because they dissolve the country, throw away its sovereignty in favor of international organizations. [4]
The Brexit is a good example of this. Especially the populist UKIP, at the time led by Nigel Farage [wikp.9] in the UK has been behind the fact that the country is now in big trouble because they are no longer a member of the EU. Not to mention the problems around Northern Ireland.
The German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) summarizes the outcome of Brexit as an “economic disaster” for the UK and the EU. [5]
The majority of economists believe that Brexit has harmed the UK’s economy and reduced its real per capita income in the long term, and the referendum itself damaged the economy. [wikp.10]

The right-wing populists are scoring well among the rural population throughout Europe, as evidenced by farmer demonstrations. Everywhere farmers are disgruntled, everywhere the problems they face are very similar. Yet supposedly in one country the Greens are to blame, in another it is Brussels. Or it’s Macron or whoever. In Poland and Slovakia, it is the price of wheat, caused by imports from Ukraine. Right-wing propaganda is apparently good at hiding the fact that the main problem has been concentration in the agricultural sector since the end of the war. Ever larger companies, which are on the leash of the food trade. Farmers have to work for ever smaller margins, while Aldi and Lidl make huge profits.

Another phenomenon has grown strongly since World War II, as we saw above in the paragraph on Israel: religious fascism. It is rarely called that. People often talk about orthodox people, although the latters are by no means always fascists. But the groups referred to here are. There is not so much difference between the SA of the Nazis and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran [wikp.11]
Or between the aforementioned OAS from Algeria and large sections of Jewish settlers who consider Palestinian autonomous areas as Jewish land and thus try to bully the Palestinians away. It all breathes very much the spirit of Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil) of the National Socialists.
Likewise the Hamas, the self-proclaimed Islamic State or Daesh, and the Taliban, who all have quite the same ideas as the Nazis, when it comes to Jews, to women, to minorities. Think, for example, of the 2014 genocide of the Yezidis by Daesh¸ of the persecution of sexual minorities and so on. Think of the Mufti of Jerusalem, who during the war was a strong supporter of the Final Solution, as the Nazis called their genocide of the Jews.
These relifascists believe every rumor, when it comes to their enemies. They live in their bubble and anyone who thinks otherwise is sent by Satan.


Internet and Social Media

Thus we naturally come to another development, which strongly promotes fascism today: the tremendous flight, which the Internet has taken, especially all forms of Internet traffic, where anyone can write anything aka web 2.0.
The platforms available for this are called social media.
The algorithms. To facilitate surfing, they ensure that users are offered more of the same. That way, they stay longer on the platform, which in turn generates revenue from the advertisers. This kind of programming ensures that more and more people only move around in their own bubble. They gradually even get the impression, that this is the real world.
Content moderation. It is precisely the fascists and other hate preachers who make strong use of social media for their message. The Islamic State aka Daesh was a clear example of this.
We also saw it above, with the farmers.
We see it among the youth on platforms like TikTok.
It has long been known that social media is used for bullying, for example of someone who is just a little different from the average. Right-wing propaganda in particular is learning more and more from this. For example, democratic politicians are denigrated with lies and half-truths and often no one knows who is behind it, see the above peasant protests.
So should we remind media corporations of their duty, that they should stop the spread of hate?
Because that hatred is amplified actually by their algorithms, because that in turn makes money. Everyone nice in their own bubble, for which then their specific advertising is ready. Once these companies engaged content moderators to manually remove the worst excesses. Impossible work, and moreover, those moderator jobs are reduced again, especially in the USA.
Why is this area, which is so important especially for young people, left almost effortlessly to right-wing parties and, last but not least, to their patrons and idols Putin and Trump?

This development of social media is far more dangerous than all the attacks by right-wing fanatics on asylum seekers’ centers or synagogues, precisely because it works so inconspicuously behind the screens.


Assassinations

Assassinations are, of course, the logical consequence of that smear campaign. These may often be the work of small groups or individual fanatics, but they have grown in the midst of our society.
Right-wing propaganda has coined the romanticizing term lone wolfs for them. Both in science and by authorities, that term lone wolf is being used less and less. The terminology has a romantic connotation and has mainly been propagated by the perpetrators themselves. The more neutral and objective lone actor terrorist is a more adequate term. [6]
Let us begin by making ourselves and especially our children resilient to the propaganda of chat trolls and chat-bots and other sources of fake news.

Germany, as the country where National Socialism has its roots, of course deserves special attention.
Those who think that National Socialism was vanquished with the end of the Hitler dictatorship are sadly mistaken. After World War II there were (also) in Germany several terrorist attacks with an extreme right-wing background. A well-known example is the attack on the Oktoberfest in Munich in 1980, which left 13 dead and more than 200 injured. The LKA (Landeskriminalamt, State Criminal Police Office) of the state of Bavaria did not bother to investigate a radical right-wing background to the attack, so as not to jeopardize the career of Bavarian Prime Minister Franz-Josef Strauß. Shortly before that, the latter had still labeled the open National Socialist Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann as harmless and preferred to assume an attack by the left-wing RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion). Many unclarified questions still exist in this regard. [1.12]
In the following rather randomly chosen examples of fatal fascist attacks in Germany, the deaths were mainly among people with a migrant background: the NSU (Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund) and Hanau murders.
It is striking again, how much effort was made by the police and other authorities to look for the perpetrators in the wrong corner.
The NSU murders were long mistaken as mafia murders and the victims as suspects. The press talked about the Döner murders.
In Hanau, the police emergency service did not respond to the repeated calls (4×) of Vili-Viorel Păun, a Romani from Romania, who then tried on his own, to stop the perpetrator. He did not survive this act of resistance.
The NSU murders were long mistaken as mafia murders and the victims as suspects. The press talked about the Döner murders.
The families were not given the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones and were treated badly in other respects as well.
In Chemnitz, where the NSU murderers lived, immediately after the end of a commemoration, four years after the murders, the police began throwing the flowers and candles into garbage buckets under the eyes of those present. The racists are not just the - usually rightly called psychologically disturbed - perpetrators. The racists are ordinary people like you and me.

There have been several attacks in the Netherlands and Belgium since 1945 with a right-wing extremist background. Some of these attacks are:

  • The attack on the Turkish consulate in Amsterdam in 1970.
  • The attack on the Belgian parliament in 1986 by far-right militants.
  • The attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014, which killed four people.
  • The attack on an asylum seekers’ center in Makkum in 2015.
  • The attack on a mosque in Enschede in 2016.
  • The bombing of the building of daily newspaper De Telegraaf in 2018
  • Other attacks on asylum seekers’ centers and political murders linked to right-wing extremism.

In a publication by the Nationaal Coördinator Terrorismebestrijding en Veiligheid (National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security, NCTV) in the Netherlands, we read:
The 1983 killing of Antillean Dutchman Kerwin Duijnmeyer by a 16-year-old skinhead was and is considered by many to be the first racist murder after World War II. [7.1]


Victims of right-wing extremist terrorist violence in Western Europe, 1950-2004

Countrydeathsinjuredattacks
Italy16277289
France89303262
West Germany51267133
Spain155636
Belgium7312
Portugal5411
Austria4414
Switzerland359
United Kingdom211510
Greece18165
Norway102
Sweden043
Denmark001
Netherlands001
Source: Jacob Ravndal, Thugs or Terrorists? A Typology of Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence in Western Europe, in: Journal for Deradicalization, issue 3/2015.
Based on the no longer accessible Tweed database, http://folk.uib.no/sspje/tweed.htm, University of Bergen, Norway

In this 2004 table, the Netherlands and Denmark are at the bottom. That such a thing can change quickly can be seen in the case of Norway, which was also near the bottom at the time.
The Norwegian Anders Breivik, responsible for 77 deaths with his attacks in Oslo and on Utøya in 2011, and earlier the British David Copeland, who carried out three bomb attacks in the United Kingdom in 1999, are examples of such lone actors in Europe.





Putin, Trump, Xi

This last paragraph obviously requires regular maintenance. Tomorrow the situation may already have changed and I will have to write this again. But so was George Orwell’s 1984: he wrote it under the impression of the situation in the world at that time. From there, he wanted to warn about a world, which CAN come into being: the world in his book 1984 is divided into three blocks, all equally totalitarian. A very dark picture.
If Orwell was alive today, who would he want to warn against now?
We will never know. But we do know, that there is a triumvirate, trying to expand its power on the world stage, which for the time being is working in unison. All three do not shy away from oppression and violence. For that, no means is too vile, no lie too flat to them. Trump was the last of the three to become president (again). All three have excellently mastered the art of hybrid warfare, including in the Internet. With the hack and leak (hacking government computers and publishing secret information found on them), with the spreading of misinterpretations and lies, for example at the time about Hillary Clinton - there is too much to mention. They circulate chatbots, whose sole purpose is to: create confusion and advertise fascist politicians. They create dormant accounts, for example on TikTok, which are activated for the same purpose during elections, as happened in Romania.

In fact, Russia’s economy does not amount to much.
Manfred Rösch wrote in the article “Der Riesenzwerg: Russlands Wirtschaftsleistung im Vergleich” (The Giant Dwarf: Russia’s Economic Performance in Comparison) on Feb. 11, 2022, so just before the start of Putin’s failed attempt to have ALL of Ukraine occupied: For such a huge country, blessed with such vast resources and with an well educated population of 145 million, even five times its gross domestic product would still be quite modest. Little South Korea, for example, which was still devastated by war in 1953, has developed an economy that is now slightly larger than Russia’s. [8]
But the war is pushing the Russian economy. That has to be paid for from the one thing, which Russia has in abundance: raw materials. Because of the war, those prices have risen.


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  1. Wikipedia
    1. Indonesia 1945-1949 • NederlandsDeutschEnglishFrançaisPortuguês
    2. Révolution algérienne (1954-1962) • NederlandsDeutschEnglishFrançaisPortuguês
    3. Pieds-noirs • NederlandsDeutschEnglishFrançaisPortuguês
    4. Métro Charonne, Paris, 8 fév. 1962 • FrançaisEnglishDeutsch
    5. Balfour Declaration • NederlandsDeutschEnglishFrançaisPortuguês
    6. Sykes-Picot • NederlandsDeutschEnglishFrançaisPortuguês
    7. Srebrenica 1995 • NederlandsDeutschEnglishFrançaisPortuguês
    8. Boerenpartij (NL) • NederlandsDeutschEnglishFrançais
    9. Nigel Farage • NederlandsDeutschEnglishFrançaisEspañol
    10. Economic effects of BrexitConséquences économiques du Brexit
    11. Pasdaran (Iran) • NederlandsDeutschEnglishFrançaisPortuguês
    12. Pasdaran (Iran) • NederlandsDeutschEnglishFrançaisItaliano
  2. de.statista.com Anzahl der Todesopfer und Verletzten im Krieg zwischen Hamas und Israel, 07. Oktober 2023 – 17. Dezember 2024
  3. gelderlander.nl Wilders zet islamverbod en andere omstreden plannen in de ijskast
  4. taz.de Italienischer Autor über Meloni
  5. tagesschau.de Brexit, Folgen für die Wirtschaft (DIHK)
  6. Internet en social media
  7. Nationaal Coördinator Terrorismebestrijding en Veiligheid (NCTV),
    1. Dreigingsbeeld Terrorisme De golfbewegingen van rechts-extremistisch geweld in West-Europa. Aard, ernst en omvang van de rechts-extremistische geweldsdreiging in West-Europa, inclusief Nederland, p.12
    2. https://www.aivd.nl › publicaties › 2018/11/05, p.10 (PDF)]
  8. Manfred Rösch Der Riesenzwerg: Russlands Wirtschaftsleistung im Vergleich, Finanz und Wirtschaft
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