Part 2 - DW062 001 026 002

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(Cont. from Page 1) It is also waging a r- thless war of national suppression in Eritrea. Though over 90% of Eritrea has been liberated by the armed forces of the Erit- rean liberation movements and only 2 or 3 cities remain in its hands, the Ethiopian government per- sists in the genocidal policy of bombing liber- ated areas. For this purpose it is using napalm supplied by the Soviet Union and pil- oted by Cubans. This is the regime which the Soviet Union and its lackeys have dubbed 'socialist'and anti-imper ialist. But this should not surprise us. To extend its sphere of influence in Africa particularly to control the vital Red Sea shipping routes, and strengthen its position in contention with US imperialism, to try and dominate Eu- rope, the Soviet Union will support and extoll as 'soc- ialist' any regime however repressive and reactionary, if it serves its ends. Recently it was report- ed that Soviet ships in the Red Sea were bombarding Eritrean liberation fight- ers positions in the port of Massawa. However the Soviet imp- erialists arewrong in thi- nking (as all imperialists do) that weapons decide everything. The people of Eritrea have been fighting for 17 years for the right of self-determination and will never give up; neither will the Ethiopian people lie down before the Soviet- Cuban military juggernaut. The Eritrean and Ethi- opian people will prove once again that, as in Vietnam, the decisive fac- tor in war is people not weapons. (Cont. from Page 6) the Palestinians, and they themselves condemned it. Brezhnev's worry is that the Begin-Sadat negotiations will lead to an increase in US influence in the Middle East (incidentally, his Czech- oslovakian sidekicks showed just how much they cared about the Palestinians by supplying arms to both sides during the Lebanese civil war). It is not a question of where borders are drawn, but of people. Until the Pales- tinians recover their home- land and establish a demo- cratic, secular state with the Jews who have come there, there can be no genuine peace. Those who want a genuine peace support the Palestinian resistance organisations, who declare that "Only armed struggle can recover Palestine." FASCISM AND THE UNEMPLOYED FASCISM is on the advance in Britain. As capi- talism staggers on from one crisis to another, mass unemployment rises, living standards fall, housing conditions worsen and spending on education and social services is ruthlessly cut. These are the concrete conditions out of which fascism takes a hold and grows. The fascist are able to win a fol- lowing; they offer solutions to these real and very immediate problems. A short while ago I was made redundant. I am now unemployed. As Brecht would have it, "the shit has hit the fan" for me and for one million and a half of my class brothers. The question I ask then is this "Is there a danger of fas- cism among the unemploy- ed?" The fascists have been with us for a long time. When they last had their faces to the sun in any great numbers, it was in the Thirties, signifi- cantly a period of economic recession and high unemploy- ment. Any faith the working class has in the strength of the trade union and labour movement is based on its achievements, not its failures. For nearly two hundred years it fought to improve the conditions of the working class. If today, through weak leader- ship, wrong policies or divisions in its own ranks the labour movement fails to unite the workers to protect themselves in the present critical period, it will lead to a lapse of faith (and is already doing so), with mass des- ertion from the socialist cause, and a wave of inertia which will be seized upon by our class enemies in an effort to crush the movement for all time. This is not mere con- jecture. GERMANY When German capitalism created an army of five million unemployed in 1928, and the Bruering government with the support of the German Social Democratic Party, reduced the scales of unemployment benefit under the guise of state economies and there began a big swing over to Fascism. Hitler, Goering and Goebbels saw their chance. They exploited the miseries of the people, made specious promises to them which they never intended to keep, opened food kitchens for the unemployed with money readily supplied by the large industrialists and bankers whom they served, established Fascist barracks in which they housed the poorly clothed, young, destitute unemployed and from these vast numbers recruited the rank-and-file of their storm trooper detachments. In March 1933, these were used to smash the German trade union and socialist movement, and to establish the bloody Nazi dictatorship. Similar forces are at work in this country. By false promises they seek to find a mass base among the workers who have been looking to the left for leadership and action against insecurity, unem- ployment and poverty which capitalism has produced. This gnawing anxiety of hope deferred produces a HITLER YOUTH ON THE MARCH - 1938 sickness of heart and mind which can turn into a desperate revulsion against the philosophy on which they pinned their hopes. The capitalist class has learned much about masses in distress since Mussolini's 'March on Rome' in 1922. They know how to misdirect the anger of the workers; how to encourage divisions in working class ranks; how to take advan- tage of every weakness in working class leadership; how to demoralise the wor- kers; distort their ideals and exploit their ideals in order to finally destroy their organisations and lead them into fascist bondage. Fascism might well be described as the last desperate stand for capi- talism. To win popular support for the fascist 'revolution' its masters must use a form of propaganda which fits in with the mood of the masses; in other words a propaganda which is des- igned to deceive the masses into believing that fascism is a system for restoring their status in society. How far I wonder is it from the chambers gassing Jews in Belsen to baiting Pakistanis in Bradford? How far from the dole queue to the swastika youth rally? Is it not true that the National Front talks anti- capitalist, slanders noto- rious reactionaries like Thatcher, libels the anti- Labour 'Labour' Party? The fascists are cunning enough to know that if they come out openly and tell workers that capital- ism could be made to work by more intensive exploit- ation, by destroying workers organisations, by crushing the liberties of workers which were so dearly fought for by our forefathers - in other words if they told us that fascism was capitalism in its most ruthless form - Webster and vermin like him would stand no chance of gaining a popular following. Unlike those wretches who were tortured and mur- dered in ignorance, we no longer have to depend upon discovering the real mean- ing of fascism from the character and class position of those who lead it in this country, or from the dis- torted hatred of their vile propaganda. We have seen its evil ugliness, masqu- erading as something else, in Germany, Italy and Spain. Yet National Front literature, putting forward the same kind of ideas was available in the Unemployment Benefits office at Castle Boulevard in Nottingham , November 8th, 1977! I grant you that the hard-core neo-fascists of today are a pathetic bunch of lay-about thugs and geriatric fifth-rate ex- commandos, but I insist that if the concrete con- ditions are there, flowers will bloom in the desert ....wounds will become gangrenous. It is in despair

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