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MINORITY PHILIPPICS CHALLENGE PARLIAMENTS
PREPARING FOR THE FASCIST STATE
(By SOLOMON BRIGG)
(NO. 22.)
Whether it hurts the forces of the left or the forces of the right, it must be said that one of the most dangerous tendencies in the development of the modern political institution is the growth of parties committed to a revolutionary programme of minority dictatorship based on force, representing the negation of Parliamentary democracy.
Australian Labor has definitely rejected such a programme, confident that it can, and will, proceed to its objective through the utilisation of the constitutional machinery available.
But it would be unwise to blind ourselves to the decided menace to our national welfare that threatens us in the immediate future from forces who are even now glorifying force as a permissible sanction to deny the will of the people once that will is expressed against the predatory institutions that sponsor such organisations.
The most negligible of the two parties committed to such a programme is the Communist Party. A motley crew of immature visionaries, half-baked doctrinaires, Mensheviks, preening pedagogues and credulous dupes who believe the fascinating romances of Arcadian bliss, ignorant of the fact that their own conditions even in these bitter days are incomparably better than those yet achieved by the working class in the Soviet Union, they have not yet learnt the penetrating truth of Bernard Shaw's crushing comment: "Communism is a tremendous extension of government, and consequently a great encroachment upon liberty."
As a potential force capable of establishing a revolutionary dictatorship based on force in Australia, their efforts are at best humorous. Ever ready to embarrass a workers' Government by staging public demonstrations, reiterating Capitalist propaganda and waxing bold with loud-mouthed claptrap against those who are trying to make some advance against the castle of privilege, they show their teeth on occasions, knowing full well that the tolerance of Labor and its knowledge of their real strength or weakness, will ensure them license. But as soon as an anti-working class Government assumes office they scurry for cover at the very suggestion of a blue uniform, and no longer do they stage "mass" demonstrations against the Government, lavishing money on amplifying equipment supplied by wealthy combines. They remain underground until the next Labor Government is established as a sniping target for their operations.
As a meal ticket to the Sane Democracy League and other "loyalty" rackets, their avowed revolutionary doctrines are invaluable, but it is not from this source that the revolutionary minority Government threatens. This menace comes from a far more insidious foe to our accepted adherence to political freedom.
The real danger is to be found in the tenets and technique of Fascism, which likewise establishes itself on the principle of minority dictatorship and finds the Communist Party a convenient stalking-horse against organised Labor. In Australia it is evident that the earlier crude Fascist organisation is being supplanted by a more elaborate and subtle approach, which includes a process of suborning responsible working-class officials to betray their trust, aided by a propaganda offensive on a hitherto undreamt of scale, in order to effect the necessary purging of leaders whom the Fascist International regards as standing in its path.
That the technique being employed is not indigenous to Australian Fascism we learn from a study of Count Nitti's volume entitled "Bolshevism, Fascism, and Democracy" tracing the growth of this cancer. Nitti, as Prime Minister of Italy, was a Gladstonian Liberal, but his study is at least authoritative and written at first hand.
Newspaper Tasks
One of the most significant of the stages leading up to the precipitation of the devil's cauldron is that played by the Press. "We find Conservative journals," says Nitti, "written apparently by reactionaries of the old school and others which, though they dare not glorify violence as a system of government in a free country, yet glorify and defend it in those countries where it flourishes. Even in free countries we see the falsest principles restored to a place of honor; the worship of force; the cult of the national State as the ruling factor in social life; contempt for Parliaments, sometimes concealed, sometimes openly proclaimed. These are the principles of former absolutism more or less disguised."
During the past two years respectable, aye, ultra-respectable, Australian dailies in their editorials have committed the very crimes here described by Nitti as the prelude to Italian Fascism.
Grossly distorted accounts or Parliamentary debates, calculated to bring that institution into disrepute and thereby facilitate its destruction, have been regularly featured in certain of the pseudo-respectable organs of "public opinion," while foreign-born advocates of the "corporate State," instead of being hounded by the Crimes Act, find themselves featured prominently in the news columns. In addition as lecturers before "loyalty" organisations, these "stunt" orators, University Professors and even politicians have had their services eagerly sought to foretell the collapse of the Parliamentary system. Discourses on the new revolutionary science are regarded not merely as theoretical surveys of current politics, but rather as practical expositions of the new "way out."
To preach the revolutionary doctrines of Communism is a crime; to preach the revolutionary doctrines of Fascism is the royal road to becoming a social lion, a Press hero, and to be welcomed as a valuable adjunct to the local organisation that is being built up against the Australian Parliamentary machine.
"There are Red minorities which constitute a menace," declared Nitti "Indeed, they arouse opposition among the workers themselves, and stand little chance of prevailing.
But they frequently serve as a reason or excuse for the organisation of White minorities, which meet with an indulgent welcome and receive support, direct or indirect, among the richer classes, and especially those whom the war has enriched."
It was here that Fascism obtained its subsidies, and he quotes one magnate who made a fortune trading with the enemy, who "supported, advised and stimulated every reactionary movement, whilst he subsidised a corrupt Press."
It was in this atmosphere that the Nation State, with its narrow motive of narrow nationalism, a programme of force, exaltation of war and aiming at hegemony over all other nations, had its origin. The Junkers of Germany, the Chauvinists of France, the Fascists of Italy, subsidised by the huge armament firms and acting in accordance with instructions from the international bankers, are concrete expressions of the one social-political idea — the negation of freedom and democracy.
With violence as its primitive modus operandi, nationalism embraces not only the intolerant subjection of its own nationals, but the more disturbing economic policy of imperialism, with territorial aggrandisement involving the annexation of colonies, and the exploitation of labor and the introduction of the modern feudal system— regulated through the scientific application of usury— by the exaction of excessively high rates of interests upon fictitious loans granted to "develop the colonies."
A Timely Reminder
The partition of the Northern Territory of Australia between two British capitalistic concessionaires, as proposed by the catastrophic Lyons Government, is a timely reminder that the nineteenth Century concept of Imperialism is not yet dead and that whenever economic Imperialism in abroad it will always employ the time-honored methods of suppression and exploitation. The proposed charters provide for the alienation of millions of acres along the same lines as huge areas of Canada were ceded to the Hudson Bay Company and the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Freedom to administer the concession through their own boards, exemption from tariffs and ordinary taxation, enjoyment of the advantages of governmental services supplied by the taxpayers of the Commonwealth, and power to determine their own labor conditions — similar clauses operated with the British East India Company and every other chartered colonial exploitation by the same groups of private capitalists. Under the new vision of the Fascist State, this technique of a phase best forgotten is to be revived.
But to us, examining the position from the analytical viewpoint of the scientific diagnosis of modern social-political tendencies, the warning to be found in this latest development is rather that it synchronises with the re-birth of narrow nationalism.
Fascism is the visible evidence of this renaissance of sordid materialism, bringing with it the exploitation of whatever unhappy people happen to come under its domination. For the National State to flourish Parliamentary democracy must be ruthlessly extirpated. So when the Lyons Government refuses to initiate any action against disloyal elements in the community advocating minority dictatorship— or, as they express it, "Government by commission "— and deliberately refuses to take cognisance of the fact that the leader has been openly consulting the most dangerous men in Europe, then the Lyons Government is exposing this country to a far graver evil than the Communist Party will ever present.
Fascism, however, is not an end in itself. The huge subsidies being paid into its coffers by armament firms, by the International bankers, and by the wealthy industrialists, are not furnished because these groups are more fervent admirers of the intellectual, philosophical, or social implications of the theory of nationalism. They are seeking dividends, and they realise that the "open sesame " to such dividends can be found in the quickest possible manner, under modern social conditions through the denial of freedom and democracy.
No Intellectual Basis
So the growth of Fascism is no mere exotic creation inspired by the desire of a majority of the people for fundamental changes. It must be engrafted on the body politic, and, involving as it does, the negation of freedom, regards violence as the speediest route to the achievement of its purpose.
The principal weapons are thus forged in the mills of hate, disruption and subversion of the higher concepts of government. Fascism has no intellectual basis; it lacks even the inverted Hegelian approach of material dialecticism as a philosophical background; while its economic theories are anti-social.
Founded on materialistic cynicism, it presents an exterior of patchwork design, appealing to all the baser elements in the community. The reactionary purpose of exploitation of all in the community except the "inner group" subsidising the movement, including invariably Press barons and high military authorities in addition to the select group mentioned above, is effectively concealed behind a hybrid policy designed to stir up internal sectional hate and bigotry.
So we find the facile embryo dictators embracing the most irreconcilable economic principles as their avowed tenets of political faith. Even its central orientation of nationalism is international. The master technicians manipulating the puppets are the international bankers.
Anti-Semitism, clericalism of the most extreme mediaeval type, the harassing of the Roman Catholic people, militarism, bureaucracy, suppression of free thought, the cultivation of universal suspicion, the promulgation of absolutism as the guiding principle of monarchism, the establishment of a dictatorship, the promotion of the authoritarian idea —such is the confused jumble that comprises Fascism. Any means deemed expedient to promote internal disorder and factional dissension are prescribed by these charlatans in the manner that inane strikes and futile demonstrations are promoted by the Communists.
The One Objective
Mussolini suppresses Freemasonry; Hitler drives Judaism and Roman Catholicism to the wall; Moseley launches his philippics against trade union officials — although the weapons differ, the objective is the same. The negation of freedom, democracy, and peace can only be attained if internal chaos reigns, so the agents-provocateur must be employed to secure that state as speedily as possible.
Obviously these campaigns must be financed, and once a reformist or revolutionary movement shows signs of affluence, then it is time to take serious notice. When trusted leaders, officials, and members of executives recant upon lifetime principles; when former democrats become featured as martyrs to their cause in the capitalistic Press; when journalists and other technical assistants of a people's movement suddenly "see the light," then no ordinary movement is afoot in the State.
To create the requisite atmosphere for a crisis requires, above all else, skilful financing. Newspapers must be rigorously controlled from the central bureau to ensure that the correct psychological impressions are formed, so that when the move is made to replace the parliamentary machine with a dynastic and authoritarian dictatorship there will be the least possible opposition.
Mercenary journalists prepared to prostitute their talents must be employed to compile handbooks of procedure, arrange publicity, and write articles enunciating the new doctrines with a sugar coating. Above all else, a demagogues must be secured, an adventurer and charlatan with the technique of the American chatauqua, a theatrical poseur able to mouth empty shibboleths to persuade the people to accept the reign of terror with the minimum opposition.
Such is the background of Fascism.
Labor Daily (Sydney, NSW : 1924 - 1938), Saturday 22 July 1933, page 9
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/236577845
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