The Rise of Digi-Fascism

Thomas Klikauer & Meg Young

Photograph Source: Abhisek Sarda – CC BY 2.0

The neo-fascist culture war of right-wing extremists and adjacent Neo-Nazis seeks to change the present climate of a democratic society. One way of achieving this goal is through digital fascism. Just like Italian fascism of the 1920s and German Nazism of the 1930s, digi-fascism wants the downfall of democracy. Its mythical calling seeks to make fascist thinking a normality. Henry Giroux calls this, the mainstreaming of fascism.

Despite its horrific past – or perhaps “because of its past” – today’s version of fascism is doing rather well. In fact, in some quarters it has even become something of a life-style idea exemplified by those who invaded Capitol Hill on 6^th January 2021; right-wing extremists camouflaging themselves as Canadian truckers; some sections of the anti-vaxxers during the Coronavirus pandemic; politicians who claim that the Charlottesville Neo-Nazis are very fine people – this list goes on.

In short, the world of real fascism (1920s to 1940s), today’s reality of offline neo-fascism, and its latest mutation of online digi-fascism remains a simple world defined by good-vs.-evil emotions. It still is just as Nazism’s Aryan master ideologue – Carl Schmitt – once claimed, those who are identified as evil and as the enemy must be destroyed.

In its eternal white-power struggle for cultural and political hegemony, the so-called New Right – which all too often is neither “new” (as it tends to regurgitate old themes) nor “right” but is rather neo-fascist in the extreme – has been taking advantage of plenty of new opportunities offered by social media to distribute its propaganda – on both sides of the Atlantic and even beyond.

Online and offline, digi-fascism thrives from designing an illusionary world of individual experiences and spaces in which the supposedly oppressed and insecure can feel at ease. Now they are protected from an accelerated and ever increasing complexity of modernity.

Right-wing extremist’s propaganda constructs this idyllic and pre- or better: anti-modern world as a place in which an imagined white majority no longer needs to fear the loss of its social privileges. Ideologically speaking, digi-fascism follows an old but proven playbook.

During the 1920s and 1930s, many Europeans, including its rising middle-class, experienced many of capitalism’s inherent pathologies. It was fascism’s task to re-direct these capitalism-endangering forces towards two newly invented enemies: a rebellious working class in case of Italy, and a powerful working class and Jews in the case of Germany.

Today’s digi-fascism also re-directs more recent threats – many of which are caused by forty years of neoliberalism – towards an invented enemy. Again, the biting pathologies of neoliberalism are redirected away from capitalism.

Once more, the task falls onto fascism – now called neo-fascism. Just as during the 1920s and 1930s, the task at hand is to obscure the ever present pathologies of capitalism. Both – traditional fascism and today’s digi-fascism – conjures up negative feelings towards an enemy. It follows fascism’s classical playbook of: no enemy – no fascism.

In that, digi-fascism focuses on a wide range of feelings. Yet, there still is one core and most suitable feeling used as a common denominator of emotions that right-wing extremists’ use when seeking to unite people. At its core is a looming sense of danger, threat, and most of all: fear. Neo-fascism’s Politics of Fear has invented the oppressed who are subjugated by some dark but always illusive force: the deep state, the elite, refugees, etc. All of these have become very handy tools for right-wing conspiracy fantasies.

However, and this is central, these feelings are invoked in groups that are also made to feel to be neglected and sidelined. Even though the exact opposite is the case. In general, many of them aren’t marginalized but privileged. Digi-fascism targets the insecure, the white man, sections of the middle and even working class, the conservative, the xenophobic, the racists, the Aryan German, the White Power American, and so on.

Yet, digi-fascism is somewhat of a big word. When we hear fascism we tend to think of drilled men in black uniforms, raising their arm to the fascist salute wearing polished boots. Mussolini’s Fasci Italiani di Combattimento was one of them. It was a fascist organization following the Germany’s Führer principle. National Socialism parroted and perfected Italo-fascism’s hierarchy.

Today’s digi-fascism relate to this – somewhat. Yet, one might also like to emphasize the crucial differences between traditional fascism and digi-fascism. Fascism is generally understood as a radical right-wing extremist’s top-down movement. It had ideologically-driven leaders – Mussolini, Hitler, Horthy, Tojo, Antonescu, Yaroslava Bandera (Ukraine) etc. – at the top. These men (all of them were men!) conjured up what the German philosopher Adorno calls as the authoritarian character among their followers.

Le Bon’s crowd is to worship these leaders and to blindly follow them. Yet and unlike traditional fascism, in the Age of Digi-Fascism, the classical relationships of fascist authority no longer works. This is the key difference between traditional fascism and digi-fascism. Today, virtually anyone can create a right-wing tale of evil refugees, a dark elite, an overbearing state, the threat of migration, etc. on the Internet.

Via social media, spreading fascist ideologies by all kinds of people and into all kinds of places is no longer an impossibility. As a consequence, digi-fascism no longer has a Mussolini and a Hitler. Despite the fact that some minor figures tried this, inevitably, they ended up as Mini-Me Hitlers. And, digi-fascism has no need for them.

Today’s fascistic movements form from the bottom up. This remains one of the most decisive difference to the fascism of the 1920s. And, digi-fascism is forced to take this into account. It is largely because of advances in individualism and strangely, even in democracy, i.e. Hirschman’s voice. Via the Internet, participants in right-wing online engagements demand voice using online platforms.

Most importantly, a no-leader digi-fascism came about because of the conditions of social media. As a consequence, there is less blind-following of and no longer an obeying of a glorified leader. Instead, one participates in right-wing extremists’ narratives, conspiracy fantasies, semi-explanatory and even partly plausible tales of right-wing vindications.

Despite these changes, some elements of fascism have not changed. Ideologically, traditional fascism just as today’s digi-fascism continues to propagate white supremacy with the goal of a racist world order. Yet today, this comes more often from users on Facebook, YouTube, Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. than by a propaganda ministry.

Digi-fascism’s participators no longer fancy obeying a leader. Instead, they communicate, invent conspiracy fantasies, and produce right-wing and fascist stories and, worst of all, are sharing these with each other. Even more troubling, this sharing can reach thousands, if not millions.

Under digi-fascism, fascism’s traditional principle of command and obedience no longer applies. There is no longer a blind obedience – not even when storming Capitol Hill to eradicate democracy. America’s right-wing extremist mob did not march behind its glorious leader. It was not a reply to Mussolini’s march in Rome.

Digi-fascism is different and one of the most important element is its communication strategy which is online and is highly visual: short videos, emotional photos, fear inducing pictures, simple cartoons, etc. Yet, many of these visual elements depict digi-fascism’s ideology.

One election image of Germany’s Neo-Nazi party The AfD, for example, showed a pregnant “white”(!) woman lying in an idyllic meadow with her exposed belly at the center. The slogan read, We make new Germans ourselves … AfD!

These new Germans are supposed to be white Germans. It is somewhat of a continuation of the reproductive ideology of Germany’s Nazis. Making Aryan children is framed as white resistance against an alienated world in which un-German hordes of Untermenschen invade the Aryan habitat destroying a racially purified future.

This is linked to neo-fascism’s ideology of the so-called great replacement, as well as the conspiracy fantasy of a great reset. According to the common right-wing extremist’s hallucination of a great replacement, white people are gradually being displaced in white majority societies such as the USA, Germany, Orban’s Hungary, Brexit-UK, etc.

The prophets of neo-fascism insinuate that white people are being alienated. On the other hand, the ideology of a great replacement refers to a recent demographic changes that actually exist. In the ideology of digi-fascism, these changes are associated with a right-wing doom-&-gloom scenario. Neo-fascism presents it as a loss of a supposedly ancestral white culture, the oppression of white people by an ever illusive and never defined elite, and as an anti-Semitic tale claiming that this replacement is part of a secret Jewish plot.

Digi-fascism believes that a coordinated struggle is waged against white majority societies seeking to turn those into – the much-hated – multi-cultural societies. It claims that very soon whites will be in a minority. They will be an endangered group. With rafts of migration figures and birth statistics, such fears are triggered and seemingly supported. This meets a diffused discomfort and white disempowerment.

This is the fruitful field of many key actors of digi-fascism that ploughs on the Internet. It is spiced up with neo-fascist messages like these, “your great-grandmother had twelve children, your grandmother had six children. Your mother had two children. You have an abortion and a dog. Whites have gone doggy!”

For neo-fascists, the decision to get a dog or an abortion is a betrayal of the people. Such images are right-wing extremists’ tales of a great replacement that has taken hold signified by a decline in white birth rates. Of course, there is no mention of the fact that those women were not allowed to vote, couldn’t earn money, had no access to contraceptives, and were forbidden to have an abortion.

In these tales, feminism particularly, when linked to reproductive self-determination becomes one of neo-fascism’s prime targets. Neo-fascism claims that feminism seeks to ensure that there is no more white procreation. This is a fascistic tale of decline, the extinction of whites, the feminization of men, perversion of the family, the end of the Volksgemeinschaft.

In digi-fascism, many private decisions are politicized and artificially linked to an imagined community. The hated female body becomes the battlefield of culture war. More recently, digi-fascism has linked much of this to the Coronavirus pandemic seeking to convert anti-vaxxers into the realm of neo-fascism. In that, digi-fascism uses online slogans against vaccination such as, “my body is mine!” This is implicitly linked to Feminism’s “my body – my choice” and “my body belongs to me.”

These are the hallmarks of digi-fascism’s online communication strategies. The radical right has been practicing this for a long time. Today, it adopts individualistic, feminist, and even emancipatory rhetoric. From the standpoint of digi-fascism, it is about the emancipation of an oppressed whites and a freedom struggle of the allegedly downtrodden and oppressed white men.

Not surprisingly, there are right-wing and neo-fascist demagogues seeking to exploit any occasion that comes up such as, for example, refugees, the Coronavirus pandemic, war in the Ukraine, etc. Since 2020, the Coronavirus pandemic has created the right conditions in which fear, feelings of threats, and sentiments of oppression can be joined up with neo-fascism’s ideological project. Many government demands caused by the pandemic have been common to all of us. Most have answered them by showing consideration and support.

Yet, digi-fascism has a rather different pattern of reacting to the Coronavirus pandemic. Their tale is spiked with its key ideology, “we – the whites, the healthy people, workers and so on are currently suppressed and replaced.”

Beyond that, digi-fascism also relies on the fact that many people feel threatened by Coronavirus, political correctness, cancel culture, migration, feminism, gender studies, changes in language, and gender-free language.

The ideological tales of imminent cultural decay can easily be carried over into neo-fascism denouncing social science as supposedly ideological science. For digi-fascism, all this is about much more than just language. When gender researchers describe gender roles and gender patterns in a variety of ways, male- dominated neo-fascism is threatened. Gender research formulates questions that have something to do with all people in all societies. And, Neo-fascism hates this.

Under digi-fascism, anti-gender sentiments are cranked up by what might be called right-wing emotionalism. Often rather unspecified emotions can be used by digi-fascism to move people into the orbit of neo-fascism. Yet, the endgame is clear. In neo-fascism’s totalitarian system, people will be deprived of their freedoms. This includes the freedom to be a completely normal person and a completely normal citizen.

Yet, in its right-wing populism, it advocates the so-called normal Germany. The ideological of so-called normal Germans or ordinary Germans plays on right-wing populism’s idea of setting ordinary people against the elite. Slogans like these turn the position of normal people into a seemingly threatened position. Now normal people are endangered by the elite, the migrant, the refugee, the feminist, the liberal, etc. Of course, under digi-fascism, normal continue to mean white and heterosexual.

Digi-fascism’s normal people always conveys the feeling that the radical right wants to trigger. For them, these supposedly normal people have somehow been marginalized. For neo-fascism, the idea of normality that is conjured up, suggests a state of life that takes place outside social conditions, outside of class, outside of capitalism, and outside of politics.

Instead, it invokes idyllic images of something like a “relaxation room of life.” This is linked to the Uber-romantic ‘good old days’. Yet, it is also something many people liked to imagine. However, the days of a quasi-natural order of life remains a deeply fascistic idea.

The Uber-romantic past of neo-fascism remains a time when women preferred to be at home and men go to work. These are dreamy feelings of an apolitical life that needs to be defended. Digi-fascism mixes a longing for such an imaginary relaxation room of life with the fear of a loss of the usual and normal life whatever this was and is. Digi-fascism also links this to a fear of the loss of privileges. This is what neo-fascism calls right feelings.

Everyone is certainly afraid of losses and many people have already lost a lot under neoliberalism’s reign during the past decades. To obscure these real losses – good union jobs, job security, decent incomes, the ability to buy a house, etc. – digi-fascism offers a tale that pretends to cater for the ordinary German. In this, the white, conservative, native men is in acute danger. He is forced to live in an alien culture determined by the left, feminists, and the state.

Digi-fascism’s culture war wants to change the political atmosphere of society. Digi-fascism calls this meta-politics, i.e. the ideologization of everyday life. Digi-fascism wants terms, words, and ultimately the language with which people communicate in society to change.

At times there are rather banal emotional points – climate change, Covid-19, refugees, etc. – at which digi-fascism begins to be agitated. It is exactly at this point where digi-fascism – via Facebook, Telegram, Instagram, YouTube, etc. – provides easy-to-grasp answers and semi-plausible formulas. Together with conspiracy fantasies, these are presented as having the ability to explain the world.

The next step for digi-fascism is to assure that its ideology and it online conversations maneuver successfully out of radical right Internet forums and into the mainstream. As a consequence, there has been digi-fascism’s media campaign strategy seeking to conquer the journalistic mainstream and ultimately to enter as deep as possible into the breadth of democratic societies. Yet, these are only intermittent steps. Once digi-fascism has progressed far enough, the willingness, acceptance, and actual violence follows.

Chinese health officials seem to make progress in the struggle against BA.2 in Shanghai

Benjamin Mateus

The National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China reported that there had been 26,462 COVID-19 cases across mainland China. These were further characterized as 1,351 symptomatic cases, and 25,111 asymptomatic. Imported cases accounted for 107 of these, of which 33 were symptomatic. These figures are posted daily on their website, offering a comprehensive look at every location across China’s 31 provinces, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao.

The bulk of infections continues to be reported in Shanghai, the epicenter of the current Omicron outbreak across the country. Yesterday, the national health authority said there had been 24,943 new infections in the financial hub, of which only 1,006 were symptomatic. The megacity, home to over 26 million people, underwent a two-phased lockdown on March 28, which was then extended to a city-wide lockdown on April 1 as cases continued to rise.

On April 4, a city-wide mass testing of the population led to uncovering of more silent, asymptomatic cases, prompting a second round of testing on April 8. The current rise in case counts has been attributed not to further community spread but to more comprehensive efforts to locate every infection across the megacity.

Dr. Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the counterpart to Dr. Anthony Fauci in the US, explained that the repeat PCR testing enabled public health officials to bring to an end the current outbreak. Speaking with the press, he attributed the increase in cases to the mass screening with PCR tests.

The average incubation period for infection with the Omicron BA.2 subvariant is around three days. Repeat testing will identify the portion of the potentially infected population that initial testing missed. Dr. Wu said, “The first test helps screen only people who have already started to shed the virus, while those who are infected but test negative would become infective if not identified immediately on the second and third tests.” He added, “If a round of tests takes two or three days, then theoretically the goal can be achieved in 10 to 14 days.”

Shanghai health officials announced Saturday that districts that have maintained zero COVID-19 infections for 14 days after repeated rounds of testing could leave strict lockdown, which will alleviate the severe constraints endured by the population and allow them to access markets for food and supplies.

Across Jilin province and the rest of mainland China, COVID-19 cases have continued to trend down since the implementation of measures to restrict social mixing and institute other cornerstones of infection control that have been tried and tested for centuries.

These public health efforts, including those being employed in Shanghai, are enormous achievements in light of the extremely contagious nature of the Omicron BA.2 subvariant. These experiences will provide important lessons for future pandemic preparedness and response in complex, densely populated urban settings.

Despite the repeated attacks and venomous language being used by the overseas capitalist press, denouncing the lockdowns as inhuman, the small number of deaths and mostly asymptomatic character of the infections attest to the efficacy of these relentless efforts at elimination. It means that the clinically severe aspects of the illness can be prevented through early intervention.

These findings are not unique to China’s experience. Every country that had employed an elimination strategy was able to lower rates of infections and complications, including deaths. Early intervention so that the health system is not overwhelmed has meant lives were spared.

Dr. Wang Guangfa, a respiratory specialist at Peking University First Hospital, explained that symptomatic patients are quickly sequestered at hospitals and treatment is rapidly initiated, which prevents cases from progressing to a more severe or critical state. If restrictions were lifted, infections would rapidly spread, leading to overwhelmed hospitals and a rise in preventable deaths. He pointed out that comparing Omicron to the flu is both misleading and dangerous.

When the Omicron wave surged through Hong Kong in February, it killed close to 8,500 people and infected more than 1 million in less than two months. The population of the special administrative region of China is approximately 7.5 million. During the surge, the per capita death toll was the highest ever experienced by any area during the pandemic.

By comparison, the severe 2018-2019 flu season killed only 352 people in Hong Kong. In other words, BA.2 has been 24-fold deadlier. These figures are important in reinforcing Chinese health officials’ commitment to zero-COVID.

Notably, in the face of the purported massive rates of vaccination across high-income countries and claims that the variant is “mild,” Omicron has killed nearly 1 million of the 6.2 million COVID patients reported to have lost their lives during the pandemic.

Globally, BA.2, the dominant version of Omicron, continues to infect more than 1 million people a day across the globe despite the dismantling of COVID-19 data trackers across many countries. At least 3,500 people are still dying every day, of whom half are in Europe, where BA.2 has seen spikes in cases and hospitalizations, particularly in Germany, France and the UK.

Globally, rates of vaccination for COVID-19 have been declining. Evidence is also emerging that the second booster appears to provide, in the short term, a modest improvement in protection against severe illness with Omicron. However, its impact on preventing infections drops rapidly in just four weeks and is negligible by eight weeks. With waning immunity and the rapidly declining efficacy of vaccines, the long-term implications remain uncertain and should weigh heavily in pandemic response, especially given the nature of viral evolution.

The United States will soon face the brunt of BA.2, which has begun its surge in the country. However, due to the nearly complete dismantling of state COVID-19 data trackers, the country is essentially flying blind into this surge. After the US CDC shifted to relying on hospital admissions and ICU capacity to determine community risk, state after state rapidly changed their reporting intervals from daily to twice or even once per week.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former US Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, speaking on “Face the Nation,” said in response to host Margaret Brennan’s question on the current state of the pandemic, “There’s no question that we’re experiencing an outbreak in the northeast, also the mid-Atlantic, [and] parts of Florida as well … It’s driven largely by BA.2. And I think that we’re dramatically undercounting cases. We’re probably only picking up one in seven or one in eight infections. So, when we say there are 30,000 infections a day, there’s probably closer to a quarter of a million infections a day.”

Despite this enormous level of infection, given the current low number of hospitalizations, the majority of the country is considered low risk. Hospitalizations and deaths are lagging indicators of infection, and without detecting the infections, it will be far too late to do much of anything about it. And BA.2 is surging when there are no mitigation measures really in place to slow the course of infections.

Yesterday, Jonathan Karl, co-anchor of ABC’s “ This Week,” asked Dr. Fauci, the White House chief medical adviser, what he thought of a Washington Post op-ed by Dr. Leana Wen, one of the more vociferous advocates of the full-scale reopening of schools, businesses and public gatherings of all kinds.

He quoted her: “At this point in the pandemic, we have to accept that infections will keep occurring. During the winter Omicron surge, almost half of Americans contracted the coronavirus. The new Omicron subvariant BA.2 is even more contagious. The price to pay to avoid coronavirus infection is extremely high. Some Americans might choose to continue to pay that price, but I suspect most won’t.”

Fauci replied, “You know, Jon, I think she—Dr. Wen articulated that pretty well. There will be—and we’ve said this many times even in our own discussions between you and I, that there will be a level of infections. This is not going to be eradicated, and it’s not going to be eliminated.”

The contrast with his counterpart in China, Dr. Wu Zunyou, who patiently explained that the outbreak could be cleared at the community level within two weeks, couldn’t be more revealing. The class struggle will determine if the war against the virus can be won.

Victor Orbán wins fourth election victory, remains Hungarian prime minister

Markus Salzmann

Victor Orbán remains head of the Hungarian government. His right-wing Fidesz party won the parliamentary elections on Sunday for the fourth time in a row.

Victor Orbán (Photo: EPP/CC BY-SA 2.0/wikimedia)

With 53 percent of the vote, Fidesz did much better than predicted, winning 135 of 199 parliamentary seats, and retaining a two-thirds majority in parliament. The opposition alliance “Hungary in Unity,” a coalition of six parties, fell far short of expectations with 35 percent.

Also represented in parliament is the ultra-right party “Our Homeland,” which achieved 6 percent of the vote. And one mandate goes to the representative of the German minority. Voter turnout was around 70 percent, the same as in the last election four years ago.

Orbán is not popular. He is responsible for countless social attacks and has built up an authoritarian system of rule over the past twelve years, restricting democratic rights and bringing the press into line.

The class nature of his government has been particularly evident during the coronavirus pandemic, during which 45,510 people have died from the virus in Hungary. In relation to the size of population, only Bulgaria has more deaths in the EU.

The health system is in a disastrous state. For this reason, the government banned doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff from giving press interviews as early as 2020. Critical journalists are not allowed to enter public hospitals. According to the European Health Care Systems Index (EHCI), Hungary ranks 33 out of 35 countries.

At the beginning of March, the government lifted all coronavirus protections. At the same time, there has been no serious vaccination campaign. By the end of March, only 64.2 percent of the population in Hungary had been vaccinated twice.

The inhumane treatment of refugees, the enforced conformity of the media and the executive’s open influence on the judiciary meet with strong popular hostility. However, the fact Orbán was nevertheless able to win the elections is due to the bankruptcy of the so-called opposition.

The only thing on which the alliance of six parties—ranging from the fascist Jobbik party to the Greens, and two completely discredited social democratic parties—agreed was the desire to get rid of Orbán. On many issues it was clearly to the right of him.

The fact that Peter Márki-Zay, a right-wing, Christian fundamentalist provincial politician, entered the election as the alliance’s top candidate speaks volumes. The mayor of the small south-eastern Hungarian town of Hodmezövasarhely accused the xenophobic Fidesz of being only against immigration in words. He accused Orbán, who locks up refugees in concentration camps at the border, of preventing the effective control of immigration by generously granting “golden visas” and residence permits.

While Orbán maintains his distance from Brussels—at least in words—the alliance promised to improve relations with the European Union. It criticised Orbán, saying his tax cuts and economic aid for businesses were too small.

It is significant that this right-wing alliance received support from politicians in several European countries. Greens, such as Germany’s Anton Hofreiter, explicitly supported it, even though Jobbik’s anti-Semitic and racist representatives would have held ministerial posts had it won the elections.

Ultimately, the decisive factor for Orbán’s clear electoral success was the Ukraine war. Initially, the alliance had run an “anti-corruption” election campaign against Orbán. When the war broke out, Márki-Zay fully backed NATO and supported its aggressive war policy.

Members of the six-party alliance demanded arms deliveries to Ukraine and the deployment of their own soldiers. Orbán was “a disgrace in Europe” because he had lost the support of NATO, without which Hungary could not be protected, they claimed. In the end, the alliance ran its campaign under the motto, “Putin or Europe.”

Orbán pursued an ambiguous course; he supported the EU’s sanctions but did not join in its warmongering, avoiding open criticism of Putin and presenting Hungary as a neutral force between the EU and Russia. He accused the opposition of wanting to drag Hungary into the war, while he favoured neutrality and was keeping the country out of the war.

This won Fidesz more votes than originally predicted. Significant sections of the Hungarian population, as in other European countries, reject both NATO’s war policy and Russia’s war policy. Orbán took advantage of this.

His election victory caused anger in Brussels and Berlin. Two days after the election, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the EU was now initiating the long-delayed procedure against the country for violations of the rule of law.

European Parliament Vice-President Katarina Barley (Social Democratic Party, SPD) said, “We now have an avowed EU opponent, an avowed Putin friend in the ranks of the European Council.” The leader of the Left Group in the EU Parliament, Martin Schirdewan, added that Orbán’s election was an encouragement for other authoritarian-oriented heads of government. “The contradictions especially along the conflict line of democracy versus authoritarianism will increase massively.”

In fact, the representatives of German and European imperialism are not concerned with defending democracy. Rather, in view of the escalation in the Ukraine war, governments fear that there will also be fierce conflicts within Europe.

In Serbia, where elections were also held on Sunday, there was a similar development. The incumbent President Aleksandar Vucic won the first round of the presidential election with over 58 percent. In the parliamentary elections, his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) scored more than 42 percent.

Vucic, who in the past was considered pro-Moscow, held back on criticising Russia in the Ukraine conflict. He rejected the attack on Ukraine, but also the threats of war against Russia.

UK Prime Minster Boris Johnson stakes his claim as Europe’s top warmonger

Robert Stevens

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev Saturday in an unannounced visit that was weeks in planning.

For Johnson, representing NATO powers funneling staggering amounts of lethal weaponry to Ukraine, the visit was a sickening photo op designed to present him as Europe’s most fervent warmonger.

A compliant media led their front pages with celebrations of the visit. The Sunday Times ran a photo of Johnson and Zelensky with a menacing armed guard behind them below a headline reading, “BROTHERS IN ARMS”.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Ukraine. 09/04/2022. Picture supplied by the Ukrainian government. (Number 10/Flckr)

Johnson also calculated that the trip into a war zone would divert attention from a government mired in crisis, which has overseen over 190,000 COVID deaths and is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police over parties held during pandemic lockdowns. Millions of workers are facing a cost-of-living crisis and what the governor of the Bank and England described as a “historic shock” to their incomes. Even as Johnson left for Kiev, Chancellor Rishi Sunak faced political oblivion as a result of the non-domiciliary, non-UK-taxpaying, status of his wife, who is from one of India’s richest families.

How desperate Johnson was to get to Kiev was detailed in the Mail on Sunday which noted, “Last month, it was reported that the Prime Minister had asked officials to examine the practicality and value of the trip to the Ukrainian capital for talks with his Ukrainian counterpart… At the time, security officials were said to be ‘having kittens’ at the prospect of Mr Johnson travelling to a war zone. But a Whitehall source said the Prime Minister ‘wants to go’ if it can be made to work.”

No matter what, the dangerous trip went ahead. It followed Friday’s visit by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, alongside EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. The Ukrainian defence ministry tweeted, “We welcome Boris Johnson in Kyiv, the first G7 leader to arrive in Ukraine since the beginning of the large-scale war. We are strengthening our union of democracies. Be brave, like Boris. Be brave, like Ukraine.”

Johnson set the militarist agenda for his visit the previous day with a Downing Street press conference alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The UK prime minister made another dig at Germany’s reliance on Russian energy supplies, stating, “We cannot transform our respective energy systems overnight, but we also know that Putin’s war will not end overnight. That’s why Britain and Germany have joined dozens of allies to supply Ukraine with defensive weapons. Last week, the UK convened a donor conference which raised weapons and equipment for Ukraine worth over £1.5 billion—or 2.5 million items of military kit.”

Johnson’s comments confirm that a proxy war is being waged by NATO against Russia, with the military hardware supplied by the western powers and Ukrainian troops doing the fighting. Announcing the pouring in of yet more weapons, he said, “The UK will send a further £100 million worth of high-grade military equipment to Ukraine’s armed forces, including more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, which fly at three times the speed of sound, another 800 anti-tank missiles, and precision munitions, capable of lingering in the sky until directed to their target.

“We will also send more helmets, night vision and body armour, on top of the 200,000 pieces of non-lethal military equipment the UK has already dispatched.”

In Ukraine, Johnson said of Moscow’s decision to withdraw from Kiev’s boundaries that Putin “has suffered a defeat but his retreat is tactical and he is going to intensify the pressure now in Donbas and in the east.”

Britain would more than double its loan guarantee to Ukraine through the World Bank to $1bn, subject to parliamentary approval, Johnson pledged. Tariffs would be liberalised on most Ukrainian exports to the UK and customs checks eased.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence tweeted of a short walkabout by Zelensky and Johnson, “This is what democracy looks like.”

What a sham! Zelensky’s government, elected in 2019, has developed the closest ties with far-right shock troops such as the Right Sector and the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party. These forces led the 2014 US-backed coup which deposed the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Today Zelensky is the poster boy of fascist forces, including the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion which played a critical role in the coup.

On Thursday, just two days before Johnson’s Kiev visit, Zelensky addressed the Greek parliament in a video message. Finishing his speech, Zelensky added, “I am confident that with the help of Greece we will win. Do not listen to me alone. Listen to two fighters.”

One of the soldiers who then spoke was from the Azov Battalion. He addressed the parliament of a country occupied by Hitler’s fascist armies, which killed 59,000 Greek Jews (83 percent of the total Jewish population, one of the highest percentages in Europe). The fascist declared, “I was born in Mariupol, and I take part in the defence of the city from the Russian Nazis.”

The crucial role played by armed fascists under Zelensky has been all but expunged from Britain’s media, with the incident in Greece reported nowhere. Rather, Johnson’s visit triggered yet more hysterical demands that the war against Russia must be stepped up. The Observer, the Sunday sister paper of the pro-war Guardian, editorialised, “In the face of Vladimir Putin’s cruelty, Nato must consider taking much tougher options.”

It complains, “Sanctions on Russia and arms for Ukraine are celebrated by western governments as an unprecedented, unifying success. They tell each other what a good job they’re doing. But it’s not working.”

The “continued, shaming, ineffectual western shouting from the sidelines is unacceptable. The sooner [US President] Biden and the rest stop wringing their hands and start calling the shots the better.”

There were “hard choices western leaders must urgently consider. First, direct intervention to create a safe haven in western Ukraine, where displaced people may congregate instead of fleeing abroad. Inform Moscow in advance of its location and boundaries. Be clear it will be protected by Nato air power and ground forces invited in by Kyiv.” Other options included NATO strikes on Russian artillery.

This diatribe for upscaled war, backed by legions of Nato’s warplanes, concluded, “If the west is serious about stopping the war[!], these and similarly robust actions may be the only way left.”

Former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore could disagree with none of this. Writing Friday in the Conservative government’s house newspaper, he declared that among the European powers only the UK was prepared to defeat Moscow militarily. “In the case of France and Germany, the feeling is not so much that the country should triumph, but that the killing must stop… Jaw-jaw not war-war is the cliché.”

Tobias Ellwood MP, chair of parliament’s defence select committee, said Johnson’s visit was a “powerful message directly to Putin that we won’t be intimidated”. Britain was leading other nations including Poland and Slovakia in “breaking away from NATO’s self-imposed limits” and providing greater military support to Ukraine.

Ellwood boasted, “I called for a division of NATO to go in prior to the invasion, but NATO didn’t want to know. And I think they’re now regretting that decision… So seeing the prime minister step forward, take some leadership” was necessary “because much of NATO is consolidated within the NATO architecture that they’ve left Ukraine outside of that support.”

Macron, neo-fascist Le Pen advance to runoff in French presidential election

Kumaran Ira & Alex Lantier

In yesterday’s French presidential election, in a replay of the first round of the 2017 elections, outgoing President Emmanuel Macron and neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen advanced to the final round of the presidential contest on April 24. According to initial estimates last night, they received 27.4 percent and 24.0 percent of the vote, respectively. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the former Socialist Party official who was the candidate of the Unsubmissive France (LFI) party, obtained 21.6 percent of the vote.

Mélenchon’s campaign manager, Manuel Bompard, issued a statement overnight calling Mélenchon’s vote “an extraordinary result,” but conceding, “unhappily, this will not be sufficient to qualify for the second round.”

If these figures prove correct, it would be the third time, after the 2002 and 2017 elections, that a neo-fascist candidate advances to the runoff of the French presidential elections. The fact that voters are being presented yet again with a poisoned choice between Le Pen and the right-wing “president of the rich” exposes the political bankruptcy of the organizations that the ruling establishment falsely promotes as the “left.” They proved incapable of defeating either a despised outgoing president or a neo-fascist.

A screen shows French President Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen at her election day headquarters, in Paris, Sunday, April 10, 2022.(AP Photo/Francois Mori)

The election confirmed the collapse of what were France’s dominant electoral parties in the era after the May 1968 French general strike. Valérie Pécresse of the right-wing The Republicans (LR), the latest incarnation of the Gaullists, and Socialist Party (PS) candidate Anne Hidalgo, representing France’s two main parties of government from 1968 to 2017, took 4.7 and 1.8 percent, respectively. Green candidate Yannick Jadot took 4.5 percent, and Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) candidate Fabien Roussel 2.4 percent of the vote. All these candidates are now eliminated.

Far-right journalist Eric Zemmour, who has been convicted of inciting racial hatred and is close to sections of the officer corps that agitated for a military coup after the COVID-19 pandemic began, took 7 percent of the vote.

The campaign for the second round is beginning amid enormous uncertainty and popular alienation from the political establishment. There was a high abstention rate of 26.2 percent of registered voters in the first round—a larger number of voters than voted for any of the candidates. Polls have shown Le Pen taking 48 or 49 percent of the vote against Macron, and there is a real possibility that Le Pen could defeat Macron.

While Macron campaigned in 2017 as an investment banker who would revolutionize the economy, France is in shambles. Nearly 1 million people caught COVID-19 over the last week in France, and 768 have died, yet the Macron government encouraged people to come out to vote without masks even if they were positive for COVID-19, making voting a likely superspreader event. Rationing of natural gas and shortages of sunflower oil and other key products are emerging due to NATO sanctions against Russia amid the war in Ukraine.

In a brief speech late Sunday evening, Macron claimed he would build a “great movement of unity,” rallying the French people “in order to block the path of the far right.” He claimed: “I am ready to invent something new to bring together different convictions and sensibilities to build with them a common action in the service of our nation in the coming years. It is in our power.”

Le Pen demagogically portrayed herself as preparing to lead a popular, democratic government. She called on voters “of the right, the left, from elsewhere, from all backgrounds to join this great national and popular rally.” Officials of Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) told the daily Libération, “It is the left that, one can say, almost holds the keys to this election.”

Le Pen’s speech combined threats to “get immigration back under control,” pledges to build up the police, and demagogic appeals to opposition to Macron’s anti-worker policies. After Macron pledged to raise the retirement age to 65 and to force welfare recipients to work for their benefits, Le Pen pledged to defend the “solidarity we grant to the more vulnerable, the possibility to have guaranteed rights, or to retire while still in good health.” Amid reports that Le Pen might try to ban Muslim headscarves, she pledged to defend “women’s rights” and “secularism.”

The neo-fascists have been allowed to posture as “left” because Macron’s presidency has faced no left-wing opposition from within the political establishment. Macron actively legitimized fascistic policies, including his murderous policy on COVID-19 of “living with the virus.” He hailed France’s Nazi-collaborationist dictator Philippe Pétain while unleashing hordes of riot police to assault “yellow vest” protests calling for social equality. Macron government officials even publicly attacked Le Pen as being “soft on Islam.”

Yet in this toxic atmosphere, the parties that the media and ruling elite have built up as the “left” consistently ceded the ground of political opposition to the far right. Mélenchon and pseudo-left parties like the Pabloite New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) or Workers Struggle (LO) isolated or denounced the “yellow vests.” They lined up behind anti-vaccine protests led by the far right, even as 142,000 people in France and nearly two million across Europe died of COVID-19.

Finally, Mélenchon, the NPA, Stalinist organizations like the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union, and LO all aligned with Macron and NATO in the war with Russia in Ukraine, where NATO is arming Ukrainian neo-Nazi militias such as the Azov Battalion against Russia.

Whether Macron or Le Pen emerges victorious in the second round, the new president will oversee a reactionary government that will come into violent conflict with the working class. The election of a neo-fascist president in France poses enormous dangers. However, candidates who are now calling on voters to support Macron as the lesser evil against Le Pen are perpetrating a political fraud: Macron is not an alternative to a neo-fascist presidency.

While Zemmour and the minor far-right candidate Nicolas Dupont-Aignan both called to vote Le Pen on the runoff, most of the defeated candidates lined up behind the “president of the rich.”

Pécresse said, “I am deeply worried for the future of our country, as the far right is closer than ever to winning the election.” Predicting that Le Pen’s election would lead to “discord, impotence and failure” at home, and “France’s disappearance from the European and international stage,” she said: “Thus, despite profound divergences I stressed throughout the campaign, I will vote Emmanuel Macron to prevent Marine Le Pen’s arrival in power and the chaos that would result.”

The Greens, PS and PCF also called for a Macron vote, and Mélenchon has made clear LFI will issue a cynical, barely-veiled call for a Macron vote. LFI officials fear the widespread opposition that emerged in 2017 among LFI voters, especially in working class areas of major cities, to voting for either Macron or Le Pen. Mélenchon’s assistant Adrien Quatennens told France2 television that LFI will hold a ballot among its members to allow them to choose what to do, but that a Le Pen vote would not be on the list of choices.

Mélenchon, who is 70 years old and has said that he will not stand again in the 2027 presidential elections, presented his failure to advance to the second round as a victory that would strengthen his party. “A new page of our struggle is opening. You will turn it, we will turn it with the sense of pride in work well done,” he claimed, adding that France faces “a political state of emergency.”

It is apparent, however, that Mélenchon is setting out to play the same reactionary role he played in 2017: corralling millions of his voters behind Macron’s violently reactionary presidency. Indeed, at the end of his concessions speech, Mélenchon was reduced to repeatedly chanting: “You must not give any votes to Mrs. Le Pen! One cannot give a single vote to Mrs. Le Pen!”

In reality, the entire militaristic and fascistic course of Macron’s own presidency shows that Mélenchon’s perspective is a false one and a dead end for workers and youth seeking to oppose the turn towards the far right in France. Mélenchon similarly let it be known that he preferred a Macron vote in 2017 to oppose Le Pen. Yet the result was that LFI helped Macron get elected and turn French politics far to the right.

Sri Lankan Central Bank governor: Prepare for more austerity

Saman Gunadasa

Sri Lanka’s newly-appointed Central Bank governor Nandalal Weerasinghe declared Friday: “We should tell the people the result of our program will be a much worse situation before [there is] a turn around.”

Weerasinghe warned that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would dictate brutal austerity measures as the price of any emergency bailout. His first action of Friday was a huge 7 percentage point hike in country’s interest rate to 14.50 percent—a move that will hit working people and small businesses hardest.

Weerasinghe made these remarks on a talk show on the Swarnavahini TV channel, just hours after he was appointed to the post. A retired Central Bank deputy governor, he was asked by President Gotabhaya Rajapakse take the post as he is desperately seeking to cobbled together a delegation to hold talks with the IMF.

Central Bank Nandalal Weerasinghe [Image: CBSL Twitter]

A delegation led by the Finance minister Ali Sabry is to leave for New York on April 18. Sabry, who clearly does not want the job, resigned less than 24 hours after his appointment as finance minister last Monday. After spending days trying to find a replacement, the president announced that he would not accept Sabry’s resignation. On Friday, Sabry reluctantly announced he would continue in the post.

Weerasinghe warned: “We can’t turn around a crisis caused by two years within two days. When we discuss restructuring with the IMF or our creditors they will ask what is the responsible authority.” He declared the country needed a “stable government,” adding that “turning around the economy will depend on how soon we can have the social and political stability.”

“We have to explain and convince the people that they must tolerate, and get their support. Then only we can carry this out. Now that inflation is 17.5 last month, it will be 25 next month. If people take to the streets and say they don’t agree to do this, it will only get worse… You have to explain the solution to them,” he said.

Working people, however, are already facing intolerable burdens with skyrocketing prices for essentials, shortages of fuel and cooking gas and long hours every day of no electricity.

Hundreds of thousands of workers and youth are continuing to hold demonstrations throughout the country that began a week ago. They demand immediate resignation of President Rajapakse and his government and solutions to the crisis.

On Saturday, more than 20,000 young people gathered at Galle Face Green in central Colombo while around 10,000 flocked there again on Sunday.

The Central Bank governor’s call for “political and social stability” is to a government that is universally hated. It has a wafer-thin majority after 41 MPs declared last week that they would act independently.

President Rajapakse initiated talks yesterday with the MPs in a bid to get them to return to the ruling coalition. Rajapakse has again called on opposition parties to set up an interim regime. Opposition parties rejected a similar offer last week.

Ali Sabry (Photo: Facebook)

The IMF program touted as the means to turn around the economy was outlined early last month. It includes increases in income and value added taxes; further rises in fuel and electricity prices; a market-determined flexible exchange rate; the restructuring and privatisation of state-owned enterprises; deep inroads into state expenditure; and the further slashing of price controls and subsidies.

The market-based devaluation of the rupee was already implemented in early March. Since then, official US dollar rate has been shot up from 203 to 325 rupees—a 60 percent devaluation. This has driven up the price of imported food items, fuel, medicines and other essentials.

The economic crisis in Sri Lanka is a very sharp expression of global turmoil fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerated by the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Tourism has been badly hit and exports have plunged. Sri Lanka has just $US1.9 billion in foreign reserves and has $7 billion in foreign loan repayments to make this year.

A Financial Times editorial on April 7 highlighted Sri Lanka’s vulnerability, warned: “The country may have as little as $500 million left in foreign reserves though a $1 billion bond repayment is due in a few months.” It declared that “fears are growing that Sri Lanka could be the first in a series of emerging markets to descend into economic turmoil.”

Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Finance Minister Sabry said: “Sri Lanka will need about $3 billion in external assistance over the next six months to help restore supplies of essential items including fuel and medicine.” In the lead-up the IMF talks, he pledged that “the government will raise taxes and fuel prices within six months and seek to reform loss-making state-owned enterprises.”

The opposition parties declare their sympathy with people on the streets demanding Rajapakse’s resignation. But they are advocates of the IMF austerity agenda, knowing full well that it will only intensify the social assaults.

Speaking in parliament on Friday, parliamentary opposition leader Sajith Premadasa declared: “If we want to receive monetary aid from them [IMF], we need to provide the IMF with a plan to build debt sustainability.” He heads the Samagi Jana Balavegaya which is boasting that it has been insisting the government go to the IMF from the outset.

United National Party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said in parliament last week that he has personally spoken with top IMF officials about the country’s crisis and was assured that the IMF was ready to help.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna is maintaining a duplicitous silence about government plans to implement IMF austerity program.

No one should be under any illusion that the IMF austerity agenda will end Sri Lanka’s economic crisis. It is the means for forcing the country’s working class and rural masses to bear new burdens to ensure repayments to the international banks, finance houses and foreign creditors.