Antifascism – a parasite living off the memory of fascism
Brussels Municipal Council adopts the playbook of Stalin
The old Bolshevik revolutionary, Leon Trotsky took the words out of my mouth when in 1939 he wrote that the ‘very concepts of “anti-fascism” and “anti-fascist” are fictions and lies[i]’.
Elsewhere Trotsky stated that ‘ “Anti-fascism” is nothing, an empty concept used to cover up Stalinist skulduggery[ii]. Stalinist skulduggery is certainly in evidence in Brussels, the city that claims to be the anti-fascist capital of Europe.
A couple of weeks ago Brussels’ municipal council unanimously declared that it was now officially and anti-fascist city![iii]
The motion, tabled by Zoubida Jellab, a member of a leftish ecology party was enthusiastically supported by a coalition of Islamist influenced socialist, liberal, and Christian Democratic councillors before being put to a vote. This coalition of supposedly politically distinct parties had no problem of speaking as one when it came to flying the flag of Antifa.
Jellab explained her justification for turning Brussels into a symbolic bastion of anti-fascism on the ground that populist movements were gaining ground throughout Europe. In line with the Orwellian speech code promoted by leftish idealogues, populist democrats are labelled as far right before being rebranded as fascist. Jellab noted that ‘far-right ideologies are very much alive today’ and cited examples from the United States under Donald Trump and various European countries.
The Mayor of Brussels, Philippe Close highlighted the importance of the motion and exhorted council members to vote unanimously for it. As far he was concerned passing this motion was an important step in fighting a holy war against fascism. He noted that ‘as the capital of Europe, we are somewhat in resistance today’. But resistance against what? The performance of resistance against the fascist hordes in 2024 has nothing to do with those who bravely resisted the Nazis in the 1940s. However by parasitically living off the memory of the real resistance, Close and his coterie of clown politicians attempt to gain a degree of moral authority.
It is important to note that the Mayor’s issue is not with fighting real fascists but with isolating and marginalising populists and conservatives. He boasted that the Brussels city council was once much more right-leaning than today and that no fascist candidates has been elected to it in the past two decades. With these words he underscored the importance he attached to silencing the voice of conservative and populist dissent in the public life of Brussels.
So what does anti-fascism mean in the world of the Brussels political establishment today? The driving force of Belgian anti-fascism is hostility to pluralism, tolerance and the spirit of political debate. I first encountered how official anti-fascism worked last year when Mayor Phillipe Close took it upon himself to prevent the holding of the National Conservative conference. He managed to force the venue where this conference to be held to cancel the event. Afterwards he went out of his way to try to intimidate other venues from hosting this event. Thankfully his campaign of intimidation failed to prevent the holding of this conference, but it was evident to all that it was not for lack of trying.
The openly authoritarian behaviour of the Brussels political establishment even forced the hand of Belgium’s Prime Minister to condemn what he characterised as ‘unacceptable and unconstitutional[iv].
Phillipe Close and his colleagues on Brussels Municipal Council are no friends of free speech. They can also rely on local antifa groups to mobilise to intimidate their political opponents.
The decision to declare Brussels an anti-fascist city occurred a few days after the local Antifa mob vandalised ten of venues that hosted events by the conservative think tank MCC Brussels. The aim of their of vandalism was to place pressure on these venues to not allow MCC Brussels on their site.
As the Director of MCC Brussels I can confirm that my team are regarded as fair targets of physical intimidation. An Antifa publication justified its campaign of intimidation in the following way:
‘We, anti-fascist activists, denounce the MCC Brussels as an institute with nauseating far-right ideas. It is essential to make it unsafe and to counter the spread of its reactionary propaganda that threatens human rights[v].
Making it ‘unsafe’ to spread our ideas indicates that their response to ideas that they find uncomfortable is coercive behaviour and violence. It never occurs to these people that their tactics of intimidation is not unlike the tactics used by fascist militants in the 1930s. They too were not prepared to allow ‘nauseating’ ideas to be heard by the wider public.
The tactics used by Anti-Fascism is the mirror image of Fascism. Both movements are contemptuous of democratic decision making and both rely on violence and intimidation to promote their cause. What is worrying about the situation in Brussels is that its officialdom supports these tactics and its Mayor relies on organised bullies to enforce its interests.
Since the 1930s the ideology of antifascism relied on people’s fear of fascism to intimidates opponents. You do not need real fascists for AntiFa to scare the public. In the early 1930, the Communist International invented the theory of social fascism. The term social fascism was used to label social democracy as fascists. Social Democracy which at the time was one of Moscow’s many enemies was subjected to a campaign of vilification not unlike the treatment meted out to populism today. Trotsky too was denounced as fascist by supporters of Stalin.
At the time many saw through the fantasy of social fascism. Sadly today, in many parts of Europe the insidious labelling of political opponents as fascists is rarely questioned.
Of all the movements operating in the western world Antifa bears the closest resemblance to fascism. It is an entirely negative movement that possesses no ideals other than its hatred for conservative and populist movements. Like the authors of the Communist fantasy of social fascism in the 1930s it too uses the label fascist promiscuously to justify its intimidatory behaviour.
Antifascism is a political parasite that feeds of the fear of a return to the catastrophe of the 1930s and World War two. Yet by its behaviour it shows that it is no less contemptuous of democracy than its historical nemesis.
[i] https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/03/spain02.htm
[ii] https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-07-26/trotsky-fascism
[iii] https://www.brusselstimes.com/1546360/brussels-is-now-officially-an-anti-fascist-city
[iv] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/17/natcon-conference-resume-brussels-court-overturns-closure-order
https://vigilancecordonsanitaire.be/?p=132
Europe, Germany with their threat to ban AfD and Brussels now are harking back to the past and acting just the people they purport to despise.
A guide in Munich who took us on Third Reich tour of that city told us that us that it was so dangerous that the AfD were so popular-he didn't name them. He told us it was because young people weren't understanding just how bad the Nazis were and had decided that weren't so bad at all.
I was somewhat bemused because I had observed many school parties visiting Dachau and the grounds where Hitler had his rallies in Nuremberg when we were there. I suggest that people are embracing the right because they see what immigration does to their cities, amongst others things.
A very thoughtful piece, and something that has been obvious since the rise of a genuine democratic alternative in Populism. This has made me question the importance of having something substantive object to achieve than merely something to oppose. Anti Fascism seemed to move from something genuinely principled and liberatory, through an absurdly antiquated phase by the end of the Cold War, to a stage now here it has become authoritarian and sinister. It’s been obvious that anti-fascism has mutated into it’s opposite and has adopted so much of what it rhetorically opposed: the activities of Antifa across the West and in the United States especially has shown this: the hostility towards debate, the celebration violence, the adoption of a highly racialised world view (albeit with an inverted hierarchy). Yet this mutation has become possible as this movement has no substantive core, and survives now because of the fear of the masses on the part of the elites.