Some texts written in past years on the subject of fascism, which at the time of publication presented serious warnings and even exuded pessimism, seem almost too optimistic today.
The social phenomena characteristic of the beginnings of fascism have been warned in Croatia and in the world for about thirty years. One of the more famous texts that listed and analyzed those initial steps, still imperceptible and unrecognizable to the majority of citizens, is the article "Ur-fascism" by Umberto Eco, published in 1995. In recent years, these phenomena seem to have entered the next, more recognizable phase. Increasing voter support for extreme right-wing populists brought some of them to power, and some close to power. These are, for the most part, politicians with whom almost no conservative party wanted to have any political ties until a few years ago, who were treated in the serious media as local political "originals", similar to Hitler in the XNUMXs.
A comparison of today's political events with the events in Europe between the two world wars is self-evident. The states created by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the defeat of the German Empire introduced parliamentary democracy and most of them became republics. Fifteen to twenty years later, in almost all of these countries, democracies were replaced by totalitarian regimes that were either declared fascist or looked to fascist regimes as a model or, at best, those democracies degenerated into authoritarian democracies.
Why did that "wave of democracy", suddenly created on the tectonic political changes initiated by the First World War, dry up so quickly? Certainly, there is a worrying similarity between the rise in popularity of extremely right-wing, illiberal policies in more and more European countries in the XNUMXs, as time went on since the end of the First World War, and the process that is happening today in some European countries, as time and enthusiasm around the creation The European Union is passing. Ten or more years ago, the coming to power, through democratic means, of parties such as Viktor Orbán's Fidesz in Hungary or Law and Justice of the Kaczynski brothers in Poland, seemed like an anomaly in the EU.
Today it takes on the dimension of possible political development. The pattern has been seen before; at the Nuremberg trials, Hermann Göring said: "You only have to tell the people that they are threatened and accuse the pacifists of a lack of patriotism and exposing the homeland to danger. It works the same way in every country." In order to achieve this sense of threat, at least in part of the people, an external force is usually chosen that can be presented as a threat or a group, preferably easily recognizable, that allegedly threatens your way of life. Even better if it is possible to find both. On the Nazis' path to power, on the one hand, it was the Western democracies that unjustly imposed the Treaty of Versailles on Germany and to which domestic servants and traitors obeyed, and on the other hand, the Jews in Germany and the world, who were portrayed in daily propaganda as a threat to the Germans.
In the policies and rhetoric of radical right-wing populists in all European countries today, these roles are assigned to Brussels and migrants. So in a speech in October 2021, on the 65th anniversary of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, Orbán says: "Once again foreign high officials are making decisions about our fate without our consent. They are forcing us to be tolerant and liberal even if it will kill us. (...) Their goal is to tear Hungary from the hands of the Virgin Mary and throw it at the feet of Brussels."
On the occasion when Fidesz and PiS came to power, in Germany, where denazification was done more than in other countries, a small and ineffective neo-Nazi party Alternative for Germany (AfD) was founded. She tried to reach voters with pronounced Euroscepticism and encouraging intolerance towards immigrants. Its specificity was the denial of Nazi war crimes and the Holocaust. Ten years later, the AfD is the second largest party in Germany. Of course, these areas were not far behind those modern political trends either. In accordance with the theory of double connotation, the symbols and ideas characteristic of the Ustaše, i.e. Chetnik, are becoming more and more publicly popular.
In the recent parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, a cultured, civilized country with a long tradition of democracy, Geert Wilders won solely on anti-immigration and anti-EU rhetoric. Wilders refers to migrants as "Muslim scum" who threaten the citizens of the Netherlands. This rhetoric about migrants as a scourge that needs to be stopped, which threatens traditional European values and the Christian foundations of Europe, is characteristic of all right-wing populists. Migrants did threaten the EU, they did threaten "Christian Europe", but not in the way that right-wing populists, those "usurers of other people's misfortunes", portray it. They threatened the EU by serving as a means of ascent to power for parties that want to end the values that anti-fascism fought for and which are at the very foundations of the EU. They threatened Christian Europe not by "overwhelming it with Muslims", but by causing more and more Christian believers in Europe to so easily fail the test and reject the best of Christianity, compassion and help to their neighbors in need, and replace them with selfishness and indifference to suffering others.
Today, anti-fascism is the defense of democracy and its fundamental determinants, freedom and equality. In contrast, extreme right-wing parties and movements that advocate radical nationalism, dehumanization and stigmatization of members of certain groups, and militarization of society are a threat to the achieved standards of freedom, equality and human rights. Those totalitarian tendencies have always fascinated a part of people and, for some, represent a motive for engaging in politics. Today's generations should be familiar with such tendencies from books about the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Opposition to these trends, as well as the glorification of fascist regimes from our own past that put similar attitudes into action, is naturally called anti-fascism.
The individual freedoms and human rights associated with an open democratic society represent a greater responsibility and may come into conflict with our deep-seated drive for the security of belonging to a closed tribal community. In this direction, we should probably look for an answer as to how such vain propaganda, which has been proven so many times to lead to disaster, gains strength in times of crisis.
The answers to crises offered by the extreme right, apart from being generally inhumane, are usually unacceptable simplifications, and their implementation and results lead to a bigger problem than the one they are trying to solve. However, the choice between freedom and security is a serious and complex problem for any society. It is often presented as an alternative either - or, you can only get one at the expense of the other. Experience has shown, contrary to the views of many philosophers, historians and politicians, that so far only the development of democracy within states and peace-making policies between them have led, in the long term, to an increase in both freedom and security. Public support for that development and such a policy, no matter what they call it today, is a continuation of the age-old struggle for a better and fairer society.
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