Understanding and Combating Fascism

The past few years have signalled an increase in right-wing capitalist governments coming to power in several “free and fair” elections in 2-party and multi-party democracies. The right-wing Hindu nationalist BJP came to power in India in 2014 in spite of winning only 31% of the popular vote. In Pakistan, the PTI led by former cricketeer Imran Khan came to power on a populist platform. In Colombia, right-wing candidate Ivan Duque came to power on a pro-business platform. In Hungary, PM Viktor Orban has won elections twice on a right-wing anti-immigration platform. In Poland the PiS (Law and Justice) party came to power on an anti-EU, Islamophobic and anti-immigrant platform. Ukraine has seen an enormous increase in white-supremacist, right-wing, anti-Semitic politics fueled by US interests. Donald Trump’s election in 2016, while seen as a watershed moment, has only exacerbated long-standing US domestic and foreign policies. In the UK, the close results of the secession referendum in Scotland as well as the close results of Brexit seem to signal almost paradoxical politics. Most recently of course, Brazil saw the election of Jair Bolsonaro, an explicitly racist, homophobic, tyrannical, anti-Indigenous, pro-business candidate whose election has been welcomed by right-wing governments like those of Israel and the US.

There has been some relief with the election of a few centrist or left of center, candidates such as Obrador in Mexico.

But it is important to ask the question of why openly fascist parties can come to power in “free and fair” capitalist democracies while we have been promised that there is no better system than capitalist democracy? The purpose of the workshop will be to understand the mechanisms by which fascism can come to power even in allegedly free and fair democracies with the supposed scrutiny of a free press, and what we can do to combat fascism.