'Red-brownism' and the axis of evil: after Moscow, Caracas and Tehran, will Pyongyang be next?

For some time now, social media has been talking about "red-brownism" or red fascism, a cocktail of totalitarian ideologies.

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Traditionally, the term "red-brownism" is used to describe a sector of the far-left, primarily composed of communists who yearn for Stalin and adopt positions typical of fascism and nazism, such as nationalism and anti-Semitism. However, it is important to remember that Karl Marx published a rabidly anti-Semitic pamphlet in 1844 and that communism has openly embraced nationalism in many places. In Spain, for example, there are communist organizations like the UPG (the core of the Galician separatist coalition BNG) that combine Marxism-Leninism in the Maoist style with a fanatical anti-Spanish nationalism.

Thus, "red-brownism" is a predictable drift of traditional communism. However, I believe that term is too limited if we only use it to refer to people who openly display Marxist rhetoric and traditional communist symbolism. Currently, there are individuals and organizations on the far-right (the real far-right) that are increasingly difficult to distinguish from the far-left, at least in aspects such as their affinity with anti-Western dictatorships like Russia, Assad's Syria, and now also, as we are seeing these days, the Islamist dictatorship of Iran.

There is a misconception that the extreme left and extreme right defend radically opposed positions, since on many occasions they have defended, respectively, antifascism and anticommunism as their defining characteristics, in addition to upholding materialist (in the communist case) and morally conservative (in the fascist case) discourses. This belief is based on a linear conception of political differences, in which the extreme left and extreme right are the most distant points from each other. However, we are witnessing a convergence between these extremes that is well explained by a circular model, in which communism and fascism ultimately coincide by completely distancing themselves from the positions that defend liberal democracy.

Antiliberalism has been a powerful incentive to promote this convergence between extremes. A convergence that is not new, by the way. As I already pointed out here six years ago, in 1939 nazis and communists had no qualms about joining forces to invade Poland, a democratic, Catholic, and conservative country. They even celebrated their victory over the Poles with a joint parade, something that some people still don't quite believe despite the existence of film footage and photographs of the event.

It's not hard to imagine what the next steps will be for this "red-brown" ideology, which today is a space shared by communists, fascists, Nazis, and even some traditionalists, whose antisemitism seems to be much stronger than their rejection of Marxism. They will adopt any position hostile to the United States, NATO, and Israel at any given moment, whom they have been portraying as demons to whom they attribute all the world's ills, and they will continue to swallow without question all the Kremlin's propaganda lies, which not only serve to justify Russia's atrocious crimes in its invasion of Ukraine, but also to defend and justify Moscow's allies.

Two years ago, I pointed out that the next stop for the anti-Western right would be North Korea. Some may have thought I was exaggerating, that within the far-right there would be a great revulsion for a communist dictatorship that is today the country where Christians are most persecuted in the world. Today, that possibility doesn't seem so far-fetched, does it? At the end of January we saw one of the best-known figures of that anti-Western far-right, Juan Manuel de Prada, defending Iran after the Islamist dictatorship murdered tens of thousands of protesters who were demanding freedom for their country. Two years ago, that same guy participated in an event organized by the Stalinist group Vanguardia Española along with known defenders of North Korea.

At this point, the "red-brownism" movement has completely dropped the mask and leaves no doubt as to how it establishes its affinities in the geopolitical sphere: its activists are faithful followers of that axis of evil formed by the dictatorships of Moscow, Beijing, Caracas, Havana, Tehran, and also Pyongyang. And most of the far-right, which once boasted so much of being anti-communist, today allows itself to be ridiculously led astray by communist charlatans who deceive their new traveling companions, mesmerized by their appeals to "Hispanism" and their harangues against the "Anglos" and the Jews.

At least this serves to make the position of the enemies of freedom and the West perfectly clear, who seem determined to show us at every moment which is the wrong side of history, which is precisely the one they choose in all international conflicts.

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Photo: AFP-JIJI. A military parade in Pyongyang on October 10, 2015.