The far-left and fascism: two sides of the same antidemocratic mirror

During the 20th century, the West was struck by two anti-democratic pandemics that caused millions of deaths.

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The first of these anti-democratic pandemics was communism, which seized power in Russia through a coup d’état that destroyed the democracy that had just emerged in the country following the fall of the Tsarist regime. Between 1917 and 1924, the first communist dictatorship, led by Lenin, murdered more than a million people and committed atrocities so bestial that it is difficult to imagine human beings capable of such acts of cruelty.

During the interwar period, Europe witnessed the birth of the second of these pandemics: fascism—the Nazi variant of which perpetrated a colossal genocide, with the Jewish people as its primary victims—while also plunging our continent into the worst war in its entire history. A war initiated, significantly, by an alliance between Nazi Germany and communist Russia—the latter then led by Lenin’s successor, Stalin, a genocidal tyrant as perverse and criminal as Adolf Hitler. Fascism was defeated in the Second World War (fortunately, all that remains of it today are marginal groups), but communism survived: even now, one-fifth of the human population lives under communist dictatorships.

Both communism and fascism are offshoots of socialism. Mussolini was a leader of the Italian Socialist Party before founding fascism in Italy, and Hitler—tellingly—termed his odious ideology "national-socialism," as it was a form of nationalist socialism. Although the adherents of both ideologies may be bitter enemies (much like China and Vietnam are today, despite both being communist dictatorships), these two totalitarian movements share significant common denominators: anti-liberalism (understood as a drive to dismantle liberal democracy and individual freedoms), a desire to subject the entire society to state control (with the state itself controlled by openly criminal political elites), the use of scapegoats (blamed for all ills, only to be persecuted and murdered), and antisemitism —a hatred of Jews that Karl Marx articulated in a repulsive 1844 pamphlet.

Today, communism persists in the West, sustained by far-left groups that openly endorse violence —particularly as a means to attack those who hold different views. There are numerous examples of this; only a few European nations remain largely free from it, most of them former communist dictatorships that, having endured that scourge for nearly half a century, have developed an immunity to it. In other cases, the extreme left has turned into a form of political thuggery that considers itself entitled to silence anyone who disagrees with its ideas, an intolerance and an addiction to violence that have always been common traits of both communists and fascists.

The far left has become a genuine threat to democracy, as evidenced by the serious unrest that took place in France and Italy last week—outbreaks of extreme violence that reveal a phenomenon that is by no means new: the alliance between the far left and Islamism, the other major totalitarian movement currently threatening democratic societies. Both share a hatred for democracy and the West, as well as a deep-seated Christianophobia and antisemitism. Above all, they are driven by a desire to sow chaos and violence as a means of imposing their demands upon society, bypassing democratic channels and the will of the citizens as expressed at the ballot box.

Democracy cannot remain indifferent or passive in the face of this threat; it must defend itself, lest it risk being trampled by totalitarians—as occurred in Europe during the last century. To defend itself, all those who believe in democracy must recognize that attacking others under the guise of "antifascism" makes one just as much of a scourge as fascism itself; ultimately, the far left and fascism are two sides of the same antidemocratic coin. Those who seek to use the far left to silence their rivals are not democrats—they are the "red" version of fascism: extremists who loathe democracy and aim to subject us to a dictatorship in which we are all forced to think exactly as they do.

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Image: Grok.