The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Lesson remain unlearnt, 60 years on

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Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Lesson remain unlearnt, 60 years on

R. Gopalakrishnan

Any attempt to avoid issues raised by the two World Wars will be inexcusable.

THE CELEBRATIONS of Victory in Europe (VE) were marked by references to the brutality of the Nazi and Fascist rule but have done little to awaken the peoples of the world to the risks of revival of the ideology in one form or another.

On the contrary, media comments and observations of statesmen created an impression as if Hitler and Nazism were an extraordinary evil that had mysteriously and suddenly descended on mankind. There were no attempts to contextualise the rise of Fascism and Nazism, though attempts at "contextualisation" of this or that aspect of the war were made by media commentators. All this despite the fact that a whole discipline of political-historical literature has arisen in the post-war decades, showing especially the links between the First World War and the Second World War, the rise of nation states in the modern era, the rivalries between emerging European Powers for control of territories or colonies and the Versailles Treaty.

Weakness of market economy

There is broad agreement among historians that Nazism (or national socialism) and Fascism had their roots in the weaknesses of market economy democracies that had just then emerged in Germany and Italy, the crisis the economies faced in the wake of the emergence of the United States as a rival power, and the defeat of Germany in 1918. The humiliating terms, including huge reparations, imposed on Germany are generally recognised as a major factor in the rise of ultra-nationalism, which, in essence, is what Fascism is all about.

Even while taking recourse to pseudo-scientific and racist theories, ultra-nationalism aims at rallying a nation, including all its different classes and varying interests, behind a leader and a state system, to fight a perceived or invented common enemy — to restore the glory of a failing state. The plight of thousands of demobilised soldiers in Germany on the morrow of the First World War, the weaknesses of its industrial base, and a rising working class movement aspiring for a revolution were all used by Hitler to rally the nation behind him in his drive for authoritarian rule pursued as a solution to problems of the entire nation. Anti-semitism was not an invention of the Fuehrer but he used it to the utmost in pursuing the Nazi Utopia, helped, of course, by resort to massive violence and terror. Fascism cannot thrive without a combination of Himalayan lies on one side and violence on the other.

The question that the world should be asking now is whether the factors that led to the rise of Fascism and Nazism, including hopes among many quarters in the West that Hitler would help finish off the Soviet Union, are no more in existence at present. The thirst for global domination has been unveiled openly as the vision for America in the 21st century by the Bush ideologues. Violence and terrorism have taken root in West Asia decades after the establishment, with Western patronage, of a nation-state in the name of a religion, depriving millions of Palestinians of their homeland.

Western patronage

The patronage extended by Western powers to feudal-reactionary regimes in the region and support to extremists with a view to combating a Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan have come home to roost in the form of Al Qaeda. And `democracy' has been imposed from above on Saddam Hussein's land of Iraq, after years of Western support to him in the U.S. anxiety to put down Iran. All the tensions arising from this geopolitics are portrayed as a clash of civilisations — a lie worthy of Goebbels.

Even President Putin, who rightly condemned the underplaying of the great sacrifice that the Soviet people made in dealing a mortal blow to Fascism, tended, during the VE celebrations, to make out that "terrorism" was a single, international conspiracy, while in fact it is only a tool that has been used by separatists, anarchists and extremists in recent times in Europe and Asia, including India. Globalisation of markets, while tending to bring together common interests across national borders, poses the threat of encouraging extreme nationalism inasmuch as it is perceived as imposed from the outside. Just as at the end of World War I when the U.S. backed out of its commitment to the League of Nations, it is now showing contempt for the United Nations. And the only nation that used the nuclear bomb on people refuses to honour its obligation for total nuclear disarmament.

Given this scenario, any attempt to avoid issues raised by the two World Wars will be inexcusable. It is perhaps apt to remember the words of Georgi Plekhanov: "Virtue requires not to be preached but to be prepared by reasonable arrangement of social relations."

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