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CounterPunch
October
3, 2002
Talking to Your
Kids About Fascism
by GARY LEUPP
I have two wonderful, beautiful teenage
kids. We talk pretty frankly about those things all parents need
to chat with their children about: drugs and sex, personal safety
and all. Lately I've felt it necessary to talk with them aboutwell,
you know, the f-word. Fascism. Not at the dinner table, where
my lovely wife would much prefer to confine the conversation
to classical music or the new car. But to them one-on-one, quietly,
in their rooms, with the music turned down.
I'm probably more comfortable doing this than many parents. I
teach Japanese history for a living, and every spring semester,
when I get around to discussing the 1930s, I have to address
this topic. The students are typically from 18 to 22, thus not
that much older than my kids, so I've more or less worked out
how to discuss, in what schoolteachers call "age-appropriate"
fashion, the obscenity which is fascism. The following is offered
as a suggested model for fellow parents, who following events
in this country, may likewise feel it might finally be time to
have this talk.
[Note for teachers/parents: The following
would be suitable for 12 year olds; you can appropriately adjust
it for older children and adolescents.]
"'Fascism' comes from the Latin
word fasces, a bundle of rods with an axe blade stuck out of
it. In Rome, about 2000 years ago (you know, when Jesus was alive),
it meant power. Having fasces was a way to scare and impress
people. People disagree about what fascism is, exactly. But pretty
much everybody agrees that Germany and Italy were fascist by
the 1930s, and many think Japan was too, from the '30s up to
the end of World War II, and that there was fascism in Spain
and Portugal and Greece and Hungary and other places. A guy named
Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy and started cracking
down on people's freedoms to say and write stuff, to organize,
to protest, and then Adolph Hitler (you've heard of him) took
charge in Germany and did the same thing. Mussolini's the one
who started using this term "fascism." Then a guy named
Francisco Franco overthrew the democratic government in Spain
with German and Italian help. There were differences between
these thugs, and it wasn't really clear to a lot of people, at
the beginning, that they were all somehow connected and that
they made up a new system, like a new disease or something.
"One thing that linked them was
the way they tried to scare people into supporting war---endless
war, a culture of war. Italy invaded Ethiopia, Germany invaded
Czechoslovakia, Japan took control of Manchuria as the first
step in its invasion of China. The fascist governments told their
peoples that they were under attack, and had to fight back. And
lots of people believed them. One of Hitler's top officials,
Hermann Goering, said before he was sentenced to death after
World War II that 'Naturally the common people don't want war
But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine
the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people
along All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing
the country to danger. It works the same in any country.' Goering
was a pretty sharp guy, actually; that's the scary thing. When
these vicious guys are in power they can sometimes win over millions
of people who just don't think.
"Like I said, there were some differences
among these war-mongering jerks, in Europe and Japan, but people
in the Soviet Union, and people friendly to the Soviet Union
(people called Marxists) started saying all these governments
and movements supporting them were in fact connected, and were
something new and worse than anything the world had seen in a
long time. So they started to use the word 'fascist' a lot, and
tried to explain why fascism was really, really bad."
[Note for teachers/parents: In 1928
the Communist International warned that "in a more or less
developed form, fascist tendencies and the germs of a fascist
movement are to be found almost everywhere." Most of the
early critical analysis of fascism was done by Marxist scholars
such as Otto Bauer, Franz Neumann, Leon Trotsky, and Karl Radek.]
"The Soviet Union was led by communists----people
who were trying to create a society in which people were equal,
and where there wouldn't be rich and poor. (The fascists hated
the communists; they were actually their main target. Hitler
thought Jews and communists were pretty much the same, and he
planned early on to invade the Soviet Union and get rid of them.)
The Soviets thought the governments in the U.S. and Britain and
other countries that called themselves 'democracies' weren't
really democratic, because the rich people, the big companies,
basically controlled them. The Soviets thought people in those
countries should do what they themselves had done in 1917---overthrow
their governments in revolutions. But as they saw fascism getting
stronger, the Soviets started thinking that to protect the world
from this horrible thing, they should work with anybody and everybody
who could be organized to fight it, including Western governments,
whom they wanted to 'just say no' to fascism.
"So communist parties all over the
world, who got leadership from the Soviet Union, tried to create
a 'United Front Against Fascism' including everybody disgusted
by Hitler, Mussolini and their allies. As part of this, almost
three thousand Americans, including the famous writer Ernest
Hemingway, went to Spain to fight fascism in a group called the
'Lincoln Brigade.' Too bad that lots of powerful people in the
so-called "democratic" countries actually liked Hitler
and Mussolini and thought that the Soviets were the real problem.
So they didn't really try to stop fascism. At least not very
hard."
[Note for teachers/parents: Both Joseph
Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to the U.K., and King Edward VIII were
sympathetic to Nazi Germany until full-scale world war broke
out in 1939. (Following discussions with Kennedy in May 1938,
the German Ambassador to the U.K., Herbert von Dirksen, told
Berlin that the anti-Semitic Kennedy was "Germany's best
friend" in London.) The
great American aviator Charles Lindburgh accepted the German
Eagle award from Hermann Goering, the Nazis' second in command,
in 1938.]
"In 1940, Italy, Germany and Japan
signed the 'Tripartite Pact,' which said that they were all anticommunist
and against the Soviet Union. Germany attacked the Soviet Union
and England, and pretty much everybody in Europe who wasn't already
fascist, and World War II started. America stayed out of it at
first, except for sending weapons and stuff to those fighting
fascism. But then the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor
in 1941, so the U.S. entered the war big-time, in the Pacific
and in Europe. The U.S. did most of the fighting against the
Japanese; the Soviets did most of the fighting against the Germans,
and in one of the greatest battles in history, turned the tide
of the war at Stalingrad, and chased the Nazis all the way back
to Berlin. The Russians still call World War II their Great Patriotic
Anti-Fascist War. That's how they see it, and it really makes
sense to put it that way.
"But still after the war, there
were fascists around, like in Portugal and Spain. The government
of the U.S. made friends with them! That's because the Soviets
had gotten really powerful by defeating the Germans, and even
though they lost, like, 20 million people in the war, they still
came out of World War II with the second biggest economy in the
world, and they kind of took charge in eastern Europe, while
the U.S. took charge in western Europe. (During the war, the
two governments had agreed to split the continent.) The Soviets
were still saying that people should overthrow the rich, and
that was very scary for the U.S. government. So the U.S. figured,
well, now that we defeated Japan and Germany, and the only power
that's really big is the world is the Soviet Union, and it's
against rich people-like the people who run this country--what
we gotta do is get together with the leftover fascists, or whoever,
to OPPOSE those communist guys."
[Note for teachers/parents: An official
U.S. government report in 1948 noted that "the men who were
most active in building up and running Japan's war machine-militarily
and industrially-were often the most successful business leaders
of [Japan], and their services [will] in many instances contribute
to the economic recovery of Japan" that had become so crucial
to U.S. policy at that point, as the communists were winning
in China. Failing to secure China as its big ally in Asia, and
needing to strengthen occupied Japan as its ally, the U.S. "rehabilitated"
many targeted by earlier anti-fascist purges, while they conducted
a "Red Purge" against Japanese communists they had
earlier freed from prison.
In 1953, the U.S. signed the Pact
of Madrid with the Spanish dictator Franco, which allowed the
U.S. to maintain military bases in fascist Spain. The U.S. supported
the military dictatorship in Greece from 1967 to 1974-a fascist
regime that suspended elections; banned all strikes, demonstrations
and criticism of the regime; and all gatherings except for religious
purposes in churches. During that period U.S. Vice-President
Spiro Agnew visited Greece, and in 1972 the United States negotiated
permanent access to Greek port facilities for its Sixth Fleet.]
"So they hooked up with some of
the creepiest people in the world, people who learned from Hitler,
and admired Hitler, people in Europe and Latin America and the
Middle East and Asia, and said these were part of what they called
the 'Free World.' Like this junta in Greece, and this guy Pinochet
in Chile, and a group called the Phalangistas in Lebanon. Your
teachers in school might not call these people fascists, and
they might give you the impression that fascism was something
that just happened, like, 50-60 years ago, and then ended. But
actually, it continued. It's still around.
"Like I said, people disagree on
exactly what it is and why it happens. Some say fascism happens
because there's a crisis in the economy and a lot people who,
say, invest in the stock market lose a lot of money really quick.
They see rising poverty and crime, and they worry as they see
working people getting organized to make real radical change----especially
if the working people include a lot of people who aren't of their
own ethnic group. So they lose faith in 'democracy'-voting for
the big political parties and stuff-and start supporting new
groups that say, 'Who cares about freedom and all-we just want
order and stability!' On the other hand, other people say, 'We
need a revolution, like happened in Russia.' Meantime the so-called
'moderate' position, that just supports things as they are, loses
influence. That's what happened in Germany. It can happen here,
too.
"I'm not saying our economy is all
that bad right now, or there's a crisis in it, even though the
stock market's been really weird. And the U.S. government is
pretty different from the Nazi government. So I'm not saying
you need to worry too much. Just be thinking about these things.
There are some pretty crazy people in the government, and since
September 11, they've chucked a lot of rights people thought
they'd always have. They've pretty much killed the Bill of Rights.
It could get worse. Somebody who's supposed to be responsible
for 'human rights' was actually talking about rounding up Arab-Americans
the other day. They're doing this thing called TIPS, too, and
some people are saying it's not really about catching terrorists,
but messing with people who oppose attacking Iraq and going to
war endlessly with random people for no good reason
"You've read the Bill of Rights,
right? No? Gosh. They don't teach that in your school? Well,
here, I'll bookmark it on your computer. And I'll also download
the 'Patriot' Act for you. This is your homework: Study them
both, and figure out how they relate. Come on, it's the weekend,
and you've got nothing better to do."
[Note for teachers/parents: Children
may ask: "What should we do about all of this?" There
are good answers, but given the current circumstances, it's probably
best not to discuss them on a website.]
Gary Leupp
is an an associate professor, Department of History, Tufts University
and coordinator, Asian Studies Program.
He can be reached at: gleupp@tufts.edu
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October 2,
2002
Carol Wolman,
MD
Is the
President Nuts?
Diagnosing Dubya
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Something
Rotten in Klamath
Linda S. Heard
Might Sharon
Nuke Iraq?
Joanne Mariner
When
the Judge Says:
"I Botched It"
Peter P. Mahoney
A Vietnam
Vet Makes the
Case Against War on Iraq
Mark Engler
From the
Quarantine
Agaisnt Greed
Uri Avnery
Manufacturing
Anti-Semites
Jennifer Berkshire
Converging Against Capitalism
October 1,
2002
Benjamin Shepard
On the
Road Again:
IMF/World Bank Protest
Reveal a Revived
Movement for Global Justice
Dr. Susan
Block
Cockfight
at the
Baghdad Corral
Krystal Kyer
Growing Union Opposition
to War
Ron Jacobs
Born Without a Spine
Scott Loughrey
Mysteries
of 9/11
Jeremy Brecher
Collective
Security is Working
Brenda Norrell
Troy
Black Feather on
the American Flag
Sam Bahour
Wake Up
and Smell
the Occupation
Richard Harth
Contrary
to Reason:
Adieu, Hitchens, Adieu
Carol Norris
Rumsfeld
the Surrealist:
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Lists Upon
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September
30, 2002
Rep. Barbara
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Zeynep Toufe
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The Troubador's
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Bush's
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Ben Tripp
Hunting with George
Jeffrey St.
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Haywire: Boeing's New Navy Fighter Fails Bomb Tests
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Naming Genocide
James T. Philips
Riding to Maine
Anis Shivani
Life of a Bum
David Vest
Too True North
Jacob Levich
Case of the Missing Terrorist
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Edward Hammond
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Molly Secours
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