This is from the Norwegian paper Revolusjon: www.revolusjon.no/om-revolusjon/82-siste-nummer/2458-revolusjon-nr-61-hosten-2022/#av-innholdet I edited the translation I received slightly.
Imperialism and war
Revolution No. 61 – 2/2022
Norway is training Ukrainian soldiers
Little by little, Norway is becoming more and more directly involved in the war between Ukraine and Russia. Ukrainian personnel are receiving training in handling materials that Norway have sent to Ukraine. Of what is known, field artillery M109 and Mistral [PM - a French short-range air defense missile?] are included. This is in addition to Norwegian cooperation with the UK on arms delivery and training. The number of soldiers involved is secret.
"The most dangerous thing we can do is to let Ukraine lose.” So says Geir Hågen Karlsen, lieutenant colonel and head teacher at the Armed Forces Staff College, to NTB [Norwegian News Agency]. This is a clear political statement that officers normally refrain from. If Ukraine is not to lose, it must naturally defeat Russia. Neither the authorities nor the officers are saying whether this entails the reconquest of Crimea, as Volodymyr Zelenski demands. This can never be done without NATO going "all in" for a full-scale third world war.
Pro-imperialist "antifascism" of Jonas Bals
Does Putin's Russia pose the imminent fascist threat of our time that the whole world must rally against? Whoever answers yes to the question is as easily fooled as anyone who thinks that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is about ridding the country of Nazi influence.
By Jan R. Steinholt
Today’s rotting capitalism promotes fascism in various ways. Fascism is imperialisms own by-product. But that does not mean that fascism holds state power in the aggressive imperialist grand schemes. Not yet.
Fascism is the dictatorship of monopoly capital and state power in its openly terrorist form. The invasion of Ukraine is clear proof that Russia is like other imperialist powers,. But the war does not prove that Russia is fascist. Imperialism is by its very nature aggressive, without it being tantamount to fascism. Otherwise, the United States would have been a fascist power to the nth degree, measured by the number of brutal invasions and wars of occupation it has carried out.
Russia is not a special case
Jonas Bals, former adviser and representative of the Labor Party in the Storting [Norwegian Parliament], is one of those who draws parallels between today's war in Ukraine and the Second World War and Nazi Germany. He believes Russia has a fascist government, not unlike the historical fascism that was defeated in 1945. And that such fascism must be met by force of arms. Bals has repeatedly argued this in the papers Klassekampen (Class Struggle) and Dagsavisen (Daily News).
He thinks it is "unforgivable" that the left does not understand how Russian fascism supports, finances and inspires the fascism that is now on the rise across much of the world. This is a somewhat peculiar claim, given that the Putin regime builds its legitimacy in foreign policy by referring to the heroic Soviet struggle against Nazism and fascism. Then it would be risky if Moscow were to be caught funding fascist movements.
One of the examples Bals mentions is Syria. This is a particularly poor example, as Russia has assisted the government in Damascus in defeating jihadist fascism in the form of al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria. Meanwhile Norway has actively, including militarily, supported the terrorists in the Nusra Front. At the same time, Bals has a point in that the role of fascism in the elections in the USA, and now most recently in France, is met with a shrug of the shoulders from large parts of the left. Nevertheless, he puts "Russian fascism" in a class of its own, in comparison with Nazi Germany.
Russia is a major imperialist power with strong authoritarian traits, some of them pointing in a fascist direction – such as, under pressure from striking workers, imprisonment of protesters and criminalization of revolutionary movements and other political opponents. The Russian regime's "anti-fascism" is not consistent with the fact that it has allowed Nazi organizations and terrorist gangs free rein. Only in 2021 did the Duma pass a legal ban on Nazi symbols. After 2000, Putin-friendly youth gangs operated alongside Nazi skinheads who carried out violence and hundreds of killings of non-Russians and leftists. Since then, several Nazi sympathizers in and around the state apparatus have been sentenced to prison sentences for murder. But far from all.
Things like this Russia has in common to a greater or lesser extent with a number of so-called Western democracies. Nazis have killed dozens of immigrants, Jews and socialists in countries such as Germany, Sweden and Norway. The German Bundeswehr army is infected with Nazis on several levels, and the government in Berlin has been forced to carry out several purges after a series of scandals. Spanish and French authorities have cracked down at least as hard on political protests as in Russia. It should suffice to mention the mass arrests of Catalan elected officials, or the French police's conduct towards the Yellow Vests. The regimes in Hungary and Poland violate human rights to the extent that the EU also feels compelled to react.
How should we understand the war in Ukraine? On the left, the analyses differ:
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Jonas Bals (right) compares today's Russia to Nazi Germany. Facsimile from Klassekampen April 30, 2022. [See the original article]
Democracy is a veneer
Fascist parties are represented in the national assemblies of many European countries. The closest thing to a fascist party in the Russian Duma is probably the Liberal Democratic Party, formerly led by Shirinovsky. It has 20 seats (out of 450). By comparison, Franco's successors in Spain, the Vox party, have 52 out of 350 seats. In several Baltic and Eastern European countries, communist parties and symbols are criminalized. None of these countries can be called fascist, although they exhibit ever more anti-democratic inclinations and the state apparatus is developing fascistic features through mass surveillance, new power of attorney laws and increasing censorship. We also see a similar development in Norway, albeit in a far milder form, since the class struggle in this country is far less acute. The reason for this European development is that bourgeois democracy is in crisis, the trust of the workers and the majority of the people in the system and those in power is evaporating more and more every day. One example is the recent elections to the National Assembly in France. Only 47.5 percent saw any point in casting a vote.
Bourgeois democracy in Russia is a veneer, as it is in other capitalist countries. The iron fist is always directly beneath the façade of class democracy, but it is not equally visible in all countries. Nevertheless, there is a significant difference between an "authoritarian" bourgeois democracy and a fascist state power in which violence and terror have free rein.
In Russia, non-socialist parties other than United Russia (Putin's party), including the remnants of the revisionist "communist" party, are allowed to stand for election and are represented in the Duma. Vladimir Putin is not an autocratic figure. The officially recognized trade union movement is allowed to operate fairly freely, while other workers' opposition is suppressed. Russia has corporate features, but it is not a corporate state, just as little as Norway, although the "Norwegian model" and the tripartite cooperation have clear corporate features. "Freedom of the press" in Russia is increasingly characterized by self-censorship, further reinforced by the fact that the country is at war. Self-censorship and cover-ups are increasingly also affecting the media in Europe, not least in foreign policy issues.
Fascism is undoubtedly on the rise, even within the bourgeois institutions of a large number of countries, such as Italy. But it is not yet the case that fascism has seized state power in any European country, including Russia. That doesn't mean it can't happen before we know it, in Russia, Germany, Spain, Italy, France or Poland.
Prayer for world war in the name of "democracy"
The imperialist powers in the east and west are competing for markets and spheres of influence, a rivalry that points to new wars. Trade wars are already a reality. China is economically on the offensive, while the US is on the defensive. But in terms of military force, the US is far superior to its Russian and Chinese rivals. Seen from Beijing and Moscow, a full-scale military confrontation is tantamount to defeat or nuclear destruction. Seen from Washington, a pre-emptive war before its rivals grow too powerful is more alluring. Perhaps even more so now, after the war against Ukraine has laid bare the great weaknesses of the Russian military machine.
Jonas Bals is a Social Democrat and one of the ideological leaders of the party's trade union left wing. He has written several books on the history of the labor movement. The view he presents of Russia as a new Nazi Germany is already being embraced by the AUF [Workers’ Youth League] and parts of the Labor Party. The consequence of such a view is obvious: the whole world must get behind the United States and the Western democracies to contain this greatest threat of all, if necessary in the form of full-scale world war. With this, Bals runs the errands of the aggressive Western powers. It is futile when he attempts to camouflage his imperialist war cry as a fictitious alliance of democracies against allegedly fascist Russia. To the extent that there is a historical parallel to World War II, it would have to be that Bals has fallen into the company of those who believe civilized Europe must acquire lebensraum to the east.
Bals and the left-wing social democrats in the AUF make a small reservation when it comes to embracing the United States. If Donald Trump comes to power again, they will bet their cards on a strong and rearmed Europe. If the US presidential election in 2024 results in a new round of Trumpism, the Labor Party and the AUF will almost certainly come on board as open supporters of Norwegian EU membership and the EU army.
What Bals is right about is that fascism is on the rise in Europe and the United States, as it was in the 1930s. The way fascism appears, and the methods it uses to win power, are not necessarily identical to what we saw in the interwar period of the last century. The boundary between right-wing populism and fascism may be more diffuse today. What is common is that "liberal" bourgeois parties – often with the support of the leaders of social democracy – are helping fascism advance: on the one hand, by allowing fascists and racists to organize and spread their propaganda under the guise of "freedom of expression", and through the historical whitewashing of the Nazis and front fighters for their "efforts" against communism; and on the other hand, through reactionary measures of repression against the workers and progressive people and through the broad powers of the state's apparatus of violence and surveillance.
Fascism does not arise overnight and without warning
Comintern leader Georgi Dimitrov explained it in 1935: "Comrades, the accession to power of fascism must not be conceived of in so simplified and smooth a form, as though some committee or other of finance capital decided on a certain date to set up a fascist dictatorship. In reality, fascism usually comes to power in the course of a mutual, and at times severe, struggle against the old bourgeois parties, or a definite section of these parties, in the course of a struggle even within the fascist camp itself -- a struggle which at times leads to armed clashes, as we have witnessed in the case of Germany, Austria and other countries. All this, however, does not make less important the fact that, before the establishment of a fascist dictatorship, bourgeois governments usually pass through a number of preliminary stages and adopt a number of reactionary measures which directly facilitate the accession to power of fascism. Whoever does not fight the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie and the growth of fascism at these preparatory stages is not in a position to prevent the victory of fascism, but, on the contrary, facilitates that victory." (Excerpts from The United Front; The Struggle Against Fascism, and War.)
Words of Arnulf Øverland
Jonas Bals is probably not convinced by the communist Dimitrov. Perhaps he listens more to Arnulf Øverland, who explained that the rise of fascism is only possible in a sick capitalist society where fascism finds fertile ground. Øverland believed that only socialism can change the social conditions and eliminate fascism. His words from 1939 largely describe today's European reality:
"I also have a few words for the bourgeois anti-fascists: I do not believe in any final victory over fascism without the victory of socialism. We socialists do not believe that bourgeois democracy is capable of solving the problems of society and overcoming fascism.
“For the past fifteen years fascism has spread across Europe like wildfire. But in order for the fire to spread with such speed, the grass must be dry. It does not spread in fresh grass,.
“There must be something sick about a society where fascism can spread as it does today. If the bourgeois liberals want to fight it, then they must also agree to a clean-up of society. If one strives for both peaceful conditions of society and individual freedom, then one must meet the fundamental demands of human rights. If you don't, dictatorship will come."
Fascism on the rise. Arnulf Øverland (1889-1968) at a mass meeting for anti-fascist unification, Gothenburg 1939. Reprinted from Virksomme Ord (Active Words). [See the original article]
SV considers support for Norway to send even more "defensive weapons" to Ukraine
The NATO trap has collapsed on the Socialist Left Party, as we warned could happen in the previous edition of Revolution. The Socialist Left Party (SV) has already supported shipments of "defensive weapons" to Ukraine.
Now the party is fighting internally over where the border lies. Which are "defensive" weapons? Norwegian field artillery M109 and Hellfire missiles are for most people not particularly defensive, but now the Socialist Left Party is discussing whether sending planes, drones – and soldiers – to the country is legitimate in the "defense war" in which NATO is now increasingly involved.
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