Militant Anti-fascism
by M Testa
(AK Press, £14.95)

THIS survey by an anarchist described as “an undercover anti-fascist blogger,” is a useful source of information about the fight against fascism in continental Europe up until the end of the second world war and in Britain until 2014.

Fascism, the iron hand which comes out of the velvet glove of capitalist rule at times of acute crisis in order to break the resistance of the working class, was a hallmark of Benito Mussolini’s rise to power in the Italy of the early 1920s. Violent gangs went on the rampage there after waves of factory occupations and the general strike of 1922.

A few years earlier in Germany Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the founders of the German Communist Party, were taken from police custody and murdered.

On May Day, workers fought battles with soldiers and around 1,000 people were killed. Increasing murderous gangsterism wore down many of the nazis’ opponents, although resistance to fascism continued for a lengthy period of time.

The author summarises the Spanish workers’ and peasants’ desperate fight against the military coup in Spain which led to Franco’s rise to power in the 1930s but misrepresents the bitter conflict of the anarchists and POUM against the communists as a simple struggle for power by the latter.

A more balanced verdict — that the communists prioritised the war effort, whereas their opponents advocated revolution — is provided by Paul Preston’s classic The Spanish Holocaust.

Yet the long, detailed chronicle of anti-fascism in England gives credit to the Communist Party’s central role between the wars in resistance to Oswald Mosley, while the lengthiest section of the book deals with the National Front, Mosley’s Union Movement, the

Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism, Combat 18, Anti-Fascist Action, the BNP and the EDL.

Fascism in various guises, largely financed by the well-to-do, has never gone away. Its simple solutions to economic austerity, sometimes with an anti-capitalist rhetoric, usually focus on ethnic minorities in an attempt to appeal to the aggrieved middle class and sections of the working class.

Fascism is violent in nature but, as the author says, anti-fascists do not always have to reply in kind. Physical resistance also means obstructing routes, picketing meeting and turning up on the streets.

He assumes that direct action of this kind is the only way to counter the enemy and while that is important, history shows that it is not in itself enough.

A united, socialist working class in Britain commanding full state power could put an end to fascism, ensuring that the Spanish and Chilean tragedies can never be repeated here.

John Moore