Dismantling Populist Fascist Apologism — A Precursor To Dismantling Fascism.
“Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler for is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa. And that is the great thing I hold against pseudo-humanism: that for too long it has diminished the rights of man, that its concept of those rights has been — and still is — narrow and fragmentary, incomplete and biased and, all things considered, sordidly racist.” — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism
“When crimes go unpunished serious boundaries of thought are shifted” — Cilla Benkö
This article is in response to an Italian Political Science Grad who chose to attack me for the enquiries outlined below, rather than call into question the non-cessation of the European Colonial Genocidal Imperialist Fascist Nazi cult that conscripted poor, starving peasant families and used them as cannon-fodder. The fact that Fascist apologism by the apparent descendants of poor Italian peasant class conscripts and POWs mimics word-for-word the rhetoric and attitude of elitist supremacists who continue to work directly with Fascists & Nazis within higher education, compels me to write on and analyse the paradoxical phenomenon of Populism as the simultaneous backbone, fortification and ideological tool of Fascism and Fascists that needs to be dismantled and disbanded.
This article deals with just a few Fascist apologist arguments and I will extend this essay with several consecutive parts. A second part in order to deal with more complex legal issues such as the suspension of justice through the State of Exception as described by Giorgio Agamben alongside questions such as; “Why Does The Justice System Exist?”. A third part to deal with hereditary systems of power such as intergenerational wealth & ideology. As well as on the other hand the denial and destruction of systems of intergenerational wealth and resources such as family, community, history, property, language & culture etc.; effectively the practice of Genocide. Examples being; the Holocaust, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Colonialism, Monarchy, Imperialism, and the Caste System. A fourth part to deal with decolonisation and epistemic violence on the part of academic institutional actors. And finally, a fifth part to deal with “whiteness” as a destructive symbol of power and dominance including but not restricted to concepts such as Critical Race Theory.
Disclaimer: I couldn’t give less of a damn if Italy, Austria, Europe— including those who colonised and continue to colonise America, white people and white wannabes want to maintain their protectionism towards regressive, barbaric, inbred, unrestrained evil. However, it is the legacy of competitive colonialism, competitive colonial genocide, competitive pillaging, slavery — both physical and psychological, labour camps, concentration camps, mass starvation and the destruction of millions of lives, families, communities, cultures, countries, and futures including that of mine — that brings me unwillingly as an unwilling participant by way of being Fascism’s prime target for unrestrained genocide as a Muslim Bengali woman — that makes Fascism my problem since it necessarily dictates my existence as someone whose parents survived the largest genocide since WWII but could not speak of it. Only to be stolen from their homeland for the sole purpose of serving the interests of colonising, pillaging, good for nothing else - Fascists. The English language is conveniently insufficient to sufficiently insult Fascists and their lapdogs to the degree that they truly deserve.
“Control over politically relevant news and information,” is in the hands of “a very small number of extremely wealthy individuals.” — Colin Crouch
Italy did not put to trial their war criminals. I write extensively about a clan of Nazis & Fascists because it was through intimate contact with this wealthy clan and their network of cronies over the course of more than two years while living in Italy, alongside 5 years of meticulous study, that I unraveled and demystified the obscured secrets and internal as well as external dynamics of European Colonial Genocidal Imperialist Fascism. This Italian/Austrian clan consists of both Nazis & Fascists who worked side-by-side with Benito Mussolini. For example, in Italy’s Eugenics programme, attempts to recruit Civil Rights Activist & Pan-Africanist W.E.B du Bois to Fascism, in the colonisation of and implementation of concentration camps and genocide in Libya, and also as high-ranking voluntary Nazis in a number of different positions between Europe and America which I call “Transatlantic Fascism”.
“Under Fascism, criticisms of American racism were frequently transfigured in such a way as to advance the Fascist cause. Paradoxically, therefore, the racist policies of the Fascist regime often coexisted with, and were even reinforced by, denunciations of the racist policies of the United States.” — Impegno nero: Italian Intellectuals and the African-American Struggle by Charles L. Leavitt IV
There are key reasons as to why this Fascist Nazi clan demands scrutiny and they are as follows:
- colonised people have been and continue to be freely scrutinised without limits or boundaries under the unrestrained, intrusive, parasitic lens of the white European Fascist Imperialist Colonisers for centuries, the di Robilant clan notwithstanding. Therefore it is only just and right and as an attribute of an antidote to European Colonial Genocidal Imperialist Fascism & Nazism, that those who suffered and continue to suffer under it should be permitted to interrogate European Colonial Genocidal Imperialist Fascists & Nazis in what could be termed as “flipping the lens”, or the beginnings of a potential restorative remedy for the harm that European Colonial Genocidal Imperialist Fascism & Nazism has imposed — in the manner that we deem fit and to our satisfaction.
- concentration of power (and corruption) is a hallmark of Fascism and the di Robilant clan is an exceptionally good example of this.
- concentration of power enabled the clan to almost completely (bar one known case of a trial for working for the Nazi regime — likely because he failed to do his job as a Nazi and was sacrificed to a 14 year long sentence) evade judicial trial and then elevated within elitist European and American society — significantly within Legal Education & Academia — a specified space which grants total impunity to such individuals. This phenomenon inevitably leads to important questions of how and why Nazis & Fascists were permitted to evade trial. what happened to them, their families, their ideology, and the societies that let them off the hook. These questions are not intended to be limited to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, but applicable to other parts of the world, including the U.K and parts of the Global South, where the practice of genocide and war crimes have gone unpunished.
My analysis is with regards to how Nazis & Fascists not only managed to evade justice through going into hiding and/or the absence of judicial trials, but how & why they were inserted specifically into powerful positions within Politics, Economics, Law & Education in Italy, Europe and America. I was personally involved with this clan when I lived in Turin for 2 years, the daughter of Bengali genocide survivors who were stolen from their homeland never to return, and myself trying to escape the remnants of my family — torn asunder by the merciless onslaught of European Colonial Genocidal Imperialist Fascism & Nazism. I found exactly what I was running away from, or perhaps exactly what I was looking for. I entered the belly of the whale, and I have a story to tell about the notions and outcomes of crimes unpunished, the ravenous, unscrupulous, abusive, manipulative, parasitic, and deeply incestuous nature of unadulterated Fascism - at the top - from an intimate and domestic perspective, and what becomes of a society that is fully content and complicit with the most heinous of crimes — genocide, colonialism and crimes against humanity going unpunished and worse-still — actively being rewarded, glorified and pedestalled.
This reckoning is hardly a deterrent to European Colonial Genocidal Imperialist Fascism & Nazism (as basic level Social Sciences and Criminology will be able to tell you) but rather an active and pro-active endorsement that enables European Colonial Genocidal Imperialist Fascism & Nazism to continue to operate on a mass scale and to operate outside of the bounds of any justice system known to man — secular, non secular or otherwise. Europe has made their false Gods out of Fascists and Nazis and this poison has extended itself across the globe masked in various forms including neo-Liberalism. I was not initially aware of what was going on around me. Partly because I generally like to see the good in people - especially in the new environment that I wanted to make my home. Partly because I knew very little about Italian history and largely because the circle of abusers I encountered work in leading higher education institutions both in Europe and in America, so I naively fell for the people, social structures and institutions that grant them God-like impunity alongside credibility. Fascism has indeed been more than once described as “appealing”, and I’ve had more than one good opportunity to become a Fascist; to posit myself within a space of supremacy, exclusivity, corruption, excess, ego, luxury and grandeur that Fascists inhabit, but I just so happen to have a conscience and a moral compass.
There are related and similar yet arguably less pressing or demanding questions that innumerable white men in particular (and some white women) have had the freedom, funding, support, resources, validation, education, access, supervision, tuition, privilege and encouragement to study, write about and publish in innumerable papers and books but never once a Muslim Bengali woman. This is not an accident, it is by systematic design. My questions always push the boat out further because what is at stake for me is much bigger.
Fascism studies, far too ironically to Fascism’s very benefit, remains one of the most homogenous, exclusive, elusive and discriminatory fields of study in existence. Even the field’s apparent attempts to “decolonise” Fascism Studies falls very short in miserly attempts at talking about or writing about beginning to tentatively take into consideration the largest most ignored (except, of course when at the service of being the subjects of study under the parasitic, self-serving white European lens), discriminated against and marginalised victims and targets of Fascism both historically and today.
Returning to the topic of an Italian Political Science Graduate perpetuating Fascist propaganda…
Many Italians fought for the Fascist Army without a choice and without knowing who exactly or what they were fighting for. This demographic, largely now deceased, is beyond doubt clearly and categorically NOT the target of my work. Indeed, Fascism is tied to Populism which generally requires the willing or unwilling, or merely ignorant, or historically speaking desperate co-operation of a wide section of the population for various reasons ranging from desperation, isolation, manipulation, propaganda, indoctrination, poverty, nationalism etc. particularly in the past via conscription (which importantly, no longer exists in Italy).
Populism too ironically is by definition a mass following that believes that their concerns are not being heard by the elite. But again, the poor “Fascists” conscripted into the military are categorically, explicitly and very obviously not the target of my work, so I do wonder what could be behind the impulse to come at me with pitchforks in hand when I am questioning autocracy; people who are held above question, scrutiny, the law, justice etc.. In fact, I would have certainly dared to question calling poor starving conscripted peasants Fascists at all.
I concentrate on the concentration of power. The pioneers and beneficiaries of Fascist Power Structures: corporatism, authoritarianism, elitism, idol-worship, racial superiority, racial purity, genocide, ultra-nationalism, imperialism, paternalism, colonialism, censorship and suppression of opposition etc. — at its worst actively merged with Nazism as it did with the infamous and aforementioned di Robilant clan. This really isn’t the secret people like to portray it as, though, because they are commonly known as the Axis Powers or the Rome-Berlin Coalition, but I guess most people prefer to be told what to think rather than rationalise or see the truth for themselves. However, concentration of power of course works in its own favour in this regard and those who have worked prodigiously to whitewash the history, mechanics, perpetrators and outcomes of Fascism. Those who have manifold reason to suppress, manipulate as well as censor history to cover for who and what they are today —corrupt, habitual abusers — as products of total impunity.
The fact that Italians themselves, even the descendent of those poor Italians who had no choice to be conscripted into the Fascist military, and furthermore served time as POWs, fail to grasp the concentration of power that drove the Fascist regime, nor the geopolitical aspects of this, nor anything about how this concentration of power was preserved and further solidified into a post war incubation period through the absence of trials and judicial justice processes — something which is the fundamental bedrock of human civilisation, ethics, morality and democracy etc — is testament to the success of Fascism’s legacy, stranglehold on education, interpersonal abuses, implementation of censorship, hand in hand with continued unearned and inherited wealth and privileges to dictate what constitutes Legal Ethics, Morality, etc. as with the case of Enrico di Robilant — who damned his only son, Manfredo, by branding him with the name of his Nazi grandfather — the absolute pinnacle of “fundamental moral integrity”, I’m sure we can all agree.
At the same time, it’s important to point out post war Italian State sponsored censorship carried out by Rai. The Italian state TV channel “shelved Ken Kirby’s 1989 BBC “Timewatch” documentary, Fascist Legacy, which detailed Italian crimes in Africa and the Balkans and the allies’ involvement in the cover-up, which provoked furious complaints from Italy’s ambassador in London, for 11 years. What interest did the Italian State have in censoring this documentary and how is this censorship in favour of the good of Italian society as opposed to the good of those who hold and maintain a concentration of power while covering up their history of crimes against humanity?
Rather than directing anger at the implementation of Fascism’s toolkit via censorship, lack of judicial trials for the power holding elitists, whitewashing history, cronyism, nepotism, corruption and for Nazis & Fascists to claim concentrations of power across all social, public and private institutions and what impact this has on breeding sexism, racism, xenophobia, unemployment, corruption, a flat economy etc. that a great section of Italians absolutely love to complain about as though they are the sole victims of the entire universe and beyond, it’s been a telling knee jerk reaction for Italians, Europeans and Americans and largely speaking “white people” ranging from the descendant of peasant conscripts to Legal Academics at BU Law etc. to accuse me — an individual who emigrated to Italy with the misfortune of being groomed and horifically abused by elitist, good for nothing Fascists, of “acting like” or “sounding like” a Fascist for demanding answers as to why Fascists and Nazis are dictating the parameters and notions of justice. If there is one thing that Fascists and I have in common is that I am systematic.
It is no wonder that the myth that “Fascism ended in 1945” is a myth perpetuated by Fascists and regurgitated by the masses as though they literally don’t have anything to eat in 2022 except Fascist mythology and propaganda, but this certainly is not the case. This perpetuation first and foremost serves as a complete and rounded insult on Partisans and those who lost their lives to European Colonial Genocidal Imperialist Fascist Nazi brutality, and those who did indeed starve to death at the hands of Fascism from the concentration camps in Europe, to Libya, to India, not just on European soil, but also where I am from — Bengal. Where millions were forced into labour camps and starved to death by Europe’s poster boy hero, Winston Churchill, and his predecessors.
Though truly, I do not expect the audience to give a damn. After all, that particular Fascist also re-wrote and whitewashed history in no less than 6 volumes to portray himself as the hero, which Europeans also eat up as though they haven’t had a hot meal a day in their lives. I wonder how, in the comfort of the 21st century, Europeans can validate or excuse their ravenous and rampant admiration, support and knee jerk protectionism towards the most inhumane ideologies, practices and individuals the world has ever seen. Not to mention that it was the successive genocidal starvation and plundering of Indians that turned the Italians green with envy, and furthermore, it was also the British that financed Mussolini. I momentarily wonder how that reflects on Italy’s precious yet fragile sense of ultra-nationalism and patriotic pride. If Europeans have such an appetite for Fascism they should be really upfront about it rather than acting like victims all the time. But that would be asking far too much, since self-victimisation is an analogous counterpart to Fascist impunity.
Italians by and large have no clue as to what they have set up for themselves and then wonder how and why they have ended up with a Mussolini-praising right wing neo-Fascist leadership — since of course, it is not the white European that is the ongoing target of Fascism. Not even self-proclaimed anti-Fascist “historians” like Carlo Greppi dare to go near anything that will insult Italian or European national pride, rather choosing selective history to reinforce neo-Fascism and directly insult me.
This didn’t happen overnight. I am not the only one who would be able to talk about this, given the chance. As the daughter of genocide survivors and forced migrants, who has inherited the almost unspeakable pain and suffering of genocide, the overall attack towards my character for the mere act of daring to ask how & why Nazis and Fascists were rehabilitated into powerful positions in Legal Academia & Politics etc. while obscuring their history via the propagation and implementation of Liberalist Doctrines (tbc.) and how this shapes our world today, as well as the all too evident rise in global Fascism, is another testament to Fascism’s success at not only indoctrinating people into attacking victims of Fascism but moreover the apparently tantalising aspects of Fascist doctrine that enables people to dehumanise someone like me — anyone who is not white European.
If I am to be generous, perhaps, 100 years ago, starvation, conscription, lack of knowledge or education, and desperation were adequate reasons for people to join the Fascist military and join in a chorus to violently and abusively attack dissenting anti-Fascist voices as there was apparently hardly any option. However, today there is no such excuse for those who claim to be the descendants of those poor exploited peasants, Partisans (tbc.), Legal Academics, or even “anti-Fascist historians” to sit comfortably on their sofas, bellies full of pasta alla mamma, with a glass of vino in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and use the internet to carry out Fascism’s dirty work.
