Exit polls have Meloni’s coalition to have 45% of the vote. The imperial core is falling to fascism left, right and centre. Well, right and centre anyway. If we want a revolution we must hurry - I fear it may soon be too late to hold our ground against the fascists.
When I told some “leftists” (see: liberals cosplaying as comrades) that Itally could be getting a fascist PM, they coped by saying Italians would never vote for another fascist.
now look what’s happened. Maybe it’s a good idea to listen when the MLs are speaking?
We have been right, and right, and right again for centuries, and yet they still do not listen. Unforunately the Idealists will ultimately choose to believe nothing more than what they want to believe. They philosophy, which as Mao points out, allows them to “talk as much nonsense as they like without basing it on objective reality or having it tested against reality” means that they have an excellent ability to bury their heads in the sand when it suits them to.
Fascism has surprisingly little stigma in Italy. Fascist statues are left alone, the Mussolini family is politically active and well respected, and very little attention is paid to Italian Fascism’s (atrocious) history in Africa and its complicity in the Shoah.
Fascism is being rehabilitated. Likely in an attempt to make it an option again to defend capitalism now that it is beginning to fall to its internal contradictions again.
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Twitter fascists are already on the horn blaring that Mussolini was a socialist.
Parenti had said he was a socialist that quickly switched sides when given the opportunity for power and promotion
Actually even before, he was kicked from party in 1914 for breach of discipline and socialchauvinism. When he was back from war, he called himself “antimarxist socialist” and “national socialist”(!) but soon stopped even that. Lenin even made few remarks about how pity it was since Mussolini was very talented agitator.
Mussolini was the OG MAGA communist.
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“Born in 1883, the son of a blacksmith, Benito Mussolini s early manhood was marked by street brawls, arrests, jailings, and violent radical political activities. Before World War I Mussolini was a socialist. A brilliant organizer, agitator, and gifted journalist, he became editor of the Socialist party’s official newspaper. Yet many of his comrades suspected him of being less interested in advancing socialism than in advancing himself. Indeed, when the Italian upper class tempted him with recognition, financial support, and the promise of power, he did not hesitate to switch sides. By the end of World War I, Mussolini, the socialist, who had organized strikes for workers and peasants had become Mussolini, the fascist, who broke strikes on behalf of financiers and landowners. Using the huge sums he received from wealthy interests, he projected himself onto the national scene as the acknowledged leader of i fasci di combattimento, a movement composed of black-shirted ex-army officers and sundry toughs who were guided by no clear political doctrine other than a militaristic patriotism and conservative dislike for anything associated with socialism and organized labor. The fascist Blackshirts spent their time attacking trade unionists, socialists, communists, and farm cooperatives.”
Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds
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He in fact was never truly socialist because he mostly learned Marxism only through revisionists that ended up sympathetic of the reactionaries
In the same sense that Reagan was a union man
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Honestly the wise play for the European Left would be sabotaging the imperial core’s dwindling ability to oppress overseas so that global south comrades have a better chance. You want to bring down empire, starve it.
Right now, the imperial core is doing that anyway. But yes - if the global south pivots to China, and the West is sabotaged so as to have it hands tied - the red wave will reach out. I am not sure, though, if western MLs are actually capable of doing this. Not in terms of will - we all have the will - but in terms of ability. Many of us are barely organised, unable to truly grow for fear of being crushed. At best, MLs in the west are still skirting the edges of what Lenin called ‘legal Marxism’ - the self censoring of Marxism to get through western media blockage and to make it appealing as possible. We are not yet ready, comrade. This is the problem. What we could do, actually, is wage a war of attrition. Not to win, but to distract the imperialists so the global south can rise up. By then, however, we would be depending on the global south to help us afterwards. If you do not, we would be defeeated and the fascists - newly empowered by their domestic victory - would likely strike back at the global south. The only battle than can now be fought against the imperialists is a civil war. Any other would have the opposing anti-imperialist military either completely crushed, or would end in nuclear holocaust. Meaning ‘support’ from the global south would have to be when the civil war is still distracting the fascists, and would have to take the form of - what was the lovely, clinical imperialist term… - ‘lethal aid’.
It’s terrible the fascists can take control without a strong left to challenge them
Where fascists rise, strong leftist movements will rise as well. Lot of European left wing people have been too complacent for the last years unfortunately but we must not get all doom and gloom
Where were leftist movements after 1991?
I think Spain had one but it collapsed after bending over backwards to placate the libs. There are leftists, the only problem is that most of them are thoroughly useless.
No matter what happens, we cannot lose hope. Whenever fascists take power, wage war against the peoples of the world, it is the communists that stand as the last bastion against the fascist spread. If we cannot have hope in ourselves, who can have hope in us? And if they cannot have hope in communists, who can have hope at all?
There are some good movements within Europe. Being aware and not getting all sunshine and rainbows is okay but defeatism will get us nowhere.
If our movement was doomed to fail I alone wouldn’t have been able to mobilize 200 people into joining us for action in the last couple of weeks.
I can’t speak for every European country of course but at least the people in my country are getting ready to stir shit up.
Agreed. We are slowly recovering from the damage done in the latter half of the 20th century. The only question is if we will be ready in time, and if the time will be right. If we are, we must remember that Mao took China in two decades, Lenin Russia in just over one decade, Castro Cuba in just 6 years. In times of qualitative change - as we are facing now - contradictory aspects are manifested in a thing far beyond their usual capacity. We do not need in a revolutionary period to gain majority support, only reach a critical mass. This, I believe, can be managed. The question is surviving long enough in a fascist nation to do so.
The best we can do is weaken the fascists. Stay out of harms way, launching probing attacks - primarily rhetorical but, if necessary, physical. The libs will be divided between those who are truly “”“leftist”“” (or at least anti-fascist) and those who are, as we have warned time and again, nothing more than disguised fascists. Let the libs destroy themselves and weaken the fascists while doing so. Soon - as has been the case time and again - we will be the only alternative. At that time we must trust in the masses and have faith in the veracity of our line that they will choose to side with us and we will be ultimately triumphant. It will likely cost many comrades: it is a dangerous course of action. But I fear it is the only one we have open to those of us in the imperial cor.e
Latin America doesn’t seem shattered. There’s a lot of hope. The bourgeois dictatorship can’t survive without it’s slaves. Socialism is the only option for the world as well as for the West. Fascism will not resolve the contradictions of capitalism. It will collapse just as it did in the south.
They did the “more female camp guards” meme
The Onion also has a parody video celebrating the first woman dictator as a victory for women rights, the way the libs are celbrating this mussolini loving fascist election made me think about it.
I’m starting to come around to the view that building a wall around the EU and then filling it with seawater would save more lives that it takes in the long run.
Might even prevent all those Pacific island nations from vanishing if we pump enough water.
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Friend in Austria thinks cautiously that the government has a good chance of collapsing bcuz of how divided Italy is – that being that all the fascists hate each other too, and Italy’s been unable to keep stable government of any sort for a while now. Hopefully he’s right.
Inshallah
Yes. There are reports that Salvini may be having second thoughts: a phone call was leaked between him and Meloni where he referred to Meloni as a ‘pain in the ass’ after he lost votes in the South of Italy to Meloni’s party.
The US and gladio doing the reaping, Italy doing the sowing.
The average Italian government lasts less than 2 years
I hope so. The average Italian government, however is not fascist and respects democracy. The present one is fascist and if we are to learn from history, it is clear that fascists do not care about popular consent nor popular support. The most likely outcome if you are right is that there will be a fascist couple in two years time. If there is a rise in instability as has been the case with other governments, Italian democracy - what little of it existed - will likely die in two years time. The fascist government will likely be here to stay.
‘respects democracy’ hey everyone! This guy believes in liberal democracy! Hahaaaaa
Nonsense. The democracy is a democracy - albeit one that listens only to the bourgeoisie. A thing is not in its entirety wholly bad nor wholly good. Such an outlook is a idealistic one. Bourgeois democracy is good in comparison to fascist authoritarianism. We support it against such an alternative. It is unacceptable next to a proletarian dictatorship. In such a contradiction we will always support the latter option. The present issue however is not between a proletarian dictatorship and a bourgeois democracy. It is between a bourgeois democracy and a fascist dictatorship. In such a contradiction as we have here I support the imperfect democracy.
Bourgeois democracy is good in comparison to fascist authoritarianism.
I do disagree with this. The worst atrocities of imperialism and colonialism have occurred mostly under parliamentary bourgeois governments: the UK, US, france, netherlands, australia, etc. They have the german and italian fascists beat both in brutality and body count.
Fascism was a specific political form of capitalist-imperialism occurring from the 1920s-40s, and those countries collapsed into the far more stable form of the other euro countries, bourgeois democracy, after ww2.
Fascism is really only allowed to be demonized in popular discourse because it practiced colonialism against other europeans. They did nothing britain hadn’t done in the global south for hundreds of years.
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Yup, hitler was very explicit that he wanted to imitate in europe what the US did to its native population… nazis called it lebensraum, while the US called it manifest destiny.
The difference? The US succeeded at its genocide / continent theft, while the nazis failed. So really fascism as a form of government is much worse at doing what bourgeois democracies were capable of acheiving.
Not so. Fascism is bourgeois democracy’s response to the worker’s gaining power. It is a defence mechanism. What that means, however, is that it is tailored to suppressing the workers and the progressive cause. While capitalist-imperialism also does this, it is a secondary feature. Its primary role is to extract value. Fascism is made to kill progress. This is why it is so much more damaging - not measured in body count, brutality… but in its harmfulness to our cause.
Extracting value BY crushing worker movements is pretty par-for-the-course for bourgeois democracy also: just look at what the US did to latin america, or its own workers movements. They are one in the same, and bourgeois democracies have really proven themselves to be much better at it.
It can easily be argued that there has been no safer shell for capitalist rule / domination, than bourgeois democracy. Fascism was a different form that tried, and failed to do what bourgeois democracy does much better.
Would it be fair to say that fascism is a feature of liberal democracy? Or at least that liberal democracy isn’t exclusive of fascism?
Not at all. Fascism has a specific goal as an extension of bourgeois democracy. It is self destructing but with it used as an immediate last resort “cure” to kill off worker’s movements when they grow too powerful. Bourgeois democracy does so over time coincidentally in its drive to extract resources. Fascism does so targetedly, more quickly. It is designed as soon as it has done so to destroy itself again to make room for the reinstatement of bourgeois democracy. But it remains still a method by which to destroy the left in the most effective manner possible, more so than bourgeois democracy which does not destroy the left but merely suppresses it. Between suppression and destriction especially in this early nascent period for the western left I would choose suppression. Even Stalin deigned to fight with bourgeois democracy against fascism. To do anything else is pure ideology with little regard for possible material outcomes.
“We support the imperfect democracy” what trot group are you with that you’re speaking for with “we”?
I do not support the imperfect democracy because they are not democracy, they are the political entertainment sold to the workers as choice under a dictatorship of the rich. “We” don’t have support what you support. Use “I” when you mean “I”.
That does not stand. You have completely ignored my previous point. Muad’dibbers is the only point that bears any wait and that is because he actually engages in the comparative at hand, that is between fascism and bourgeois dictatorship. If you object to the we, then I will tell this account expresses my own opinions, and sometimes - as in the case above - the opinions of myself and a group of friends in accordance with democratic centralism. If it should help you, I have changed it back to “I”.
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They have never had a majority government to my knowledge. They have all been unstable coalitions and fell to infighting or were immobilised during times of crisis and so had to resign. Italy is case in point for the necessity of democratic centralism.
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Libs will support anyone if it allows them to pretend to be morally superior. Even, as in this case, support a fascist to pretend to be in support of women’s rights.
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Hillary Clinton literally happy that a fascist won merely because it’s a girlboss.
The only thing a petrol station is good for these days
The same crowd that was happy to arm Nazis in Ukraine are suddenly concerned by fascists in Italy?
The Italian fascists are too hesitant to lick US fascist boots for their preying eyes.
Sweden is also having a surge in Far Right/Neonazi accepting candidates
Wild how divided Italy is here. Looks like a map of Ukraine. If only southern Italians had a neighbor to deal with their Nazi problem 🤔
Berlusconi might have maybe qualified to be described as a fascist, but then, he was so comically corrupt that he was probably too byusy to enrich himseldf to do more fascist things …