Brothers in Hunger

 The news out of Europe this past week has been dominated by headlines about the rise of the far-right—from the disturbingly strong showing of the AfD in one state election in a formerly Communist region of Germany, to gangs of black-clad, balaclava-wearing anti-migrant gangs roving the British coast to intimidate asylum seekers. 

I always make the mistake of assuming at first that these moments will be clarifying and unifying for the left. I expect the response among liberals, leftists—and even center-right people who oppose fascism and racism and accept the basic tenets of liberal democracy—to be to realize that we have to work together and form a popular front against rising fascism. 

Instead, people exploit these moments to undermine unity from multiple directions and settle their own long-standing beefs with other members of this "popular front" coalition. The far-left says: "see? all this just proves that your previous establishment consensus failed, and the public demands radical change in one direction or the other."

Meanwhile, center-left liberals say—to the contrary—"this just proves that the left went too far and was too woke in welcoming immigrants and refugees and we need to pivot in order to placate the far-right and meet them half-way, otherwise they will win every election until the end of time." 

One popular economics commentator, for instance, opined on Substack a couple days ago that the AfD's electoral strength means that center-left governments need to develop a new policy position on immigration—one that sounds much more restrictive and hostile to asylum.

To my mind, this type of argument always sounds like a shakedown. It's like: you better tighten asylum rules or else look what happens—these kinds of balaclava-wearing thugs might take over. "Nice little liberal democracy you have there; be a shame if anything happened to it." 

This strikes me—among other things—as abusive, since it essentially blames the victim. Instead of faulting the people who are voting for these fascist parties, it suggests that fascism is somehow an inevitable response to the arrival of asylum-seekers, and therefore the latter are somehow to blame for their own persecution at the hands of these far-right thugs. 

It's like the violent spouse who pushes their partner down the stairs and then shouts "look what you made me do!"

My own view—as I've reiterated consistently since Trump and Brexit in 2016 started the current rise of the populist far-right a decade ago, is that we have nothing to learn from these people. A bunch of neo-Nazis and skinheads threatening migrants have nothing to teach us, and we certainly don't have to meet them half-way on policy. 

"It is a God-damned lie to say that these [...] knew anything worth a man's pride," to borrow a line from Hugh MacDiarmid. 

But if appeasement here is neither morally justified nor effective as a strategy, how are we supposed to confront the far-right? 

I do think it's true that we need a pro-labor global policy that recognizes the commonality of interest between native-born and immigrant workers across the West.

Right now, the far-right is having the most electoral success in economically depressed areas (it's telling that the AfD quasi-victory last weekend occurred in a run-down formerly Communist part of the country). So too, MAGA has always been most popular in post-industrial parts of the American Rust Belt. Displaced workers fear foreign competition for low-wage jobs. 

Unemployment and the resulting race to the bottom in wages and conditions are the true and perennial causes of the electoral strength of fascism. As one German warned Sven Lindqvist (in a conversation recorded in the latter's book "Exterminate All the Brutes," about the history of colonial genocides) all the way back in 1992: "The great mass of unemployed are on the other side of Europe's Rio Grande, in Asia and Africa. [....] Wait until the border falls just like the Wall fell and everything will be one great labor market. Who will then win elections?" (Tate trans.)

It's easy to see how the far-right can win handily by blaming the "great mass" of immigrant "unemployed" for this situation—instead of the sources of unemployment; how they can succeed by pitting workers against each other, when they experience the arrival of foreign-born workers only as so much fresh competition for jobs that are already scarce and offered on miserable terms. 

I think again of those Edwardian British laborers in Robert Tressell's Ragged Trousered Philanthropists whom the Tories manage to convince to blame "Hitalian horgin' grinders" for their conditions—rather than their own employers and the British ruling class. 

What we need, however, is not to concede the point to the far-right, but rather a policy that orients people toward what Robert Tressell called the "true causes of poverty." 

Tressell's message to his fellow workers was that instead of attacking other equally exploited people, we need to direct the fight against exploitation itself. 

Immigrant workers need legal status in order to have legal protections. We need transnational solidarity in order to raise the floor for wages and conditions across borders. If native-born workers could learn to work together with foreign-born in "one big union," as the IWW used to call it, transnational capital would not be able to exploit either of them—whereas they are vulnerable so long as each is pitted against the other. 

But, as Jean Guerrero pointed out in a recent piece in the New York Times, it is far more convenient for tech oligarchs and anti-democratic elites in the Trump White House to keep undocumented labor vulnerable and exploitable, and then to redirect populist anger on the part of native-born workers toward their fellow laborers, instead of the people who are exploiting both groups. 

It's the old, old strategy of "divide and rule." It's what Trump has been doing since 2015: "don't blame me for your plight; don't blame the rich—blame the immigrants! Blame Somali refugees! Blame the Syrians! Blame the Haitians! Blame the Venezuelans! Blame your brothers and sisters!"

It's what the AfD is doing today: "Don't blame the corporations; blame one another! Blame the asylum-seekers!"

The result of these tactics—if they are permitted to go unanswered—will be the same as what happened the last time the far-right came to power in Germany. 

As Bertolt Brecht wrote in his "Song of the Stormtrooper" (Hays trans.): 

From hunger I grew drowsy,

Dulled by my belly’s ache.

Then someone shouted in my ear,

Germany awake.

Then I saw many marching

Toward the Third Reich, they said.

Since I had naught to lose

I followed where they led.

And as I marched, there marched

Big Belly by my side.

When I shouted “Bread and jobs,”

“Bread and jobs” he cried.

The leader wore high boots,

I stumbled with wet feet

Yet all of us were marching

To the selfsame beat.

I wanted to march leftward,

Squads right, the order was.

I blindly followed orders

For better or for worse.

And toward some new Third Reich,

But scarcely knowing whither,

Pale and hungry men

And well-fed marched together.

They gave me a revolver

And said: now shoot our foe.

But as I fired on his ranks

I laid my brother low.

It was my brother, hunger

Made us one, I know,

And I am marching, marching

With my own and my brother’s foe.

So I have lost my brother,

I wove his winding sheet.

I know now by this victory

I wrought my own defeat.