Written by Mirjana KasapoviÄÂ
Translated by Dr. Dorothy McClellan
Nazis among the Non-Aligned - about 'global anti-fascism'
Contemporary debates about "global anti-fascism" and "anti-fascist internationalism" are methodologically based on the displacement of fascism and anti-fascism from the temporal and spatial frameworks in which they arose and their transformation into super-historical categories that explain events and processes before and after their real existence. Anti-fascism is not only understood as a response to historical fascism from the interwar period; it was also that, but over time it acquired a "relatively independent dynamic" (Stubbs 2024: 174) and now travels freely through space and time thanks to the "post-disciplinary" approach created on the ruins of the borders of traditional scientific disciplines, especially historiography (Stubbs 2021: 134) . Leninists and Stalinists defined fascism as a natural outgrowth of capitalism, that is, imperialism as the last stage in the development of capitalism. As long as there is capitalism, there is fascism, and thus the need for anti-fascism as a theoretical, ideological and political response to it. Fascism "is not just a thing of the past, it is a permanent threat, always trying to reach its full expression. Its substance does not age, but from time to time, depending on specific economic and social crises, fascism seeks new forms of articulation" (ÄakardiÄ 2023: 57). The eternally young fascism has found ânew forms of articulationâ in contemporary liberal states.
The neo-communist left reaffirms the orthodox Leninist and Stalinist understanding of fascism that emerged within the fold of the Communist International (Comintern) and its highest officials such as the General Secretary, the Stalinist loyalist Georgi Dimitrov, and the member of the Executive Committee Klara Zetkin (MoÄnik 2023; ÄakardiÄ 2023; DurakoviÄ and MatoĆĄeviÄ 2023; Kirn 2017). The "theory" of anti-fascism was defined in the report and resolution of the Third Extended Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Comintern from June 1923. The fundamental starting point in the approach to fascism "is best summed up in the proclamation of the Communist International, which defines it as a 'direct terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, chauvinistic and imperialistic elements of finance capital'." ", which was written in 1933 by Dimitrov (ÄakardiÄ 2023: 60). Attempts to present the speeches, reports and writings of Dimitrov and Zetkin as theory are absurd. Ideological and political pamphleteering is not a theory.
With the worst "elements", the communists concluded a year later the "Pact of non-aggression and friendship between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics", which was signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939 by Nazi and Communist foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov. Why remind us of it? Are we forgetting that the pact between Hitler and Stalin was just a tactical ruse used by the first communist state to deceive its gullible and stupid partner, the Third Reich, in order to gain time to prepare for a conflict with it, as we were taught in schools in the Yugoslav communist regime? And didn't we convince ourselves at the prompt German-Soviet partition of Poland and the Soviet occupation of Finland in 1939 that "Nazi-fascism" is inextricably linked with colonialism, and communism with anti-colonialism?
Anti-fascism, in short, is any engagement against capitalism as the basis of the liberal civil state. It is irrelevant whether we are talking about contemporary liberal or illiberal states, because the differences between them are quantitative, not qualitative: "If liberalism and illiberalism are located on a socio-historical continuum, and their fascist-like characteristics are a matter of quantity, not qualitative change, since if the principle is the same â then the essence of the matter is to change the principle, and the principle is capitalismâŠâ (MoÄnik 2023: 18). Antifascism is essentially anticapitalism â there is no fight against fascism that is not at the same time a fight against capitalism. In contemporary liberal states, fascist and fascist-like "capillary social tendencies whose derivatives can be observed in everyday life, from graffiti on facades, speech in the media, open discrimination against diversity reflected in immigration regulations to strict gender policies such as reducing women's bodies exclusively to their reproductive function" (DurakoviÄ and MatoĆĄeviÄ 2023 : VI). If the state does not want to be fascist or fascistoid, it must remove objectionable graffiti from its facades, censor the media, allow unlimited immigration and make abortion available. There is no place in the "anti-fascist state" for conservative, but also for liberal and social democratic actors who oppose some of these and related elements of public policies.
If the Comintern had it right, the two most developed capitalist countries between the wars, Great Britain and the USA, would be exemplary fascist creations, especially for Britain, which was also the largest imperial power in the world. But those administrations freed the world and half of Europe from fascism. In the former fascist countries that were defeated and occupied, as in West Germany, Japan, and Italy, they tried war criminals, carried out some form of denazification, imposed democratic constitutions, and launched successful economies. Within two decades, they were among the most economically developed and politically democratic countries in the world. In Eastern Europe, which had been liberated in the name of Comintern or Bolshevik anti-fascism, massive violent reprisals followed, basic human rights and freedoms were suppressed, fascist or fascist-like dictatorships were replaced by communist ones, and the countries languished in poverty for decades.
Once a ânew consensusâ on the approach to fascism has been built (Griffin 2012) and a ânew paradigmâ in the study of antifascism has been discovered (GarcĂa 2016), a historiography of âglobal antifascismâ and âantifascist internationalismâ can be developed that goes beyond its generic Italian form â or the Italian-German form expressed by the coinage âNazi-fascismâ â and encompasses the entire world before and after Mussolini and Hitler (BraskĂ©n, Featherstone, and Copsey 2020). The new historiography needs to explore the global struggle against the organically linked racism, imperialism, colonialism, and fascism. The connection between them is constructed in a triangle formed by the conference of African and Asian countries in Bandung (1955), the first meeting of the non-aligned in Belgrade (1961) and the conference of African, Asian and South American countries in Havana (1966) (MiĆĄkoviÄ, Fischer-TinĂ© and BoĆĄkovska 2014; Khudori 2022; Parrot and Atwood 2022; DurakoviÄ and MatoĆĄeviÄ 2023; Stubbs 2021, 2024). Minor variations in the triangle do not disturb the fundamental axis along which the anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, anti-tourist and anti-fascist international was formed.
The core of the front was the non-aligned movement as a genuine anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-tourist, and thus anti-fascist actor in international politics - in Bandung it was the pre-founding group, and in Belgrade it was the founding group of the non-aligned movement. In the former Yugoslavia, the policy of non-alignment marked the third âpartisan turning pointâ â the first two were the national liberation struggle and self-management â and was a continuation of the revolutionary, partisan, anti-fascist struggle by other means (Kirn 2017). We are being bombarded with a wave of texts that seek to affirm the non-aligned movement as an anti-fascist actor in history, and the âglobal Southâ, the successor to the non-aligned Third World, as a source of new emancipatory potential.
If the Comintern orthodoxy is discarded, the ideological constructivist fog is dispelled, and historical facts are allowed to come to light, a somewhat different picture will emerge. The Non-Aligned Movement was not anti-fascist not only because it was created years after the defeat of the fascist states in the Second World War, so it did not profile itself in conflict with them, but also because many of the leaders of the non-aligned countries were fascists and Nazis, that is, they cultivated and expressed preferences for these ideologies and regimes before, during and after the Second World War.
Fascists and Nazis Among the Leaders of the Non-aligned
The Palestinian movement, especially the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as an associated non-state member of the Non-Aligned Movement, was known as a demonstrative example of resistance to imperialism and colonialism. But all the leaders of that movement were essentialist anti-Semites, not only anti-Zionists, who did not hide their pro-Nazi views either.
The founder of the Palestinian Arab movement, its spiritual and secular leader in the interwar period, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Emin al-Husseini, became the most prominent Nazi collaborator from the Arab and Islamic world during the war. Having established political and financial ties with representatives of Italy and Germany in the Middle East in the early 1930s, he moved to Berlin during the war, from where he spread anti-Semitic and Nazi propaganda directed against Britain, the USA and the Soviet Union (see Höpp 2004). He became well-connected in the Nazi establishment in Berlin, and on 28 November 1941, the âleader of the Arab worldâ and âMuslim popeâ was received by Hitler. Husseini told Hitler that the Arab countries were convinced that Germany would win the war because it had âa large army, brave soldiers and brilliant military leadersâ, but also because âthe Almighty would never grant victory to an unjust causeâ. Germany is a natural ally of the Arabs because it has never colonized an Arab country, and the Arabs are natural friends of Germany because they have common enemies: the English, the Jews, and the Communists.
Hitler decided to reveal his war plans to the Mufti on condition that he temporarily hide them in the depths of his heart ("in seinem tiefsten Herzen verschlieĂen"). Germany is waging an "uncompromising war against the Jews" that includes the destruction of the "Jewish national home" in Palestine, and a life-and-death struggle with England and Russia as the "two strongholds of Jewish power." After destroying the "Jewish-Communist empire in Europe," the German army will break through the South Caucasus Passage into the Middle East, liberate the Arab world and make his guest âthe most invited speaker in the Arab worldâ (in: Michman 2017: 65-98). Huseini was reassured and satisfied with the FĂŒhrerâs words. The âdoctrineâ of National Socialism as anti-colonialism and Nazi Germany as an anti-colonial force was in effect (Mallmann and CĂŒppers 2006). Huseini also practically engaged in achieving the goals of the Third Reich.Â
In 1943, he arrived in the NDH to prepare ideologically and organizationally the establishment of the 13th Waffen-SS Division HandĆŸar with representatives of the Muslim religious and secular elite in Sarajevo, and on the orders of Heinrich Himmler. Given the Nazi character and criminal role of this division in the war, the post-war Yugoslav government declared Huseini a war criminal. In one of the darkest episodes of post-war history, Yugoslavia dropped its request for the extradition and trial of the mufti. His role in the war had a disastrous effect on the solution of the Palestinian question. All three major anti-fascist powers â the USA, the USSR and Britain â were allergic to the idea of the creation of a âmuftiâs stateâ â a Palestinian state headed by Husseini. Incidentally, Husseini also participated in the famous Bandung conference at which the key roles were played by the Japanese collaborator, Indonesian President Sukarno, and the German Nazi sympathizer, Egyptian President Nasser.
The first PLO chairman, Ahmed Shukairi, openly supported Nazi Germany and the Muftiâs involvement on its war side. In his memoirs, he wrote: âThe news of German victories in Europe filled our hearts with great hope⊠We celebrated New Year 1942 with great Axis victories in Europe and North Africa. We just talked about Rommel and waited for him to enter Egypt and Palestine with his victorious army" (in: Litvak and Webman 2009: 292-293).
Yasser Arafat was a fan of the mufti - he was also related to him through his mother's Jerusalem line - so he praised him as "our hero" (Taguieff 2016: 483). He allowed the PLO to establish and maintain ties with old Nazis, including the "Butcher of Lyons" Klaus Barbie, and with German Nazis and neo-Nazis who were training Palestinians militarily in refugee camps in Lebanon. For example, Wilhelm Börner, guard of the Mauthausen concentration camp, was a military instructor of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. About twenty activists in different branches of the PLO chose the noms de guerre Abu Hitler or some variant containing the surname Hitler (Litvak and Webman 2009: 283). Even after the signing of the peace agreement in Oslo in 1993, the PLO did not use the name Israel but the "Zionist entity" that usurped Arab Palestine, which stretches from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. Those geographical borders of the Palestinian state are also written in Art. 2. Charters of Hamas, and they also became the battle cry (From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free) of pro-Palestinian protesters in the West during the war in Gaza (2023-2025) who, knowingly or unknowingly, thus expressed genocidal intent towards Israeli Jews.
And Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, respected Husseini's "pioneering" and "heroic" role in the Palestinian movement. He particularly stood out for denying the Holocaust. He accepted the claims of leading Western deniers, especially Robert Faurisson, that the Nazis did not use gas chambers to kill Jews, declaring it the "main legend" of the Holocaust in which less than a million Jews were killed, and "the Zionist movement was a partner in that slaughter" (in: Karsh 2006: 8). He advocated the thesis that the Nazis considered the Zionists "natural allies", that after the "Kristallna Night" in 1938, Jews were sent to camps in order to protect them, etc. He contributed to weaving an inextricable narrative knot: there was no Holocaust, but the Palestinians were the biggest victims - the Holocaust.
One of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, was a member of the pre-war pro-Nazi organization "Young Egypt". He did not renounce his sympathies towards Nazism even after the war. In an interview with the Deutsche Nationalzeitung on 1 May 1964, he said that during the war the sympathies of the Egyptians were on the side of the Germans and that âno one took the lie about six million murdered Jews seriouslyâ (in: KĂŒntzel 2002: 71). He was an avid reader of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most famous anti-Semitic pamphlet in history, and recommended it to everyone as a âuseful guide to the Jewish mindâ (in: Karsh 2006: 5). During the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, the press of Nasserâs Egypt launched the slogan âEichmann is a Zionistâ. Nasserâs successor Anwar el-Sadat âmade no secret that he was for Hitlerâ (Zimmer-Winkel 2000: 59). In 1941, he joined the military organization of the Islamist and pro-Nazi âMuslim Brotherhoodâ, and in 1942, the British obtained his message to Wehrmacht General Erwin Rommel about how he could not wait to break through from Libya to Egypt, and they imprisoned him as a Nazi spy (Patterson 2022: 65). An incredible affair is associated with Sadat. When an Egyptian newspaper asked Egyptians what they would say to Hitler that he had survived the war, Sadat, then the speaker of the Egyptian parliament, wrote:
âMy dear Hitler!â I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart that, although you seemed defeated, you are actually the winner. You have managed to sow discord between old Churchill and his âsatanic allyâ the Soviet Union.â He admitted that Hitler had made some mistakes and added: âYou have been forgiven for your faith in your country and people. The fact that you have become immortal in Germany is reason enough to be proud, and we should not be surprised if we see you again in Germany or some new Hitler in your placeâ (in: Litvak and Webman 2009: 279-280).
The Iraqis also contributed to the establishment of the âdoctrineâ of the Third Reich as an anti-colonial force. The pro-Nazi coup in Iraq in April 1941 was portrayed as a struggle for final liberation from British colonial rule. The leader of the coup, Rashid Ali el Gailani, was celebrated by the Nazi authorities as the "Iraqi Bismarck" who led the fight against English colonialism at the head of the "Iraqi Wehrmacht" (Goldenbaum 2016: 468-469). After the British put down the revolt, Gailani settled in Berlin where he enjoyed generous financial and political support from the Nazis as the voice of the Arabs in their struggle for liberation from colonialism and imperialism. Post-war Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was "one of the most ardent and effective practitioners of El Husseini-inspired Nazi pan-Arabism" (Morse 2010: 68-69).
The long-time dictators of non-aligned Syria, Hafez and his son Bashar al-Assad, were essentialist anti-Semites. Hafez called Zionism a "racist Nazi movement," and Bashar asserted that "Zionism surpassed Nazi racism." Hafez said that the Zionists "don't just want Palestine or a part of a country... They want... to impose their hegemony until they conquer the whole world" (in: Karsh 2006: 7). In these words, echoes of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion can be heard and the standard topos of Nazi propaganda is recognized.
Libyan leader Moammar el Gaddafi was one of the leading anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. He called the non-aligned states that recognized Israel "dirty spies of imperialism, Zionism and racism". In the last phase of his life, he evolved from a "socialist brother" to the self-proclaimed "king of African kings" and, in an unreflective racist manner, he physically self-styled as a black man. Ironically, in the 2011 Libyan uprising, he was declared a "crypto-Jew" and was caricatured as a black man with a Star of David, but also with a swastika on his forehead (Gruber 2018: 201). Cuban dictator Fidel Castro built his anti-Semitism on the combination of the Jewish experience from Marx's writings On the Jewish Question and the Arab narrative about the "Zionist entity" (Horowitz 2007). Hugo ChĂĄvez turned anti-Semitism into the official policy of Venezuela. In a brief overview, it is impossible to list the anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi profiles of the leaders of other non-aligned countries (Algeria, Bolivia, Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, etc.).
There were not only individual heads of state and leaders of non-aligned countries, but also the political regimes that established them, which were massively Nazified after 1945. In the "fascist international" that stretched from Argentina to Egypt (Finkenberger 2011), thousands of Nazi officials who participated in war crimes found refuge. Although Latin America was known as their main refuge, significantly more of them settled in the Middle East. Most of the high-ranking Nazi officials converted to Islam, changed their names, and took up important positions in the political regimes of Arab countries: from personal advisors to presidents, to officials and instructors in the military, security, and intelligence services, to prison administrators.
A simple question arises: what kind of anti-fascists were these who denied the Holocaust as the most terrible crime of the Nazi regime? And the answer is simple â none. What kind of anti-racists were these who nurtured anti-Semitism as a form of racism and the very core of Nazi ideology and policy? Very selectiveâŠ
The Yugoslav communist and non-aligned authorities were not bothered by these facts. For example, Tito personally met with Nasser and Sadat about thirty times from 1955 to 1977. Ruthless in his efforts to root out fascist collaborators and sympathizers in the country, he was surprisingly tolerant of them in non-aligned countries. It is clear why there was silence about this in Yugoslavia, but why has the silence been transferred to contemporary Croatia? Why are there no discussions about it in the works of Croatian historians on anti-Semitism and the Non-Aligned Movement? The answers to these questions are not too difficult, are they?
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