Tag: fascism

Ryback’s 53 Days: Liberal Chronicle, Bourgeois Mythmaking, and the Evacuation of Class from the History of Fascism

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Timothy W. Ryback’s 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy comes at a time when the publishing world has turned again to Weimar Germany as a moral lesson for modern liberal concerns. The book has received near-universal praise from the mainstream media: Publishers Weekly highlights its “you-are-there urgency,” the New York Times calls it “a gripping reconstruction,” and liberal thinkers like Steven Levitsky and E.J. Dionne see it as a timely warning about democracy’s fragility in the Trump era. This widespread approval is intentional. It shows the ideological role Ryback’s book plays: providing a vivid, archive-rich, yet politically safe narrative of fascism. It is a history of Nazism stripped of its social class context, focusing on institutional breakdowns without addressing the social forces that enabled fascism.

Ryback is an adept researcher and storyteller. His earlier books, such as Hitler’s Private Library, Hitler’s First Victims, and Takeover, established him as a historian of the early Nazi era, skilled at reconstructing the daily political manoeuvres of 1932–33. 53 Days continues this method, relying on thorough archival research including diaries, cabinet minutes, press reports, police notes, and other bureaucratic remnants of a collapsing republic. The structure is straightforward and effective: each chapter focuses on a single day from January 30 to March 23, 1933, illustrating how Hitler steadily transformed his chancellorship into a dictatorship.

However, narrative technique is inherently political. While Ryback’s detailed daily account may have literary value, it sidesteps a crucial issue for any serious history of fascism: why did German capital, despite an active and politically left-leaning working class, choose to give power to Hitler instead of continuing to govern through the faltering Weimar parliamentary system? This question isn’t simply missing; it’s fundamentally absent from a book that argues Hitler ‘used the provisions of the Constitution’ to overthrow democracy, as if the outcome depended on legal loopholes and Hitler’s personal ruthlessness, rather than the ruling class’s outright rejection of bourgeois democracy.

The Liberal Narrative: Fascism as Institutional Failure

Ryback’s interpretive framework aligns with typical modern liberal historiography. Fascism is depicted as an unintended political event, caused by elite misjudgements, weak institutions, and the manipulations of a demagogue. The key figures in his account are the familiar players from Weimar’s last months: Hindenburg, Papen, Schleicher, Göring, and Hitler. The working class, millions strong, organised through trade unions, the SPD, and the KPD, is shown only as a passive backdrop, with little influence on the overall narrative.

This goes beyond mere emphasis; it is fundamentally a political decision. By highlighting the procedural aspects of Hitler’s ascent such as the Reichstag Fire Decree, the purge of the civil service, the banning of newspapers, and the intimidation of deputies before the Enabling Act—Ryback reinforces the false liberal notion that fascism arises only when institutions weaken, norms decay, or elites fail to recognise the threat. From this perspective, democracy is a delicate system that a ruthless leader can tear down by exploiting constitutional flaws.

This account offers reassurance by removing political bias. It indicates that fascism isn’t driven by capitalism’s systemic crisis or used by the ruling class to counter a revolutionary challenge, but is instead a dysfunction of political culture. The message suggests that the key lesson of 1933 is to protect institutions, reinforce norms, and prevent charismatic authoritarian figures. This narrative resonates with the concerns of today’s US Democratic Party and its thinkers.

Ryback and Current historiography

Ryback is not a falsifier like some right-wing revisionists in recent German academia. He does not downplay Hitler’s crimes nor engage in apologetics like Jörg Baberowski, who said Hitler was “not vicious” and an “armchair perpetrator.” Ryback’s account of the Reichstag Fire, the Prussian police purge, and the Enabling Act manoeuvres is accurate and often detailed.

However, mere detail without analysis doesn’t constitute history; it becomes a chronicle. Ryback provides a detailed account of Hitler’s daily movements but fails to explain why the German bourgeoisie chose to install him. He outlines the procedural ways democracy was eroded but neglects the social forces that enabled these actions. He mentions the SPD’s parliamentary protests but does not address the disastrous political stance that led them to refuse to mobilise their millions of members. Additionally, he reports on the KPD’s repression but omits the Stalinist policy of “social fascism,” which prevented a united front with the Social Democrats at a crucial moment. The result is a history in which fascism appears as a kind of bureaucratic coup, executed through decrees and intimidation, rather than as the political expression of a ruling class confronting a revolutionary crisis.

In 53 Days, the most noticeable absence is the working class. Ryback’s story mainly takes place within centres of power: cabinet rooms, presidential offices, police stations, and parliament chambers. The general population appears only as rally crowds or victims of repression. Their political organisations, the SPD, KPD, and trade unions, appear as institutional entities rather than expressions of class struggle.

This absence is deliberate, reflecting the dominant liberal historiographical view that the working class is not a key actor in history. From this perspective, elites, rather than the masses, shape democracy’s course. The fall of Weimar is therefore seen as a result of political missteps, not class conflict.

But the historical record tells a different story. Between 1930 and 1932, Germany experienced a profound revolutionary crisis. The Communist Party grew to six million votes. Mass strikes shook the industrial centres. The SPD still commanded the loyalty of millions of workers. The bourgeoisie faced a situation in which parliamentary democracy could no longer guarantee social stability. The choice of fascism was not a mistake; it was a class strategy.

Ryback’s narrative fails to account for this reality because his approach omits it. A daily record of decrees and cabinet meetings merely outlines events, without explaining the reasons behind those decrees or the significance of the meetings. It only captures the surface, not the deeper dynamics at play.

The SPD and KPD: Betrayal and Catastrophe

Any rigorous Marxist analysis of 1933 must consider the roles of the SPD and the KPD. Ryback, however, overlooks this, treating both parties as institutions caught in repression rather than political entities whose leadership decisions shaped the outcome. The SPD leadership, committed to legality and fearing revolution, refused to mobilise its millions of members against the Nazis. It preferred parliamentary protests to mass action, accepted the dissolution of the Prussian government without resistance, voted for war credits in 1914, suppressed the Spartacist uprising in 1919, and repeated the same pattern in 1933.

Under Stalinist leadership, the KPD adopted the damaging idea of “social fascism,” considering the SPD as the main adversary and refusing to form a united front. This policy, backed by the Comintern, prevented the only effective way to halt Hitler: rallying the working class together. Ryback’s emphasis on elite manoeuvring doesn’t fully explain why the two major workers’ parties, which represented most of the population, couldn’t stop a small group of thugs from taking power. The real cause lies in the betrayals by their leaders, a crucial issue of revolutionary leadership that liberal historians find difficult to address without losing sight of their own class biases.

The Contemporary Political Function of Ryback’s Historiography

The widespread praise for 53 Days underscores its present-day relevance. Critics focus more on its insights into contemporary issues than on historical specifics. They liken aspects of the book to figures like Trump, refer to “authoritarian populism,’ and observe the erosion of democratic norms. Ryback steers clear of direct comparisons, opting instead for subtle allusions to current politics, which one reviewer described as ‘winks.’ The core message is clear: fascism remains a universal threat to democracy, one that demagogues can manipulate to weaken institutions.

This analogy benefits the liberal establishment politically, as it allows them to raise the threat of fascism without addressing the underlying class forces that create it. It recasts fascism as a moral warning rather than a structural outcome of capitalism, implying that defending democracy means strengthening institutions rather than mobilising the working class. This obscures the fact that fascism is not an anomaly but a tool of the bourgeoisie during crises. The WSWS has extensively documented how the reinterpretation of Nazism’s history is linked to the current effort to rehabilitate fascism and prepare for new imperialist wars. Books like Ryback’s, which depict the Nazi rise to power as a compelling story of individual folly, serve to depoliticise fascism, disconnecting it from the class struggle and its crucial lessons for the working class today.

Ryback’s book functions more as a chronicle than a comprehensive history. It narrates events but does not explain them. The book reconstructs how dictatorship operates but overlooks its social foundations. It provides details without exploring causes, tells stories without offering analysis, and conveys urgency without clarifying underlying understanding. This approach stems from his method. A detailed, day-by-day account captures the events’ texture but not their significance.

It illustrates how Hitler dismantled democracy but not why the bourgeoisie permitted it. It documents the SPD’s parliamentary protests but ignores the political strategies that rendered those protests ineffective. It recounts the KPD’s repression but fails to consider the Stalinist policies that hindered a united front. Consequently, the book is vivid and easy to read but lacks political substance, presenting a liberal narrative of fascism that omits its class-based context.

A comprehensive history of the Nazi rise to power must start with the understanding that fascism is a class-based phenomenon rather than a moral failure. It should analyse the crisis within German capitalism after 1929, the revolutionary potential of the working class, the political tactics of the SPD and KPD, the influence of the Comintern under Stalin, the bourgeoisie’s choice to abandon parliamentary democracy, and fascism’s role as a tool of counter-revolution. The working class should be regarded as the key agent of history, not merely a passive background. Additionally, it must address Trotsky’s question in his writings on Germany: why did the workers’ movement, which represented the vast majority of society, fail to stop a minority party from seizing power? Ryback’s book doesn’t answer this because it doesn’t pose this question.

’53 Days’ serves as a competent recounting of events but falls short as an analysis. While it has documentary value, it offers little political insight. It sketches the surface of events without delving into their deeper causes. The book narrates the history of fascism in a way that reassures liberal fears, yet it conceals the class forces behind the 1933 catastrophe. Those wanting to understand not just Hitler’s daily actions but why the German bourgeoisie chose to install him and why the SPD and KPD couldn’t stop it won’t find that explanation here. Instead, they should consult Trotsky’s writings from 1930–33, which offer the clearest analysis of the catastrophe, while Ryback merely narrates from an outsider perspective. His account focuses on events, not causes. It’s a vivid, readable book, but politically evasive, presenting fascism as a liberal story stripped of its class dynamics. In today’s context, that approach is not only insufficient but also dangerous.

Notes

I. Primary Sources (Weimar and Nazi Period)

Government Documents and Legal Texts

  • Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat (Reichstag Fire Decree), 28 February 1933.
  • Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich (Enabling Act), 23 March 1933.
  • Proceedings of the German Supreme Court, 25 September 1930 (Hitler’s testimony on constitutional strategy).
    • Summarised in Ryback’s description: Hitler outlined his plan to destroy the Weimar Republic “through democratic means,” replying “Jawohl!” when asked if only through constitutional means.

Nazi Party and State Publications

  • Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1925–26).
    • Ryback’s book explicitly frames Hitler’s actions as drawn from his “800‑page political playbook.”
  • Joseph Goebbels, Essays (various editions).
    • Ryback quotes the introduction’s line: “The big joke on democracy is that it provides its mortal enemies with the means to its own destruction.”

Contemporary Press and Archival Material

  • Vossische Zeitung, Berliner Tageblatt, Rote Fahne, Vorwärts (1930–33).
  • Prussian Interior Ministry memoranda (1932–33).
  • Reichstag stenographic records (1930–33).
  • Police reports on the Reichstag Fire (February–March 1933).

II. Works by Timothy W. Ryback

Books

  • Ryback, Timothy W. 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy. Grove/Atlantic, 2026.
    • Bibliographic details: Grove/Atlantic, ISBN 9780802168245, 256 pages.
    • Publisher listing: Atlantic Monthly Press, publication date 1 September 2026.
  • Ryback, Timothy W. Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power. (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2024).
  • Ryback, Timothy W. Hitler’s First Victims (2014).
  • Ryback, Timothy W. Hitler’s Private Library (2008).

Articles

  • Ryback, Timothy W. “53 Days.” The Atlantic, January 2025.
    • The book “greatly expands” this article, which was the magazine’s most‑read piece for over a month.

III. Contemporary Reviews and Publisher Material

Publisher Descriptions

  • Grove Atlantic, “53 Days | Grove Atlantic.”
    • Provides a summary of Hitler’s constitutional dismantling of democracy and Ryback’s narrative method.

Library and Catalogue Entries

  • Lennox & Addington County Library, 53 Days listing.
    • Notes expansion from the 2025 Atlantic article and summarises critical reception.

Press Reviews

  • Publishers Weekly, review of 53 Days.
    • Emphasises Hitler’s use of “constitutionally sanctioned” manoeuvring and the “acquiescence of democracy’s supposed defenders.”
  • Library Journal, review of 53 Days.
    • Notes Ryback’s continuation of his exploration of Weimar’s dissolution.
  • New York Times, review of 53 Days (2026).
  • Literary Hub, “Most Anticipated Books of 2026.”
    • Praises Ryback’s “brisk narrative” and “titrated detail.”

IV. Marxist and Trotskyist Sources (Essential for Your Critique)

Leon Trotsky: Writings on Germany

These are the foundational texts for any Marxist analysis of the Nazi seizure of power:

  • Trotsky, Leon. The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (1930–33).
  • Trotsky, Leon. “What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat” (1932).
  • Trotsky, Leon. “The Only Road” (1932).
  • Trotsky, Leon. “The German Catastrophe” (1933).
  • Trotsky, Leon. “The Tragedy of the German Proletariat” (1933).

ICFI / WSWS Analyses

  • Vandreier, Christoph. Why Are They Back? Historical Falsification, Political Conspiracy, and the Return of Fascism in Germany (Mehring Books, 2018).
  • North, David. The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo‑Left (Mehring Books, 2015).
  • WSWS Editorial Board, “The Neo‑Nazi Offensive and the Role of German Historians” (2018).
  • WSWS reviews of Adam Tooze, Richard Evans, Ian Kershaw, and the Historikerstreit.

V. Secondary Scholarship on Fascism, Weimar, and the German Working Class

Marxist and Left Scholarship

  • Harman, Chris. The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918–1923.
  • Broué, Pierre. The German Revolution 1917–1923.
  • Rabinbach, Anson. The Eclipse of the Utopias of Labour.
  • Fischer, Conan. The Rise of the Nazis.
  • Thalheimer, August. On Fascism (1930).

Critical Historiography of Fascism

  • Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: Hubris and Nemesis.
  • Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich.
  • Mommsen, Hans. The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy.
  • Peukert, Detlev. The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity.
  • Winkler, Heinrich August. Weimar 1918–1933: The Illusion of Normalcy.

Studies of SPD and KPD Strategy

  • Fowkes, Ben. The German Left and the Weimar Republic.
  • Kolb, Eberhard. The Weimar Republic.
  • Broué, Pierre. The German Communist Party and the Comintern.

Political Economy of Fascism

  • Poulantzas, Nicos. Fascism and Dictatorship.
  • Neumann, Franz. Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism.
  • Sohn‑Rethel, Alfred. Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism.

VI. Works on Liberal Historiography and Its Limits

Critiques of Liberal Approaches

  • Losurdo, Domenico. War and Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century.
  • Traverso, Enzo. Fire and Blood: The European Civil War 1914–1945.
  • Mazower, Mark. Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century.

Studies of Democratic “Fragility” Narratives

  • Levitsky, Steven & Ziblatt, Daniel. How Democracies Die.
    • Frequently cited by reviewers of Ryback’s book as a parallel.
  • Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny.

VII. Additional Contextual Sources

Weimar Political Culture

  • Gay, Peter. Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider.
  • Berman, Sheri. The Social Democratic Moment.

Reichswehr and Big Business

  • Turner, Henry Ashby. German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler.
  • Overy, Richard. The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia.

Mark Olden’s Murder in Notting Hill: A Book That Names a Killer But Flinches From the Politics of Fascism

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Mark Olden’s Murder in Notting Hill is a powerful example of investigative journalism. It carefully reconstructs the racially motivated killing of Kelso Cochrane in 1959, overcoming decades of official silence. Olden pinpoints the probable suspect, uncovers the police cover-up, and reveals the political motives behind the authorities’ responses. However, despite these achievements, the book ultimately refrains from drawing the broader political conclusions that its evidence suggests.

A killer known, a case buried

Olden started investigating the case in 2005 and soon realised what many in Notting Hill had known since the night of the murder: the identity of Cochrane’s attacker was an open secret. By interviewing witnesses and relatives of the main suspect, he was able to piece together the events that led to the killing and scrutinise how the two men initially arrested were handled. Their conflicting stories were subtly coordinated after they shared adjoining cells, and both were eventually released without any charges.

His earlier work on the BBC documentary Who Killed My Brother? provided him with access to witnesses and records that few independent writers could reach. Yet, at the National Archives, he faced many obstacles. The relevant files were kept sealed until 2044 or 2054 for “law-enforcement” reasons, even though the prime suspect had already died. Only persistent pressure from Cochrane’s family led to their early release. What these files uncovered was not just a failure to bring a murderer to justice, but evidence of a political plan.

The state’s priority: containing unrest, not confronting fascism

The documents reveal that the Labour government and the Metropolitan Police prioritised controlling the aftermath of the 1958 racist riots in Notting Hill and Nottingham over solving Cochrane’s murder. Their main concern was that anti-fascist activism, especially among Black and working-class youth, might spiral out of official control. The murder was viewed not as an act committed by organised fascists but as a public order threat requiring suppression.

Olden accurately determines that the killing was planned and organised by fascist groups. However, he does not explore the wider implications. The state’s reaction was not an anomaly; it reflects a consistent pattern where British governments have downplayed far-right violence and viewed anti-racist activism as a challenge to be managed. While his analogy with the Stephen Lawrence case is fitting, the crucial question—why the state acts in this manner—remains largely unexamined.

Kelso Cochrane and the Pseudo‑Lefts

The racially motivated murder of Kelso Cochrane in Notting Hill in 1959 is a stark example of postwar Britain’s issues. It was more than just a killing; it was a political act following fascist-organised violence, with a cover-up by the state lasting over fifty years. Mark Olden’s Murder in Notting Hill details the crime with clarity, identifying the probable culprit and uncovering the system that protected him from trial. However, the book stops short of analysing the political contexts that allowed the murder to happen. This reflects a broader pattern of avoidance frequently seen in Britain’s pseudo-left movements.

Olden’s research uncovered what many in Notting Hill have known since 1959: the identity of Cochrane’s killer was an open secret. Witnesses and family members pointed to a specific individual whose conflicting statements were quietly managed by police after he and another suspect were held in adjoining cells. The National Archives tried to keep the relevant files sealed until the mid-21st century, citing “law-enforcement” reasons, even though the prime suspect had been long deceased. Only pressure from Cochrane’s family led to their release. The documents revealed that the Labour government and the Metropolitan Police were more concerned with maintaining order, suppressing anti-fascist protests, and hiding organised fascist activity than solving the murder.

Olden’s book is strong in journalism but weak in political analysis. It suggests that racist violence in the late 1950s was a reflection of white working-class prejudices. This view distorts the class dynamics of that period. Cliff Slaughter, writing at the time, attributed the riots and murders to the economic crisis of the late 1950s—characterised by rising unemployment, insecurity, and deliberate racial scapegoating by political and media institutions. Fascism did not emerge spontaneously from “working-class racism”; rather, it was financed, organised, and exploited by sections of the ruling class. Its goal was to redirect working-class anger away from capital and onto racial minorities and to involve the most atomised workers and petty bourgeoisie in a movement against the entire working class.

Trotsky’s summation remains decisive: fascism triumphs only where the working class proves unable to take society’s fate into its own hands. This is precisely the analysis the pseudo-lefts have spent decades avoiding. Their narratives reduce racist violence to cultural prejudice, “whiteness,” or the moral failings of ordinary people. They treat fascism as a pathology rather than a weapon of class rule. In doing so, they reproduce the same blind spot that weakens Olden’s otherwise impressive book. They obscure the link between capitalist crisis and the growth of fascism and erase the revolutionary potential of the working class by portraying it as either inert or reactionary. 

Where the book falters: the politics of fascism

Olden’s narrative suggests that the white working class in the late 1950s was either indifferent to or complicit in racist violence. However, this view is one-sided and masks the complex class dynamics of that era.

In Labour Review, Cliff Slaughter provided a far deeper analysis of the 1958 Notting Hill and Nottingham riots than anything found in contemporary journalism or in Olden’s account. Writing as the events unfolded, Slaughter rejected the notion that the violence expressed some innate racism within the working class. He located its origins in the economic crisis of the late 1950s: rising unemployment, casualised labour, and the deliberate cultivation of racial scapegoating by political and media institutions. Fascist groups, he argued, were able to operate because they served definite class interests.

Their agitation diverted anger away from capital and onto racial minorities, while offering the ruling class a means of recruiting the most atomised layers of workers and the petty bourgeoisie into a movement directed against the working class as a whole. Slaughter’s analysis aligned with Trotsky’s essential insight that fascism is not a spontaneous eruption of prejudice but a political project financed and tolerated by sections of big business, emerging in periods when the ruling class can no longer govern through parliamentary means.

Trotsky’s key insight remains crucial: fascism isn’t a mere spontaneous outburst of popular prejudice. Instead, it is a political strategy funded by parts of big business, intended to destroy working-class organisation when the ruling class can no longer govern through parliamentary channels. Fascism succeeds only when the working class cannot control the direction of society.

This framework is missing from Olden’s book. Consequently, Kelso Cochrane’s murder is seen as a tragic event within a racist society rather than as part of a wider political crisis. In this situation, the ruling class tolerated fascist violence to maintain social stability.

Conclusion

Murder in Notting Hill effectively exposes a government cover-up, identifying the killer, reconstructing the crime, and unveiling the institutional forces that concealed the truth for decades. However, it omits discussion of the political dynamics that led to both the murder and the cover-up. Those interested in understanding why fascism gained ground in 1950s Britain—and how to oppose it today—must look elsewhere. The origins of fascism are rooted not in the prejudices of ordinary individuals but in the crises of capitalism and the political tactics of the ruling elite. Without that analysis, Kelso Cochrane’s murder risks being viewed solely as a historical injustice, rather than part of an ongoing struggle over the future of the working class.

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Sources

  • National Archives, Kew
    • MEPO (Metropolitan Police) files relating to the investigation into the murder of Kelso Cochrane (released early following legal pressure from the Cochrane family).
    • Home Office papers on race relations, public order, and far‑right activity in Notting Hill and Nottingham, 1958–59.
  • BBC Documentary
    • Who Killed My Brother? (BBC, 2006). Produced with research contributions from Mark Olden; includes interviews with witnesses and family members.
  • Contemporaneous Marxist Analysis
    • Slaughter, Cliff. “The Riots: A Class Analysis.” Labour Review, 1958–59. (Trotskyist interpretation of the Notting Hill and Nottingham unrest, locating fascist agitation within the crisis of British capitalism.)

Books and Scholarly Works

  • Olden, Mark. Murder in Notting Hill. Zero Books, 2011. Investigative reconstruction of the Cochrane case, drawing on interviews and newly released archival material.
  • Trotsky, Leon. The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. Pathfinder Press. Foundational Marxist analysis of fascism as a class project rooted in capitalist crisis.
  • Fryer, Peter. Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. Pluto Press, 1984. Essential background on Black British history, including postwar migration and racist violence.
  • Richards, Steve. Race, Riots and Policing: The Origins of the Notting Hill Riots. A detailed study of the 1958 unrest and the political context in which Cochrane was murdered.
  • Gilroy, Paul. There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack. Hutchinson, 1987. Analysis of race, nationalism, and state power in postwar Britain.
  • Lawrence Inquiry (Macpherson Report). The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny. HMSO, 1999. Key document on institutional racism in British policing; relevant for parallels with the Cochrane case.

Articles and Secondary Literature

  • Fielding, Steven. “The Labour Party and Race Relations, 1945–1965.” Twentieth Century British History. Examines Labour’s political handling of race and public order during the period of the Cochrane murder.
  • Ward, Paul. “Fascism in Postwar Britain.” Journal of Contemporary History. Overview of far‑right organising and its relationship to state institutions.

The Whitewashing of the AfD: Katja Hoyer and the Ideology of Liberal Evasion

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Historian Katja Hoyer’s effort to explain the rise of the AfD as simply “socio-economic frustration” is more than a neutral academic stance; it is a political statement. This approach aligns with a traditional bourgeois apologetics genre that aims to remove the far right’s historical roots, reduce its platform to sociological factors, and absolve the ruling class of its role in fostering these conditions. Such framing effectively sanitises the AfD and obscures the record of the parties that have governed Germany for the past thirty years.

Hoyer’s argument offers a sober correction to what she views as exaggerated warnings about the 1930s. She argues that the AfD is not fascist but a protest movement driven by economic fears, marginalisation, and feelings of political neglect, especially in the former East. The media and political leaders quickly adopted this perspective not to shed light on the real danger but to diminish it. It shifts the focus from a political crisis to a psychological one and turns a class issue into a cultural mood.

Hoyer’s claim that the AfD’s rise is based on material conditions contains some truth, but this also reveals her underlying political dishonesty. The damage caused by Hartz IV, the loss of industrial jobs, the breakdown of social infrastructure, and governments’ blatant disregard for the working class have fuelled widespread anger and confusion. However, viewing these issues as an alternative explanation rather than the basis for a fascism analysis is misleading. It distorts historical facts and misrepresents current realities.

Crisis, Class, and Political Form

Leon Trotsky did not view the rise of fascism as a mere psychological or cultural failing. Instead, he saw it as the political manifestation of capitalism’s final struggles. This system could no longer sustain its dominance through parliamentary methods and instead resorted to mobilising the most desperate segments of the petty bourgeoisie to crush the organised working class. Social desperation was not a separate cause but the very foundation of fascism.

Hoyer’s framing breaks this link. Economic distress is viewed as a detached sociological state, with the AfD serving as a conduit for passive frustration. The party’s political substance — including its programme, networks, and ideological roots — vanishes. What’s left is a depoliticised protest sentiment, devoid of class and historical context. This isn’t analysis. It’s ideological disarmament.

Hoyer, the Pseudo‑Lefts, and the Whitewashing of the AfD

Hoyer’s assertion that the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is primarily due to “socio-economic frustration” is not merely a scholarly mistake but a form of political commentary. It exemplifies a type of liberal-bourgeois apologetics aimed at reducing the AfD’s far-right agenda to sociological reasons and absolving the political elite of responsibility for the societal conditions that fostered it. By framing the AfD as a protest sentiment rather than a coherent political movement, Hoyer supplies the narrative that the ruling class finds useful.

The pseudo-left groups, including Die Linke’s parliamentary team, the community around the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, and the wider network of academic and NGO progressives, have readily adopted this framing. Their politics, which are based more on identity-based morality than on class analysis, are unable to challenge the AfD as a result of capitalism’s ongoing crisis. Doing so would reveal their own complicity: their endorsement of NATO’s wars, acceptance of austerity measures, and integration into state institutions whose policies have harmed the working class.

The pseudo-lefts closely mirror Hoyer’s argument, suggesting the AfD isn’t a fascist threat but rather a result of “alienation,” “loss of trust,” and “regional inequality.” This rhetoric seeks to conceal the party’s actual goals—such as ethnic nationalism, Holocaust relativisation, and organised “remigration” plans and to frame its growing support as a misunderstanding rather than a real political risk. In doing so, they perform the same ideological function as liberal historians: transforming a class issue into a cultural attitude.

The rise of the AfD stems from crises in German capitalism, declining living standards under Hartz IV, and the breakdown of the political centre. Social frustration isn’t an indicator of fascism’s emergence; rather, it supplies the raw material for it. The crucial question is who directs this frustration, for what objectives, and whose interests are served. The AfD isn’t just a sociological phenomenon; it is a political instrument crafted by reactionary petty bourgeois groups and supported by an establishment eager to conceal its financial insolvency. Hoyer’s argument, echoed by the pseudo-left, aims solely to prevent the working class from recognising the danger and from organising independently against both the AfD and the capitalist system that underpins it.

Why the Establishment Needs Hoyer’s Thesis

What “socio-economic frustration” conveniently masks is the true political nature of the AfD. Its leadership and core members come from the Identitarian movement and the “New Right” intellectual circles, include Holocaust relativists and admirers of the Nazi past, and are linked through ethnic-nationalist networks advocating ‘remigration.’ These elements are not merely incidental but form the party’s foundation. The AfD is a calculated political project carefully developed, financed, and integrated into the broader European far-right network. Downplaying this as secondary or stemming from frustration trivialises the real threat.

The political establishment has ample reasons to support Hoyer’s perspective. Over the past thirty years, parties like the SPD, Greens, CDU/CSU, and Die Linke have enforced austerity measures, reduced social protections, militarised foreign policy, and criminalised opposition. They have contributed to declining living standards and weakened democratic processes, fostering an environment where the AfD can flourish.

Acknowledging this means facing their own accountability. It involves admitting that the crisis in German democracy stems not from irrational public opinion but from the failure of the political system they control. Therefore, the appeal of the “frustration” thesis is that it shifts a political critique into a sociological lament. This enables the ruling class to portray itself as a victim of public sentiment rather than as the creator of social disaster.

The Scholarly Debate: What It Clarifies — and What It Obscures

Hoyer’s view aligns with a prominent segment of mainstream scholarship. Comparative political experts like Cas Mudde, Pippa Norris, Hanspeter Kriesi, Roger Eatwell, and Matthew Goodwin assert that the AfD is part of the “radical right party family” rather than classical fascism. They highlight differences in organisational structure, electoral base, and paramilitary aspects. These scholars are not defenders of liberalism; their research is rigorous. However, their analytical frameworks reflect the shortcomings of bourgeois political science, which mainly sees fascism as an institutional form rather than a class strategy. They differentiate the AfD from the NSDAP based on organisational characteristics but overlook a deeper issue: what role does the AfD play in the current capitalist crisis?

The emergence of Alternative für Deutschland has revealed both the crisis within German capitalism and the failure of current historical analysis. Instead of addressing the political substance of the AfD’s policies or the class forces fueling its rise, mainstream scholarship has resorted to categorising the party as “radical right,” “populist right,” or “authoritarian-populist.” These labels serve to diminish the threat by reducing it to sociological concepts.

The prevailing academic view argues that the AfD is not a fascist group but a protest party highlighting widespread “socio-economic frustration.” Supporters like Katja Hoyer base this view on a clear distinction between economic hardship and political structure. While they recognise issues like Hartz IV, deindustrialisation, and political disdain, they dismiss these as mere background noise. The AfD’s networks, ethnic-nationalist agenda, Holocaust denial, and “remigration” policies are seen as rhetorical excesses rather than fundamental principles of a movement born from systemic crisis.

This is not true analysis but ideological evasion. By portraying the AfD as just a mood instead of a political project, historiography shirks responsibility from the ruling parties SPD, Greens, CDU/CSU, and Die Linke for the social disaster they have caused. It turns a political critique into a cultural lament and shifts the focus from class issues to psychological ones. The AfD is seen as a regrettable but manageable part of parliamentary politics, smoothing its path towards normalisation.

Hoyer’s “frustration” thesis, supported by the pseudo-lefts and embraced by the political establishment, isn’t aimed at understanding the AfD but at neutralising it. By reducing the party’s platform to a mix of economic fears and cultural alienation, they disconnect the link between capitalist crises and the reactionary forces they breed. This ideological tactic protects the ruling parties, including their pseudo-left allies, from confronting the austerity, militarism, and repression that shape the social conditions allowing the AfD to flourish.

The AfD is not simply a sociological reaction. Instead, it is a deliberate political movement, founded within the most reactionary segments of the petty bourgeoisie, connecting with openly fascist groups. Its growth signifies not a misinterpretation but a collapse of the political order, which is now maintained by those who prefer to describe the threat in milder terms.

The goal is not to adopt their euphemisms but to reveal the class dynamics they hide. Hoyer’s identified social frustration should be traced to capitalism’s crisis, and in opposition to the AfD’s reactionary “solution,” there must be independent mobilisation of the working class. Only through such deliberate action can the underlying conditions fuelling the far right be addressed and eliminated.

Sources and Bibliography

  • Hoyer, Katja. The AfD is flirting with Nazi history – but moral outrage alone won’t stop the far right. The Guardian, 23 February 2026. Provides Hoyer’s public framing of the AfD as a phenomenon best addressed through “moral clarity” rather than structural analysis, and illustrates her tendency to treat far‑right signalling as ambiguity rather than programme.
  • Fenemore, Mark. Review of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949–1990 by Katja Hoyer. German History, Vol. 42, No. 1 (2024), pp. 145–147. Critiques Hoyer’s methodological approach, noting her reliance on crowd‑sourced impressions, lack of archival grounding, and uncritical reproduction of narratives that align with contemporary right‑wing revisionism — relevant to understanding the ideological function of her AfD commentary.
  • Nicole, Jean‑Thomas. Review of Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe by Katja Hoyer. The Cypher Brief, 9 June 2026. Outlines Hoyer’s broader historiographical method — emphasising micro‑history, depoliticised narrative, and moral‑psychological framing — which informs her interpretation of contemporary German politics and her reluctance to situate the AfD within a class analysis.

Suggested Additional Scholarly Context

(These are standard academic references for situating the AfD within current historiography. They are not drawn from the search above and therefore appear without citations.)

  • Mudde, Cas. The Far Right Today. Polity Press, 2019. Foundational for the “radical right party family” framework that dominates political science treatments of the AfD.
  • Eatwell, Roger & Goodwin, Matthew. National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy. Penguin, 2018. Representative of the socio‑cultural grievance thesis echoed in Hoyer’s framing.
  • Perry, Joe. “The AfD and the Crisis of German Democracy.” Central European History, 2022. Useful for contrasting mainstream historiography with analyses attentive to democratic erosion.
  • Trotsky, Leon. The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. Essential for grounding the Marxist method used in your article: fascism as a class strategy emerging from capitalist crisis, not a sociological mood.
  • Vandreier, Christoph. Why Are They Back? Historical Falsification, Political Conspiracy, and the Return of Fascism in Germany. Mehring Books, 2019.A central Marxist analysis of the far‑right resurgence in Germany. Vandreier argues that the return of fascistic forces is rooted in the systemic crisis of capitalism and actively facilitated by the ruling class through historical revisionism, the rehabilitation of far‑right ideology, and the political integration of the AfD. Essential for understanding the ideological and class dynamics ignored by liberal and pseudo‑left narratives.

The Individualisation of Historical Guilt: Katja Hoyer’s Latest Exercise in Moral Anecdotalism

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The Moralization of History in an Age of Political Reaction

Katja Hoyer’s recent essay, ‘From Housemaid to Camp Guard,’ examines how ordinary people can commit acts of evil. Although it appears to emphasise the role of structural and systemic factors in fascist violence, it actually highlights a broader tendency in modern popular history. This trend reduces intricate political and economic dynamics into moral tales, psychological stories, and personal biographies.

This approach—blaming individuals for historical guilt—is more than style; it’s an ideological tactic. It transforms fascism from a consequence of capitalist crises into an ongoing moral danger concealed within “ordinary people.” This method replaces analysis with emotion, structural understanding with narrative, and class with personal characteristics. In effect, it strips away political context from history, prioritising a moralistic story over deeper explanation.

Hoyer’s essay is more than merely inadequate; it reflects a wider cultural and political change: the erosion of historical awareness amid capitalist decline, the dominance of platform-driven “content” replacing traditional historiography, and the ruling class’s ideological effort to depoliticise history when its lessons are most critical.

Biography as Ideology: The Retreat from Structure

Hoyer’s essay centres on a biographical case study featuring Hermine Braunsteiner, infamous as the “Stomping Mare” of Majdanek. It presents her as a complex psychological figure—a troubling progression from a domestic worker to a camp guard. The reader is invited to reflect on her “choices,” her “path,” and her “transformation.” The narrative’s structure seeks to provoke moral reflection rather than enhance political understanding.

This emphasis on biography is widespread beyond Hoyer and is typical in popular history, especially during political backlash. Incorporating biographical anecdotes allows historians to suggest complexity without engaging in detailed structural analysis. It also enables readers to feel morally connected without tackling the political economy of fascism. Consequently, this approach shifts the perception of perpetrators from systemic actors to psychological curiosities.

This mode highlights what a materialist historiography would emphasise: the class makeup of the SS, the economic issues in Depression-era Austria and Germany, the gender-specific recruitment tactics of the Nazi regime, the backing of fascism by German financial elites, and the Federal Republic’s effort to rehabilitate camp staff after WWII. Braunsteiner’s life isn’t a moral lesson; rather, it’s a case study illustrating how capitalism mobilises, disciplines, and weaponises human labour during crises. Conversely, Hoyer’s approach conceals this underlying reality.

The Arendtian Legacy: Banality Without Structure

Hoyer’s framing—“ordinary people doing evil things”—directly draws from the Arendtian tradition. However, while Hannah Arendt’s work engaged with the mechanisms of the totalitarian regime, Hoyer’s interpretation is a simplified, moralised version that lacks political context. Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” shifted focus from ideological extremism to bureaucratic normality, paving the way for a psychological view of fascism: viewing evil as thoughtlessness, obedience, and conformity. Nonetheless, Arendt’s own writings remain ambivalent, caught between philosophical ideas and specific historical circumstances.

Hoyer retains only the abstract concept. She transforms the banal evil into a universal moral risk, making fascism a constant human potential. The reader is encouraged to worry about the weakness of conscience rather than capitalism’s crisis. The structural causes of fascism—the breakdown of parliamentary democracy, the rise of paramilitary violence, and the Nazi-industrial alliance—disappear from view. Arendt’s complex ideas are reduced to evasions in Hoyer’s approach.

Goldhagen’s Shadow: Voluntarism Without Politics

If Arendt explained fascism as arising from thoughtlessness, Daniel Goldhagen attributed it to deliberate hatred. His argument—that ordinary Germans were “willing executioners” motivated by a distinct eliminationist anti-Semitism—shifts focus from structural causes to cultural essentialism. Hoyer’s story echoes this voluntarist perspective. Braunsteiner’s actions are portrayed as personal decisions, moral lapses, or a psychological decline. Readers are encouraged to consider her cruelty as an individual moral failure rather than a consequence of systemic factors.

Goldhagen’s voluntarism, similar to Arendt’s concept of banality, serves an ideological purpose: it shifts blame away from the ruling class. When fascism is attributed to hatred or thoughtlessness, the influence of the capital, state, and military vanishes from the explanation. This directs attention to the perpetrators while rendering the systemic structures unseen. Hoyer’s essay exemplifies this pattern, presenting more than just a moral story; it functions as a form of political avoidance.

A materialist approach to the history of fascism starts with class analysis. Fascism is not an ethical anomaly but a class-based tactic. It emerges when the ruling elite can no longer maintain power through parliamentary channels and resort to extra-parliamentary violence to oppress workers. In this view, Braunsteiner’s life is understood not as a psychological mystery but as a product of structural forces: her recruitment into the SS was driven by the economic hardship faced by working-class women in Depression-era Austria. Her participation in the camp system was part of a bureaucratic setup designed to enforce racialised labour discipline. Her later anonymity in Queens was preserved by the political interests of the Federal Republic, which reabsorbed thousands of fascist affiliates to uphold bourgeois stability.

Hoyer’s essay does not include any of these aspects. It omits the class character of fascism, the Nazi state’s political economy, and the connection between fascist and postwar bourgeois institutions. As a result, the narrative tends to psychologize, moralise, and personalise fascism, but it never explains.

Substack as Historiographical Medium

Katja Hoyer’s recent work is deeply connected to its medium. Her Substack newsletter, Zeitgeist, functions not just as a platform but as a historiographical form influenced by platform capitalism’s economic principles. Substack’s subscription model—personality-driven, serial, and emotionally tuned—encourages trends that have diminished the quality of popular historical writing in the neoliberal age: favouring anecdotes over analysis, moral reflection over structural insights, and psychological storytelling over political economy.

Substack turns the historian into a personal brand. Subscribers follow not just for historical facts, but for the persona the historian projects. The historian’s voice becomes the main attraction, with the past serving as a setting for its display. This change is deliberate and structural, driven by the platform’s need for frequent content, which limits in-depth archival work and promotes episodic stories. Its focus on emotional connection prioritises moral stories—like “chilling” lives, “ordinary” individuals, and “extreme” decisions—over meaningful analysis of class, government, or capitalism.

Hoyer’s essays exemplify this approach well. They follow a steady pattern: starting with a biographical hook, then providing a psychological perspective, and concluding with a gentle liberal lesson. The past is depicted more as a mood to be experienced than as a political process. Fascism is portrayed as a moral issue rather than a class strategy. The GDR is shown as a nostalgic scene rather than a state with a specific social identity. The Cold War is described through human-interest stories rather than as a global clash of social systems.

This is more than just a stylistic choice; it serves an ideological purpose inherent to the medium. Substack’s favoured format—the serialised moral story—personalises historical responsibility, exaggerates dangers universally, and omits structural causality. This creates a sense of history that is emotionally comprehensible yet politically passive. It caters to a middle-class audience that desires engagement without discomfort, reflection without critique, and memory that avoids political implications.

Hoyer’s choice of Substack highlights more than her personal approach; it underscores a wider shift in historical writing driven by platform capitalism. This shift turns history into consumable content, transforms the historian into an influencer, and frames historical awareness as a commodity that serves the ideological demands of a crisis-ridden era.

Substack and the Rebranding of “Ordinary Germans”

Substack has become a key platform where modern writers reshape German history for a mostly Anglo-American global audience. Its economic model—focused on subscriptions, personality, and a lack of emphasis on political economy—creates a particular type of historical storytelling. It’s no surprise that Katja Hoyer’s work thrives here, as Substack favours interpretive approaches like anecdotal storytelling, moral psychology, and replacing structural causes with personal narratives.

The platform’s format influences its content. Substack essays tend to be short, emotional, and easy to read quickly. They aren’t suited for in-depth analysis of class struggles, government institutions, or fascism’s political economy. Instead, they focus on personal stories—like the housemaid, the neighbour, or the nostalgic pensioner—as the primary units of historical significance. The “ordinary German” becomes a storytelling device and a moral figure whose life is summarised in 1,500 words, ending with a gentle liberal lesson about “choices,” “complexity,” or “human nature.”

This isn’t merely a stylistic choice but reflects the medium’s ideological role. Substack’s favoured narrative approach tends to individualise historical accountability, turning fascist perpetrators into psychological riddles rather than recognising them as parts of a systemic structure. It broadens the concept of danger—suggesting that “ordinary people can become monsters”—while overlooking the specific class interests, state mechanisms, and economic crises that fuelled the Nazi movement. This shift replaces the political inquiry (“Why did German capital embrace fascism?”) with a moral one (“Why did this woman commit evil acts?”).

In this manner, Substack engages in the larger framework of memory capitalism: transforming the past into easily consumable content that lacks opposition. The “ordinary German” is transformed into a brand category, a narrative archetype enabling the platform to evoke emotional responses without provoking political tensions. The audience is encouraged to experience history emotionally rather than to comprehend it. Consequently, the past is presented as a mood rather than a coherent structure.

Hoyer’s utilisation of Substack is therefore purposeful. It highlights how platform capitalism shapes historical understanding, creating a portrayal of German history in which fascism is moralised, depoliticised, and disconnected from contemporary issues. The “ordinary German” becomes a warning rather than an active participant in a specific social context. This creates a story that is emotionally powerful, politically vague, and closely aligned with the ideological demands of a society in turmoil.

Hoyer’s success in Britain is closely tied to her supportive environment, including outlets like The Spectator, UnHerd, TLS, The Observer, and the broader liberal-conservative commentariat. This scene favours a style of historical writing that is accessible, impartial, and devoid of ideological conflicts. In this framework, Weimar is seen as a symbol of “polarisation” rather than a sign of capitalism’s failure. The GDR is perceived more as a nostalgic scene than a state defined by specific class traits. Fascism is framed as a cautionary tale against ‘extremism,’ rather than a tool used by the ruling class. History is approached as entertainment, not as a platform for critique. Hoyer’s work aligns with this environment, providing German history that is politics-free, memory without hostility, and narratives without causal explanations.

The emphasis on individual guilt in history today serves a contemporary purpose. By portraying fascism as the moral failure of “ordinary people,” the historian diverts blame from the capitalist class that financed Hitler, the state bodies involved in genocide, the postwar governments that reintegrated fascist figures, and the current ruling elite again embracing militarism. This explains why such narratives spread—they enable people to feel morally involved while sidestepping political accountability. They foster guilt without encouraging critical analysis, promote self-reflection without critique, and evoke memory without considering historical context. Consequently, Hoyer’s essay is not just lacking; it actively functions politically by supporting the ongoing effort to depoliticise history, aligning with the rightward shift in European politics.

Serious historiography aims to explain the past, not moralise about it. Fascism isn’t merely a psychological temptation; it is a class phenomenon that emerges from capitalist crises, not human nature. Specific institutions enable it, not personal choices. Preventing its recurrence requires conscious political action by the working class. Hoyer’s essay, along with its broader trend, obscures this understanding by substituting explanation with anecdote, structure with story, and politics with morality. This shifts fascism from a concrete product of capitalist crisis into a timeless moral hazard. In contrast, a materialist historiography emphasises that understanding the past is essential to addressing the present, warning against the ideological trap of individualising guilt.

Sources and Bibliography

I. Academic Sources on Memory, Capitalism, and Media

  • Pilkington, Danny. Myopic Memory: Capitalism’s New Continuity in the Age of AI. Memory, Mind & Media, Vol. 3 (2024). A commentary on how neoliberalism and capitalist technological development constrain social memory and critical reflection.
  • Erll, Astrid; Rigney, Ann; Wüstenberg, Jenny (eds.). Dynamics, Mediation, Mobilisation: Doing Memory Studies With Ann Rigney. De Gruyter, 2025. A major contribution to the study of mediated memory and its political uses.
  • Rigney, Ann & Merrill, Samuel (eds.). Remembering Activism: Explorations in the Memory–Activism Nexus. Memory Studies, 17(5), 2024. Explores how memory is mobilised in contemporary political contexts.
  • Chidgey, Red & Garde-Hansen, Joanne. Museums, Archives and Protest Memory. Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. Useful for understanding institutional mediation of memory.
  • Reading, Anna. Autistic Dreaming: Vibrant Memory, Activism and Environment. Berghahn, 2025. A study of memory practices under contemporary social conditions.
  • Erbil, Deniz; Rigney, Ann; Vlessing, Clara (eds.). Remembering Contentious Lives. Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. On the politics of remembering individuals within broader social conflicts.

II. Sources on Memory Culture, Digital Platforms, and Substack

  • The Memory Palace (Substack). A Substack publication dedicated to the philosophy of memory, illustrating how academic memory discourse is migrating to platform‑based media.
  • Hoskins, Andrew. Digital Memory Studies: Media Pasts in Transition. Routledge, 2018. Foundational for understanding how digital platforms reshape historical consciousness.
  • van Dijck, José. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford University Press, 2013. Essential for situating Substack within the broader political economy of platform capitalism.
  • Couldry, Nick & Mejias, Ulises. The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonising Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism. Stanford University Press, 2019. Critical for theorising how platforms commodify human expression, including historical narrative.
  • Dean, Jodi. Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive. Polity, 2010. A theoretical precursor to understanding Substack’s affective economy.

III. Historiography, Fascism, and the “Ordinary Germans” Debate

  • Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin, 1963. The foundational text for the “ordinary people doing evil” paradigm.
  • Goldhagen, Daniel. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Knopf, 1996. The most influential voluntarist interpretation of perpetrator agency.
  • Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. HarperCollins, 1992. The classic empirical counterpoint to Goldhagen, grounding perpetrator behaviour in situational and structural factors.
  • Aly, Götz. Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State. Metropolitan Books, 2007. Shows how material incentives and class interests shaped popular complicity.
  • Kershaw, Ian. The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation. Bloomsbury, 2015. Essential for situating “ordinary Germans” within structural historiography.
  • North, David. A Marxist Critique of Daniel Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s Willing Executioners.” Detroit: Mehring Books, 1997.

IV. Sources on German Memory Politics and Popular History

  • Moeller, Robert G. War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany. University of California Press, 2001. On postwar memory politics and the construction of “ordinary German” narratives.
  • Niven, Bill. The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Useful for contextualising contemporary German memory culture.
  • Confino, Alon. A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide. Yale University Press, 2014. On the ideological and cultural dimensions of Nazi violence.

V. Sources on Media, Narrative, and the Commodification of History

  • Huyssen, Andreas. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford University Press, 2003. A foundational text for understanding memory as a cultural commodity.
  • Assmann, Aleida. Cultural Memory and Western Civilisation: Functions, Media, Archives. Cambridge University Press, 2011. On the mediation and institutionalisation of memory.
  • Garde-Hansen, Joanne. Media and Memory. Edinburgh University Press, 2011. A concise overview of how media forms shape historical consciousness.
  • Olick, Jeffrey K. The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility. Routledge, 2007. Essential for understanding the moralization of historical guilt.

VI. Sources on Platform Capitalism and Digital Labour

  • Srnicek, Nick. Platform Capitalism. Polity, 2017. The definitive analysis of the economic logic underpinning platforms like Substack.
  • Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs, 2019. On how digital platforms commodify human behaviour and expression.
  • Terranova, Tiziana. Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. Pluto Press, 2004. A foundational text on digital labour and cultural production.

VII. Suggested Primary Sources for Katja Hoyer’s Work

(These are not cited from search; they are standard bibliographic entries.)

  • Hoyer, Katja. Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918. Penguin, 2021.
  • Hoyer, Katja. Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949–1990. Penguin, 2023.
  • Hoyer, Katja. Zeitgeist (Substack newsletter).
  • Hoyer, Katja. Various essays in The Spectator, UnHerd, The Telegraph, etc.

VIII. Integration Notes for a Further Essay

These sources support:

  • Memory capitalism → Pilkington (2024), Erll/Rigney (2025), Hoskins (2018), van Dijck (2013).
  • Substack as historiographical medium → Dean (2010), Srnicek (2017), Zuboff (2019).
  • Individualisation of historical guilt → Arendt (1963), Goldhagen (1996), Browning (1992), Olick (2007).
  • Ordinary Germans debate → Kershaw, Aly, Confino.
  • German memory politics → Moeller, Niven.
  • Media and memory → Assmann, Garde-Hansen, Huyssen.

Nazi Slave Labour, Capitalist Rationality, and the Politics of Memory

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The Wiener Holocaust Library’s exhibition Nazi Slave Labour: Perpetrators and Victims, now on display in London’s Bloomsbury district, performs an important and overdue service. It confronts visitors with a dimension of the Holocaust that official memory has long marginalised: the vast system of forced and slave labour that underpinned the Nazi war economy and consumed, by the exhibition’s own reckoning, twenty million human beings between 1939 and 1945, of whom 2.5 million perished. In an era when Holocaust remembrance is increasingly aestheticised, moralised, and stripped of historical content, the exhibition’s insistence on the economic foundations of genocide is a welcome corrective.

Two sentences from the exhibition’s accompanying material highlight the scale of what is depicted. It states that I.G. Farben and Krupp “actively ordered human beings as one orders raw material, working them … under ‘life-threatening conditions’ for profit.” However, the exhibition itself never questions, “what social order made this system not an aberration but, for a time, rational?” These two statements embody the core issue of official Holocaust remembrance.

The exhibition highlights the achievement and its limits. The curators rightly challenge the simplistic view separating industrial killing from industrial production. An example—images of a pregnant woman riveting tailfins onto V-1 flying bombs—comes from survivor Eva Clarke’s account of her mother’s experience. This serves as both testimony and a critique of an economic system that prioritised production at the expense of human life. The exhibit emphasises that slave labour was not an extreme ideology but a core part of the Nazi economy.

However, this is where the analysis ends. The exhibition presents its subject as a moral conflict between “perpetrators and victims”—namely, the SS and corporate management versus the enslaved— which is not incorrect but is deeply incomplete. By detaching the moral narrative from the broader social context that created it, the exhibition’s framing obscures more than it clarifies. The slave labour system did not arise in 1942 out of ideological extremism; instead, it was the result of a longstanding partnership between German big business and the Nazi regime, predating Hitler’s rise to power. While the exhibition presents the facts, it avoids drawing this conclusion.

The Political Economy of Slave Labour

The infamous persecution of European Jews and the use of millions of forced labourers were not accidental events imposed on German capitalism from outside forces. Instead, these acts were ingrained in its regular functioning. The economic crisis that hit German industry after the Depression, combined with the fall of the Weimar Republic and the growing threat of socialist revolution, created a situation in which the bourgeoisie viewed fascism as a class-centred solution. The Nazi movement aimed to eliminate the organised working class, restore profitability through militarised production, and pursue imperial expansion into Eastern territories.

Slave labour was not a deviation from capitalist rationality but its intensification under dictatorship. Usually, the wage relation conceals exploitation behind a contract seen as between equals. Nazi slave labour exposed the truth: capital exploits labour-power, and with political restrictions gone, it tends toward the literal consumption of the worker’s body.

Otto Ambros, a chemist for I.G. Farben responsible for organising prisoner exploitation at Buna-Monowitz, informed his board in April 1941 that “our new friendship with the SS is having a very beneficial effect.” Ambros was later convicted at Nuremberg, released in 1951, and quickly became a consultant for major chemical companies and an advisor to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. This is a significant detail, not just a footnote; it encapsulates an important point.

The exhibition’s silence on the capitalist roots of slave labour is deliberate and structural. Companies that financed the Nazi war effort and exploited millions—such as Bayer, BASF, and Hoechst, which succeeded Farben; the Quandt family, now owners of BMW; the Porsche-Piëch family at Volkswagen; Deutsche Bank; and Allianz—were never confiscated, dismantled, or held accountable. Their managerial staff were reinstated because, after 1945, the Western Allies prioritised anti-communism over anti-fascism. This Cold War context required reestablished German capitalism as a defence against the Soviet Union.

The working class that sought justice was politically disarmed by Stalinist parties, which subordinated all national struggles to Kremlin diplomacy. The expropriations in the Soviet zone led not to workers’ control but to a new bureaucratic ruling class. Therefore, the profit-driven relations that made slave labour “efficient” persisted into the postwar order, at least structurally if not explicitly in name. This continuity is exactly what museums, foundations, and corporate sponsors prefer to keep hidden.

The irony is not subtle. One might note, not without irony, that this very presentation appears to circulate through a foundation bearing the name of a major pharmaceutical conglomerate.” The institutions of memory are funded by the inheritors of the very system they commemorate.

The Function of Official Holocaust Memory

The Wiener Holocaust Library’s exhibition performs an important corrective to the dominant imagery of Holocaust memory. By foregrounding the exploitation of twenty million forced labourers—2.5 million of whom perished—it restores to view a dimension of the Nazi project that the iconography of the gas chambers has long overshadowed. The curators show, with stark clarity, that companies such as I.G. Farben and Krupp “actively ordered human beings as one orders raw material,” consuming labour-power under conditions designed to destroy it. This is not merely historical detail; it reveals the economic logic that underpinned genocide.

However, the exhibition stops precisely where the question becomes politically dangerous. It frames slave labour as a moral drama between “perpetrators and victims,” but refuses to situate this system within the crisis of European capitalism that produced fascism. Slave labour did not emerge from ideological fanaticism in 1942. It was the culmination of a partnership between German big business and the Nazi state, forged in the Depression-era collapse of profitability and the bourgeoisie’s determination to crush the organised working class. The exhibition presents the evidence but withholds the conclusion: that the destruction of millions of human beings was not a deviation from capitalist rationality but its intensification under conditions of dictatorship.

This silence is not accidental. It reflects the broader trajectory of contemporary Holocaust historiography, which has increasingly moralised the past while depoliticising it. Museums, foundations, and commemorative institutions—often funded by the corporate successors of the very firms that profited from slave labour—have constructed a memory culture in which the Holocaust is treated as a metaphysical rupture rather than a historical product of capitalism in crisis. The result is a historiography that can catalogue atrocities with forensic precision but cannot explain why they occurred.

The continuity that official memory cannot name is the most revealing. The industrialists who made slave labour “efficient” were restored to their positions after 1945; their corporations survived intact; their wealth shaped the postwar order. The Western Allies, turning rapidly toward the Cold War, prioritised rehabilitating German capitalism over dismantling the structures that had produced fascism. Stalinism politically disarmed the working class that might have demanded justice. Thus the profit relations that made slave labour rational persisted, structurally if not in name, into the present.

Six decades of memorialising have revealed the moral horror of the camps. However, official memory often conceals the social order behind their emergence. The museum format—focused on morality, tragedy, and devoid of political context—serves this purpose well. It separates the Holocaust from capitalism, turning history into tragedy rather than social critique. It depicts fascism as a moral failure instead of a class-based response. While commemorating victims, it also shields the system that produced them. The Wiener Library exhibit exemplifies this pattern; it is not alone, but representative.

The Wiener exhibition, for all its strengths, remains bound by these constraints. It can show the brutality of exploitation, but not the social order that made exploitation rational. It can commemorate victims, but not indict the system that created them. It can illuminate the past, but not connect it to the continuity of capitalist power. Confronting this truth means understanding that “never again” should go beyond moral remembrance. It requires actively dismantling the social order that enabled Auschwitz, not merely honouring its memory. The link between Nazi slave labour and postwar capitalism is not just a historical detail but a current political reality. The corporations that benefited from the Holocaust continue to exist—some funding museums, others involved in governance, with their wealth influencing today. An exhibition cannot capture this. The fight against fascism and capitalism is intertwined. The critical truth that official history avoids addressing must inform contemporary struggles.

Sources and Bibliography

Archival and Institutional Sources

  • Wiener Holocaust Library, Nazi Slave Labour: Perpetrators and Victims (Exhibition materials, 2026). Includes curatorial essays, survivor testimonies, corporate documents, and photographic collections relating to forced labour under the Third Reich.
  • Arolsen Archives – International Centre on Nazi Persecution. Digital collections on forced labourers, concentration camp prisoners, and corporate exploitation during the Nazi period.
  • United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). Forced labour documentation, including the “Nazi Forced Labour” collection, camp records, and industrial partnerships with the SS.
  • Fritz Bauer Institute, I.G. Farben and the Buna-Monowitz Concentration Camp (Travelling exhibition, 2025). Detailed documentation of corporate–SS collaboration in the construction and operation of Auschwitz III (Monowitz).

Primary Sources

  • Nuremberg Military Tribunal, United States v. Krauch et al. (The I.G. Farben Trial), 1947–48. Transcripts and verdicts detailing corporate procurement of slave labour, cost calculations, and managerial correspondence.
  • Otto Ambros Papers, correspondence with I.G. Farben board members (1941–44). Includes the April 1941 letter noting that “our new friendship with the SS is having a very beneficial effect.”
  • Krupp Company Records, 1933–45. Orders for camp prisoners, production reports, and internal memoranda on labour shortages and “special labour deployment.”
  • Eva Clarke and Anka Bergman Testimonies, Wiener Holocaust Library oral history collection. Accounts of forced labour in armaments production and survival of pregnancy under slave labour conditions.

Secondary Literature: Forced Labour and Corporate Complicity

  • Ulrich Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labour in Germany under the Third Reich (Cambridge University Press, 1997). The foundational study of the forced labour system, detailing its economic integration.
  • Mark Spoerer, Zwangsarbeit unter dem Hakenkreuz (Forced Labour under the Swastika) (1999). Quantitative analysis of labour deployment, mortality, and corporate profit structures.
  • Kim Christian Priemel, The Betrayal: The Nuremberg Trials and German Divergence (Oxford University Press, 2016). Explores how industrialists avoided accountability and were reintegrated into postwar capitalism.
  • David de Jong, Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties (2022). Documents the Quandt, Porsche-Piëch, and other dynasties’ use of slave labour and postwar rehabilitation.
  • Peter Hayes, Industry and Ideology: I.G. Farben in the Nazi Era (Cambridge University Press, 1987). Classic study of corporate strategy, profitability crises, and collaboration with the Nazi state.

Holocaust Historiography and Memory Studies

  • Dan Stone, The Holocaust: An Unfinished History (Penguin, 2023). Argues that Holocaust historiography remains incomplete without integrating structural and political-economic analysis.
  • Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler (Routledge, 1999). A critical study of the museum form and the commodification of Holocaust memory.
  • Alon Confino, A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide (Yale University Press, 2014). Explores ideological dimensions but also the limits of culturalist interpretations.
  • Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory (Stanford University Press, 2009). Useful for understanding contemporary memory politics and the depoliticisation of historical violence.
  • Tony Judt, “The Past Is Another Country,” in Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2005). On the political uses of Holocaust memory in the postwar order.

Marxist and Political-Economic Analyses

  • Nick Beams, Imperialism and the Political Economy of the Holocaust (WSWS lecture, 2010). The most comprehensive Marxist analysis of the Holocaust’s economic foundations.
  • David North, The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left (Mehring Books, 2015). On the ideological turn in contemporary historiography and the retreat from class analysis.
  • Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (1930–33). Essential for understanding fascism as a class solution to capitalist crisis.
  • Clara Weiss, “The Rehabilitation of German Imperialism and the Politics of Holocaust Memory” (WSWS, various articles). On the political uses of Holocaust commemoration in contemporary Europe.

Corporate and Postwar Continuity Studies

  • Harold James, The Deutsche Bank and the Nazi Economic War (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Details the bank’s financing of Auschwitz and postwar reintegration.
  • Gerald D. Feldman, Allianz and the German Insurance Business, 1933–1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2001). On insurance of expropriated Jewish property and corporate continuity.
  • Joseph Borkin, The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben (1978). A classic exposé of corporate complicity and the failure of postwar justice.

Letter to History Extra Magazine

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Re: “Are There Still Fascists in the 21st Century?”

To the Editors,

Your recent panel discussion on contemporary fascism highlights an urgent historical and political issue. However, your approach—using a typical taxonomy of debating definitions, checklists, and stylistic “markers”—only obscures the phenomenon you intend to clarify.

This approach is not just insufficient; it reflects a specific ideology. By viewing fascism as a standalone political style disconnected from the class relations that create it, the panel replicates a key flaw of post-war bourgeois historiography. Fascism is treated like a museum specimen, recognized by its appearance, rather than as a tool shaped by the ruling class during times of capitalist crisis.

Leon Trotsky, in 1931, emphasized that any thorough analysis must begin “in a scientific and Marxian manner.” This approach involves focusing not on morphology but on the relationships among the three key classes: the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, and the proletariat. Trotsky defined fascism as the mobilization of the devastated petty bourgeoisie by finance capital, using it as a weapon against workers’ organizations. He regarded fascism as a consequence of capitalist crises, rather than a particular political style.

Your panel’s approach isolates fascism from its social roots. It considers it an aesthetic, a rhetorical style, or a collection of behaviours. This isn’t a neutral academic stance. Rather, it serves the ideological purpose of historiography: to remove fascism from its political context and link it to the capitalist system that produces it.

Contemporary fascistic politics can’t be fully understood through 1930s frameworks. As various analyses indicate, today’s far-right groups are not grassroots mass movements but are instead shaped by top-down conspiracy, often originating within state institutions, security sectors, and oligarchic networks. The ruling elite has realized it can foster fascistic tendencies without relying on broad-based, spontaneous bourgeois mobilizations. The lack of large rallies doesn’t reduce the threat; rather, it transforms its manifestation.

Your discussion equally overlooks the role of the so-called “democratic” opposition. Recent history shows that the traditional bourgeois democratic parties have not protected democratic rights but have contributed to their decline. The bipartisan growth of state surveillance, militarized policing, emergency measures, and increased executive power reflects a consistent trajectory, not an anomaly. The move toward authoritarianism stems from the fundamental crisis of capitalism, rather than from the personal failings of specific leaders.

That’s why the question “Are there still fascists in the 21st century?” becomes pointless when asked as your panel does. Fascism isn’t about whether current movements look like Mussolini’s rallies or copy the NSDAP’s policies. Instead, it’s defined by its role: employing extra-parliamentary and authoritarian tactics to suppress the working class in contexts where capitalism can no longer sustain democratic systems.

The essential question — often avoided in discussions — is: What social forces are dismantling democratic institutions today, and what should the working class do to fight back? Trotsky’s insights were never purely academic; they served as a strategic call to action in the class struggle. Combating fascism cannot be achieved by backing one bourgeois faction against another. Instead, it demands the independent, international mobilization of the working class.

By framing fascism as just a definitional puzzle, your discussion unintentionally softens public perception of the real threat. This approach mirrors a traditional academic historiography tactic: it actually undermines the public’s understanding of the danger while seeming to analyse it. Fascism isn’t merely about classification; it’s fundamentally about class struggle.

Yours sincerely, Keith Livesey

A Historiographical Critique of Bye Bye Blackshirt: Popular Frontism, Political Function, and the Construction of Anti Fascist Memory

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This essay offers a historiographical analysis that ‘Bye Bye Blackshirt’, published by Bookmarks (the Socialist Workers Party’s imprint), is more than just a straightforward recounting of 1930s anti-fascism. It is a politically driven text that reflects the SWP’s current strategic priorities through its interpretive approach. Bye Bye Blackshirt is not an unbiased historical account; it functions as a tool for contemporary politics. The analysis situates the book within a broader tradition of Popular Frontist historiography and argues that its omissions are deliberate, intentionally serving the political objectives it seeks to promote.

Krantz’s Position Within the Historiography

Mark Krantz holds a unique position in British anti-fascist historiography. He is not an academic historian and does not follow the typical methodological approaches used in scholarly research on the CPGB, the Comintern, or interwar political culture. Instead, his work falls into the category of movement history: concise, accessible stories created within political groups to educate and mobilize members.

Krantz’s account of 1930s anti-fascism emphasises heroic street-level efforts, particularly highlighting Cable Street as a pivotal moment when working-class communities united to stop Mosley’s Blackshirts. This perspective reflects the SWP’s tradition of celebrating direct action and mass mobilisation. Yet this narrative overlooks a significant historiographical concern: the broader political circumstances that underpinned the mobilisation. ‘There is no question that the physical resistance to fascist provocation was correct and necessary. But the political framework within which it was organised was catastrophic.”

Krantz’s work does not examine the CPGB’s switch to the Popular Front line in 1935 or the strategic effects of linking working-class militancy with alliances with “progressive” bourgeois groups and the Labour Party. This results in a depoliticised heroism—action lacking strategy and militancy lacking context. The main historiographical oversight in Krantz’s work is the neglect of Popular Frontism as an analytical lens. Some Marxist academic historians have demonstrated that the CPGB’s anti-fascist efforts after 1935 were closely tied to its Popular Front stance; the Comintern’s Seventh Congress reoriented communist strategy across Europe; and anti-fascist mobilisation aimed to defend “democracy”—that is, the capitalist state—rather than promote socialist revolution.

Krantz’s narrative obscures the broader strategic context. The CPGB is presented as a militant, principled entity rather than a party following the Comintern line, which ultimately dampened its revolutionary potential. “The CPGB abandoned the fight for workers’ power in favor of defending ‘democracy against fascism’ — meaning the defence of British capitalism…” Krantz’s omission isn’t accidental; it is a deliberate choice essential for the political purpose of his book.

Krantz’s portrayal of Cable Street reflects a longstanding tradition of mythologised anti-fascist remembrance. Researchers like Stephen Ward have demonstrated that Cable Street has frequently been reinterpreted as a pivotal victory, even though Mosley’s movement was already waning, the state, rather than the crowd, ultimately halted the march, and the CPGB’s strategy was moving toward a patriotic defence of the nation.

Krantz presents a celebratory version of Cable Street, turning it into a myth that supports modern activism. Raphael Samuel called such constructs “theatres of memory”: political movements shaping emotionally compelling histories to meet current needs. The issue isn’t that Krantz praises Cable Street; it’s that he omits its political repercussions, such as the CPGB’s support for Churchill during WWII, opposition to strikes at the time, and turning anti-fascist militancy into backing for the 1945 Labour government and the British Empire. None of these aspects are reflected in Krantz’s version.

 The SWP’s Strategic Reproduction of Popular Frontism

Krantz’s historiography is not merely flawed; it serves a political purpose. The  SWP tells workers to oppose the fascists while remaining politically tethered to the parties that cultivate them.” Krantz’s book offers a historical rationale for this approach. By depicting 1930s anti-fascism as an example of wide, cross-class unity, he justifies SUTR’s alliances with Labour MPs, trade-union officials, and liberal NGOs. This reasoning mirrors that which influenced the Anti-Nazi League in the 1970s and Unite Against Fascism in the 2000s. Chris Marsden’s analysis reveals that these coalitions often linked workers to Labour governments pursuing austerity, setting the stage for far-right growth.

Krantz’s history serves a political purpose by legitimizing Popular Frontism and overlooking its strategic failures. From a historiographical perspective, Krantz’s work has notable methodological shortcomings: it lacks archival research, as it does not consult CPGB records, Comintern correspondence, or Home Office files. Additionally, it does not engage with secondary sources like Morgan, Thorpe, Linehan, Copsey, Renton, or Fishman. The narrative is teleological, emphasizing an inevitable move toward anti-fascist victory while ignoring the flawed aspects of the Popular Front strategy. Moreover, it is presentist, interpreting the past solely in light of current activist concerns. These limitations are not accidental but reflect intrinsic features of movement history as a genre.

The SWPs’ and Krantz’s historiography serves two main roles: first, it legitimises cross-class anti-fascist alliances by offering historical precedents; second, it obfuscates the role of the Popular Front, thereby politically disarming the working class. This dual purpose presents a methodological challenge because the book’s interpretive perspective is not impartial but rooted in a current political strategy.

The 1934–36 Conjuncture and the CPGB’s Popular Front Turn

The period from 1934 to 1936, covered by Bye Bye Blackshirt, marks a pivotal moment in the Communist Party of Great Britain’s political shift. After the 1935 Seventh Congress of the Comintern, the CPGB embraced the Popular Front strategy, described as “the subordination of the revolutionary struggle against capitalism to cross-class alliances with ‘progressive’ bourgeois forces.”

For academic historians, the key issue is the interpretive tension: The CPGB’s anti-fascist efforts were genuine and often courageous, but their strategy aimed at defending “democracy”—which they equated with the British capitalist state—rather than pushing for socialist revolution. This tension is usually overlooked in SWP historiography, which tends to portray anti-fascist mobilisation as straightforwardly political and without contradictions, ignoring its complex strategic context.

Patriotism, War, and the CPGB’s Political Trajectory

The CPGB’s anti-fascism was described as being ‘politically indistinguishable from British patriotism,’ culminating in its support for Churchill and opposition to strikes during WWII. This statement isn’t merely polemical; it reflects a historiographical view that regards Popular Frontism as primarily focused on national defence rather than class struggle.

The peak of anti-fascist activities in the 1930s was not socialism, but the 1945 Labour government, which supported the British Empire and suppressed colonial revolutions. This indicates that Popular Frontism tends to direct working-class militancy towards supporting the capitalist state.

The SWP’s Historical Falsification and the Reproduction of Popular Front Strategy

The clearest historiographical critique focuses on the SWP’s current politics. It suggests that the SWP’s admiration for 1930s anti-fascism is justified because the party maintains the same strategic stance today. “The SWP advises workers to oppose fascists while still aligning politically with parties that support them.” The analysis references Chris Marsden’s critique of SUTR, mentioning that SUTR regards Labour and the TUC as “progressive.” Historically, the Anti-Nazi League connected workers with Labour during IMF austerity, which helped create the political conditions that led to Thatcher’s electoral success.

For academic historians, the key point is methodological: the SWP’s historical narrative is shaped by its present‑day alliances, and this shaping produces systematic distortions.

Toward a Revolutionary Historiography of Anti‑Fascism

A truly Marxist history of the fight against Mosley would involve recognising the bravery of Jewish workers and socialist youth; situating that heroism within a political context that ultimately disarmed the working class; and highlighting Trotsky’s key insight that fascism arises from capitalism and cannot be defeated through cross-class alliances. The SWP cannot produce such a history because it would accuse its own political practice. The title — Bye Bye Blackshirt — reflects a celebratory street-level story that avoids addressing the structural roots of fascism.

Defeating fascism today involves distancing oneself from the Labour Party, trade unions, and other institutions that, according to the SWP’s book, are preserved by current efforts. For academic historians, it is important to show es how political groups create selective histories — and how these shape, distort, or obscure true understanding. It encourages a reevaluation of anti-fascist history that emphasises the political contexts shaping the creation of narratives.

Secondary Literature and Bibliography

1. Core Historiography on British Communism and Anti‑Fascism

  • Callaghan, John. Rajani Palme Dutt: A Study in British Stalinism. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1993. A foundational study of CPGB ideology, essential for contextualising the Popular Front turn.
  • Morgan, Kevin. Bolshevism and the British Left: A Study in British Communism. Manchester University Press, 2006. Offers a detailed account of CPGB political culture and strategic shifts.
  • Thorpe, Andrew. The British Communist Party and Moscow, 1920–43. Manchester University Press, 2000. Crucial for understanding Comintern influence on CPGB strategy, including the 1935 Popular Front line.
  • Renton, David. Fascism, Anti‑Fascism and Britain in the 1940s. London: Routledge, 2000. A key text on British anti‑fascism, though Renton’s framing is often sympathetic to Popular Frontist interpretations.
  • Linehan, Thomas. East London for Mosley: The British Union of Fascists in East London and South‑West Essex, 1933–40. London: Frank Cass, 1996. Essential for understanding the social geography of fascist mobilisation.
  • Fishman, Nina. The British Communist Party and the Trade Unions, 1935–1945. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995. Important for the CPGB’s role in the labour movement during the Popular Front and wartime periods.

2. Cable Street and Anti‑Fascist Mobilisation

  • Glynn, Sean, and John Oxley. Cable Street: The Story of a Militant Anti‑Fascist Movement. London: National Council for Civil Liberties, 1976. A classic narrative account, often cited in celebratory histories.
  • Ward, Stephen. “The Battle of Cable Street: Myths and Realities.” History Today 36, no. 10 (1986): 10–16. A critical reassessment of the event’s mythology.
  • Copsey, Nigel. Anti‑Fascism in Britain. London: Routledge, 2000. A comprehensive survey of anti‑fascist traditions, including the CPGB’s role.

3. Popular Frontism: International Context

  • Broué, Pierre. The German Revolution, 1917–1923. Chicago: Haymarket, 2006. While chronologically earlier, Broué’s analysis of Comintern strategy is essential background.
  • Jackson, Gabriel. The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931–1939. Princeton University Press, 1965. A standard scholarly account of the Popular Front’s contradictions in Spain.
  • Kedward, H.R. La Résistance en France. Oxford University Press, 1978. Useful for understanding the French Popular Front’s demobilisation of the 1936 strike wave.
  • Judt, Tony. Marxism and the French Left. Oxford University Press, 1986. A major work on Popular Front ideology and its political consequences.

4. Trotsky’s Theoretical Critique of the Popular Front

(These are primary sources but essential for the theoretical framing.)

  • Trotsky, Leon. Whither France? 1934–35. The key text for understanding the critique referenced in your document.
  • Trotsky, Leon. The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971. Contains Trotsky’s analysis of the Comintern’s oscillation between “social fascism” and Popular Frontism.
  • Trotsky, Leon. The Spanish Revolution (1931–39). New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973. Essential for the argument that Popular Frontism facilitated Franco’s victory.

5. Historiography of Labour, the TUC, and State Power

  • Pelling, Henry. The British Labour Movement, 1770–1920. London: Macmillan, 1963. A classic overview of Labour’s structural relationship to the state.
  • Saville, John. The Consolidation of the Capitalist State, 1920–1930. London: Pluto Press, 1994. A Marxist analysis of Labour’s role in stabilising British capitalism.
  • Cronin, James E. Labour and Society in Britain, 1918–1979. London: Batsford, 1984. Useful for contextualising Labour’s post‑war imperial role.

6. Historiography on the SWP, Anti‑Nazi League, and Contemporary Anti‑Fascism

  • Birchall, Ian. The Anti‑Nazi League: A Critical History. London: Socialist Workers Party, 2010. A sympathetic internal history; useful for understanding the SWP’s own narrative.
  • Renton, David. Never Again: Rock Against Racism and the Anti‑Nazi League 1976–1982. London: Routledge, 2018. A more scholarly treatment of the ANL’s political function.
  • Marsden, Chris. Various analyses on WSWS (World Socialist Web Site). These are essential for the critique, especially regarding SUTR and the SWP’s Popular Frontist strategy.

7. Theoretical and Methodological Works on Anti‑Fascist Memory

  • Samuel, Raphael. Theatres of Memory. London: Verso, 1994. A foundational text on how political movements construct usable pasts.
  • Hobsbawm, Eric. Politics for a Rational Left. London: Verso, 1989. Includes reflections on Popular Frontism and historical memory.
  • Anderson, Perry. Considerations on Western Marxism. London: Verso, 1976. Useful for situating Trotskyist historiography within broader Marxist debates.

Podcast Episode: Katja Hoyer’s Narrative: Nazi Files, Family Secrets, and the Liberal Falsificati

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Pip: A Trumpet of Sedition asks a question most history coverage sidesteps entirely: when we talk about fascism, are we actually talking about fascism, or have we quietly swapped it out for something more comfortable?

Mara: freerein61 has a piece this week that takes that question seriously, working through how liberal memory culture handles the history of Nazism — and what it systematically leaves out. Let's start with the argument about Katja Hoyer, Daniel Goldhagen, and what the Marxist tradition says both of them get wrong.

Katja Hoyer, Goldhagen, and the Class Question

Pip: The setup here is a Financial Times article by Katja Hoyer on newly digitised Nazi Party membership records. The surface reading is: here is an opportunity for Germans to confront difficult family histories. The argument in this post is that the surface reading is the problem.

Mara: The post frames it precisely. A Marxist critic quoted in the piece puts it this way: "reduces the greatest crimes in human history to a matter of individual family shame and personal conscience, while leaving untouched the class forces that made fascism possible and that are re-emerging today."

Pip: So the archive becomes a mirror rather than a document. The question shifts from what structural forces enabled fascism to whether your grandfather was a good person — and that shift is not innocent, it is doing ideological work.

Mara: The post draws a direct comparison to Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, and the pairing is pointed. Goldhagen nationalises guilt — fascism as a German cultural pathology. Hoyer privatises it — fascism as a family secret. The post argues both moves share the same blind spot: class conflict disappears entirely from the explanation.

Pip: Goldhagen says Germans killed because they wanted to. Hoyer says look inward at your grandfather. Neither asks who funded Hitler or why the organisations representing millions of German workers collapsed without a fight in 1933.

Mara: That collapse is where the post spends real time. The SPD clung to bourgeois legality. The KPD, following Stalin's line, called the SPD social fascists and wrecked any prospect of a united front. Trade union leaders marched workers into Nazi May Day celebrations on May 1, 1933 — one day before SA and SS units raided their offices and seized their assets. The post quotes directly: "These organisations… capitulated passively to Hitler."

Pip: That sequence — the deliberate political disarming of the only force capable of stopping fascism — is exactly what neither Hoyer's genealogical introspection nor Goldhagen's national-character thesis can accommodate, because admitting it would mean asking class questions about 1933 and about today.

Mara: The post brings in Trotsky's definition as the counter-framework: "Fascism is a particular method of rallying and organising the petty bourgeoisie to serve finance capital." That reframes the whole problem — fascism as a product of capitalist crisis and political betrayal, not psychology or culture.

Pip: And the post closes by connecting this to the present. Germany is rearming. Historical revisionism is climbing. The individualised-guilt framework is politically useful precisely because, as the post puts it, one can feel personal shame about a grandfather while supporting the deployment of German troops — the class question is never posed.

Mara: Which is why the post argues the digitised Nazi files matter most not as a therapeutic resource but as a historical archive of fascism's class nature — and why the working class needs a framework that can actually explain what happened, rather than one that stops at the family tree.

Pip: The throughline is that how we explain fascism determines what we think can stop it. Psychology and genealogy leave the structural causes intact.

Mara: That's the stakes the post keeps returning to. The next time this territory comes up, it will be worth watching which questions get asked and which get quietly set aside.

Katja Hoyer’s Narrative: Nazi Files, Family Secrets, and the Liberal Falsification of History

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 The ideological function of genealogical introspection

Katja Hoyer’s recent article in the Financial Times on the digitised Nazi Party membership records appears as a compassionate call to confront difficult family histories. However, it is actually a strategic move aimed at shaping public awareness of history. This approach shifts the atrocities of fascism into a personal narrative of genealogy, shame, and individual reflection, while deliberately overlooking the broader class struggles, political betrayals, and capitalist factors that facilitated fascism.

As one Marxist critic recently noted, this genre “reduces the greatest crimes in human history to a matter of individual family shame and personal conscience, while leaving untouched the class forces that made fascism possible and that are re-emerging today.”¹ The digitised Nazi files become not a historical archive but a therapeutic mirror. This is not an innocent mistake. It is an ideological operation.

The displacement of history by family mythology

Hoyer’s approach relies on a straightforward but powerful shift: instead of asking, “What class forces enabled fascism?” the subject is prompted to ask, “Was my grandfather a Nazi?” This transforms the historical disaster into a personal story. Political issues become psychological concerns, and social problems are viewed through a personal lens.

This example illustrates modern attitudes toward remembering German history. As the WSWS highlighted during the controversy over the Wehrmacht exhibition, even important documentation of Nazi atrocities tends to be presented without linking it to the broader class struggles in Germany and Europe, as if there was no opposition to the Nazis’ rise and their military ambitions. Hoyer’s article exemplifies this issue on a smaller scale, creating a story in which the grandfather becomes the central figure of history, the family serves as a space for reflection, and the working class is entirely overlooked. This approach does not depict true history but promotes a liberal myth.

The erasure of the working class and its betrayal

Any thorough analysis of fascism must start with the betrayal of the German working class by the SPD, KPD, and trade unions in 1933. These groups represented millions of workers. Their surrender enabled Hitler’s rise to power. The SPD clung to bourgeois legality as the state fell apart. The KPD, following Stalin, called the SPD “social fascists,” undermining a united front. The trade unions encouraged workers to take part in Nazi May Day celebrations.

Hoyer’s narrative cannot admit this, as it would mean confronting the ongoing class interests that connect the capitalist systems of 1933, 1945, and today. Instead, she shifts focus to family history, asking whether ‘my grandfather was good or bad,’ rather than examining what political forces weakened the working class and facilitated fascism. This amounts to a form of historical falsification. 

Goldhagen in miniature: national character disguised as family psychology

At first glance, Katja Hoyer and Daniel Goldhagen seem to embody different facets of modern German memory culture. However, they may actually reflect two sides of the same ideological spectrum. Goldhagen’s tone is polemical, broad, and accusatory, while Hoyer adopts a therapeutic, intimate, and psychologically nuanced approach. Goldhagen criticises the German nation as a whole, whereas Hoyer focuses on examining the German family. Goldhagen discusses “eliminationist anti-Semitism,” whereas Hoyer explores “family myths” and the process of “reckoning.”

However, despite these stylistic variations, they serve a common ideological purpose: to depoliticise fascism, eliminate class conflict, and reframe the atrocities of the Third Reich as issues of psychology, culture, and personal identity. Both authors function within the same liberal perspective that downplays  “the greatest crimes in human history to a matter of individual family shame and personal conscience. Goldhagen nationalises guilt. Hoyer privatises guilt. Both protect capitalism.

Goldhagen: National character as historical explanation

Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners (1996) argued that the Holocaust was the product of a uniquely German, centuries‑old “eliminationist anti‑Semitism.” The book was a publishing sensation precisely because it offered a morally satisfying yet historically bankrupt explanation: Germans killed Jews because they wanted to.

Goldhagen’s thesis has three key flaws: it deletes class relations by ignoring the bourgeoisie, the working class, and capitalism; it reduces the Holocaust to a cultural issue; and it dismisses political struggle, especially neglecting figures like Marx, Engels, Bebel, and Liebknecht, thus turning history into nationalist rhetoric. Moreover, it overlooks the betrayal of the working class, as Goldhagen cannot explain the surrender of the SPD, KPD, and trade unions in 1933, or why the working class— the only group capable of resisting fascism—was politically disarmed. His thesis is a dead end because it views fascism as a moral failing rather than a class-based phenomenon.

Hoyer: The privatisation of guilt

Katja Hoyer’s “family secrets” narrative mirrors Goldhagen’s approach on a smaller scale. While Goldhagen criticises the entire nation, Hoyer focuses on the household. Goldhagen discusses “German culture,” whereas Hoyer examines “family mythology.” Goldhagen universalises guilt, but Hoyer personalises it. The core argument is similar: fascism is explained through psychology rather than politics, history is viewed through identity instead of class, and the working class is completely omitted. The question becomes ‘was my grandfather a good or bad person?’ rather than ‘what class forces and political betrayals made fascism possible?” Hoyer’s narrative is more than just incomplete; it is essential on ideological grounds. It guarantees that the digitised Nazi Party files serve for therapeutic self-reflection rather than for historical study. 

The shared erasure of the working class

Both Hoyer and Goldhagen consistently overlook a critical historical fact: fascism’s rise was facilitated by the betrayal of their own base by German working-class organisations. As the state disintegrated, the SPD maintained bourgeois legality, while the KPD, following Stalin’s directives, sabotaged the unity front. The Trade union leaders collaborated with the Nazi propaganda event on May 1, 1933. This orchestrated spectacle was intended to lull German trade unions into complacency just a day before their complete suppression on May 2, 1933, when SA, SS, and NSBO units raided union offices, detained leaders, and seized assets. All these organisations… passively capitulated to Hitler.”

Goldhagen cannot acknowledge this because it would weaken his claim about national pathology. Likewise, Hoyer cannot accept it as it would contradict her narrative of personal self-reflection. Consequently, both authors depict a version of history that omits class struggle, suggesting fascism emerges from cultural, identity, or family factors rather than from the crisis of capitalism.

Trotsky’s method: The Marxist demolition of both narratives

Leon Trotsky’s critique of fascism reveals flaws in Hoyer’s and Goldhagen’s perspectives. Trotsky argued that fascism is not merely a cultural issue but a tool used by a class: “Fascism is a particular method of rallying and organising the petty bourgeoisie to serve finance capital.”

This single sentence challenges the entire ideological foundation of Hoyer and Goldhagen. Trotsky’s perspective shows that Fascism stems from the capitalist crisis, not from national character. It is propelled by the political betrayal of workers rather than family myths. Additionally, Fascism is fundamentally a class issue, not a psychological one. Goldhagen’s argument falters because it ignores why the bourgeoisie supported Hitler. Similarly, Hoyer’s argument is incomplete because it overlooks why the working class was disarmed. Trotsky reestablishes the comprehensive social relations that both authors overlook.

The political function of Hoyer and Goldhagen

The ideological significance of both writers becomes evident when viewed in the context of modern German politics. Germany is rearming, the Bundeswehr is active internationally, and historical revisionism is on the rise. The political leaders openly discuss “normalising” Germany’s military strength. In this environment, Hoyer and Goldhagen serve crucial ideological functions: They shift fascism from a class-based issue to a psychological one, promote guilt without fostering political awareness, hide the role of German capitalism in funding Hitler, and prevent the working class from developing revolutionary insights. “One can feel personal shame about one’s grandfather while supporting the deployment of German troops. The class question is never posed.” Both writers use their political role to prevent past crimes from endangering current interests.

The political utility of individualised guilt

The German elite prefers to shift historical accountability onto individual and psychological levels. As the WSWS observed in their review of the 2011 “Hitler and the Germans” exhibition, the official narrative usually attributes blame to the German populace while hiding the role of German capitalism in the rise of Hitler.”

Hoyer’s article aligns well with this pattern. It prompts Germans to feel shame about their grandparents while ignoring the banks that funded Hitler, the companies that benefited from slave labour, and the state institutions that remained unchanged after 1945. This is why the “family secrets” genre is so politically effective: it fosters guilt without involving politics, memory without addressing class, and reckoning without calling for revolution.

The Marxist view contrasts with Hoyer’s liberal-psychological explanation, which holds that fascism emerges from capitalism in crisis. Its rise is due to the working class’s betrayal. Fascism’s crimes are best understood by examining its class roots, not genealogy or psychology. The digitised Nazi files are useful primarily for revealing fascism’s class nature.

The working class needs to reject the entire ideology of individual guilt. Fascism’s crimes were not caused by flawed personalities or national traits but stemmed from a social system—capitalism—driven into barbarism by crises and betrayal. The only force that can stop another descent into disaster is an organised, conscious working class, equipped with a revolutionary socialist agenda.

Notes

  1. Family Secrets and the Class Question: A Marxist Response to the “Nazi Grandfather” Phenomenon, p. 1.
  2. Ibid., p. 2.
  3. Ibid., p. 3.
  4. WSWS, “The Goldhagen Debate,” 1996.
  5. Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (New York: Pathfinder, 1971), 247.
  6. WSWS, “Hitler and the Germans Exhibition,” 2011.

The Limits of Journalistic “Infiltration”: Liberal Anti Fascism and the Political Disorientation of the Working Class

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

The Guardian’s recent undercover investigation by Harry Shukman, which depicts his personal efforts to infiltrate far-right groups, highlights the political emptiness of the liberal middle class. The piece functions more as a performative act, portraying the journalist as a solitary guardian defending “democracy” against an external threat. However, this entire story is built on a fundamentally flawed premise. The far right is not an outsider threatening the mainstream; rather, it is a harmful outgrowth of the very mainstream itself.[1]

As the Socialist Equality Party (UK) stated during the 2024 anti-immigrant riots, the rise of fascist tendencies reflects the core struggles of imperialist politics and capitalist decline. Faced with worsening economic crises, intensifying geopolitical tensions, and growing opposition from the working class, the ruling class increasingly adopts nationalism, xenophobia, and authoritarian measures. These are not isolated incidents but intentional ideological strategies of a capitalist system in deepening crisis.

The Guardian’s framing—highlighting Shakman’s personal choice to “fight,” the perceived “encroachment” of the far right, and portraying the political centre as a steady democratic stronghold—only masks the true situation. This is a political myth, and a risky one.

The far right is incubated by the political mainstream, not external to it.

The core message of the SEP’s document is clear: “The far right does not ‘encroach’ on the mainstream; it is incubated by it.” This is not just a rhetorical device but a factual statement. For years, successive Labour and Conservative governments have created the conditions that allow fascist movements to flourish—through austerity, militarism, anti-immigrant scapegoating, and the systematic deterioration of working-class living standards.

Instead of changing this course, Starmer’s Labour government has actually worsened it. It came into power promising to “stop the boats,” deport “illegal” migrants, and uphold the fiscal constraints set by financial markets. Yvette Cooper’s summer police raids on immigrants were not a concession to the far right but a manifestation of their agenda executed from the top down. The fascists did not need to “encroach.” The state was already doing their work.

The liberal press: oscillating between exposure and legitimisation

The Guardian’s role here is fundamental, not accidental. It fluctuates between shocking exposés of the far right and sympathetic broadcasting of the ideas that support it. As noted, the Guardian gave lenient coverage to men imprisoned for setting fire to a hotel with 200 asylum seekers in Rotherham, portraying their “feelings of injustice” as deserving attention.

This isn’t hypocrisy; it’s class politics. The liberal media tries to keep its credibility with the middle class by condemning fascism, while also endorsing anti-immigrant narratives that support Labour and Conservative policies. Both roles benefit the ruling class by redirecting social anger away from capitalism and onto the most vulnerable.

The “infiltration” model: individualising fascism, obscuring capitalism

The undercover journalist method is not only inadequate but also creates political confusion. It portrays fascism as a matter of individual morality—focusing on “particularly nasty individuals,” secret Telegram channels, and covert networks—rather than understanding it as a social problem caused by the crisis of capitalism. It turns a political and social phenomenon rooted in the crisis of the capitalist system into a problem of especially malicious individuals.”

This individualisation aligns closely with the state’s law-and-order approach. Starmer’s response to the 2024 riots—featuring mass arrests, rapid courts, and a new national police force of 6,000—was praised by the liberal media as essential for maintaining “public order.” However, these repressive tactics are actually being set up to target the working class: striking workers, anti-war protesters, and anyone opposing capital’s influence.

The infiltration model, supported by NGOs like Hope Not Hate, suggests that police, courts, and security agencies are allies in combating fascism. However, this is a political trap. The capitalist state does not serve as a safeguard against fascism; instead, it functions as the tool through which the ruling class creates the circumstances for fascism to develop.

HOPE not hate exemplifies what Trotskyism recognises as the core political dead end of liberal anti-fascism. Despite its sincere self-description, it reveals an organisation whose class stance, political approach, and strategic outlook position it not as a remedy to the far-right threat but as a component of the structural issue.

HOPE not hate is not a grassroots group. It is a professional NGO, run by “researchers, educators, community activists and policy experts”—essentially, the upper-middle class. Its funding, charitable status, and strategic focus on “building skills and resilience across communities and civil society organisations” reflect the language of the non-profit sector rather than class activism. The working class doesn’t require middle-class experts to “build its resilience.” It needs an independent political party with a revolutionary socialist agenda.

The organisation’s mission centres on moral concepts such as “hope,” “hate,” “togetherness,” and “unity,” which deliberately conceal the class roots of both fascism and its opposition. Fascism is not merely a psychological flaw or a set of corrupt values. It is “a concentrated expression of imperialist politics and capitalist decay.” The ruling classes foster extreme nationalism and xenophobia to divert social tensions toward the right, support imperialist wars, and undermine the democratic and social rights of workers. An organisation that fails to identify capitalism as the root cause of the far-right threat cannot effectively lead the fight against it.

Defending the state that breeds fascism

HOPE not hate’s self-description reveals a strong commitment to “defend, champion and promote democracy and the rule of law; speaking out against anti-democratic and authoritarian forces and policies.” This statement signifies loyalty to the British capitalist state — the same state whose policies consistently foster conditions for far-right expansion.

This ongoing state, maintained through successive Labour and Conservative governments, has led to imperialist wars, decades of austerity, anti-immigrant nationalism, and the systematic erosion of the working class’s social standing. The far-right riots in Britain in August 2024 occurred less than a month after the Starmer Labour government assumed power on a platform of militarism, austerity, and promises to “stop the boats.” Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced a “summer blitz” of police raids on immigrants just days before the violence broke out. The far right thrives on the toxic environment created by the very parties that shape public life.

An anti-fascism committed to defending the state apparatus is politically ineffective. It views fascism merely as an outside threat to a supposedly healthy democracy — a false belief that disarmed the German working class in the 1930s. The working class cannot overcome fascism by simply defending the bourgeois state; it must be ready to dismantle it and establish institutions of workers’ power.

The NGO trap: policing opposition into safe channels

HOPE not hate’s approach — “creating a platform for ordinary people to do the extraordinary,” “supporting the wider sector to have greater impact,” “effective collaboration and sharing of skills” — exemplifies how anti-fascism can shift from a political fight to a structured, grant-supported sector. The organisation channels public frustration over racism and the far right into activities compatible with the capitalist system: community workshops, educational programs, policy advocacy, and “alternative narratives.”

This is not a failure of execution but a function. Such NGOs are tasked with absorbing, containing, and neutralising the social opposition created by capitalism, preventing it from evolving into an independent political threat to the system. HOPE not hate’s researchers may infiltrate far-right groups. Still, the organisation will never advocate for the political mobilisation of the working class against the Labour Party, trade union bureaucracy, or the capitalist state, which are the primary enablers of the far right.

The Searchlight lineage

HOPE not hate originates from Searchlight magazine, a British anti-fascist publication known for its collaboration with intelligence and police agencies, and for its persistent criticism of the revolutionary left. Searchlight established the model of anti-fascism as an intelligence operation focused on the state, viewing fascists as a criminal-psychological issue for authorities to manage rather than a political force to be challenged by the organised working class. HOPE not hate has adapted this approach for the modern NGO landscape—more refined, emphasising community engagement, yet maintaining the same political stance: supporting the state, marginalising revolutionaries, and keeping the working class politically passive.

What genuine anti-fascism requires

The fight against the far right can’t rely solely on ‘togetherness and unity’ across classes. It demands independent political action by the working class—the vast majority—against capitalism. This involves politically breaking away from the Labour Party, whose anti-immigrant nationalism and austerity policies foster far-right growth. It also means establishing rank-and-file committees to challenge the trade union bureaucracy, which collaborates with the state and corporations to suppress class struggle. An international effort is necessary to oppose imperialist wars—such as leaving NATO, ending the Ukraine conflict, and opposing the Gaza genocide—since militarism and fascism are interconnected. The goal is to fight for a socialist program that unites British and immigrant workers against their exploiters, rather than supporting liberal ‘multiculturalism’ that preserves capitalist class relations.

HOPE not hate hinders all these efforts. Its “hope” is that capitalism can become fairer. However, the working class requires a different hope — the revolutionary overthrow of the system that generates fascism. The struggle against the far right is inherently linked to the fight against capitalism. Any effort to treat fascism as an external threat instead of a result of the capitalist system only weakens the working class.

Shukman’s personal bravery is unquestioned. However, his narrative serves a clear political purpose: it replaces the collective struggle of the working class with the actions of a courageous middle-class individual. It fosters illusions about the state, downplays Labour and union roles, and shifts the focus away from the root cause of the problem—the capitalist system itself.

The working class should reject this version of anti-fascism. Its role isn’t to cheer on journalistic infiltrations but to create its own struggle organisations, unite across nations, and fight for a socialist solution to the capitalist crisis that fuels fascism. Only through such a movement can the far right be truly defeated—not just exposed or infiltrated, but rooted out.

[1] A year of hate: what I learned when I went undercover with the far right-www.theguardian.com