- The Guardian
- Issue #2029
Previously, this column mentioned the role of labour parties and social democracy as enablers to fascism. Against Fascism and War, Georgi Dimitrov’s report to the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International in 1935, characterised fascism in power as “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.” It is “a government system of political gangsterism, a system of provocation and torture upon the working class […]. It is medieval barbarity and bestiality, it is unbridled aggression in relation to other nations.” As to social democracy: “The Social Democratic leaders glossed over and concealed from the masses the true class nature of fascism, and did not call them to the struggle against the increasingly reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie. They bear great historical responsibility for the fact that, at the decisive moment of the fascist offensive, a large section of the working people […] failed to recognise in fascism, bloodthirsty, rapacious finance capital, their most vicious enemy, and that these masses were not prepared to resist it.” (emphasis in the original) Finance capital is characterised by a predominance of the pursuit of profit from the purchase and sale of, or investment in, currencies and financial products such as bonds, stocks, futures and other derivatives – the transformation of competitive “liberal capitalism” into monopolistic “finance capital”; just in case you wondered why the four major banks and their financial institution cohorts are “too big to fail.”
Meanwhile, business support for the fascists in the seat of government in Ukraine includes the likes of Fawkner Property Group and Rotary Australia along with the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations; In the mix will be the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists – the fascist outfit responsible for the killing of up to 14,000 Russians living in the areas of Luhansk and Donetsk who opposed the 2014 US-backed coup that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine. Earlier this month, a fundraiser at the Melbourne Hyatt brought together Fawkner Group’s Chris Garnaut, along with Ukrainian “entrepreneur” Alex Vynokur, the founder and fund manager of the $2 billion BetaShares, with its program around the 6000 Ukrainians who have come here this year. (The ratcheting sound you can hear is a rewind to the Menzies government embrace of murderous Ukrainian Nazi collaborators following WW2.) The themes of the Hyatt night included the raising of ultra-nationalist slogans – honour, integrity, duty, pride. Further in that vein is Garnaut’s take on Ukrainians, which, it turns out, is based on race: “Now I think they are one of the nicest races of people I have had the pleasure to meet.” The $4.4 billion fund manager emphasises his Catholic beliefs; “I have a huge distaste for communism and the oppression of communism”.
PARASITE OF THE WEEK: NDIS Minister Bill Shorten is already tipping the bucket on providers to the Disability Insurance Scheme, setting up an atmosphere of suspicion of what he calls “price gauging.” The government intends to dismantle the NDIS and shovel the money into the trillion dollar military budget.
