When he arrived in Montreal in 1937 to expose the dangers of the rise of fascism in the world, the writer André Malraux told those who came to listen to him how a plane from his squadron had been shot down in Spain. He spoke of the need to fight, “for the people and for an ideal of human dignity.” He also praised Norman Bethune, the doctor played by Donald Sutherland in the movies, to whom we owe advances in medicine.
The dutyin its pages of the time, considers the author of The human conditionwinner of the 1933 Goncourt Prize, as a vulgar propagandist. Malraux’s audiences are predominantly English-speaking, writes The dutyas if that discredited his thinking. The daily Canadawho attended the same events, offers a different account.
We know it today: faced with the rise of the extreme right in Europe, which is rumbling in Franco’s Spain like a dress rehearsal for the worst, André Malraux is not mistaken about the need to fight fascism.
The French-Canadian world that Malraux discovered, he spoke of it in a speech given in Madrid on July 7, 1937. “In one of the poorest countries, or rather in one of the poorest regions, which so resembles Spain, French Canada, where there is the same misery and the same courage, I spoke for Spain.” Malraux also recounts how a simple French-Canadian worker offered him his watch, his only wealth, to finance the fight against the rise of the extreme right.
In this French-Canadian society that my grandparents knew, social and political demands accumulated in a terrible jumble. In the midst of a general crisis, how could one get out of it? The world below found itself crushed by those above. To remedy the weaknesses of the political system that they were paying the price for, many subscribed to the idea of weakening it further, in the name of wild ideas that pointed the finger at scapegoats.
Any resemblance to this past is forbidden to note, profess today the new administrators of the same old fears and the same old resentments as before. Those same people who affirm that the extreme right does not exist, despite evidence that warns us of the contrary, see on the other hand everywhere, if we are to believe them, the crooked fingers of left-wing movements.
The neo-fascists are once again galloping freely through the uninhibited meadows of hatred of foreigners and minorities. They ride on worn-out rhetoric, where culture and civilization are always mentioned, as if they were immutable marble statues. They advocate coercive measures, the strengthening of executive powers. Their words serve to plow a battlefield rather than cultivate a common space. But above all, do not say that their ideology, their obsessions with a regeneration sung to the tune of identity, their desire to stigmatize minorities, is something already seen, already known! “The Devil’s finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist,” wrote Baudelaire.
Last May, the far-right parties gathered in Madrid, at the invitation of the ultranationalist party Vox. The speakers included the leader of the French National Rally (RN), Marine Le Pen, the crazy Argentine president Javier Milei, who is now supported by the billionaire Elon Musk, and André Ventura, the leader of the Portuguese ultranationalist party Chega. The voices of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, and other figures of the radical right were also heard. All claim to fight the same enemies: minorities, immigrants, foreigners, social movements. After all, doesn’t Vladimir Putin, in many ways, resemble these people?
Seeing Bolivia escape a coup d’état last week, how can we not think of the storming of the Capitol in the United States on January 6, 2021, when Donald Trump, despite his serial lies, is very likely to return to the head of the country? This fragile global situation is fostering, in its shadow, the growth of populisms of all kinds. In Canada, the rise of a Pierre Poilievre is partly taking advantage of a deleterious global context to allow himself to multiply outbursts worthy, at times, of alley cats. Unheard of, in any case.
In France, the Le Pen clan’s RN may be breaking records for absenteeism in the European Parliament, but the electorate entrusted it with a large part of its representation in the June 9 election. These same elected officials now risk making unprecedented gains in the second round of the legislative elections on July 7. The RN promises to repel immigrants, while reducing taxes on fuel, which amounts to cutting state revenues while increasing the profits of oil companies. The RN also shows its desire to exempt those under 30 from taxes. Aged 28, the president of the RN, Jordan Bardella, could thus not pay a penny to the state if he becomes prime minister, just like other wealthy young wolves in his entourage. In a framework where equity is put aside, the new extreme right, supported by billionaires and wealthy people, is in fact proposing to take over from neoliberalism by ensuring the renewal of its hegemony, taking advantage of a deadly moment when the crisis of democracy is reaching its peak.
The rise of the extreme right is evidence of a collapse of political representation systems, in an increasingly widespread denial of democracy, at a time when neoliberal policies encourage everyone for themselves. Whatever one may say, the neofascists and their supporters do not represent, in the face of this disaster, a threat to the system, but its pure product.
When a democracy is sick, said Albert Camus, fascism readily rushes to its bedside. And it is not to inquire after its news…