Rolling Back Fascism Is Not Easy, Part Two

This was first published in January 2013. I'm adding this note 5/25/16: On May 22, Austrian voters narrowly defeated a far right candidate for president, Norbert Hofer, choosing instead, Alexander Van der Bellen.

Nazism differed from Italian Fascism, and indeed from most other European fascist movements, at least to some degree, in that Hitler's fascism was strongly based upon "race" and "ethnic" identity, with the fanatical furious Führer the proponent of mass murder against people he deemed to be racially unfit, with his number one target being Europe's Jews. Members of other fascist movements tended not to emphasize this hatred as much as did Hitler, but they acquiesced to the dominant German dictator by participating in many a crime against minorities.* 

A post World War Two Nazi revival in Germany didn't materialize, although the fear of such remained for decades,** and still does for some. First the Allied occupation forces, and then the Germans themselves cracked down on Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, by banning the display or use of the swastika, even banning medals for veterans of the war, as they virtually all contained a swastika somewhere on the medal, by forbidding the Nazi salute (Hitlergruss, in German; that is, "Hitler greeting"), by banning Nazi songs, and by making the third verse of the national anthem the official version, thus removing the first verse, which had been exploited by the Nazis and other super German nationalists to support conquest, as it touted "Germany over all," but it was originally meant to promote German unity, not conquest, and the third verse more clearly defines that principle with the words "unity, justice and freedom."*** The right wing fanatics have stomped, huffed and puffed, but German democracy has flourished, showing that sometimes national law may need to be to some degree undemocratic to protect the basic principle of democracy from those who would destroy that democracy to gain power, and let's not forget, this was all started under the Allied occupation in West Germany, enforced by three democracies, the U.S., Britain, and France.**** The last I checked, Germany was still a model democracy and the tough anti-Nazi laws haven't diminished that, nor ended civilization. Laws must be flexible and what might be good for one country may not be good for all, or others. Similar measures were put into effect in postwar Austria, but right wing political groups in Hitler's homeland have tended to be more successful than those across the border in Germany, but this is in no way meant to suggest that Austrians are about to lead an establishment of a Fourth Reich, as Austria too seems to be a solid democracy.

Next, Rightwing Extremism In The United States

* Croatian fascism during World War Two manifested itself in hatred of Serbs, their close kin. The only real difference between the two groups is, Croats are Roman Catholic and use the Latin alphabet (some call it the "Roman" alphabet), while Serbs are Eastern Orthodox and use the Cyrillic alphabet (most prominently used in Russia). Religion can be used by some as a powerful motivator, including in the motivation and justification of hatred. In this case religion determined the "ethnicity" of people and several hundred thousand Serbs were murdered and many more were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism by Croats, especially by their militia forces. As to fascist collaborators with the Nazis, this could be an article or series of articles on its own, but briefly, the greatest number of Europe's Jews and Gypsies lived in eastern Europe, especially in the then Soviet Union, Poland, Lithuania, Rumania and Hungary. Fascists in these countries eventually helped the Nazis in their murderous deeds committed right in those regions, or in the sending of Jews to "resettlement areas," a euphemism for "concentration camps," where many were murdered. Only a small percentage survived the Nazi defeat. Mussolini, the Italian dictator, was not a racist anywhere near the likes of his Axis partner Hitler, but he too came under the sway of the man with the toothbrush mustache, and I don't mean Charlie Chaplin, and the "Duce" had his fascist thugs persecute and terrorize Italy's small, but vibrant, Jewish community. Hungary, an Axis ally, held out against deportation of their Jews for much of the war, but by 1944 they too gave in to Nazi pressure and outright force. Earlier, Hungary persecuted and repressed their Jewish population, even murdering Jews, but the vast number of the country's Jewish population lived until the Nazi takeover in 1944. This is in no way meant to suggest that Hungary's pre-1944 treatment of Jews was okay.  

** The plot of "The Quiller Memorandum," a movie from the mid 1960s starring George Segal, was based on a neo Nazi group in West Germany and an agent sent to get information on it. As he meets various Germans, you can never be sure if they are Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, or anti-Nazis. The movie is well worth watching. The link to my article on the movie: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-quiller-memorandum-anti-nazi.html

*** For more on the German anthem, see my article:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/09/german-question-part-forty.html

**** East Germany was occupied by the Soviet Union and any inclination by former Nazis to regain power would have been met by severe penalties, and possibly death. "In theory" Soviet Communism was not supposed to be racist and bigoted, but in reality, Stalin was another nutcase whose paranoia brought suppression to some of the Soviet Union's many ethnic and national groups, including to German communities living there, like the Volga Germans (German: "Wolgadeutsche"), who had been living in southern Russia since the 1700s. They had been invited and encouraged to settle there by the German-born Empress of Russia, Catherine the Great. 

WORD HISTORY:
Crime-The ultimate origins of this word are unclear. It traces back to Latin "crimen," which meant "accusation of wrongdoing, offense." Some say this was derived from another Latin word, which itself was borrowed from Old Greek, but I'm not really sold on this. Anyway, "crimen" was inherited by Old French, a Latin-based language, the form of which is uncertain to me, perhaps "crimne," which was then borrowed by English in the 1200s, seemingly as "crime," and with the meaning "sin, evil deed." Within a couple of hundred years this had taken on the more legalistic sense of "act that violates the law."