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• Germany and England
  

  
  by: Nesta Webster
  

  
  Chapter IV
  

  
  BOLSHEVISM AND FASCISM

• The defence of Czechoslovakia
  having been only a pretext for the world war into which we have narrowly
  escaped being plunged, and the destruction of the Dictatorships – other
  of course than Stalin’s – its real object, let us consider the
  nature of those systems which, at the cost of countless human lives and untold
  suffering, it was held necessary to destroy.
• On this subject most people
  in our country depended for their information on the Press and especially
  on the newspapers, which in the main opened their columns freely to anti-Fascist
  views and firmly closed them on contrary opinions and even on authoritative
  statements of fact.
• England has thus become a gigantic
  parrot house in which words pass from mouth to mouth without any comprehension
  of the real issues at stake.
• The analogy perfectly applies to the methods
  employed. For in the teaching of a parrot the procedure is, I believe, to
  place a thick cloth cover over its cage and then to go on clearly enunciating
  the same phrases over and over again until it has learnt to repeat them of
  its own accord.
• This is precisely what has been
  done to the British public;
• it has been kept in the dark as to the truth
  of world events and misleading statements have been made to it by the press
  and by that whisper that the secret directors of world events well know how
  to set in motion so that from the most raucous macaws down to gently twittering
  budgerigars the same catch-phrases are obediently repeated.

• The two most current and the
  most absurd of these are
  

  
  (a) that “Bolshevism is the outcome of
  Fascism” and
  

  
  (b) that “Bolshevism and Fascism are really
  the same thing” and therefore equally to be fought.
  

  
  

  
       (It will be noted, however,
  that the people who say this seldom display any inclination to fight
  Bolshevism.)

• Now with regard to the first
  phrase, that Bolshevism is the outcome of Fascism, history shows exactly
  the contrary; no “Red” rising has ever followed on a system for
  forcibly preserving law and order unless an attack had first been made on
  that system by subversive forces.
• From the French Revolution onwards
  a “White Terror” has always been the sequel to a Red.
• Fascism – under
  which term for the sake of brevity we must here include Nazi-ism – was
  both in Italy and Germany the reaction to the destructive activities of the
  Communists.
• And if in all such reactions
  there has been an element of violence, it is because terrorism can only be
  put down by counter-terrorism and a nation which has been kept in a state
  of fear and subjection under a tyranny once know as Jacobin and now as Bolshevik,
  inevitably turns with fury upon its oppressors as soon as its liberty has
  been restored.

• As a French historian has well
  expressed it:
  

  
  “Nothing is so terrible as those who have been
  afraid and are afraid no longer!”

• As to the second phrase, what
  could be more ludicrous than to bracket Bolshevism and Fascism together?
• The only point they have in common is that both are autocracies.
• But the
  police force is an autocracy, demanding unquestioning obedience from its
  subordinate ranks; is that then a reason for bracketing it with a band of
  Chicago gangsters who have to obey the murderous dictates of their leaders?
• The difference between the two
  is no greater than the difference between Bolshevism and Fascism.
• For Bolshevism
  is destructive of all that constitutes civilisation whilst Fascism sets out
  to correct those parts of civilisation which, in common with all sincere
  social reformers, it regards as defective.
•  A further and most important
  difference between the two is that whilst Bolshevism seeks to spread its
  doctrines all over the world and organises Communist Parties in every country,
  working under the obedience of Moscow for the overthrow of constitutional
  government and supplying them freely with funds, Fascism has never sought
  to proselytise and has never been accused, even by its bitterest enemies,
  of forming affiliations abroad or of financing any foreign group.
• Indeed Mussolini, somewhat
  egotistically, declared at the onset that Fascism was for Italy alone and
  that Italians only were capable of comprehending its ideals. The various
  groups of “British Fascists” became the butt of his pleasantries.
• Hitler expressed himself in
  much the same way with regard to Nazi-ism and in his insistence on
  “race” and the superiority of the German race over any other
  discouraged imitators. And that is only logical, since the essence of
  Fascism and Nazi-ism is Nationalism, whilst that of Bolshevism is
  Internationalism.
• This being so why should Fascism
  be continually denounced as a menace to this country whilst Bolshevism is
  declared to be innocuous?
• People who exclaim with an air of heroic determination:
  “We will not have Fascism here!” are really making themselves supremely
  ridiculous – they have never been asked to have it. But if the Italians
  and Germans choose to have it what business is it of ours to interfere?
• It
  is this “governessing” of other nations with regard to their internal
  arrangements as much as their foreign policy that led Hitler to
  protest.
• What then is this monstrous
  thing against which we are warned, so repeatedly?
• In Italy the word Fascism
  is now seldom used since it signifies only the first point in Mussolini’s
  programme – the suppression of Bolshevism in Italy, and that was
  accomplished long ago.
• Fascism was thus only a means to an end, and that
  end was the establishment of “the Corporate State.”
• This took place quite
  constitutionally; the King remained on his throne, in fact it was he who,
  after the march on Rome, sent for Mussolini and gave him full discretionary
  powers.
• After four years of reconstruction the Corporate State was created
  in 1926 by an act of legislation.
• Its principles are a system
  built up on Trade Unions of organised labour on the one part, and Capitalism
  on the other, and its object is to promote peaceful relations between the
  two. Together they form a corporation or guild and enter into agreements
  which cannot be infringed without rendering the defaulting party liable to
  prosecution, so that Capital cannot tyrannise over Labour and Labour cannot
  hold a pistol at the head of Capital.
•  Space forbids a fuller exposition
  of the system, but that it is one which has contented the workers of Italy
  is clearly apparent; at the same time it has forcibly suppressed the stirring
  up of class hatred. For the same reason the Press is now not free.
• When we observe the mischief-making
  role of many of our newspapers, we cannot help wishing that Fleet Street
  could be put under a like control.
•  In Germany the same ideals inspired
  Hitler.
• He himself, like Mussolini, had sprung from the ranks of the workers
  and felt keenly the misery of their lot at the hands of heartless employers;
  he felt too, as every thinking man must feel, the injustice between extreme
  poverty and vast riches acquired by the exploiters of labour.
• At the same
  time he realised the wickedness and futility of the class war. For this reason
  he hated Marxism, which he saw as “a world pestilence” to be destroyed
  before any constructive new order could be introduced.
• That both in Germany and Italy
  immense reforms have been effected nobody can deny.
• Agriculture has been
  encouraged so as to provide the population with home-grown food – in
  Germany at any rate superior to that which is to be found in Great
  Britain* - and thus to render the country
  self-supporting.
• *G. Ward Price, “I Know These
  Dictators,” p. 115, and confirmed to me on the day of writing this by
  an English friend just returned from Bavaria who speaks with particular
  enthusiasm of the marvellous vegetables grown there. Mr. Ward Price’s
  book should be read by everyone who wishes to know the truth about Germany
  and Italy under Hitler and Mussolini. 
• The housing problem has been
  dealt with and slums abolished; the workers’ conditions of life have
  been raised, their physique improved; holidays and amusements are provided
  for them; and their self-respect is stimulated so that each worker feels
  himself of value to the State.
•  How far this frame of mind will
  last we cannot guess; the weakness of all Socialist schemes lies in the fact
  that they depend on the degree of enthusiasm their originators are able to
  keep up; all we can say now is that in both these countries the people as
  a whole seem happy.
• Undoubtedly in both, the new
  order has pressed hardly on the upper classes, but why Socialists should
  rave against it seems at first inexplicable.
• The fact that the upper classes
  are allowed to live in peace, provided they do some useful work for the State,
  no doubt arouses the fury of the Bolshevik who holds that the hated bourgeois
  should be “liquidated,” after perhaps having his eyes gouged out.
•  The fact that the drawing-room
  Socialists, who disclaim all ideas of violence and have long preached the
  doctrines which Hitler and Mussolini have put into practice, not only disapprove
  but foam at the mouth when the names of the “Dictators” are mentioned,
  suggests one or both of two conclusions – either that they do not really
  wish for Socialism but adopt it as a pose, or that Socialism is a camouflage
  for something else.
• If it were not so they would
  praise the Dictators’ social reforms, even if they condemned their methods
  of government.
• But no, the Dictators and their systems are condemned by them
  as wholly evil.
• It may be that both these
  conclusions are correct.
• The vast number of “Socialists” to be
  found in drawing-rooms, universities, newspaper offices, etc., or whose ideas
  are set forth in books well boomed by publishers and Press, are undoubtedly
  actuated by the primitive instinct of self-preservation. They know that the
  sort of stuff they talk and write will pay, and that to profess
  “Left” views is the only way to a successful career. Of the real
  doctrines of Socialism many of them know nothing.
• But there are those who know.
• And these are the secret directors of
  world
  revolution, who use Socialism and Communism alike in order to achieve
  their real aim – world domination.
• For this reason they stir up
  strife between classes and nations. For this reason they hate “the
  Dictators” who have rendered them powerless in the lands that the Dictators
  control.
• In order to judge of the influence
  the Dictators exercise one has only to compare the effect on the character
  of the populations rules respectively by Hitler and Mussolini and on the
  other hand by Stalin:
• in the first: hope and purpose; in the second: dull
  despair; in the first: the friendly salute of the raised arm; in the second:
  the clenched fist of hatred and blood lust.
• The great evil of Marxism
  lies in its appeal to the basest instincts of human nature – to self
  interest, to greed and envy.

• The only honest Socialist I
  have ever talked with – who had known Marx personally and for this reason
  detested him – used to say:
  

  
  “We have not got to tell people what they would
  gain by Socialism but to ask them what they are prepared to lose. True Socialism
  means sacrifice, self-denial in the common sense".

• This is the Socialism that both
  Hitler and Mussolini have set out to inculcate and because the noblest instinct
  in human nature is its passion for self-sacrifice, they have met with a
  tremendous response: in Italy the women brought their wedding rings to help
  the cause, in Germany families sit down contentedly to their single dish
  meal once a month in aid of the Winter Relief Fund.
•  It is natural that the drawing-room
  Socialists in our country would not enjoy this sort of thing at all.
• It is
  one thing to write and talk of the beauties of Socialism, it is quite another
  to have to buy a cheaper make of car because some people are starving.
• Still less can the Italian or
  German systems please those who are using Socialism merely as a cover to
  their own scheme of world domination.