 I think in many countries we see the right-wing populist and the right-wing do very well in elections and going forward. The latest was in the Austrian election, I think it was last Sunday, where the so-called Freedom Party, the FPÖ, actually got 27% of the votes. And I think we have had Marine Le Pen, we have had Trump, we have had many, many right-wing populist movements and parties and people, Trump, doing very well in the latest period. And I think, and also we see in general that governments are moving right, one government after the other at the moment, how do you say that, are deciding on so-called Burkabands. You cannot wear what you want to wear, in Denmark they are discussing it now and I know in many other countries they are discussing this. So all these attacks on immigrants, on refugees, so we see what can, if you look at the surface of politics, it can seem like there is a shift to the right in many, many countries and I think that this has gotten a lot of people, a lot of young people especially, very worried and in good reason I think, I think it's a healthy thing to be disgusted and worried about this development and this trend and also we have seen a rise in hate crimes, racism and all this and we saw the demonstration in Charlottesville where actually an activist and anti-racist activist was murdered. So there are many incidents that get people concerned and also get them to think what is this phenomena, what is this right-wing populism, what is this far-right phenomena and very indignant also. What we also see is that on the left wing there is a tendency to, when you see these phenomena to cry fascism all the time, every time someone stands up saying something racist or something right-wing people immediately shout fascist at this person. I know the Cliffites in Denmark for example at the French presidential election they had a headline in their article saying the choices between the banker and the fascist that is between Macron and Le Pen and of course I can understand the need to just call something that is racist and not very nice just something very bad like fascist but it has become in this way it becomes more or less meaningless and it just becomes like a swear word and in my opinion not understanding what is fascism and just using it about everything that is right-wing and reactionary actually first of all makes people confused and also confuse ourselves in what is these different phenomena and how do we fight them and it is very clear we need to fight them but in order to fight them we need to understand them so first of all in my opinion we need to understand what is fascism actually what does it scientifically mean and in a Marxist sense it's not just a swear word you use against everything and everyone you don't like who are right-wing it actually has a scientific meaning so I will begin my lead off with actually go into the historical origins of fascism and I think this is important in order to understand it and also to understand the situation today and see what are the similarities and also what are the differences and not least what can we learn from there the how fascism arose in order to actually combat it and combat the right-wing and fascism arose in Italy in the 1920s and I will focus on this I know normally you will focus on Germany and I think also that is a very important lesson but I hadn't read that much about Italy and I thought it was very interesting and also it came before it's Germany it's the same processes but but in Italy I would say it is more clear maybe what is actually the essence of fascism because in Germany you could not get confused but it is very connected to anti-semitism and that is actually one part of the Nazi regime a very important part of course but it's not the essence that was more like the German version of fascism and anti-semitism was not a big thing in Italy there was not a lot of Jews in Italy so you didn't have to use those as a scapegoat for for your policies and Trotsky he wrote quite a lot analyzing this phenomenon and I really want to encourage the comrades if they want to know more to read what he what he wrote especially about Germany in the 30s and what he says is that not all reactionary regimes are fascist there can be military a military bonapartist dictatorships that can be all kind of dictatorships but they're not all fascist just because it is a dictatorship and there are certain historical factors that that made the triumph of fascism possible and also that not all races are fascist either so you have to you have to look specifically at at fascism and what he says and I will quote and I know it can be a bit difficult to follow so I will try to explain after what what he means he says the fascist movement in Italy was a spontaneous movement of large masses with new leaders from the rank and file it is a plebian movement in a region directed and financed by big capitalist powers it issued forth from the petty bourgeoisie the lumbin proletariat and even to a certain extent from the proletarian masses Mussolini a former socialist is a self-made man arising from this movement so what is fascism it is a map it is a phenomena based on a social mass base of the petty bourgeoisie especially so it's not just a military coup it actually has a social base in society it's financed by big capital and and the purpose of fascism coming to power is to annihilate physically the labor movement and and in that way destroy the ability of the workers to move in any way so so these are like the three characteristics of a fascist regime and I think this is very important also to understand today when we talk about fascism and I will come back to this and and you could say in in Germany this was a description of Italy but but it very much applies to Germany also yes so what actually happened in Italy and after the the first world war the war had led to a huge development in industry and therefore also the working class in Italy and also its organizations the Socialist Party that is the Social Democratic Party or Labor Party and the and the trade unions had grown quite a lot in these years and also in the in the years just after the war of course as we all know the war was followed by the by the Russian Revolution and and not just a revolution in Russia but a general revolutionary wave throughout Europe and the world that also affected Italy and there was a big strike wave in Italy after the first world war in 1919 there were 1666 strikes the next year 1881 thousand strike and and then these strike waves actually was quite successful the the industrial workers got better wages they got the eight hour day they got recognition for the unions right to to negotiate the right to exist the unions a to have collective bargaining and collective contracts and and also they set up factory councils and many of the big factories that the bosses had to accept because they existed and and what else could they do so there was a big movement among the workers in Italy and there was also a big movement amongst the peasants a lot of the peasants in Italy most of them were either they didn't have any land at all so they were like a peasant proletariat or they just had a little bit of land so they also had to work very few of them actually had enough land to sustain themselves and there was a big movement in the countryside where the peasants coming back as soldiers from the war saying we want land so they occupied it and actually the government had to accept this fair complete what can you do if the peasants have occupied the land and say okay you can you can stay on the land for four years hoping that then the problems would be solved and then it but you can you can keep it if you set up cooperatives and start to organize in these cooperatives in order to try and have some control of the peasants yes so actually also the agricultural daylabors in the peasants they form very strong unions what is known as the red leaks that actually controlled more or less production in the countryside if you wanted to have work you had to go through the red leak they would divide the work so that all workers had something to do and and nobody got unemployed and everybody shared in the work there was so nobody would go hungry so these leaks and the cooperatives organized more or less everything and then in 1920 this strike wave among the workers culminated in factory occupations starting among the metal workers there was a dispute in the metal factories the bosses locked out the workers thinking they were clever but then the workers actually decided to occupy the factories and start running production themselves and these factory occupations they spread not just in the north where they began among the metal workers but to all the metal workers and it began to spread further out up to when half a million workers were actually occupying and beginning to to start production by their by themselves and also to set up these factory councils which could be the beginning of setting up some kind of so yes so what we had initially in 1920 was it was actually a revolutionary situation where the workers were posing the question of power and actually moving in that direction of taking power and and also beginning to set up red guards under the control of the factory councils in order to defend themselves so actually beginning to to create armed bodies of men connected to these factory councils the problem was that these factory councils were only local and the leadership of the movement the CDL the trade union was a reformist leadership and what they they tried to control the movement and also to keep it within the limits of capitalism they they they tried to make it all the time a question of pay rise and of recognition of workers right to have a union and to bargain instead of taking the struggle forward to making it a question of society and the workers taking power they tried to limit it to dust to these economic trade union demands and the same thing did the did the leadership of the Socialist Party and it is clear if you have a situation where the factories are occupied and the workers are in a in a struggle and the leadership does nothing then at some point the movement begins to lose momentum you cannot just keep being isolated factories forever and and and the movement nothing happens it has to take a step forward or the movement will begin to die out it has to be centralized or the movement will begin to crumble and this is what happened in Italy and I think we have seen many times throughout history that that that at a certain point in the movement if it is not centralized and taken forward by the leadership which is unfortunately what most often happen then the workers begins to get demoralized and begins to to go back one by one of factory by factory to go back to work and to the normal ways of functioning of capitalist society you cannot be in a strike and in a struggle indefinitely and the leaders of the Socialist Party and the trade unions they they maneuvered and blamed each other and played with word who was responsible for this movement not going forward but the the main thing was none of them wanted to take it forward because the leadership of both of them were reformist didn't want to break with with capitalism basically the leadership of the the National Council of the CTL the trade union declared that the aim of this struggle is to get the bosses to recognize the principle of trade union control over factories so that that was their vision people the workers were occupying the factory and what they said is we want to be recognized we want to negotiate with you but it is clear the power was on the side of the workers so it was a huge step back in this sense yes so so what the what the government did the government was was was led by a liberal called I'm not a very good at Italian something like it Geolitti I think he was the prime minister and he intervened and and and and tried to to set up this to have some kind of compromise which of course is never a compromise but it's actually a way of trying to devoid further struggle saying we should set up some kind of factory councils not controlled by the workers but to have but to have joint management at the factories so the bosses have to recognize that the workers should be part of running the factories and I think everybody who knows northern European countries today know what this means it means you can be part of deciding who is fired and who is not fired and so on when the class struggle dies down this is how it always ends because it's in the end it under capitalism it is the bosses who decides but this was the compromise reached by the mediation of the liberal government in Italy joint trade union and bosses management it was called yes the Socialist Party was actually at this time which is quite astonishing you could say it was actually a member of the of the third international of the common turn but they and in the leadership in words were the so-called maximalists those who in words were revolutionary but indeed when it came to it actually were not prepared to to take power but but hit behind words oh but this is not a true revolutionary movement we have to wait for the real revolutionary movement to to begin and then we can we can move we shouldn't do any deals or put forward any partial demands and so on so in the end they actually ended up behaving like the reformist they just had other words when they spoke and the communist international the the executive committee they actually sent out an appeal to the to the Italian workers they could see what was going on sending out an appeal to take power carry out an armed insurrection purse the party of the reformist and set up councils of workers peasants soldiers and sailors so it is clear that the communist international could see what is the movement actually about this is a potentially this is a revolutionary movement and it is actually possible for the Italian workers to take power and this is what should happen yes of course the Socialist Party actually had grown from 60,000 in 1918 to 200,000 members in 1920 so it is clear it was it was a party that was reflecting the radicalization in society and was actually and also if you look at the membership of the union it was also growing and much bigger so it was clear that that there was a possibility of this party actually going in the lead of the working class but they they didn't have the right policies or courage or whatever to actually carry it through and it actually ended up in the Socialist Party splitting in January 1921 on the National Congress where one-third of the party then walked out and formed the Communist Party they also had some problems and I will get back to that later but we have Italy we have this huge movement among the workers we have this huge huge movement amongst the peasants and you can see the big capitalists the industrialists and the big landowners being very very afraid of of the future and what is going to happen and being afraid of losing everything they have actually losing their power losing their privileges so they they decide that they have to step up they are very unfortunately most of the time more ahead more clear thinking than the than the workers leaders and in 1919 they formed an alliance to fight against Bolshevism and in 20 they set up the General Federation of Industry an organization for all of these big industrialists in order to fight against the workers and they began to lean on Mussolini's gangs and other gangs that that were different armed groups in Italy that were fighting the workers and they began to lean on these of course the big industrialist doesn't go out himself and peter a worker but you can get people to do it by leaning on them and giving them money and giving them weapons and so on and this is what what they began to do in in Italy so they both needed the fascist and these gangs in order to combat the workers in a very physical way and they also began to lean on these on the fascist because it's very clear both of you look at Italy and Germany that that both countries come into the scene the historical scene quite late in history when Britain and France and other countries had already colonized most of the world and it countries like Italy and Germany they they hadn't really had the same share of the cake you could say they wanted their own colonies their own markets their own places to exploit and and therefore they wanted the industrialists they wanted a strong government with a very aggressive foreign policy and you it's very clear in the case of Hitler that this was a strong government with a very aggressive foreign policy in order to create room for this newly developing capitalist countries against countries like Britain and and France so the big industrialists they began to look at fascism not only as as something auxiliary something to just combat the working class but actually of something a force that that could be good to put in power in order to get the house in order you could say and yes they wanted this strong state that could directly impose their will so we didn't have to have all these negotiations liberal democracy these kind of spectacles but you could actually just have a say to do to further your interest and especially from 1921 after this workers struggle that had been defeated and died down and economic crisis hit Italy and an economic crisis hits the workers that's very clear unemployment price and so on but it also hits the capitalists it hits their profits and in order for them to keep profits up they also want a state that can help them in this respect if you if they can have a state that can cut wages keep the workers down disband unions and and have laws that doesn't say the eight hour working day for example then then it helps on and also give tax redemptions and all this it helps to to proper profits so especially from 21 the capitalists initially began to look for fascism as a way of solving their problems you could say and actually solving the problems of a capitalism in a blind alley that was the case in in 21 yes so after the war there were many different anti-labour leagues in Italy one of them were muslims they were called combat fasci I think fasci is at this point meant some some kind of a gang or something and there was the war volunteers in something called the aditi of of yeah people who had fought in the war and who had now been demobilized coming back to Italy and they were about 20 20,000 armed members and and they became the shock troops of various anti-labour leagues in this struggle against the workers and what they would do is if there was a peaceful procession a demonstration or something of workers in some city also women children and so on they would go in and they would just start attacking with grenades with knives with the if you have 20 30 armed gangsters what is basically is going in in a peaceful demonstration and just starts slashing out at people who who is not expecting this at all you can create quite a big scare and quite a big mess of it and this is what they started to do in different towns and especially in the countryside in Milan in April 1919 there was a very big parade that reached close to to the center that was dispersed and then the same day they went into the office of the Socialist Party paper in that city called Avanti and just sack the place and this was also more and more common they just went into the offices of the Labour Leagues the unions the Socialist Party and their papers and just smashed everything up and burned down the place and and beat up everybody who was inside and and it doesn't take how can you say the workers were many more and much stronger but they they were not organized in any kind of defense it doesn't take that many to start these kind of attacks and this kind of intimidation if you are determined and if you have a plan and if you are armed then you can do it quite easily you can say yes and this just continued in in December 1919 the new chamber the new Parliament in Italy opened and as it closed the Socialist Deputies as they left Parliament they were just beaten up by fascist gangs also yes and and soon these different groups fused with the Mussolini gangs and that became like the fascist movement the beginning of it and after the factory occupations because then the industrialists and the landowners was so scared they decided to to send quite a lot of money into the fascist organizations to just fund them with the millions of liars I guess it was in Italy yes and for that the fascist gangs could buy arms they could pay the recruits to actually be full-time fascist gangsters and and also to pay ex-officers from the army who enrolled in these fascist groups so they started in the countryside where people were more isolated just attacking and they started in Bologna that was the center of these red leagues and they went into there had been municipal elections in November 1920 and the Socialist Party had won a big victory and at the first session of this new council they the group of fascists went in and just shot crazily and actually it ended up killing actually a reactionary councilman and it it has never been solved who killed him and they said at that time it wasn't the fascist they used but it's very clear it was the fascist but they used it as an excuse now a reactionary this right-wing municipal council guy has been killed so we just started a start an offensive against the labor movement so everything was turned on its head actually they created the mess and then they used it as an excuse to just go into the offensive and the fascists yes these different action squadrons of punitive groups and also they a lot of them were were headed by the local landowners the sons of the local landowners just going into these yet into these groups in order to to use them also against the the the workers in the in the countryside they had cars they had vans to be driven around to different areas and to help each other to attack these workers that that lift different places yes these groups even though it was not official they were helped by the state by the police the military and some kind of diff I think it's a mix maybe called carabineri or something like that some kind of Italian police armed force I think the police helped them by recruiting people to to these fascist gangs they helped them by a giving permits for arms for the fascist groups and revoking arms permits for for the labor organizations and they remain passive if there were any fascist attack they only went in if the fascists were in problems to help them and also the army the general bedouliou he was chief of staff he sent out a confidential circular to the officers saying if you enroll in the fascist organizations you can keep getting for a fifth of your pay and this was this were men coming back from the war having nothing to do and obviously used to fighting so they could keep getting part of most of their pay if they enrolled in these these fascist organizations and also giving a munition from the state arsenals and so on yes so they began to occupy different regions by thousands of of armaments the liberals who were in power in Italy so called Democrats they thought it's a good idea to lean on the fascist in order to smash the workers so when we have smashed the workers then we can take on the fascist that that was their clever idea and then they would end up as the masters of the country and in the spring of 21 parliament was dissolved preparing for new elections and they set up a national a national block including the fascist different bourgeois parties stood on the same platform in the election and this helped the fascist to get their first MPs and the fascist got elected 30 MPs in this election with the help of the liberals and because they hoped then to get the labor movement to to to be crushed in this in this move and it was very clear that it was not the intention of Mussolini or the fascist to to be just succumbed by the liberals it was their intention to take power or to get into power some some some way or the other Mussolini was was now there are thousands of fascist armed and they want something to happen it's clear you also though they can be in a constant them how can you say mobilization also for this psychology you also have to move forward and there was a huge pressure from below in the fascist organization in order to take step forwards one thing is just to smash up workers but also you need to now you have Mussolini talking about power he also had to do something and he began to mobilize these different fascist gangs a 50,000 I think in Milan gathered on this in in the weight of the so-called March on Rome but actually and I think this is a it's very often portrayed as they got into power in some kind of coup but actually Mussolini he had these men but he wanted to to get into power in a more parliamentary fashion and I think that is something that is good to remember that just because you have democracy on paper it doesn't necessarily mean that it is not how can you say that it's not a vaccination against fascist coming to power he also came to power a democratically you could say yes what he did was there was these fascist gangs gathering they were occupations in different regions and and the government now could see there might be a threat that they would be overthrown so so the prime minister he called us a state of siege but the king didn't want to sign it the king he plays a very helpful role of the fascist in all this he didn't want to sign it so there was complete confusion and the police didn't know what to do so they just let the fascists do what they wanted and in the end the king summons Mussolini to Rome in order to settle down everything in order for him to to form a government this is a guy with 30 members of parliament out of there were several hundred parliamentarians in the in the Italian parliament but the king he says no what we should do is summon Mussolini to form a new government and this is and he accepted and then after he had taken power in parliament he summoned these fifty thousand by train very heroic march on Rome they had already gotten power by the king and then they are driven in by train and then they can march through Rome and and seem very impressive in some way but this is actually what happens in the beginning he had to threat carefully because the workers organizations were still in existence in in Germany so what he did was to have an absolute majority he passed the new elect electoral law saying in 23 that if a party got a majority in the elections if and if they got 25 percent of the vote they would have two-thirds of all votes in parliament that is a very clever law to do you just need to get 25 percent of the votes then he called an election they completely intimidated everybody who went to vote they got 25 percent of the of the votes and then they had two-thirds in parliament at couldn't start running by decree so so he didn't do anything illegal from a bourgeois democratic sense but that was a way of him obtaining an absolute power and then he could begin yeah he began to introduce emergency laws he began to ban strikes suppress all liberties and and governing by decree and in 25 and 26 all parties except the fascists were dissolved and what they then had to do was to try and destroy the unions because the unions had been smashed up by the by the fascist in especially in the countryside but they were not eradicated and in order to really slash the conditions of the workers you have to eradicate a completely any trace of organizations of the workers so so what they did was first of all creating fascist unions and pushing people into them I don't have that much time so if anybody wants to know how I can explain that in the summer but what they did was basically saying you don't get a job you don't get to eat if you don't join a fascist union that is a very compelling way of getting people into your organization and also they began to yet to suppress the industrial unions but actually they never managed to get support among the workers there were elections to these factory councils in the beginning and they never got a lot of votes and the same as is true in in Germany Hitler's Germany when Hitler had come to power in in 33 there were elections to the factory councils and the Nazis got 3% of the votes and I think this is important to to understand because there is a myth that all Germans all German workers or all Italians they supported the Nazis or the fascists and this is not true and if you look at the figures it's very clear that this was not the case the problem in these countries were the leadership of the unions and of the of the labor organizations the Socialist Party and the Communist Party and and this is what I want to say a bit about also because this is the main thing I think what did the what did the workers organizations do you can only fight back especially at an enemy like fascism in an organized centralized way what did they do the Socialist Party first of all they could have won the middle layers the peasants were voting for the Socialist or supporting them at least and especially in the factory occupations but the but the program of the Socialists were not give the land to the peasants like the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 it was to warn the peasants that if the Socialists came to power they would take the land that is not a very good way to win over this whole very big group of peasants the petty bus was seen and what also happened was that they completely just how to say that they completely left the workers on their own when there was this revolutionary wave in 1920 Mussolini he said about the Socialists and I think and he know them very well because he was a Socialist until 1914 he said they did not know how to profit from a revolutionary situation such as history does not repeat and that was actually the basis of him coming to power the youth and the war regiments many of them supporting fascists if there had been a strong lead from the labor movement in a revolutionary direction they could also have been one over to the working class in order to change society because what they were looking for was something else something different a way of changing society but the problem was that the labor leaders didn't give them any lead in this direction they just kept getting into deals with with the liberals and the government in order to solve to try and find some negotiated deal in 1921 on 3rd of August the Socialist Party signed a peace deal it was actually called a peace deal with the fascist broke it by the liberal government to say we we agree to not attacking each other so the Socialist Party signed it and Mussolini signed it and then Mussolini used it the Socialist said OK now we are fine we will not be attacked anymore this is after the fascists have smashed up their offices but Mussolini used it in order to strengthen his organization denounce the deal in November and just go even further into the offensive and now the Socialist Party had completely created illusions in in this way of of combating a actually a true to ready one of the leaders of the Socialist Party I think he said one must have the manhood to be a coward this was that this was a way of fighting or we shouldn't upset we shouldn't provoke the fascist we should keep the public opinion on our side so so we so we the best thing to do is not to fight it will it will pass he will never come to power we just have to wait be the responsible party and then problems will be solved and then it will be our turn this this was the thinking and the workers were actually trying to fight back they were setting up different fascist anti fascist militias called the digital popular in order to to arm themselves and fight back but but both the Socialist Party and the trade unions were very hostile towards this because they had this idea of not fighting back but also this new communist party which you might excuse because they it was a very new party but they also they had a very sectarian attitudes towards these these anti fascist groups what they said was this is not communist led groups because they consisted of all kind of political tendencies and there are many who are not class conscious enough so we cannot go into them so they pulled out the communist in order to create their own groups to defend the to attack the fascist the problem was they were not strong enough so they didn't really do anything if they had actually given a real revolutionary lead to these anti fascist groups they could actually have fought back against the fascist and might have won a very possibly if they had had the right policy instead they withdrew in a very sectarian way and and you can see the same process going on in Germany I won't go into that because they don't have that much time and yes but actually you can see the communist having it was later it was in the 30s having this third period theory of the biggest enemy is the social democrats their social fascist so before we fight against fascism we fight against the social democrats and actually joining up with the Nazis to to attack meeting of social democratic workers and beat them up in a completely crazy manner of course and then when they realized the danger it was too late and Hitler had come to power so what is fascism to sum up you can say world war one was a sign of a capitalist system in decline and it's a way of the capitalist to overcome the problems in their own system you can see and and one of the other sides of a system in an impasse is the is the workers going on to the offensive and I think this is a very important thing and I will get back to it that that what you see first when a system goes into a decline and into an impasse is the workers reacting and fighting back in order to to create a better life and then if that doesn't succeed on the back of that fascism can come into power Trotsky he said fascism is the chemically pure distillation of the culture of imperialism and when I was I saw a lot of articles we have written and I have read this many times and I had really had to think about what does it actually mean it's the pure essence of imperialism it's something that is very easy to say but what is it actually but when I think about it as I see it it is really this it is finance capital not not being able to find a way out of the internal contradictions of its own system and trying to solve it by just applying power in order to further its interest both internally against the workers and externally in order to create the markets and and for its for its production so so this is like the pure pure essence of imperialist policies in in a system that is that that can see no way out so if you look at the situation now this is the final part and I think this is important but I thought I thought it was necessary to have this historical explanation first because fascism is something we say very often but what does it actually mean and what can we use it for today what we see now is a system in decline in many ways similar to the situation in in in in the 30s and the in the 20s and the 30s a system in decline a system in a blind alley the capitalist can find no way out in any way we have these insolvable contradictions so there are many similarities but still I would argue that that that doesn't mean like many on the left-wing things or says that fascism is on the agenda in the immediate future not in any way that is not to say that we don't see the rise of of the right wing and also of the far right wing and that we need to to fight it what we see is that that the whole political system that we know it crumbles also like we saw in the 20s the the political center begins to disintegrate we see all the old parties who used to switch have being in government the Social Democrats or the liberals or whatever they're called in differentories or labor or whatever they they can't form governments in some places they can't even phone from government together anymore like in Austria because they are they when they come into power they get discredited because they all have to carry out the same policies the necessary policies that is within the limits of a capitalism in crisis that it is cuts and cuts and cuts and they can do nothing else and I think that is also why they call all these other groups populist that is because they think people like Trump but also on the left wing this are people who say something that are popular that resounds among the population and the old traditional parties they can't do that because they know they have to do what is necessary for the system and that is only one way and that is austerity the problem is they can't solve these internal contradictions in any way so so what we see is a political polarization to both sides and people are looking for something else and that is why we see all these anti-establishment phenomena rising people are just sick and tired of of status quo and and the establishment what is and I think we should there are many on the Danish left wing at least that are very sad about this thing there are no trust in politics anymore the social cohesion in society is being undermined they're really trying to put back trust in democracy but in my opinion it's a very good thing that people do not trust the system or beginning not to trust the system to solve their problems that they're beginning to see that this system cannot work and we need something else the problem is if there's only the right wing to say this people will go that way but but the potential is there for for polarization and for people going to the left wing and yes so so the social basis now for this right wing populism being going forward is a system in an impasse and in in decline yes so what these right right wing populist groups are they base themselves on especially I would say the the failure of the reformist leaderships in the labor movement to do anything about the problems of the working people and and for people in general in Denmark the the Danish people's party that is a bit like the freedom party in Austria it's a right wing populist party they they began to really go forward in the 90s we had a social democratic government they said it has never been as good as it is now and that was not how people felt it then comes someone along saying there are problems we recognize people have problems we also know what the what the problem is its immigrants we know who to blame and and nobody else said there were problems and now even the social democrats are saying yes we have problems and the problems are the immigrants they're competing with the Danish people's party so so where should people look but it is very clear that places where there is a left-wing anti-establishment alternative that these right wing populist groups that most of those who support them can be one over to left-wing alternatives and you see it in Britain for example UKIP is nothing anymore now we have Jeremy Corbyn winning big time among I would I would guess many people who formerly would have voted or supported UKIP also I know there was an opinion poll some years ago among UKIP voters and most of them said yeah we want an NHS on public hands yes we want a nationalization of the energy companies and it's clear these right-wing populists they will never give it but most of them has never been tested so so that is also why they can win win votes so what we see now we see this right-wing populist but they should not be mistaken for fascist they have some of these groups have fascist elements in them and we also see in some countries actual actual fascist groups growing and going forward but they're still very very small why do I say that fascism is not on the agenda right now the social base for fascism is completely different now than it was in the 30s and the 20s if you look at the number of self-employed including peasants it is in France it was 30 it was 9% in 2010 Germany now it's 12% the average in the EU is 17.3% the peasantry and and this social base the petty bourgeoisie is completely being soaked up you could say into the proletariat in the years since since before the Second World War so the social base is much smaller and that means they can't just go into this into this direction into this solution also they learned from the last time one thing is to put some strong man in power to to put up to safeguard their interest but they couldn't control neither Hitler or Mussolini so in the end they ended up provoking mass movements and not really serving the interest of big capitals so they would have to think very strongly again then we have other layers like the middle layers like doctors teachers and so on earlier they were like privileged layers that also could be one to fascism today they're proletarianized in Italy in the 20s it was the students also who supported fascism today the students are moving left they're not a social base either yes so so so therefore and and and I think most importantly what is on the agenda now is a system in impasse and it is like in the 20s and also the 30s it is pushing the working class to move and it is pushing the working class to move and to be able to attract also the middle layers what was the problem in Italy and in Germany in the 20s and the 30s it was the lack of leadership from the workers movement from from those who were supposed to lead the fight for a better world they completely capitulated when the struggle actually came so the best way to make and the fascist couldn't get into power until after the workers had been completely defeated so so if we say what is on the agenda now it is the workers moving to change their lives what is what is the soul thing we can do in order to make this successful the soul thing we can do is to build an organization that is actually able to lead this movement to success and not into defeat and this will be on the agenda in the next period of course there will be I think a rise in the far right and attacks and hate crimes and we should fight against this we should if necessary put up groups to protect the demonstrations like in Charlottesville and so on but the main struggle is a political struggle in order to create a leadership of the labor movement that is actually capable of carrying out the task of changing society in a better way and I think this this is I have to sum up I have been told I think there are many things you could go into about the right wing now but I think this is the main lesson there are those on the left wing who are so preoccupied with going out fighting fascists but the main way building a revolutionary organization and mobilizing on a mass scale I know it was done in Sweden there has been mass demonstrations against the fascists it was done in in the US and I think this is there are people on the left wing who who think everything is black but what they don't see is yes we have far right groups coming up but we have much much bigger demonstrations against the far right when Trump was elected there were massive demonstrations and when the far right tried to demonstrate in San Francisco there were huge mobilizations the duck workers said they would strike and and the right wing had to cancel their demonstration in France in one of the regions where Front National had gotten many votes in in the previous elections when there was this movement in the spring they were nowhere to be seen because they have no role to play in mass movements so this is how what we should aim for and learn from the from Italy no trust in the state in fighting fascism no trust in the liberals only trust in the working class that it will move and that it will be able to take power if we are able to build the necessary forces to make this a success thank you