 I'll start with a quote from Trotsky. If the Communist Party is the party of revolutionary hope, then fascism as a mass movement is the party of counter-revolutionary despair. I think this is not a bad beginning to understanding fascism. In a period of extreme turbulence and revolutionary crisis, the working class and communism represents the hope of humanity, a better society, society of equality, tolerance, education, culture, all the most advanced and developed aspects, cultural, economical aspects of capitalism, raised to an even higher level. And it's not popular to talk about enlightenment, but that's certainly what we were striving for, of enlightened society, where education is generalized and so on, and culture is accessible to everyone. Now fascism is the very opposite in Trotsky. I will be referring a lot to Trotsky here because out of the great Marxist thinkers, he is the one who actually observed comments on the events firsthand as he was politically active in the 1930s and 20s, of course, when we had development of fascist regimes in Europe. And Trotsky referred to fascism as being this distilled essence of the culture of imperialism. And it's not hard to see why. So what he referred to is despair, of course, extreme jingoism, nationalism, ignorance, racism, although not always anti-Semitism, but that obviously is part of it, bigotry, misogyny, and all these things are what we associate usually with fascists and the fascist neo-Nazi groups and so on. We can look at the likes of EDL. They're really like graduates, they're just football hooligans with a bit of a political program slightly attached onto it. And they represent all the worst aspects of British society, ignorant, bigoted, drunk. There's real drags of society, to be honest. I counted a few in the pub ones, and it was really not a pleasant experience. And in such crisis as the ones that we're passing through, the working class has multiple chances to take power and transform society into the kind of society we want to see. And in doing that, it pulls behind it the Petit Bourgeois laylers who look to the Politiariate for leadership. One of the characteristics of a Petit Bourgeoisie is that it's very disparate, it's not cohesive, it's incapable of forming any kind of political program to change society and to take society in a different direction. All it can do is fall behind one of the two contending classes in capitalist society. That is the ruling class, the capitalist class or the bourgeoisie or the Politiariate, the working class. Now, but if the working class fails to take power, and I will be referring again to Germany quite a lot here because obviously the regime of Hitler is the most, let's see, the most famous example of a fascist regime. And the working class had multiple opportunities to take power in Germany between 1918 and 1924. It got very close, basically, to take power and then to transform society, not just Germany, but there would have been the beginning of a revolution in the whole of Europe, France, Britain and so on. And it would have completely changed the course of history but because it failed to take power, certain things happened which would have otherwise not have happened, such as history. If the heroic struggles of the worker don't lead to the final victory of the Politiariate at the defeat of capital, that's the abolition of capitalism and the introduction of social society across the world. Now, if the workers failed to put themselves at the head of the nation and present the way out of the crisis, then after a period of inconclusive struggle, and in the case of Germany, you had a period which lasted for around 1918 to 1932, so that's 14 years which this struggle took place in various degrees of intensity. So after a period of inconclusive struggle, those Petit-Bortua layers, so originally at times side with the Politiariate to be ready to propel the Politiariate or the working class to power, they will be seeking another way out. They will seeking order, stability, normality, if we talk about it in those terms, as we often hear today, basically a return to capitalist stability. So the economy can grow and so on, all those kind of things, but also the disorder often is associated revolution, particularly from a Petit-Bortua point of view, shopkeepers don't like all these demonstrations going on to shop in their business and so on. So these Petit-Bortua layers will be drawn to the camp of order, as you call it, as it's sometimes referred to. At the same time, the Bortua are looking for a seeking end to the crisis, the social, political and economic crisis. And the only way they can do that is by completely smashing the working class, completely smashing the organizations of the working class. Obviously they couldn't actually get rid of the working class itself, although they abolished themselves. And this is where fascism comes in. So with the help of the money and organizational ability from the Big Bortua Sea, the fascists begun or will do in these situations begin, the most vicious propaganda campaign directed against workers, against the trade unions, against the labor movement, against strikes and against demonstrations, as well as obviously combined with the racism, which is often also a field which has been sown in the whole preceding period by the capitalist press, who constantly sown the seeds of racism in society in order to basically kind of create a scapegoat for the ills of capitalism itself. And obviously anti-Semitism was not the creation of Hitler or the fascists at all. They had been around in Germany for decades and have been around on the right wing of German politics for decades, not to the left at all. So these fields had already been sown and the fascists came in to reap them in the sense. And this propaganda by the Bortua press and so on, as well as the fascists, they imbue the petty Bortua layers with a vicious hatred against the working class, they blame it, the whole thing, the whole crisis and everything is all the fault of the workers, all the fault of the trade union leaders and so on. And in these circumstances, when these Bortua layers move in this direction, this is where fascism can find a mass base. And in Germany, this happened not in 1920, not in 1923 or 1924 or 1926, but in 1929 it began to happen after Wall Street crash. So from being a party of 2.6% in the election of 1928, the Nazi party became a party of 18% in 1930. So you have this massive leap when precisely under these conditions that I described and not 37% in the first election of 1932. And this creation of this mass movement then also enables these fascist gangs to begin a campaign of intimidation and physical attacks on the working class organizations themselves. And this pushing them off the streets, intimidating them, stopping them from holding demonstrations, stopping them from holding picket lines, stopping them from attacking strikes and so on. And this begins, this is the beginning of the process of destroying the organization of the Poletariat. And I will be, again, another quote from Trotsky. It may be said that fascism is the act of placing the Petit Bourgeoisie at disposal of its most bitter enemies, that is the Big Bourgeoisie. In this way, big capital ruins the middle classes and then with the help of hired fascist demagogues incites the despairing Petit Bourgeoisie against the worker. The Bourgeois regime can be preserved only by such murderous means as these. For how long? Until it is overthrown by the Poletarian Revolution. And Trotsky wrote this in an article called The Collapse of Bourgeois Democracy. So this is the element of scapegoating, the workers as well as if we talk about Germany, the Jewish people or immigrants in other cases take the blame for the devastation caused by the capitalist crisis. And they often have combined them on the part of a fascist by demagogic attacks on international finance capital, which is another byword in that case for Jewish people or Jewish bankers. But this is really just a smoke screen to defend, yes, international finance capital but of the German variety. So it's just against basically foreign international capital, not the German variety. And which is, but it's obvious that the German banks were the ones who were making all the farmers and the small, the Petit Bourgeoisie of Germany. There was the German banks who were making the destitute, not international capital. Whether they were headed by Jewish or ethnic Germans is completely beside the point. For these reasons, it is completely false to conceive of fascism as an ideological movement, first and foremost. In fact, there's very little ideological coherence to their ideas. The political program they have is quite secondary. Fascism really has only one aim and that is the complete destruction of the working class organizations and the atomization of the working class. So I think that's quite important to understand that distinction. It's not so much like that they have, think up some, if you actually look at what they write, it's complete gobbledygook with a lot of it. Doesn't make any sense. It doesn't, and also if you look at different fascist regimes they have quite different sort of ideological sort of a scheme as they propose. But what they all have in common were all fascist groups now having common and what makes them really the fascist is this attempt to physically exterminate the working class organizations. And it is worth for a moment to contrast fascism with other types of reactionary regimes. Now there have been a lot of many different types of right between dictatorships over the past two centuries. In general, we would refer to these by the Marxist terminology that we used to refer to these are Bonapartist regimes. And these are named after Napoleon the first or the second. I'm not quite sure which one, but in a way that applies to both of them. And this is a phenomena, Bonapartism is a phenomena which arises in class, different class societies, not just capitalism, where the class struggle reaches fever pitch and can no longer be contained within the traditional forms of class rule. And the old ruling class is unable to reestablish this authority, whilst at the same time the rising class, in the case of capitalism working class, has been unable to take power and basically replace the society with a new one. Now this deadlock between the classes enabled the state to acquire a certain degree of independence vis-à-vis the ruling class and strikes blows against left and right to boost against the ruling class and the rising class. And it is able to stabilize the situation on that basis and restore order. So although, as I said, it is a regime which rises above the ruling class, it differentiates itself from the ruling class. It rises at independence from the ruling class. In the last analysis, it still defends the existing property relations and existing order. And so Trotsky, and he describing here a government which came just before Hitler. Which was, so he had the Bonapartist regime which preceded the fascist regime in Hitler, so in Germany at the time. And he said the following, the true axis of the present government passes through the police, the bureaucracy, the military clique. It is a military police dictatorship with which we are confronted, barely concealed with the decorations of parliamentarism. But the government of the Sabre as the judge arbiter of the nation, that's just what Bonapartism is. And the key point here is that Bonapartism is the rule by the Sabre or the sword. And that's, there's a rule by repression, by force, rather than by ideological or means. So you have the police and the army are there to repress any kind of resistance against capitalism, rather than being, like usually is the case by the trade union bureaucracy, the social democratic leaders, and so on. As well as the parliamentary games and corruption that exists in parliament. So, and that's also why typically Bonapartist regimes are military, so come to power by force of, by a military coup. So you have like General Pinochet, for example, coming to power in the military coup, you have the Jonathan, Greece, et cetera, et cetera. All these kind of military dictatorship that capture power. And that America was full of them in the second half of the 20th century. Obviously all backed by the CIA. Now Trotsky makes another point, which I think is very pertinent to the present situation and to the discussion of fascism and Bonapartism. He says, the strength of finance capital does not reside in its ability to establish a government of any kind and at any time according to its wish. It does not possess this faculty. So that is the ruling class cannot simply change government, the political regimes at the will, at the whim. They have to actually be in certain parameters. So it's not the case that like the ruling class wakes up one day, I think the workers are a bit bothersome and therefore they sort of say why we're just gonna have dictatorship now. It doesn't work that way because obviously any kind of change like that will face the resistance of the working class. So only under certain circumstances are they able to do that. And also under only a certain circumstances will they want to do that as well. The strength of finance capital does not reside, sorry, the strength of finance capital resides in the fact that every non-pollutarian government is forced to serve finance capital or better yet the finance capital possesses the possibility of substitution for each one of its systems of domination that decays and other systems corresponding better to the change conditions. And what this means is regardless of which kind of regime as long as it's not working a proletarian dictatorship or the worker ceasing power, the abolition of capitalism, as long as that doesn't happen, any kind of regime that you have will in one way or another have to be forced to defend the capitalist world order and finance capital, right? Or the capitalist order and finance capital. So this also kind of, this also makes, if you think about what has happened, taking place in Egypt for example over the last few years. Now the Mubarak regime was defended by international finance capital. It was replaced by the Morsi regime, right? Which, so you have a revolutionary uprising, it's one government is replaced by another and actually the whole regime collapsed momentarily. But actually the new government of Morsi also defended the interests of capitalism and interest of international finance capital. It was doomed to do that of imperialism, maybe it's the word in international finance capital. And so you have, or in the case of for example, in Spain you had the Franco regime, which took place and then transformed itself into the Bonaparte regime, which then became a democracy. You can read about that in Alan's book about the Spanish transition. And in all of these regimes defended the interest of finance capital. But obviously each one was replaced by other. The Republic in Spain was replaced by the fascist regime because of the needs of the capitalists at that time. And then again, when that regime or Franco regime exhausted itself and it failed to control the masses, control the class struggle, it had to be replaced with another regime, which was the new democracy or the bourgeois democracy, which came afterwards, but which retained a lot of the elements of the old Franco dictatorship. Now the key point here is that unless you break the rule of capital by abolishing the private ownership of the means of production, any government will be forced to more or less follow in the dictates of capital. And when it comes to Bonaparteism, it is not a policy of the capitalist class that issues. In general, they would prefer democracy because of its inherent safety valves, its ability to fool the workers to a certain extent. And it provides also, like I said, safety valves. You can keep a better understanding and check on the situation for elections of various other means, as well as it keeps the state and the state bureaucracy in check. So it's a cheaper, less corrupt form of government. But Bonaparteism is capital adopting itself to a situation of extreme class struggle where the working class has been unable to take power, but they, yes, they need to crush the workers in order to re-establish order and the rule of capital. 20 minutes. And he says, Trotsky continues, there's no epoch in human history so saturated with antagonism as ours. Under a too high tension of class and international animosities, the fuses in the commerce of democracy blow out, hence the short circuits of dictatorship. So it's basically the pressure of class struggle, the democracy or bourgeois democracy can no longer contain it. And certain, and there's fuses as he talks about, blow out. Therefore, it is also fruitless to attempt to appeal to the ruling class to defend democracy using pretty phrases about legality and the wonders of democracy and democratic values, et cetera. When the ruling class needs and desires to change its democratic mass and rule by means of repression. And this really goes for, doesn't have to go all the way towards a Bonaparte's regime, but also when they take various kinds of anti-democratic measures, like, you know, restricting trade union rights and so on under normal bourgeois, under general system of bourgeois democracy. The attempt to avoid the situation and force the class struggle into legal, peaceful, normal, inverted commerce method is tantamount to attempt to hold back the tide because the class struggle cannot be contained. And so the partition can no longer be contained in under-remits of why it's the lawful way of it conducting itself, which is prescribed by the law under capitalism. And any attempt to keep it within those narrow frameworks, particularly as the bourgeoisie is constantly restricting that framework will only disarm the working class and hand it over gagged and bound to the kind tender mercies of military dictatorship. And hence we have the disastrous refusal of the Yende government, for example, in Chile 1972, 73, to arm the workers. When the workers saw their military crew was coming, they were demanding to be armed and the government refused to give them arms. And the result was, and they were trusting instead of the democratic generals like Pinochet, who was one of the ones that stopped the pre, who had been involved in the repression of a previous coup, but these democratic generals was then what the government relied itself on rather than the working class itself and the constitution and all these kinds of excuses. And any appeals to legality are completely worthless when you get to that point. When the bourgeoisie has attempted, has decided to go down that route of completely smashing the workers using the state apparatus in this way, then this is complete, any attempt to appeal to legality, appeal to the bourgeois status effectively is completely pointless. And every time this has happened, the social, but in spite of that, every time this has happened, the social democrats and the reformist leaders always attempt to force the class struggle down those channels. So in particular appeals to the constitution, the constitutional court and so on. And that happened in Germany in 1932, happened in Austria in 1933. And it happened in Austria a few years later and they never basically learned their lesson. Also important to remember that no all-born apartheid regimes are the same. Some are extremely weak and unstable and incapable of holding back the workers with insufficient basically to hold back the working class and the class struggle. And you can see that, for example, in the present day with the coup that took place in Bolivia last year, which has now completely collapsed. You can see it in Honduras, where although they introduced, they had a coup government and so on. They're trying, have been trying to suppress the class struggle and reality of that completely failed. You can also see the same with the LCC government in Egypt, which although it has had a bit more success than the previous two mentioned, it's still quite clear that the revolution has not played out its role and the government is extremely nervous and anxious for any kind of sign of movement on the behalf of the working class. So you can contrast that, for example, within the regime of Pinochet, which lasted for a number of decades as regime of Franco, which lasted even longer. Fascist regimes develop into Bonaparte's regimes. So once they pass for one stage, they're moving to a second stage. There's not very much time in between the two, but these regimes, so started off as fascist movements because of the complete destruction of working class, it seemed to have a long staying power. And these regimes have a greater degree of stability. So, and just to make some of the differences between these kind of Bonaparte's regimes, of like the military coup style regimes and a fascist regime. Now the difference between those is in the early stages where the fascist regime is basing itself on the mass mobilizations of the petty bourgeois layers on the streets and it's those street gangs who are basically propelled into power and used to smash the working class. It's quite different than to what you saw, for example, in Chile then with the military coup where the state is using its repressive arm to destroy the working class. And there are, and this has certain implications, which I'm afraid I don't have too much time to go into. But the difference is that the mass movement of the petty bourgeoisie and the lumpen, since London Poleterity Classed Elements in Society is the base of the fascist regime where Bonaparte's regime is based on the state itself and the bourgeois state. So if this was fascism historically, what role does it play today? And we haven't really seen a proper fascist regime since Hitler and Franco or Mussolini. And we must consider what the reasons for that place. Now one of the reasons is that ruling class on some extent have learned a lesson. And Hitler really went too far. He got beyond their control and they were incapable of controlling him. They thought when they first put him in power, they thought he was in the minority in the government and the only free minister or something like that in the government. And they thought that he could control him. They would use his essay troops on the streets to smash the workers, destroy the working class organizations, but then they would then shift towards a more normal bourgeois government. But once the working class had been smashed, then really there wasn't anything in particular to stop Hitler from taking power himself and strengthening his descriptive power and eventually he forced all the other bourgeois parties into a merger with the Nazi party effectively and he forced the ruling class basically into backing him as the whole. And when the president died, oh, sorry, he died in it, and then he became then the figure as they call it off the nation. So this plan of the ruling class went awry and the whole conduct of Hitler was completely, well, sometimes it would generally speaking acting into the ruling class, but some of his fanaticism was completely destroyed Germany. His conduct in World War II basically destroyed German imperialism for decades. It hasn't really recovered to this day. The disastrous outcome of the World War II was that Germany was divided with the Soviet Union extending a sphere of influence all the way into the center of Germany and even taking or capturing capital of Berlin. The Holocaust itself was in no way in the program of the bourgeoisie who was partly made up of Jewish people who had no intention of this taking place at all. They thought they could play games basically with this question, with this racist question. I don't think they were even had in their minds that Hitler will go as far as he did in this question. The ruling class are not keen to repeat this particular experience. Although that being said, it doesn't mean that they won't support fascist groups. It doesn't mean that they won't use fascist groups, but it is unlikely or they'd be very, very reluctant to do ever put them in power again because of what took place at that time. It's not to be completely ruled out, it's unlikely. The second point that has to be made is the strength of the working class and it's probably the most important point. Throughout the 1920s, the strength of an arty party was concentrated in urban professionals, civil servants, military officers, teachers, university lecturers and students. But these layers today is no basis of fascism whatsoever. In fact, all of these layers who at that time had various kind of privileges vis-à-vis the working class. Today, they've lost all those privileges and even more under attack. And really, if you're looking at unions and groups of workers which are more prone to strike action, it's those groups which was not the case in the 1930s. Also, you can see that the other groups of the Petit Bourgeoisie, which they base themselves on, which is the farmers, which barely exists in advanced capitalist countries today. And you look at shopkeepers and so on, they've also been completely destroyed by the development of capitalism over the last 100 years, actually, if you count all the way back to 1920. These, I mean, you now have on every high street is completely covered with Tescos and Sainsbury's and so on. And the small shopkeepers that used to own and run these shops or clothing shops, whatever kind of shops really, they are now very limited in numbers indeed. And they were much more integrated into a kind of working class community. So the working class have been massively strengthened and the social reserves, as we call it, of capitalism or of capital has been massively weakened because of the economic development. And this is really what Marx and Engels described in the Communist Manifesto when they said that capitalism produces its own grave diggers. All the massive investments that have gone into the development of the industry have destroyed these other professions and created a much more cohesive working class, really. Or strong working class. Today, there's therefore, there's not much sense into the crying wolf about fascist takeovers. It's not really on the agenda at all at this moment in time. And through our history, there has been a tendency of working class leaders or leaders of various left-wing parties and trade unions to cry wolf or to overestimate the strength of fascism and the strength of reaction. This was true also in the 1920s, for example, and Trotsky is heavily critical of this. In 1923, he writes, Brandler was the leader of the Communist Party at that time in Germany. In spite of all our warnings, monstrously exaggerated the forces of fascism. From the wrong evaluation of the relationship of forces through a hesitating, evasive, defensive, and cowardly policy, this destroyed the revolution. So a wrong analysis of the balance of forces was disastrous and overestimation of fascism was part of that. And this actually crucial element that led to the defeat of the German Revolution which in turn then prepared eventually some of us on the line prepared a way for Hitler to take power. And I will skip ahead a little bit here now. Now, what is the balance of forces today? It is incredibly clear that Trump and Bolsonaro, whatever their personal opinions, and I'm not gonna try to mind read them, they have some rather strange ideas in their heads regardless, they are completely incapable of smashing the working class, even if they wanted to. They aren't very capable as Trotsky said, of rule by the sword. Of course, there are fascist elements supporting the regimes. And some of them are quite capable of committing individual atrocities or heinous acts against individual members of trade unions or so on, or even like racist attacks as we've seen against churches and mosques and so on. Yet these gangs are very weak in the grand scheme of things. And I think one of the very illustrative examples of this is that of the Golden Dawn in Greece. Now, you probably saw, but just a week or so ago, the Golden Dawn was bound as a party and the murderers of Pavlos Fissas, who was a left-wing rapper, were committed to jail. Now, this is quite unusual in capitalism. Usually fascists are allowed a certain leeway in how they handle their affairs and allowed to carry out attacks without much hindrance from the state. But when this murder took place, there was such a backlash, there was such a response on behalf of working class people, particularly in the neighborhood, but in general in Greece, that they got scared. They got scared. They thought that this has the potential of provoking a much bigger movement or may possibly turn into insurrection and civil war if they persisted. And so rather than going down that route, they thought, well, we're just gonna lock this, they felt compelled to lock up these fascist committed crime. And then again, now, when the trial was taking place, there was again mass protests outside court demanding that these guys be put in prison, which also took place. It's clear that the ruling class do not feel confident of letting these guys run riot and cause a lot of trouble because of the response is created by mobilization of the workers. And there are numerous examples of this, of the state being put under pressure, state in the ruling class, by the mass movement in this way. And really the working class has to only lift the little finger these days. This is not the case in the 1920s and so on. The fascism are much stronger at that time. And the ruling class was firmer in their ability to let them run riot. But actually today, even what we're saying must be relatively little effort on the part of the working class can have a big impact in terms of ruling class pulling back, not being brave or not having the, being brave enough or not being too worried about taking this any further. Now just a few minutes on how we fight fascism. I think the first thing which flows from this analysis is the importance of politics. We must fight fascism in a political way. And it flows from our analysis that this is really fascism and as well as bonapartism, we talk about like military dictatorships and so on. It's something that comes from the crisis of the capitalist system. And it says, and that gives us also a hint of the politics we need to fight them. So the obvious conclusion is that we need to have demands and slogans that can unite the working class in a struggle against the ills of capitalism and the crisis, against austerity, against evictions, against unemployment, et cetera. To some extent, we would even stretch this out to if we were at the, if the working class was united behind its own demands, we would even stretch this to the point of, we would also try to win over the petty bourgeois layers with these demands. Finding more means of extending credits, cancelling loans to those small businesses that have been badly affected by the crisis, allowing them to basically lease of life and out of the news of finance capital. We would be in favor of such measures, basically measures to win over these layers to the course of the proletarian revolution. But it's a bit, and the day is kind of the point that the only real way of stopping fascism, really stopping the barbarism of capitalism, which is kind of the same thing, is for the workers to take power and just transform society into a social society. The crisis of a capitalist system means that the ruling class can no longer rule in the way that it used to. It means that the democracy in the way that we near it cannot function in the same way. It's not really on the cards of abolishing democracy because they need it. They need the trade union leaders, they need the social democratic party leaders in order to hold back the working class. But this class struggle can no longer reality be contained within the framework that existed in the previous period. So if you compare this class struggle basis now, obviously you see the increasing attempts and so on to legislate against trade unions, against sometimes against political parties and political movements, the attempts to introduce spying, we have recently in Britain, you have the prevent agenda, et cetera, et cetera, various kinds of measures against what they call extremism. All this is a sign of that the capitalist system is under threat and they're taking measures to defend it from the rising working class. And the ruling class will be looking for a way to deal a mortal blow to this movement at some point, but at the moment the pendulum is swinging in the right direction and they really have very little ability to do so. The working class will be given multiple opportunities for itself to deal a mortal blow against the capitalist class to take power. But if it's going to parties and fascism really only comes into play when the moralization and exhaustion sets in, which will take some time, even at the height of the revolution. You can see that in Venezuela, for example, the way that the stamina of that revolution to still hold out against reaction to this day in spite of it not having achieved the same. The struggle against fascism is therefore intimately linked to the struggle for socialism. Quite in Trotsky again. Bring the Petit Bourgeoisie to its side. The Poletarius must win its confidence. And for that it must have confidence in its own strength. It must have a clear program of action and must be ready to struggle for power by all possible means. So that's the method of winning the non-Politarian layers of the class by starting with a firm program of political program and a program of action. Therefore, to abandon our political program in the name of a struggle against fascism will be criminal and merely prepare the way precisely for what we're trying to avoid. Yet some of the left when it comes to fascism simply leave their program at the door. All the criticism of capitalism, all the criticism of bourgeois democracy all go out the window in favor of the most sycophantic like defense of the existing status quo. And we have they make alliances with all kinds of bourgeois or the Tories the Catholic Church or whatever in order to defend democracy or oppose racism for these kind of vague slogans. Of course we defend democratic rights particularly those of the working class. And of course we oppose racism. But we cannot leave left covered with various reactionary politicians who one day make pious speeches about anti-racism, black history month, et cetera. And the next day found the flames of these very same off-racism, anti-immigration sentiment and curtail trade union rights. What kind of democracy is it if you can't go on striking if you can't join union? And the same thing goes then for lesser evilism which is a complete disaster. We should be thankful that there is no serious risk of fascism in U.S. today. Otherwise another election which won't take place now where the left and the bulk of the trade unions fall behind the Democrats would be an excellent preparation for fascist takeover. The strategy has been tried and tested a million times and it always fails. It's often forgotten but the social Democrats while refusing to form a block with the communists in Germany in 1932 as well as before continuously ported one reactionary government after another in the lead up to seizure power by Hitler in order to defend against Nazism and fascism. That was their thing. We support this right wing bourgeois politician after another in order to stop fascism. Obviously that didn't work out very well. Trump incidentally is very much a child of lesser evilism. He reflects the lack of working class political alternative in the United States. At the same time as the two traditional parties of the ruling class in the United States have been thoroughly discredited. And here that gives rise on the one hand to Trump and on the other hand to Bernie Sanders. They're both kind of products of the same process. Historically lesser evilism was known as popular frontism. The idea being that the working class should ally with a progressive bourgeoisie in order to defend democracy or to support national independence struggles or something like that. 40 minutes. And then only after this has been achieved once democracy had been defended or the imperialism had been defeated or whatever it might be. Only then after that has taken place then we could go on to the struggle for socialism. This was a complete disaster both in the Chinese revolution it was a disaster in the Spanish revolution. If they had adopted this policy in the Cuban revolution there would have been a disaster as well and it would have been a disaster in the Russian revolution in 1917. Because they're basically disarming the Poletariat pushing back the class struggle and demoralizing the Poletariat and thereby the only force that could stop fascism is being destroyed. And this idea of the popular front came from Stalin as a claim to be defending the legacy of Lenin but it's nothing of the sort. In fact Lenin subjected liberals to the most merciless criticism. In fact the whole period leading up to 1917 you have him constantly attacking liberals for one thing off because of the treacherous role that they played. And his slogan in the middle of during 1917 was no trust in the provisional government something which then the Stalinists forgot all about in subsequent years. So yeah, what then should be our policy? The premise of posing the question about how to fight fascism is that the workers are not just ready to take defensive, to take power they might be objectively ready but they're not yet organizationally prepared for or maybe consciously prepared for this step. If they were the problem would be posed kind of differently. What we're dealing with here instead in the first instance is a defensive struggle defending against an offensive by the bourgeoisie. And what we need to do is to create the strongest workers united front defend against this attack. So in defense of demonstrations in defense of democratic rights in defense of trade union rights in defense of pickets we defend the freedom of the working class to organize. Now this replies to whoever or not democracy as a whole is under attack or general the trade union rights in on a national scales under attack or whether dealing with isolated fascist attacks on picket lines and on demonstrations. The specifics of the platform United Action depends on the circumstances but has to be concretely somewhere or another. In the case of far right violence self-defense must be organized whether it is the self-defense of picket lines demonstrations or neighborhoods. And it should be added as Trotsky also points out that such a defense if it doesn't if it doesn't also go on the offense where it's not a very good defense the best defense sometimes is an offense. The struggle against in the end against fascism and Bonapartism is completely linked to the struggle of socialism. Now just to sum up after the second election in 1932 Hitler the slightly reduced votes chair was invited to form a government by Hinderberg the right wing president who had just been elected with the support of the social democrats. This was a fateful moment four months later the late movement was crushed. The whole proceeding period was a textbook sample of how not to behave. The social democrats defended the capitalist system in the midst of a deepest recession. They practiced the policy of lesser evilism paving the way for ever more right wing governments. The communist party under Stalinist leadership declared that the social democrats were the main enemy the complete ultra left turn and they refused even to attempt any kind of united front. And quite consciously so. It went to the absurd extent that communist workers would attack social democrat meetings sometimes with the collaboration of Nazi bands. First Hitler then us was the mad idea that was implanted in the minds of the communist party militants. When the right wing attacked the social democratic chief of police in Prussia the communists joined the right wing in the referendum to depose the social democrat chief of police. There was a lot of blood between the communist and social democratic workers but it could have been overcome by the communist leadership had them in a serious appeal for a united front on a limited program. Together they had the militias that could have, there were bigger than anything the fascists could muster. And they could have turned the tide of the fascists which by the end of 1932 was shown signs of weakness of having beginning of exhaustion in a movement. And they could have a communist party the communist party could have won over the social democrats to the side. On a local level the communists and the social democratic workers joined in an attempt, a local attempt at united funds and resisting the fascists but without the national coordinated campaign these were doomed to isolation and failures. So for us today we must learn the lessons not so much because fascism around the corner but because the revolution and strategy and tactics that can be learned is applicable to all kinds of circumstances. If we are fight to fight effectively not against the mass fascist movement it's nowhere to be seen but against the ruling class we need to learn lessons of united funds. If we are to fight against fascist gangs we still exist we must learn these lessons as well. We must learn that the working class must trust in its own forces that the state will not protect us against reaction. And most importantly before there will be a serious threat of bonus parties dictatorship in Britain the working class will have multiple chances to take power and we must prepare for that with all our efforts because if we go back to the quote as I will leave it off with the working class and communism represent the hope of humanity and it is our job to make it reality.