Back in October 2024 I wrote an article in this paper, ‘Crushing it in the egg’.This was addressed to the view on the left that sufficiently violent action against the fascists at an early stage of their development could crush fascism “in the egg” and prevent it developing rapidly. I looked at where that idea came from.
It comes from a writer called Daniel Guérin, writing about the rise of Nazism in Germany. He quotes Hitler and Goebbels as saying that, if the opponents of Nazism had crushed it in the egg by sufficiently violent force in the 1920s, then it would never have succeeded.
In reality, this Hitler and Goebbels story is complete nonsense, because actually the Nazi Party was one of a number of far-right parties that organised veterans’ groups to beat up leftists. They acted as external auxiliaries of the German state, with the support of the police and the judiciary, who protected them against the leftists who wanted to organise self-defence against them.
Continue @ Weekly Worker.
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