No Pasaran!

The founder of the German Workers’ Party in 1919 was Anton Drexler, a machine-fitter and locksmith of Munich, Bavaria. The fifty-fourth member to join the new party was Adolf Hitler, soon deployed as head of propaganda. Eighty-seven years ago in April 1920, the German Workers’ Party changed its name to the National Social-Democratic Labour Party, German initials NSDAP, “Nazi” for short. Hitler replaced Drexler as party leader in the following year, 1921.

These facts are from the web site Spartacus Educational. It points out that that Hitler simply “redefined socialism by placing the word 'National' before it”.

A table further down the Spartacus Educational page on the Nazi party shows the results of eight general elections in Germany between 1920 and 1933. In all of these elections except the last, both the Communists and the Social Democrats did very well. After 1933 there were no more elections until the military defeat of the Nazis by the Soviet Union in 1945.

So even in a time of rising working-class consciousness, organisation, and electoral support, it is demonstrably possible for a Nationalist cult to rise within the very same working-class population, overtake the communists, and then hand the entire working-class over to the capitalist class “on a silver platter”. This is what the NSDAP, under Hitler, effectively did. Part of the trick was to sell the whole package as a “developmental state” (see picture above).

It is with all this in mind that the Communist University has been revisiting the new draft “Strategy and Tactics” (S&T) document of the ANC, called “Building a National Democratic Society” (also here). The prompt is the similarity between the initials “NDS”, and “NSDAP”. The test to apply is this question: What is the difference between the new draft S&T, and fascism? The answer that comes back is one: there is no difference between the new draft S&T and fascism.

That’s it for that topic for today. We will obviously have to come back to it again. Don’t expect the bourgeois “analysts” to be working on this. They will be very happy to wait until after the event to discover what has happened. At this stage they are worse then useless. They will distract people with quibbles in the margins and the corners, while ignoring the fascist “elephant in the room”. This, too, has happened before, even in South Africa.

President of Cuba Fidel Castro Ruz is writing of a matter that applies directly to us as Africans. Put briefly, the US is promoting a plan to make alcohol from “corn” for use as fuel for cars. Corn is another name for maize (mielies), which is the staple diet in many African countries, including our own. The worldwide price of mielies and of mielie-meal will rise. The North Americans will still be able to afford to use it for fuel, but the Africans will not be able to afford to eat it. Fidel calls it genocide. See the link below.

History has not ended, and nor has US interference with other countries. To review some of that history, see the next linked item, which is mainly a table of US “interventions” since 1890.

That table is partly attributed to William Blum, author of “Killing Hope”. Blum puts out an e-mail distribution called “The Anti-Empire Report”. The latest one came out yesterday, and is linked below. If you wish to get it sent to you, free, follow the instructions at the bottom of the document.

The contrasting cases of Luis Posada Carriles and the Cuban Five make shocking reading. Gloria La Riva has done a new interview with José Pertierra, lawyer for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in its extradition application against Posada in the US courts. See the link below.

Lastly, the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) here in South Africa has a law facility that has just completed its first year of operation. Worth knowing about if you are any kind of journalist.

Click on these links:

Internationalization of genocide, Fidel Castro Ruz, 3 April 2007 (2217 words)

History of US Interventions in Latin America, Marc Becker (709 words, including table)

The Anti-Empire Report, 6 April 2007, William Blum (3221 words)

Interview, Cuban Five and Luis Posada Carriles, La Riva, Counterpunch (3935 words)

FXI law clinic celebrates successful first year of operation (505 words)