An Unrepentant American Nationalist

MOST LIKELY, there will only be a small minority of readers who will recall the epidemic of anti-fascist conventions that gripped different parts of India between 1973 and 1975. Organised by Congress and their foremost cheerleaders in the Communist Party of India (CPI), the target of their vitriol was the Navnirman movement inspired by Jayaprakash Narayan. The anti-fascist hysteria had so engulfed the ecosystem around Indira Gandhi that some of the doughty recipients of Moscow Gold seriously imagined they were rolling back the counter-revolution.

Only a handful of people today realise that CPI still exists. It has lost its national status and depends almost entirely on DMK, Congress and CPM to keep its tattered Red Flag flying. This is such a contrast from the days CPI had its own fellow travellers, many of whom feature in the Mitrokhin Archive of a former KGB functionary. But the R&R organised as part of the Soviet Union’s public diplomacy at resorts on the Black Sea ended abruptly once the Berlin Wall collapsed—although impressionable Indian diplomats held out hope of a communist coup against Mikhail Gorbachev.

Considering the chequered history of anti-fascism that I have personally experienced in both India and different countries of Europe, I am sceptical of suggestions that the so-called Nazis of today are descendants of the Waffen-SS. I recall meeting a member of the Bundestag in the Reichstag building in Berlin. He was a member of AfD, the dreaded rightwing party that gives nightmares to the Eurocrats.

Realising I was from India, he promptly engaged me in conversation on a subject I knew so little about: holistic healing. He had travelled several times to India and believed that the German medical system could do with a generous dose of naturopathy and Ayurveda. Throughout that conversation, he didn’t talk even once of the Waffen-SS.

I have also had the privilege of meeting a parliamentarian from the National Rally in France who turned out to be one of the most articulate Eurosceptics. Likewise, earlier this year, engagement with Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party—they have recently organised the Patriots for Europe bloc in the European Parliament—convinced me that there is a very rich intellectual and political tradition that sustains Hungarian conservatism. This has nothing to do with admiration for Hitler. The ambivalence of Hungary during World War II has everything to do with trying to regain the country’s lost territories— particularly Transylvania that the victorious powers had detached from Hungary in 1919.

Given this chequered history of anti-fascism in the past five decades—and the fact that those movements and parties that have been labelled fascist have invariably risen in popularity— it is comic that the US presidential election is experiencing the anti-fascist diarrhoea. Donald Trump may be foul-mouthed, a bit of a loose cannon and occasionally impulsive. However, he belongs to that tradition of US populists who carved out a slice of the electoral pie for themselves. Of course, no one has been as successful as Trump. In 1968, George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, won five states, secured 45 electoral votes and came precariously close to sending the election to Capitol Hill. Wallace appealed only to the whites because he lived in an America that was predominantly white. But American whites have always voted a little different. Even Bill Clinton and Barack Obama couldn’t secure the support of a majority of whites. It will be no different for Kamala Harris, although she seems to have made quite a mark among single white women and women in general cutting across communities.

If his election speeches are anything to go by, Trump is an unrepentant American nationalist. His supporters are called MAGA, Make America Great Again. How different is this from our politicians who want India to achieve Vishwaguru status? The point is that it is both facile and inaccurate to dub Trump a fascist, just as it is a travesty to stick the same label on Israel. Yet, there are enough hysterical souls in America who love to scream and be shrill about almost everything they disagree with.

This week, the sensible proprietors of the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times decided that the system of endorsement of candidates needed a second look. I am sure that the review was triggered by the fact that the opposition to Trump was being spearheaded by a lady who, to put it mildly, is not the brightest star in the US of A. This may seem strange because her Tam Brahm genes should have put her on an intellectual pedestal. But she has been reduced to calling Trump a fascist.

Donald TrumpFascismIndira GandhiJayaprakash NarayanMikhail GorbachevUS Presidential Election 2024