Marc Botenga
I am not surprised to see that today many far-right forces are among the most enthusiastic supporters of Israeli policies and the Netanyahu government, just as many of them supported the South African apartheid regime and are still today denying the crimes of European colonialism. The fight against imperialism and colonialism and the fight against fascism and racism have always been intrinsically linked.
Historically, colonialism provided an ideological and material antecedent and sometimes blueprint for fascism. Fascist or similar regimes imported the racial hierarchies, the dehumanization, the indiscriminate mass violence, and authoritarian governance perfected in colonies to Europe, applying similar brutality domestically to maintain total control and oppress the working class. We do not speak about this enough, as European colonial history and crimes are routinely downplayed in the public debate, but colonial suppression methods inspired and molded fascist terror tactics. Think of the debate on how techniques and ideologies, such as the use of concentration camps and racial science, developed by German colonialism in Namibia subsequently influenced Nazi policies. Recently a French political journalist also launched a fiery debate on parallels between Nazi crimes against villages in France on the one hand and those the French committed in Algeria on the other.
The repression of Palestinian solidarity movements in Europe is huge.
But it is not only about fascist or far-right regimes. Even within the current political systems, dehumanizing rhetoric has made it to mainstream European political parties. European governments or local authorities import Israeli techniques of crowd control and digital surveillance into Europe. Israeli forces train their European counterparts. Weapons and military technology are sold to European countries…
Auteur: Marc Botenga
