Defeating fascism

Pakistan’s politics remains a vicious circle degrading with each rotation. The 2014 horror movie was re-run this week. Fascist hordes descended once again upon D-Chowk in a paralysed Islamabad amidst government threats of ‘severe repercussions’. Just as in 2014, the PTI’s mob murdered security personnel, whose families will never obtain justice. The Imran Khan-led fascist threat has aggravated to a recurrent, clear, and present danger to the state of Pakistan and, it is clear, cannot be defeated by peaceful democratic means.

The re-run is global. The 2020s are a B-movie re-run of the 1920s. “The mouse we banished yesterday,/ Is an enraged rhinoceros today,/ Our value is more threatened than we know:/ Whole phyla of resentments every day,” wrote the poet Auden at the height of the Nazi rampage across Europe. Fascism is on the march again across the globe; from Indonesia to India to Hungary via France to the United States, and yes, in Pakistan.

Young Pakistani voters infantilised, blunted, and incited by fascist TikTok and Instagram have no interest in reforming and rebuilding Pakistan. They do not care which elected prime minister during 2013-18 overcame terrorism, loadshedding, Karachi target-killing, and reduced inflation to record lows. The 18th Amendment and 9th National Finance Commission Award are irrelevant for the newfangled revolutionaries who were infants in 2010 and are now lashing against the state.

PTI contributors overseas have since 2011 financed the fascists’ sophisticated, hate-filled, lie-infested 24/7 media onslaught. This too is not unprecedented. Fascists everywhere and for a century have proved masters of propaganda. Joseph Goebbels was the first minister for propaganda (1933-45) in the history of the world and immortalised himself by observing that “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

The challenge to antifascists in Pakistan is clear: the fascists have endless money for media and legal shenanigans; possess the most sophisticated propaganda machine; have enthusiastic, historically ignorant voters fuelled by hate and resentment; have divided all state institutions and enjoy support from within the sensitive institutions, judiciary, and bureaucracy; and now have attracted anti-establishment voters.

What to do? The way back for Pakistan’s antifascists begins with facing stark facts. One, democracy has been battered beyond recognition in Pakistan. Two, Imran's fascism is largely bluff, most of it digital. Its street appeal is limited to the province where his party has been well-entrenched for twelve years in abusing government resources. Three: the internet is much more fascist than real life. The same tools being used to spread fascism can be wielded to stem and reverse the tide. Four: Hitler too was a master at using the tools of propaganda of his time. Yet to gain power he needed luck and the errors of others.

Fascism can be defeated. But those who support democracy have to forgo the “mix of fatalism and despair and living in perpetual reaction to the right and policy wonkiness and praying for indictments", counsels American writer Anand Giridharadas. What is needed: “A new and improved movement – feisty, galvanising, magnanimous, rooted and expansionary – that can outcompete the fascists and seize the age.”

Overcoming fascism anywhere is a political, legal, communicational, and governance challenge. “It cannot be defeated by appeals to reason alone, or even by collective struggle alone,” Paul Mason writes in 'How to Stop Fascism'. “It has to be morally defeated, forced into logical disarray, encouraged to retreat to the ‘ordinary’ prejudices [such as] nationalism which – though distasteful – can each be reasoned with and contained.”

What can Shehbaz Sharif’s government do? Recognise that fascism is a temporary alliance of the elite and the mob, as Hannah Arendt diagnosed. The first task is to sever the struggling middle class and the poor from the fascists by controlling inflation and reducing utility bills. The second task is to enforce laws diligently to bring immediately to justice the planners, abettors, and perpetrators of May 9 and November 25. The third is to learn from post-WWII Germany and pass a series of robust anti-fascist laws. Fourth is a radical reformation of government to face 21st-century communication challenges.

A greater task awaits anti-fascist political parties, identified trenchantly by Timothy Snyder of Yale University. First: beware of the vote. Adolf Hitler came to power after the 1933 election, ten years after his coup attempt failed. But once he had legitimate power, he destroyed German democracy from within and inflicted a global war on the world that killed millions.

Second, coalitions are necessary. The centre must hold; the centre-left has to join the centre-right against fascism. Anti-fascist centrist parties have to step forward and inspire citizens to call fascism’s bluff and reject the cult of leader, outrageous language, threats of violence, and claims of inevitability.

The third point is crucial. Business should not be exhausted by Islamabad’s paralysis into supporting fascists, deeming them a kind of solution to chaos. In Germany of the 1930s, business leaders enabled Hitler as an instrument of order and their own profit. “Although the circumstances today are different, the general lesson is the same", observes Snyder, “whether they like it or not, business leaders bear responsibility for whether a republic endures or is destroyed.”

Giridharadas suggests that antifascist have to work very hard to provoke and command attention. “The more one’s ideas are repeated – positively, negatively, however – the more they seem to millions of people like common sense. When the opposition is endlessly consumed by responding to its ideas, that opposition isn’t hawking its own wares.”

Political parties opposed to fascism have to listen to the Pakistani people and take their fears seriously. The anti-fascists have to learn to pick fights, not appease; one positive recent example is the 26th Amendment. And most importantly, the antifascists have to tell the people whom to blame for the people’s misery.

Last but not least, the political centre has to redefine democracy for the people, illustrate a fresh vision of Pakistan’s future, give the people a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves and that the present may be harsh but Pakistan is moving towards a more prosperous and peaceful future.

There is a contest to tell the better story about Pakistan and draw people into that story. Antifascists have to give a bold agenda that emphasises the dignity of the Pakistani people, creates jobs for young men and women, modernises agriculture, protects the environment as an economic necessity, and throws off the twin yokes of Bonapartists as well as civil bureaucracy.

Policy as politics is bad strategy. Jaded smartphone carriers reject press conferences and bland statements. What is needed is an exciting narrative that defines heroes and villains, frames and justifies the policy aims, and helps people make sense of the time and place they’re in. The fascist assault on the state of Pakistan is not a movement of the future – it is an expression of frustration against the present misery of the Pakistani people.

“It is time for the pro-democracy cause to step it up", concludes Giridharadas, “ditch the despair, claim the mantle of its achievements and offer a thrilling alternative to the road of hatred, chaos, violence and tyranny. It’s going to take heart and intelligence and new strategies, words and policies. It’s going to take an army of persuaders, who believe enough in other people to try to move – and join – them. This is our righteous struggle that can and must be won.”

The writer has served as Pakistan’s minister for foreign affairs,

defence, commerce, and energy. He tweets/posts @kdastgirkhan These are his personal views.