What is Democratic Colonialism, Racialization, Enslavement, Incarceration and Migration Control?
C.N.T.
F.A.I.
Ambitions of Militarism and War — This is Fascism
Destroy It By Joining Your Effort With Others
Intro
With democracy in seeming retreat and totalitarianism, racism and war on the rise, the question of fascism becomes topical once more.
Fascism is a specific European form of totalitarianism, born from democratic colonialism, militarism and the Great War for colonies, World War I.
The settler colonial democracies of the Americas were themselves born from and have been maintained by the totalitarian oppression of non-white peoples, and subsequently inspired the late bloomer fascists of Europe. In turn, European fascism re-inspired the already racist totalitarians and democrats of the Americas and Asia, regardless of the eventual conflagration of World War II and its result.
Democratic colonialism, the father of fascism, has repeatedly proven unwilling or unable to properly discipline his wayward child, rekindling the question of the possibility of a third kind of society, neither democratic nor totalitarian, instead based on mutuality and freedom for all oppressed peoples.
-Ed. (2025)
Quotes
“Democracy is not a bulwark against dictatorship. Its spinelessness, its incapacity, its regime of corruption, of rot, constitute rather the pretext and justification of a fascism that says it’s called to ‘purify’ the world.”
Pierre Besnard, Fascism or Democracy? Statist Communism or Libertarian Federalism!, Le Combat Syndicaliste (1930)
“That is why we maintain that the Colonies are the breeding-ground for the type of fascist mentality which is being let loose in Europe today.”
George Padmore, How Britain Rules Africa (1936)
“Fascism, that is, a politico-economic state where the ruling class of each country behaves towards its own people as for several centuries it has behaved to the colonial peoples under its heel…”
Bart de Ligt, The Conquest of Violence (1937 expanded English edition of 1935 French book)
“All the ingredients for a fascist state were already present: racism, the morbid traditional fear of Blacks, Indians, Mexicans; the desire to inflict pain on them when they began to compete in industrial sectors.”
George Jackson, Blood in My Eye (1972)
Articles/Chapters
“It will relieve the whole State of Mississippi and the western part of Alabama of Indian occupancy, and enable those States to advance rapidly in population, wealth, and power.”
Andrew Jackson’s Speech on the Indian Removal Act – Annotated (1830)
“It was here the rights of property triumphed, and the rights of man were lost sight of.”
A Piece of History, by Lucy E. Parsons (1895)
“Our country’s national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob. It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is an ‘unwritten law’ that justifies them in putting human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity to make defense, and without right of appeal.”
Lynch Law in America, by Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1900)
“Civilization? Who, then, represents it just now? […] Is it the French State, with its Biribi, its bloody conquests in Tonkin, Madagascar, Morocco, and its compulsory enlistment of black troops?”
Anti-War Manifesto, by the Anarchist International (1915)
“Nearly every human empire that has arisen in the world, material and spiritual, has found some of its greatest crises on this continent of Africa, from Greece to Great Britain.”
The African Roots of War, by W. E. B. DuBois (1915)
“The destruction by Germany of a hundred odd American citizens who were packed around a cargo of ammunition, is less atrocious than the atrocities which the United States perpetrates upon its own peaceful Indians.”
Concerning Atrocities, by James Peter Warbasse (1915)
“Six masked ruffians dragged him from the bed where he reposed, and while the population slept, his life was snuffed out.”
In Free America!!, by Ricardo Flores Magón (1917)
“Liberty is dead, and white terror on top dominates the country. Free speech is a thing of the past.”
“What is more, the United States has always had a sort of private police in the service of the capitalists, acting in cahoots with the official police, but independently of government, in troubled times and during strikes.”
The Preventive Counter-Revolution: Essay by an Anarchist on Fascism, by Luigi Fabbri (1922)
“The Fascisti have provided a means of existence, even though it is gained by the murder and terrorism of their class brothers and sisters, to masses of destitute demobilised soldiers. ”
“Fascism, which synthesizes all the reaction and calls back to life all the sleeping atavistic ferocity, won because it had the financial support of the rich bourgeoisie and the material help of the various governments that wanted to use it against the pressing proletarian threat…”
Why Fascism Won, by Errico Malatesta (1923)
“Our comrades are daily killed; many take the road of the exile; many are chained; others are at the forests; all are menaced with the want of bread.”
Fascism, by Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1923)
“The revolution will have to be carried out in the name of justice, freedom and human solidarity and proceed with methods inspired by justice, freedom and solidarity. Otherwise, one will only fall from one tyranny into another.”
Communists and Fascists, by Errico Malatesta (1924)
“We are going to stick,” asserted Pease. “and if the Klan starts anything, the I.W.W. will finish it.”
K.K.K. And I.W.W. Wage Drawn Battle in Greenville, from the Portland Press Herald (1924)
“Curious inquiries elicited the information that there would be a parade of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. From remarks passed among the crowds it appeared to be no secret that the purpose of this parade was intimidation of the Industrial Workers of the World, who were growing stronger, in spite of every form of persecution.”
“I looked for sanity in the United States to come from a democratic appeal to the Middle West. And yet, there in Akron, in the land of Joshua R. Giddings, in the Western Reserve, I found the Klan calmly and openly in the saddle.”
The Shape of Fear, by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois (1926)
“Because fascism in Tunisia is a prelude to the fascist movement that our bourgeoisie will unleash against all workers, metropolitans included.”
Attention! Fascism Installed in Tunisia, by Nguyen Nam (1933)
“Everyone who dared raise his voice to stem the tide of the war-mania was shouted down and maltreated as an enemy, an anarchist and public menace.”
Woman Without a Country, by Emma Goldman (1933)
“The whole Italian situation has led up to the dictatorship, has determined the different phases of Fascism. To believe that all that has been the product of the will and the intelligence of one man is infantile.”
Mussolini: The Great Actor, by Camillo Berneri (1934)
“The race delirium is not a product of Hitlerism: it predated and largely generated the latter.”
Against the Racist Delirium, by Camillo Berneri (1935)
“Teachers in schools, professors in colleges and students alike are being ousted from the ‘temples of learning’. Legislative bodies in State after State are enacting ordinances which doom any expression of free thought to total extinction.”
Rampant Fascism in America, by Marcus Graham (1935)
“It is no exaggeration to assert that never in our modern history has such perfidy and sheer brutal audacity been displayed by the various government officials of the world as in this Ethiopia-Italy conflict.”
Mussolini’s War Upon East Africa, by Marcus Graham (1935)
“The struggle against fascism, which at this time has a clear international character, must advise us to try with all our means to foment a healthy atmosphere of rebellion in the communities of the Riff”
The Right of Peoples to Determine Themselves, by Solidaridad Obrera (1936)
“For us, the military is an integral part of fascism. The army is the characteristic instrument of authoritarianism.”
Militians, Yes! But Soldiers, Never!, by some Spanish anarchist militias (1936)
“International fascism is determined to win the battle and we have to be determined not to lose it.”
You don’t argue with fascism, you destroy it, by Buenaventura Durruti (1936)
“The operational base of the fascist army is Morocco. We must intensify our propaganda in favour of Moroccan autonomy throughout the pan-Islamic area of influence.”
What Can We Do?, by Camillo Berneri (1936)
“The chief characteristic of fascism is that of organizing the petty capitalist and middle class with their narrow-minded spirit of private business into a mass organization, strong enough to check and beat the proletarian organizations.”
The Role of Fascism, by Anton Pannekoek (1936)
“What gave it power was the brutality of its methods. Its reckless violence could have no regard for the opinions of others just because it had none of its own. What the state still lacked of being a perfect prison the fascist dictatorship has given it in abundance.”
Nationalism — A Political Religion, by Rudolf Rocker (1937)
“However, apart from once more exposing Mussolini as the opportunist par excellence, the events in Palestine once more shows that all Imperialisms, whether they be democratic or totalitarian are ruthless.”
Terrorism In Palestine: “Democracy” at Work, by Vernon Richards (1937)
“First it should be understood that fascism is not just political dictatorship, not just militant reaction, not just the abridgement of civil liberties, not just the old rough and ready way of trampling on labor, and not just a process of Jew-baiting either. We have had all these things with us before.”
The Economics of Fascism, from One Big Union Monthly (1937)
“Fascism and National Socialism and all the frightfulness they imply are the direct legacy of the last war.”
The Black Spectre of War, by Emma Goldman (1938)
“For the Government is inaugurating a policy which savours of Colonial Fascism, and which, if not challenged immediately, is bound to deprive the workers of their most elementary civil rights, such as freedom of the press, speech and assembly.”
Fascism in the Colonies, by George Padmore (1938)
“Similarly, the colonial peoples living under the yoke of British, French, and American Imperialisms must forego their struggle for self-determination and line up in defence of ‘democracy,’ something they have never known.”
Hands off the Colonies!, by George Padmore (1938)
“It is not the politically backward Moors who should be blamed for being used by the forces of reaction against the Spanish workers and peasants, but the leaders of the Popular Front, who, in attempting to continue the policy of Spanish Imperialism, made it possible for Franco to exploit the natives in the service of Fascism.”
Why Moors help Franco, by George Padmore (1938)
“In the colonies of the British Empire fascism is already established.”
Manifesto of the Anarchist Federation of Britain (1939)
“…the fact remains that such conditions existed in Germany six years ago, and then, far from exposing these crimes, the British Government was eagerly helping the Nazi regime to get on its feet with loans and raw materials.”
This Is Not A War For Freedom!, by War Commentary (1939)
“Imperialistic urges and fascist proclivities are not confined, however, to Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese militarists.”
British Imperialists Treat the Negro Masses Like Nazis Treat the Jews, by George Padmore (1941)
“When hypocritical tears were shed over democratic China by our Government and the Labour Party, we were not impressed. We pointed out that the conflict was only made possible with British and American collaboration.”
The Axis Versus “Democracy”, by Marie Louise Berneri and John Hewetson (1941)
“Their reputation of being a ‘great democracy’ has never failed; not even when Tom Mooney was kept in prison nor when Sacco and Vanzetti were led to the electric chair.”
Our New Ally, by Marie Louise Berneri (1942)
“Fascism is the natural child of bourgeois ‘democracy.’”
Manifesto of the Anarchist Federation on War (1943)
“The government began to imprison working class militants while fascist hooligans could act with complete impunity. Mussolini began an organized struggle against working-class organizations, their offices were burned, their centers destroyed, their members murdered.”
The Rise of Fascism in Italy, by Marie Louise Berneri (1943)
“The role played by the financial interests and the governments of the ‘democracies’ in enthroning and keeping in power the Italian fascist régime is common knowledge”
What Made Fascism Possible?, by Marcus Graham (1943)
“During those pre-war years when our ruling class was friendly towards the Fascist powers and coldly sacrificed the smaller states, as they successively fell victims to Fascist aggression, the workers were solidly anti-fascist.”
War and Fascism, by Marie Louise Berneri and John Hewetson (1943)
“The capitalist system is to be saved at all costs. The nazis and fascists of all sorts will be tolerated, but subdued and controlled by the democratic powers.”
American Imperialism Exposed, by Marcus Graham (1943)
“The ink of the Peace terms, which were supposed to put an end to totalitarianism, was not yet dry when American, British, French and Dutch imperialisms hurried to take over the whip with which the Japanese Government held the Indonesian and Indo-Chinese under subjection.”
British Army of Oppression Crushes Eastern Freedom, by Marie Louise Berneri (1945)
“Yet, as the record shows, neither the United States, nor the British Government made any effort to expose the criminal acts of the Nazi régime. On the contrary, diplomatic as well as commercial relationships were kept up intact.”
Mankind and the State, by Marcus Graham (1946)
“As the earliest Anarchist criticisms of Zionism said — a new nationalism could only create a State and this would become more reactionary, as witness the decline of Italian nationalism into fascism.”
Middle East Notes: Civil War, from Freedom (1948)
“Spectacular and futile condemnations of race prejudice. In reality, a colonial country is a racist country.”
Racism and Culture, by Frantz Fanon (1956)
“The Anti-Fascist League, poor and ‘un-influential’ had, by its devotion and courage, proved that Fascism can be fought and defeated.
Newcastle fights the fascists, by Albert Meltzer and Tom Brown (1962)
“But, now, to make my point very clear, a real opposition party did come into existence. The BPP, Black Panther Party. What happened? What happened — they reverted back to the second stage, back to the second dimension. They were kicking doors in and killing people.”
Analyzing the Correct Method in Combating American Fascism, by George Jackson (1971)
“The longest war that the United States government has ever waged has been against the American Indians. The war has never ceased.”
Wounded Knee: The Longest War 1890-1973, from Black Flag (1974)
“This violent state repression consisted of dozens of murders and assaults, including an assault on a non-Native legal defence team.”
Chronology of Oppression at Pine Ridge, from Victims of Progress (1977)
“My relative’s contempt was my first experience with racism, which gave this relative an affinity with the Pogromists she had fled from; her narrow escape from them did not make her a critic of Pogromists; the experience probably contributed nothing to her personality, not even her identification with the Conquistador, since this was shared by Europeans who did not share my relative’s experience of narrowly escaping from a concentration camp.”
Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom, by Fredy Perlman (1983)
“After the war, many reasonable people would speak of the aims of the Axis as irrational and of Hitler as a lunatic. Yet the same reasonable people would consider men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson sane and rational, even though these men envisioned and began to enact the conquest of a vast continent, the deportation and extermination of the continent’s population, at a time when such a project was much less feasible than the project of the Axis.”
The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism, by Fredy Perlman (1984)
“Between the surrender of Sitting Bull in 1883 and the massacre at Wounded Knee seven years later occurred the last great Indian uprising: the valiant campaign of the Chiricahua Apaches in the Southwest, led by Geronimo”
Anarchists and the Wild West, by Franklin Rosemont (1986)
“If you ever want to measure a historian’s imbecility, get him to reason on things that are in the making rather than on the past. It will be a mind-opener.”
What can we do with anti-fascism?, by Alfredo M. Bonanno (1994)
“Why, after killing an Indian, was an avowed political racist charged with manslaughter instead of murder and sentenced to a short prison term?”
The Killing of Leo LaChance, by Ron Bourgeault (1994)
“First, its recasting of the history of Western Civilization helps us locate the origins of fascism within colonialism itself; hence, within the very traditions of humanism, critics believed fascism threatened.”
A Poetics of Anticolonialism, by Robin D.G. Kelley (1999)
“Democracy is not dictatorship, but democracy does prepare dictatorship, and prepares itself for dictatorship.”
When Insurrections Die, by Gilles Dauvé (1999)
“Thus, the President and Congress authorized the removal and incarceration of over 110,000 people based solely on race without evidence of wrongdoing, charges or hearings. More than two-thirds of those incarcerated were U.S. citizens.”
“This casting out within the nation-state is not new or unique; it is evident in the experiences of segregation, internment of Japanese Canadians and Japanese Americans, the War on Drugs, and reserve system.”
What Is Border Imperialism?, by Harsha Walia (2013)
“… the texts either ignore or gloss over the fact that for almost a decade, during the earliest fascist invasions of Asia, Africa, and Europe, the Western democracies encouraged rather than fought Hitler and Mussolini, and sometimes gave them material aid.”
The Forgotten Fight Against Fascism, by William Loren Katz (2014)
“Although the Indian Removal Act was aimed mainly at the Indian nations in the South, it was also used to negotiate removal treaties with the Shawnee, Sauk and Fox, Potawatomie, Ottawa, Omaha, Miami and other smaller tribes.”
The Indian Removal Act of 1830, by The Native History Association (2014)
“There is no simple binary between countries that produce refugees, and those that care for them.”
Little Bear’s Cree and Canada’s Uncomfortable History of Refugee Creation, by Bejamin Hoy (2015)
“Aleuts were kept in camps as late as 1945—two full years after Japanese troops left the Aleutian Islands. Those who survived the war went home to find their villages burned and destroyed.”
The U.S. Forcibly Detained Native Alaskans During World War II, by Erin Blakemore (2017)
“A larger group made up of Native Americans from the county and the surrounding area descended on the gathering and confronted the Klan. Outnumbered, the Klan members fled from the field. After that night, the Klan never held another public gathering in Robeson County.”
“Alabama governor David Bibb Graves was Grand Cyclops of the Montgomery chapter. He served two terms, starting in 1927. Alabama’s neighbor, Georgia, also had a Klan governor in Clifford Mitchell Walker, who served from 1923 to 1927.”
The History of the KKK in American Politics, by Tara McAndrew (2017)
“A lot of times people point to aspects of fascism like hyper-nationalism, leadership and party dictatorship, corporatism, or racism. Well, the thing is many countries have these features and they are not fascist regimes.”
“…Gord Hill looks at the history of fascism over the last 100 years, and the concurrent antifa movements that have worked fastidiously to topple it.”
The Antifa Comic Book, by Gord Hill (2018)
“And what you may not know is that the federal policy of Indian removal, which ranged far beyond the Trail of Tears and the Cherokee, was not simply the vindictive scheme of Andrew Jackson, but rather a popularly endorsed, congressionally sanctioned campaign spanning the administrations of nine separate presidents.”
How Native American Slaveholders Complicate the Trail of Tears Narrative, by Ryan P. Smith (2018)
“It also recalls an earlier time in U.S. history, nearly 90 years ago, when Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants were ousted from the country in enormous numbers.”
“During the 1880s, the earliest enforced immigration laws drew upon these values to bar legal entry to categories of persons considered unsuitable for citizenship, starting with Chinese as a race, the poor (LPC [Likely to become a Public Charge]), and contract workers.”
US Immigration History Timeline, by the Immigration and Ethnic History Society (2019)
“But bisected by the line, Crees became asylum-seekers on their own lands 150 years ago. Though some were granted political refugee status, Crees were still denied basic rights. Instead, many were killed, ignored and deported on both sides of the border.”
Ignored and deported, Cree ‘refugees’ echo the crises of today, by Brenden Rensink (2019)
“Now, close to eighty years later, one of the lesser known moments in anarchist history, the efforts to suppress Man!—including the several-year legal persecution and deportation trials of the editor, Marcus Graham, and his associates Vincenzo Ferrero and Domenic Sallitto—provide an important window into mechanisms of State control by serving as a powerful example of the connections between border politics, immigration policy, and political repression.”
“But radical Black thinkers have long argued that racial slavery created its own unique form of American fascism.”
The Long Shadow of Racial Fascism, by Alberto Toscano (2020)
“Nor did it pursue alternative paths that might have made success more likely, such as arming the Black community.”
“In knowing the history of how AAPI were treated in this country, we can better understand how we arrived at this point in history.”
“Despite Kearney’s threats, he and his mob did not actually invade the mansions, which would have resulted in the full power of the authorities coming down on them. It was safer to beat up Chinese people.”
S.F. had its own demagogue who capitalized on racist grievances, by Gary Kamiya (2021)
“…how the fascism analogy may help reveal what fascism always owed to Americanness and to empire.”
Fascism and Analogies — British and American, Past and Present, by Priya Satia (2021)
“C.L.R. James (1901-1989) called for mass resistance to Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.”
“Between 1880 to 1920, British colonial policies in India claimed more lives than all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China and North Korea combined.”
“Native people are incarcerated in state and federal prisons at a rate of 763 per 100,000 people. This is double the national rate (350 per 100,000) and more than four times higher than the state and federal prison incarceration rate of white people (181 per 100,000).”
Native incarceration in the U.S., by the Prison Policy Initiative (2023)
“On 13 January, the day after the German announcement, the president of Namibia, Hage Geingob (who died on 4 February), rebuked Germany, arguing that it ‘cannot morally express commitment to the UN Convention on Genocide … while supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza’. He added that ‘the German government is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil.’”
Three Genocides, by Eyal Weizman (2024)
“Settler colonialism, and class collaboration more generally, have been the motor of the roots of fascism in the United States; once a culture based upon genocide against the Indigenous was established alongside a culture of slavery based upon expropriation of certain ‘racialized’ groups, then it could, and does, continue to serve as a kind of political precondition; it serves as an exemplar of what can be done with full-throated, full-blooded fascism.”
What American Fascism Has Already Looked Like, by Gerald Horne & Anthony Ballas (2024)
“While Black people make up less than 14% of the U.S. population, they account for 42% of people who are incarcerated; unsurprisingly, Black people are also overrepresented among people with an incarcerated family member”
“Until the Civil War, US Army officers relied on enslaved servants even while serving in ‘free states.'”
The US Army as a Slaveholding Institution, by Matthew Wills (2025)
“But it has also renewed focus on the network of remote immigration detention centres that stretch between Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, known as ‘Detention Alley’ – where 14 of the country’s 20 largest detention centres are clustered. And now where other students have since been sent after being arrested thousands of miles away.”
C.N.T.
Our Coasts Will Be Defended By Our Brave Mariners
Also
Anarchists & Fellow Travellers on Palestine
Anarchists on National Liberation