There certainly was a racist streak in the Socialist movement, paradigmatically represented in the US by the likes of Jack London. Margaret Sanger, Ms. Eugenics, also came out of the American radical and feminist movements [and points to the presence of racism within American feminism.] No doubt, there was parallel developments in other national movements, as Nathan points out with respect to Mussolini's origins in the Italian socialists. But perhaps more important, in the US as well as elsewhere, was the failure to take the struggle against racism seriously.
As bad as that is, and as deserving of criticism as it is, it does not begin to compare with what happened under Communist regimes, much less under fascism. There is a need for perspective here. Stalinist USSR and Stalinist satellite regimes in Eastern Europe were marked by anti-Semitic purges, and such treatment of national minorities as epitomized by the deaths of millions of Ukrainians. Maoist China has not a much better record with respect to the treatment of Chinese national minorities; Tibet is only the tip of the iceberg. And so on. I assume we need no recitation of the racism of fascism.
Against such a background, the racism of the socialists and social democratic movements pales.
>Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> >The reason fascism ties to eugenics and other nasty doctrines is that the
> >elite usually needs to justify its own hierarchy. Nationalism, racism and
> >purity are often useful for that purpose, as well as creating scapegoats to
> >divide the working class.
>
>But you're letting soc dem off too lightly here. Historically it's
>depended on a confined national economy, and maintaining that can get
>ugly.
>
>Doug
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 212-98-6869
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
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