-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To what extent can the European Left be blamed for the rise of 20th c. fascism? To the extent to which it didn't respond to real social and economic distress - and therefore allowed the fascist parties to do so. We can debate how possible an anti-fascist organization of the European working class was in the 1920s & '30s, but it's clear that it didn't happen. Chomsky fears that the current situation resembles that of almost a century ago in Europe - and that a similar failure of the Left is possible. (BTW, an interesting account of how the matter looked half-way between now and then is the account of the European 1930s by Alex Cockburn's father, Claud, "The Devil's Decade" [1973].)
^^^^^^ CB: Chomsky's article was discussed recently on PEN-L. Lou Proyect crticized Chomsky for comparing the US of today to Germany in the 20's /30's. Of course, it's kind of hard to accuse Chomsky of shilling for the Democratic Party, Lou's usual response to any warning of fascist danger in the US.
Note : Hindsight suggests that the main error of the anti-fascists in that time ( I assume C.G. knows they existed and is just saying they failed) was ultra-leftism. That is , the CP and the Social Democrats ( reformist working class party; comparable to US Democratic Party) failed to unite with each other against the fascist danger. Combined they had more votes than the Nazis in the key election. In 1932, the Nazis were not the quite so clearly the world historic monsters they turned out to be.