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THIRD WORLD
FASCIST
Fascism was defeated in
the Second World War. The alliance between Nazi Germany, fascist Italy
and Japan was beaten, and the fascist regimes dismantled. Hitler committed
suicide, Mussolini was strung up by his own people, and the Japanese
government dissolved itself. Fascism, rising during the first half of
the 20th century, collapsed before it could see the second half.
However, the collapse of
fascism did not mean that as a problem it had been wiped off the face
of the earth. After the Second World War, and in the Third World, fascism
actually increased. The dictators and juntas which came to power in
Latin America and Africa, were also basically committed to fascism.
The
Savagery of Fascism in Latin
America Third World fascists
did not hesitate to commit atrocities recalling the Nazi massacres.
For instance, the Chilean dictator General Pinochet, who came to power
with a military coup against President Allende in 1973, turned his country
into a river of blood. Pinochet had Allende killed with tank and jet
attacks on the Presidential Palace. However, the Chilean people were
told that Allende had committed suicide because he refused to surrender.
Following that, a ruthless policy to eliminate Allende's supporters
and the opposition was implemented. The junta killed thousands of people
in its first year in power, and approximately 90,000 Chileans out of
a population of 9 million were arrested. The terrorizing of the population,
corpses piled up in morgues, or shot and thrown into the Mapocho River,
the detention of suspects in the Santiago Stadium, hostage-takings,
frequent search operations and lootings, were just a few of the crimes
of the Pinochet regime. Academic institutions were "cleansed," and history
and geography courses in universities were subjected to censorship by
the fascist authorities.
Fascist dictatorships similar
to that of Pinochet came to power in Latin American countries such as
Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Paraguay,
and also carried out appalling cruelties. Thousands of opponents of
the junta in Argentina "disappeared." According to the evidence that
emerged after the fact, more than 2,000 political detainees were put
onto planes and thrown out over the sea from thousands of feet in the
air. A former gendarme, Federico Talavera, who appeared on Argentine
television on April 27, 1995, admitted the tortures carried out during
the time, saying among other things that pregnant women were thrown
into the sea and that dogs were specially trained to bite peoples' sexual
organs. According to his confession, the dogs would take political detainees'
sexual organs in their mouths and wait for an order. If the detainee
refused to talk, then the dog was told to bite.
The brutality in Guatemala
was also horrifying. In the 1960s and 1970s, the fascist regime which
overthrew the country's first and only elected president, Jacobo Arbenz,
in 1954, turned the country into killing-fields. Among the fascists'
targets, in conformity with fascism's general hatred of religion, were
men of religion. Amnesty International announced that between October
1966 and March 1968, some 8,000 Guatemalans, including many priests,
were killed by "death squads." In 1972, the number of death squad victims
went up to 12,000, and to 20,000 four years later.
The Roman Catholic Bishops
Conference described the government's policy as "genocide." In Killing
Hope:US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, the American
writer William Blum explained the torture methods used by the Guatemala
regime:
Anyone attempting to organize
a union or other undertaking to improve the lot of the peasants, or
simply suspected of being in support of the guerrillas, was subject
... unknown armed men broke into their homes and dragged them away to
unknown places ... their tortured or mutilated or burned bodies found
buried in a mass grave, or floating in plastic bags in a lake or river,
or lying beside the road, hands tied behind the back ... bodies dropped
into the Pacific from airplanes. In the Gual area, it was said, no one
fished any more; too many corpses were caught in the nets ... decapitated
corpses, or castrated, or pins stuck in the eyes ... a village rounded
up, suspected of supplying the guerrillas with men or food or information,
all adult males taken away in front of their families, never to be seen
again ... or everyone massacred, the village bulldozed over to cover
the traces ... seldom were the victims actual members of a guerrilla
band. One method of torture consisted of putting a hood filled with
insecticide over the head of the victim; there was also electric shock
- to the genital area is the most effective.133
William Blum quotes a statement
by a female native Guatemalan. Taken for questioning, along with her
family, on charges of being an "opponent of the regime," Rigoberta Mench�
Tum described what happened to her on December 9, 1979:
On 9 December 1979, my 16-year-old
brother Patrocino was captured and tortured for several days and then
taken with twenty other young men to the square in Chajul ... An officer
of [President] Lucas Garcia's army of murderers ordered the prisoners
to be paraded in a line.... I was with my mother, and we saw Patrocino;
he had had his tongue cut out and his toes cut off. The officer jackal
made a speech. Every time he paused the soldiers beat the Indian prisoners.
When he finished his ranting, the bodies of my brother and the other
prisoners were swollen, bloody, unrecognizable. It was monstrous, but
they were still alive. They were thrown on the ground and drenched with
gasoline. The soldiers set fire to the wretched bodies with torches
and the captain laughed like a hyena and forced the inhabitants of Chajul
to watch.134
These are but a few examples.
The fascist regime in Guatemala, run first by General Romeo Lucas Garcia,
and then by General Efrain Rios Montt, by similar methods, killed more
than 100,000 people. William Blum speaks of victims "having their eyes
put out, their testicles cut off and stuffed in their mouths, and their
hands and feet cut off" by the security forces, as well as women "having
their breasts cut off."
Similar fascist regimes
held power in African countries, such as Zaire, Uganda and South Africa,
for long periods of time. The regime of South Africa adopted a fiercely
racist ideology, reminiscent of Nazi Germany. The black majority in
South Africa, the original inhabitants of the land, were exploited by
the white minority for years.
In short, the second half
of the 20th century was as much the brunt of fascist violence as the
first. Fascist regimes, similar to those overthrown in Europe, emerged
in Latin America and Africa, who again led to the world becoming'a battlefield
where "the strong survive and the weak are eliminated."
A
Middle Eastern Fascist:Saddam Hussein
At this point in time, being
the beginning of the 21st century, many of the fascist dictators of
the 1960s and 70s have disappeared. However, fascism may rear its head
at any time, in various places and under different conditions. The Middle
East in particular has suffered from the violence of fascist regimes
and organizations. One such fascist dictator is at this very moment
threatening the region: Saddam Hussein.
It will be useful to examine
Saddam Hussein's past in order to better recognize his fascist character.
The events that brought
him to power in Iraq began with a military coup. In February 1963, a
group of officers and street militants, calling themselves the Baath
(Resurgence) Party, overthrew General Kassem who was then in power.
Among these militants was one young member of the six-man team charged
with killing Kassem: Saddam Hussein al-Takriti, or Saddam Hussein from
Takrit. Although he was not a soldier, Saddam usually wore a military
uniform, and after the coup, he was brought in by the Baath administration
to head a group responsible for terrorism and murder. The first thing
he did was to develop new and effective methods of torture with which
to interrogate opponents of the coup. When the administration that followed
the Baath's palace coup collapsed, in November of that same year, Saddam's
torture facility was exposed, which was equipped with various implements
of torture that Saddam had invented himself.
The Baath government lasted
less than ten months, and was brought down by another coup. But the
party carried out a second coup on July 17, 1968. This time the plotters
remained in power. The leader of this second Baath coup was "torture
expert" Saddam Hussein. He brought in his personal relatives into key
positions in the regime, and eventually gathered complete power by eliminating
his rivals. The merciless torturer had become the dictator of Iraq.
After coming to power, Saddam
pursued war and conflict constantly. In 1988 he engaged in a surprise
and totally unjustified attack on Iran, occupying part of the country.
The war lasted for eight years and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands
of Iraqis and Iranians. Two years after the war had ended, he invaded
Kuwait, again without justification, leading to the Gulf War. Like Hitler,
who carried out savage attacks for four years to enlarge German territory,
Saddam terrorized those around him.
Furthermore, he had no
qualms about using the most oppressive methods against his own people.
Throughout his rule, those regarded as opponents of the regime, and
various political and ethnic groups, have suffered all kinds of repression.
An edition of Newsweek described Saddam's fascistic character in the
following manner:
His detractors call him
a bloodthirsty tyrant-the Butcher of Baghdad. Saddam Hussein rules Iraq
with an iron hand inside a steel glove, backed by a million-man Army
and a legion of informers, assasins and torturers. Saddam, as he is
known throughout the Middle East, is utterly ruthless in the pursuit
of glory for himself and his country. He has not hesitated to use poison
gas on enemies both foreign and domestic.135
Saddam has spilt the blood
of numberless Iraqis. At the end of the war against Iran, 1 million
out of Iraq's population of 17 million had either been killed or injured.
More than 1 million people left the country for political and economic
reasons. The human rights organization Middle East Watch states that
many people were relocated or deported, arrested and punished for no
reason, and that the use of torture was widespread, together with political
executions and unsolved killings in Iraq. According to Amnesty International,
torture, even of children, includes such methods as roasting victims
over flames, amputating noses, limbs, breasts and sexual organs, and
hammering nails into bodies.136
The atrocities carried out
by Saddam at Halabja in 1988 demonstrate his fascistic treatment of
people of different ethnic origins. Nerve gas was used against the Kurdish
settlers, causing the death of many innocent men and women, including
babies and the elderly. Amnesty International reported that 5,000 Kurds
were killed in a single Iraqi gas attack on the village of Halabja,
and many more thousands perished in similar attacks elsewhere in the
country. 137
The torture inflicted on
the political opponents of fascist Saddam was still worse. A doctor
who fled from Iraq described: "I was an intern in a hospital in the
South. Only doctors were allowed to see the people brought from prison.
Most of them were no more than lumps of meat, and most of them died.
No political detainee lived through the torture. I fled when I realised
that I was about to be detained."138
Even Saddam's own family
and closest associates were victims of his cruelty. His step-brother
Barzan Takriti fled to the United Arab Emirates out of fear that Saddam
and his son Uday were going to kill him. Two of Saddam's son-in-laws,
Hussein and Saddam Kamel fled to Jordan out of fear of him. Saddam then
guaranteed them that their lives would not be in danger, but as soon
as the brothers returned to Baghdad, they and their father were killed.
Later, their mother's body was found cut to pieces, all which happened
before the eyes of the world.
The Iraqi leader also uses
cruel methods as well to intimidate opponents who have fled the country.
For instance, General Najib Salihi, who escaped to Jordan in 1995, reported
that his close family were raped and that tapes of the act were sent
to him. He also said that the same has been done to many other opponents
of the regime.
As we can see from these
numerous examples, Saddam's authority in Iraq is entirely based on intimidation,
terror and torture, while the people within his fascist regime are hungry,
unemployed and living in poverty. Little children are dying of hunger
and lack of medicine, while the rest of the nation is doomed for either
death or extinction. Despite all of this, the people will say nothing
against Saddam, whether out of fear or from the effects of mass-hypnosis,
but instead blame "them," Saddam's enemies, for the poverty they are
suffering.
In Saddam, we can also
discern several other fascist characteristics. Of these is the way he
compares himself to pagan dictators of the past, just as the Nazis and
other fascists had done. The "Sparta" that Saddam selected was Babylon,
a pagan empire of the ancient Middle East. He sees and portrays himself
as heir to the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, who had "no opponents
from horizon to sky."139 In Iraq, ceremonies are held symbolizing the
resurrection of the Babylonian Empire, in a manner that recalls the
pagan ceremonies of the Nazis. Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed the temple
of Solomon and carried the People of Israel to captivity in Babylon,
is known to history for two characteristics, that of a ruthless commander,
and a great architect. He was also filled with a pride bordering on
the psychopathic. He had his name written on every one of the bricks
used in the construction of the buildings he had erected. In direct
imitation, and despite all the poverty and misery he inflicts on his
people, Saddam has his name written on the bricks used to build the
palaces he constructs so ostentatiously.
A great portion of the Iraqi
people, however, have been so psychologically deformed by Saddam's fascism,
that they do not see the construction of such palaces as a wrong or
as an injustice to them. On the contrary, they regard these palaces,
where Saddam lives in great luxury, as a matter of national honor, and
something Iraq can display proudly to foreigners.
Another example of Saddam's
fascist character is that, although he has no religious belief, he sometimes
puts on a false facade of religion to use religion for his own political
ends.
However, it is clear that
the use of religious symbols for improper ends (such as to keep Saddam
in power and spreading evil) is tremendous hypocrisy. The duty of the
Iraqi people, and indeed of everyone, when faced with fascism, is not
to be deceived by its propaganda methods, but to distinguish between
the truly devout and the fascists who just pretend to be so, and to
then act accordingly. It is not difficult to make out the difference
between the two, because a fascist can never be truly devout.
In the Koran, God has this
to say about these two-faced leaders who, through their power and ill-earned
respect, deceive their people into complacency:
Among the people there
is someone whose words about the life of the world excite your admiration,
and he calls God to witness what is in his heart, while he is in fact
the most hostile of adversaries. Whenever he holds the upper hand, he
goes about the earth corrupting it, destroying crops and animals. God
does not love corruption. When he is told to have fear of God, he is
seized by pride which drives him to wrongdoing. Hell will be enough
for him! What an evil resting-place! (Koran, 2:204-206)
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