SINOGRAPH False targets and the rise of
fascism By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - The very first sign of fascism
in Europe was the capture of Fiume in 1919 by a
bunch of Italian World War I veterans led by
poet-warrior Gabriele D'Annunzio. Italy had won
the war but lost the peace, as many right-wing
propagandists were fond of saying, and the symbol
of the loss was embodied in Fiume, a city of mixed
nationalities that had well represented the
multi-ethnicity of the Habsburg Empire.
But after the war redrew European borders,
by respecting national lines rather than loyalties
to a crown, Fiume was caught in the middle.
Half-Slav, half-Italian, with a sprinkling of
German blood, Fiume was pulled between the newborn
union of southern Slavs (Yugoslavia) and infant
Italy. Despite its young age (it had proclaimed
unification just 58 years earlier, in 1861, and had
wrested Rome, its
capital, from the pope 49 years before, in 1870),
the latter came swaggering on to the international
scene like a grand power.
The reasons
Fiume was given to Yugoslavia and not Italy were
indeed debatable. There was the possibility that
the victorious allies, London and Paris, wanted to
contain the power and swagger of then-boastful
Italy, which had managed to win the 1918 Piave
Offensive almost on its own. Yet for D'Annunzio to
lead a band of ragtag veterans to invade Fiume and
thus destroy on the ground the agreement the
powers had just reached in Paris was an entirely
different matter.
D'Annunzio and the
Italians, who then supported his action,
vanquished not only the weak Yugoslavs, but also
any prospect of a lasting peace in Europe. They
opened the doors to fascism and World War II.
(Fiume is now the Croatian city of Rijeka.)
Borders are in fact always disputable and
never certain. One can contest them with
discussions and arguments or by using force and
threats. The first method is more manageable; the
latter breaks the existing order with consequences
that are hard to predict, especially in a volatile
international context.
In Europe, even a
defeated country used that method of contesting
the terms of peace, when again a group of veterans
led by an artist - a failed painter sporting a
small mustache, Adolf Hitler - accused generals of
having betrayed the German people and argued that
Germany had indeed won World War I but was stabbed
in the back by the Jews and communist defeatists.
Then Hitler disputed Germany's borders and tried
to expand the country at the cost of its
neighbors.
As was made clear by the
results of World War II, the generals who in World
War I surrendered without waiting for Allied
forces to pillage Berlin had done their best to
save the country, but Hitler did the worst for
Germany.
Is there a lesson for China in
this? In recent days, thousands of Chinese have
taken to the streets to protest against Japanese
"occupation" of "Chinese" islands called Diaoyu in
China and Senkaku in Japan. This is legitimate.
What is illegitimate and very dangerous for China,
as Hitler proved in Germany, is shouting slogans
that call for dropping nuclear bombs on Japan or
singing songs advocating that Tokyo be stamped
down. There have been violent anti-Japanese
protests in the past, but the violence of these
present slogans is unprecedented.
Moreover, the past demonstrations were
against alleged sleights for Japanese actions that
had already been done and had to be amended. Now,
protests are over an open wound that can't be
fixed overnight; maybe it can't be fixed at all.
It is hard to think that Japan tomorrow will
decide to give the Senkakus to China, and even if
this were to happen, it would send a frightening
message to the world. Japan would be seen to have
buckled under China's arrogance and threats,
almost like France and Britain tried to appease
Hitler's Germany and gave in to his requests over
Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in 1937. This
gesture is now widely regarded in Europe as having
accelerated the onset of World War II.
Japan may well be wrong in claiming to own
the contested islands, but waging war against it
to redress this alleged wrong suggests fascism.
Moreover, similarly to what happened in Italy,
this new breed of Chinese "fascists" use Japan as
a false target. Their real goal is to put on the
spot the present Chinese leadership, considered
too weak with foreigners and thus undeserving to
rule.
China has a long tradition of using
foreigners to protest against its leaders. In
1919, after World War I, young Chinese students
protested the peace terms accepted by republican
China and started a movement that eventually led
to breaking up the country and the arrival to
power of the Communists. The Communists in the
1930s accused the Nationalists (Kuomintang) of
betraying the country because they were not
fighting the Japanese. Today, again some
youngsters shout anti-Japanese slogans, burn
Japanese cars, and don old-fashioned Mao jackets,
a statement, like the black shirts in Italy or
brown shirts in Germany, against the present
post-Maoist Chinese leadership.
Chinese
nationalism then helps to breed Japanese
nationalism, never quite off the mainstream of
Tokyo politics, and the two rightist movements de
facto support each other, like images reflected in
parallel mirrors in their respective countries.
The louder the Chinese nationalists become, the
stronger also Japanese nationalists can be. This
also does not mean that the Japanese position on
the islands is right and the Chinese is wrong or
vice versa. There are also Japanese mistakes in
handling the issues. Yet this is beyond the point.
It's hard to overstate the danger this
movement poses for China and the world. Many
considered China a threat simply for its peaceful
economic and political development, without
hearing Chinese people shouting any war cries. Now
these slogans hint to countries steeped in the
European historical tradition that a fascist and
aggressive China is indeed a possibility. Then, in
a nutshell, either Beijing takes care of its
fascists or the world will take care of China,
much to its chagrin.
Stamping down the
roots of this new Chinese fascism may not be easy.
Certainly, it might not be too difficult to forbid
violent slogans or songs and arrest warmongers,
but it is a different thing to root out the
suffering of the people who are venting their many
frustrations for what is ultimately the fast pace
of change. This will naturally take decades.
In the meantime, people have to be allowed
to vent their anger in a manner that is both
peaceful and does not compromise the government,
and the government needs any legitimacy it can
muster to crack down on excesses. Governments
mandated by a popular election have greater
legitimacy in putting down protests they deem
excessive: I can take this down because the
majority is with me; you are a minority, you are
free to express your opinions but can't act to
endanger the majority.
Governments without
the legitimization of a popular election have a
harder time doing that because protesters can
claim they represent the majority, and thus its
best interests. How can a non-elected government
disprove that?
Therefore, China needs
political reforms to make it better able to crack
down on the dangerous sprouting of fascism. Of
course, these reforms have to be carefully crafted
and should not become the very springboard for
full-fledged fascism. Both in Italy and Germany,
fascists came to power through democratic
elections.
Navigating this narrow and
subtle road is perhaps the biggest challenge for
the next Communist Party congress this autumn.
Francesco
Sisci is a columnist
for the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore and can be
reached at fsisci@gmail.com
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