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About Three Way Fight
Three Way Fight is a blog that promotes revolutionary anti-fascist analysis, strategy, and activism. Unlike liberal anti-fascists, we believe that "defending democracy" is an illusion, as long as that "democracy" is based on a socio-economic order that exploits and oppresses human beings. Global capitalism and the related structures of patriarchy, heterosexism, racial and national oppression represent the main source of violence and human suffering in the world today. Far right supremacism and terrorism grow out of this system and cannot be eradicated as long as it remains in place.
At the same time, unlike many on the revolutionary left, we believe that fascists and other far rightists aren't simply tools of the ruling class. They can also form an autonomous political force that clashes with the established order in real ways, or even seeks to overthrow global capitalism and replace it with a radically different oppressive system. We believe the greatest threat from fascism in this period is its ability to exploit popular grievances and its potential to rally mass support away from any liberatory anti-capitalist vision.
Leftists need to confront both the established capitalist order and an insurgent or even revolutionary right, while recognizing that these opponents are also in conflict with each other. The phrase "three way fight" is short hand for this idea (although in concrete terms there are more than three contending forces). Our blog confronts complexities in the dynamics between these three poles that are often glossed over. We point out, for example, that repression isn't necessarily fascist -- anti-fascism itself can be a tool of ruling-class repression (as was the case during World War II, when anti-fascism was used to justify strike-breaking and the mass imprisonment of Japanese Americans, among other measures). And we warn against far right efforts to build alliances with leftists as well as fascistic tendencies within the left (as when leftists promote conspiracy theories rooted in anti-Jewish scapegoating).
Three Way Fight was initiated in 2004 by leftists active in anti-fascist organizing and other kinds of political work. As a political project, Three Way Fight built on earlier efforts such as the collaborative publications Confronting Fascism: Discussion Documents for a Militant Movement (2002) and My Enemy's Enemy: essays on globalization, fascism and the struggle against capitalism (2001). From the beginning, Three Way Fight brought together anarchist and independent Marxist perspectives, and sought to promote inclusive discussion and debate among revolutionary leftists. Over the years, Three Way Fight has addressed a wide range of topics, from confrontations between neo-nazis and anti-nazi activists to geostrategic debates within the ruling class, and ranging from Latin America to the Middle East and from Europe to South Asia.
Three Way Fight has had a number of contributors over the years, and blog activity has increased and decreased at different times. Currently, the blog has one regular contributor and remains active on a limited basis, with original pieces typically posted every 1-2 months plus occasional repostings from other sites. At this time, we are particularly interested in addressing:
- recent developments in far right politics, such as major upsurges, ideological changes, and internal conflicts
- insurgent and populist tendencies within more "moderate" right-wing movements
- anti-rightist strategy and analysis by leftist and liberal groups
- ruling class relations with the far right (collaboration and conflict)
- state repression against the left and the far right
- left-right alliance-building and leftists promoting rightist politics
- histories of fascism and related movements.
15 July 2013
2 comments:
About this post: I would challenge the assertion that the far right might "overthrow global capitalism" and replace it with a different but still oppressive power structure. Fascism is emergent from capitalism and is falsely posed as an alternative to both capitalist modernity and revolutionary communism, but its reason for being is to still more brutally enforce the premises on which capitalism is based (especially property and class relations), usually in the guise of an "organic national community". Fascism is an ideology that is used to mobilize a middle class that is threatened by proletarianization against the danger (to capitalism) posed by a revolutionary proletariat.
It’s not a given that fascism automatically defends capitalism, although many Marxists have accepted this as an article of faith. Don Hamerquist argues that fascism may lead toward the “common ruin of the contending classes,” which Marx and Engels recognized as a possible outcome of class struggle. He cites Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s analysis that German Nazism foreshadowed a “transcapitalist” exploitative order. In particular, the Nazis’ genocidal labor policy broke with capitalist principles. Nazism worked to death millions of workers in the heart of Europe — members of the modern working class. Not just labor power, but workers themselves, were “consumed in the process of production just like raw materials and fixed capital,” thus obliterating “the distinctively capitalist difference between labor and other factors of production.” (Hamerquist, “Fascism & Anti-Fascism,” pp. 7-9, http://kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/books/fascism/fashantifash.php.)
These comments are hardly the last word on the subject, but they challenge us to approach fascism’s relationship to capitalism with an open mind. Neo-nazis’ hostility to global capitalist elites is intense and widespread and has led some of them to literally wage war on the U.S. government. It would be a mistake to assume that this is false ideology just because Marxist authorities say so.
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