MAY 8 2025 is a day when many people in Britain will be celebrating. Most, understandably, will celebrate their Britishness or Englishness without understanding the significance of Victory in Europe Day and its oft-forgotten sister Victory over Japan Day, officially commemorated in Britain on August 15.

For anti-fascists these are the days when fascism was defeated militarily and when the Soviet Union became a significant world power. It was a day when those countries which had seen the emergence of fascist power took stock and agreed to put a cordon around the far right.

If we look across nations now, that cordon sanitaire has been breached in a whole host of nations. The far right are in power in Italy and Hungary. Japan lifted its militarisation restrictions in December 2022. Milei in Argentina is clearly anti-communist and and anti-socialist. Within the EU the Prague Declaration equated communism and fascism, shifting the bloc on a more overtly right-wing path.

As in the 1930s social democracy has cracked and taken on the language of the far right. Allowing the far right the oxygen of publicity.

Marx said in his essay The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte that history repeats itself, at first as tragedy then as farce. But everything must be set in context and today’s far right are not the same as those that came to the fore in the 1930s. Marx’s words are a reminder that whilst history can teach us lessons each historical event must be understood in its unique context.

There is no doubt that the election of Trump to the presidency of the US has given a boost to far-right populist movements. His rhetoric is dangerous and a number of commentators consider his view fascistic. The slogan Make America Great Again has been taken up in Britain, changed and recycled of course to Make England Great Again, Make Cornwall Great Again!

This longing for a mythical past is a trait of far-right and fascist parties. Trump’s demands for repatriation have been picked up by Britain First, Ukip and Homeland. Reform UK calls for a freeze in immigration, the closure of hotels housing those awaiting decisions on their asylum applications, opposition to equality programmes, and their MPs voted against enhanced workers’ rights. All tenets from the classic far-right playbook.

In its pamphlet released in 2019, On Guard Against Fascism, the Communist Party reminded us of a few salient facts.

That extreme right-wing movements often arose when there was a deepening economic crisis. That they do not see the collective solidarity of labour as a means of replacing capitalism as a social and economic system, but want to exploit those divisions that exist. We see this in Britain, the US, Germany and France along with others.

The danger of these populist movements is that they can provide a breeding ground where fascist ideologies can take root. They can be a gateway to fascism. This is the real challenge posed by Reform UK and its friends in the far-right worldwide.

In 1934 Rajani Palme Dutt in Fascism and Social Revolution sought to analyse the conditions necessary for fascism to take root. These included economic stagnation, decay of progressive elements, collapse of economic hope and the loss of credibility by previous militant social democrat politics and sharpening inter-imperialist rivalries.

And while there is not a direct collaboration between 1934 and 2025 there are similarities. Our union membership levels in Britain now stand at 22.4 per cent according to 2023 figures. Often due to the failure to recruit amongst the growing working population. Pensions and disability benefits are being cut. Social support is falling or non existent. Rivalries exist across nations.

George Dimitrov in For the Unity of the Working Class Against Fascism (1935) stressed that fascism was not something over and above capitalism. It was the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital. It was the the strategy of last resort when capitalist rule could be secured no other way.

Fascism did not grow out of thin air. Financial capitalists were openly anti-socialist and were often anti-semitic. Anti-semitism was rife across Europe. It was institutionalised into the state itself, and by the end of the 19th century racial anti-semitism emerged as part of the view that the white race was superior. This view was supported by pseudoscientific theories. Fascist parties fed these theories and gave them more popular appeal with capitalist support.

In Britain, which never, apart from in the occupied Channel Islands, saw fascists in power the 1930s saw a significant growth in the far right, particularly the British Union of Fascists. The battles of Cable Street and Stockton where anti-fascists stopped their marches are well known, but there were many more. But governments and their friends in the media fed the anti-union, anti-communist and anti-migrant fever.  

Today the far-right actors call nations “shit holes” and then denigrate the people who come from them. This language is designed to designate fellow humans as outsiders, inferior. Language reminiscent of 1930s fascism.

But things are not the same. The world is wealthier and more interconnected.

Vijay Prashad of the Tricontinental Institute in 2024 laid out 10 theses. These are valuable if we wish to understand the growth of the far right today.

The far right of a special type:

Uses democratic institutions. It believes in the “Long March” through these institutions. It patiently builds political power, staffs its people within these institutions, and captures education institutions.

Is driving the attrition of the state and transferring its functions to the private sector.

Uses the repressive apparatus of the state as much as legally permissible to silence its critics and demobilise movements of economic and political opposition.

Incites a homeopathic dose of violence in society by the more fascistic elements within its political opposition to create fear

Provides a partial answer to the loneliness that its woven into an advanced capitalistic society — precarious working, long hours etc. Community comes via the internet and a parasitic relationship with religious communities. This partial answer fuels anger.

Uses its proximity to private media conglomerates and social media to normalise its discourse and increase the acceptance of its ideas, resulting in agitational activities.

Is a tentacular organisation with its roots spread. It operates where people gather.

Attacks the institutions of power that are its socio-political basis. Creating the illusion that it is on the side of the people by developing a highly masculine form of nationalism.

It is an international formation organised through various formations and means. Representatives of the AfD, alongside Milei, Meloni and Farage, were among the guests at Trump’s inauguration. Musk and the Koch brothers fund right-wing groups world wide. They have significant media interests.

And finally the new far right has differences between the leading imperialist counties and the global South in how it organises and manifests itself.  

If we are to confront the far right the left must take up the challenge posed by these 10 theses. We must not compartmentalise our struggles but see them as a whole.

We can compare the far-right players against the theses — Reform UK, Elements of the Tories and Labour parties, Vox in Spain, the RN in France, AfD in Germany and BJP in India for example.

The job of the left is to build the much needed United Front. Whilst there is not a direct comparison with the 1930s we can look back to the failure of the international community to recognise and combat anti-semitism in their own communities and nations, the failure of the international community to support republican Spain, the opposition to communism and Marxism and appeasement or accommodation of the far right and fascism, which led to war.

Today in Britain we see a the march to war, cutbacks in social provision, the growth of poverty, the sell-off of state assets, the demonisation of minority communities, a far-right discourse becoming the norm in the media, poor and worsening employment and a massive growth of far right influences.

And one lesson from history is the need for unity.

In March 1933, the Nazis won 196 seats in the German Reichstag. It was not a majority. The Social Democrats won 120, the Communists 100, the Centre 70, the National Conservatives 52, and the Bavarian People’s Party 19.

Opposition to the Nazis didn't hold. The Social Democrats and Communists were banned. The rest, as they say, is history.

Tony Conway is on the executive committee of the Communist Party and convenes its Anti-Racist Anti-Fascist Commission.