International Federation of Resistance Fighters: Racism, the phase before Fascism, is spreading

On 5 October 2013 the sixteenth congress of the International Federation of Resistance Fighters (FIR) was held in the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia. The significance of this meeting has been reported on by the website of the Czech Freedom Fighters’ Union (Český svaz bojovníků za svobodu – ČSBS). News server Romea.cz brings you their report in translation:   

The congress discussed many important questions facing the anti-Fascist and resistance movements. It was attended by delegates from all over Europe, from Denmark to Greece and from Portugal to Russia, a total of 45 delegates from 35 anti-Fascist organizations in 15 states (Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine).  

The main speech was given by FIR president Vilmos Hanti. He touched in particular on the following most significant questions for the contemporary world situation from the anti-Fascist point of view:

• Seven decades after the victory over Fascism, the ultra-right is gaining strength and spreading Fascist ideas.
• This trend is already being felt in the education system and the media. 
• Racism, the phase before Fascism, is spreading.

The ultra-right is creating its own enemy anew out of groups of people such as the disabled, gays and lesbians, the homeless, immigrants, Muslims, Jews and the Roma, just as Nazism made such people into scapegoats and charged them with bringing down the living standard in interwar Europe. Holocaust commemorations, therefore, are a brilliant opportunity to show the true, inhuman face of the Fascist ideology, as are days commemorating the Second World War, which communicate the heroism of the anti-Fascist struggle as an example for all to follow.

Unfortunately, what is happening is that during such commemorations today, these events are being presented without their corresponding historical contexts, such as who bore responsibility for the war and its brutality, the role played by anti-Fascists, and the heroism of the fight for freedom and its leading personalities, whose names and memorials are now disappearing from public sites. We who belong, for the most part, to the younger generation must not allow the ultra-right to take our institutions and rights away from us, or for hatred to become a determining factor in human relationships. 

We want a democratic, peaceful society and we are fighting for one. We need everyone, whether left-wing or right-wing, atheist or believer, to condemn the ideology that once led humanity into catastrophe.