Fascism feeds on a sense of personal injustice.

From Times Online:

"This slump is stirring a political storm

From Japan and France to Swanley, the effects of recession will be felt not only in the economy

William Rees-Mogg

Fascism feeds on a sense of personal injustice. Swanley St Mary's sounds like one of those quiet English villages in which Miss Marple might have detected a murder. In fact, it is a ward of Sevenoaks District Council that has usually been a comfortable Labour seat. In recent years, the number of black and Asian residents has increased and racial resentment has been rising.

The Independent interviewed Lesley Dyall, the retiring Labour councillor in last Thursday's by-election. She was shocked to see voters chanting racial slogans as they went into and out of the polling station: “They were chanting ‘blacks out' as they came out of the community centre... it was very distressing to witness something like that in a local election. I just feel sorry for any black people who might have heard or seen that - it was shocking and disgusting.”

The result was a victory for Paul Golding, an unemployed lorry driver who was the British National Party candidate. The votes cast were BNP 408, Labour 332 and the Conservatives 247.

Labour has to be worried about the Swanley result. The BNP tends to attract working-class voters who feel that their interests have been neglected by Labour. At the next general election, the loss of a few hundred votes to the BNP in a number of Labour marginals could be significant in what might still be a hung Parliament. More immediately, Labour would be embarrassed if the BNP were to win seats in the European elections next June. Labour already expects a very bad European result, as it had in the last European elections in 2004.

On Saturday, a rally in London, organised by the group Unite Against Fascism, was addressed by Peter Hain and Ken Livingstone. Weyman Bennett, the secretary of the group, has argued that “Hitler used the economic crisis of the 1930s to gain a hearing for racist and murderous policies”. That is historically correct.

Germany was very hard hit by the Great Depression of the 1930s, particularly by unemployment. In the last pre-Depression election, in 1928, the Nazis won only 2 per cent of the vote. Four years later, in July 1932 - the trough of the depression - they won 37 per cent. That was their decisive breakthrough, although it was not until 1933 that they actually obtained power.

It cannot be said that the Great Depression created the great dictators, apart from Hitler himself. Stalin had come to power in the 1920s; so had Mussolini. Franco won power in the Spanish Civil War later in the 1930s. The Depression did, however, do much to undermine the democratic governments.

In Britain, Labour was in office when the Depression started; it was the largest party, with 288 seats. In the 1931 general election, Labour was able to win only 52 seats; it did not win a parliamentary majority for 14 years. In Germany, the Depression destroyed Heinrich Brüning's Government, the last serious hope of Weimar democracy.

In the US, Herbert Hoover lost the 1932 election by a landslide; the Republicans did not regain power until Dwight Eisenhower was elected President in 1952. Electorates are unforgiving to parties they associate with a depression.

We can see that the present depression is already putting political as well as economic pressures on the world's governments. It has destroyed the economy of Iceland and forced the Prime Minister to resign; it has split the Government of Ukraine; it has enraged Irish voters. Large countries in the G7 are also showing a high degree of political stress. In Britain, this is not just a matter of the BNP winning in a small Kent town. Current opinion polls suggest there could be a landslide against Labour comparable to the Tory defeat in 1997, if not to Labour's defeat in 1931.

Two other big countries under political pressure are France and Japan. In a recent poll for Le Figaro, 61 per cent expected massive strikes and social problems in the coming months; 36 per cent said that they would welcome them.

President Sarkozy's closest friend, Jacques Séguéla, has made a “let them eat cake” remark that is likely to infuriate the French people. He said that anyone who did not own a Rolex watch by the age of 50 was a “failure”. French public opinion is like tinder and could easily catch fire. Mr Sarkozy has enviable energy, but pitifully little tact. He might say or do almost anything and is capable of crass misjudgments. France is not an extinct volcano of revolt. One should not forget the events of 1968 and the ultimate defeat of President de Gaulle.

In Japan there is a similar mixture of economic crisis with almost random events. Japan is heavily dependent on high-quality exports, many of which are postponable purchases. Toyota, the world's leading carmaker, has announced its first loss in 70 years. The Prime Minister's approval rating has fallen below 10 per cent, which may be some sort of record. The economy is expected to contract by 4.1 per cent this year. The suicide rate is up. The Finance Minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, has had to resign after appearing to be drunk at the Rome G7 meeting.

Even an ordinary recession makes any government less popular; but it increasingly looks as if the world is experiencing a full-blown depression, comparable in scale, if not in precise timing, with what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called a Kondratiev. This is, at any rate, a big depression of a kind that appears only once or twice a century. These are historically associated with large- scale industrial innovation, such as the introduction of railways, the automobile, or, in our age, the internet. They have also been associated with political change that has sometimes been revolutionary. We are moving through a critical period in global politics as well as in global economics."

Me:

The possibility of massive unemployment followed by political upheaval has been the real problem to fear from the start. Hilariously, some people believe that allowing things to implode will lead to a free market bonanza. It is much more likely to lead to various forms of nationalism, all toxic.