In a clear sign of rising fascism, the racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-immigrant, pro-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won state parliamentary elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt, where they may soon form the first openly fascist state government in Germany since the Nazis’ Third Reich. After decades of failed liberal political leadership and economic decline, brought to a boil by a worldwide crisis of capitalism, masses of mostly white and male workers have been won to racist scapegoating, the bosses’ playbook to hide the true problem: the profit system. Whether it’s the Nazi AfD, the centrist Social Democratic Party (SPD) or Christian Democratic Union (CDU), or the German fake left (Die Linke), which recently won a state election in Berlin, all of the bosses’ political parties will gladly sacrifice workers’ lives to serve their masters’ interests. When it comes to electoral politics, there is no lesser evil–only evil. To protect the rulers’ profits in a period of sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry, liberal reformists—most of all the U.S. Democratic Party—will lead us to slaughter in World War III just as readily as Trump’s Republicans or the AfD. We have only one real choice: Organize for communist revolution to rid the world of all capitalist parasites and their political stooges.
The lessons of Nazi Germany
In the 1930s, the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party attracted workers amid an economic breakdown that followed Germany’s defeat in World War I. The fascists scapegoated Jews, Roma people, trade unionists, socialists, and communists, and went on to target them for elimination. Now, with Germany facing another economic crisis, the AfD is casting blame on immigrants. Then, Hitler served German arms producers, bankers, the Church, and landowners. The German rulers stoked a nationalist fever to plunge into World War II, mostly to stabilize their economy and generate more profits. Today, the AfD is supported by the same banking family that backed Hitler, and by the medical diagnostic and automotive bosses. More broadly, the German ruling class just raised its military spending by 25 percent (deutschland.de, 9/7).
When the bosses invest in more arms, as World War II proved, it’s because they intend to use them–against our class!
The most critical lesson to be drawn from 1930s Germany was laid out by R. Palme Dutt in his 1934 book, Fascism and Social Revolution. Dutt showed that the road to the Third Reich was paved by the "social fascists" of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), who collaborated with the proto-fascist Freikorps militia to crush a workers' uprising led in large part by communists of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1919. The SPD stayed committed to the parliamentary process even as the Nazis used it to consolidate their lethal power. Today, the international working class can't afford to repeat that fatal mistake. Voting can't beat fascism. As the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union ultimately showed the world, only mass armed struggle can end the fascist threat. More than 20 million Soviet workers gave their lives to crush the Nazi war machine (globalpoliticaleconomy.com, 2/9/2014).
Across Europe, millions of /workers have mobilized against open fascism. In Germany, the AfD’s win in Saxony-Anhalt was met by demonstrations of 150,000 workers in 20 cities (France24, 9/12). In Italy, two million workers and youth have joined anti-austerity, anti-fascist, anti-genocide protests led by labor unions and peppered with pro-communist sentiments (Reuters, 12/25). What’s missing is communist leadership to free angry workers from the liberals’ clutches and guide them toward a revolutionary movement. Progressive Labor Party is committed to winning workers’ confidence to lead this critical struggle.
Liberals pave the way for the racist right
The open fascists’ rise in Germany is no isolated case. We’re seeing it in Italy and France, in Argentina and Brazil, in the U.S. and Israel and Turkey and India. Much as in the 1930s, the door for these gutter-racist parties has been opened by the utter failures of the old liberal world order–and, this time around, by the spiraling decline of U.S. imperialism. Capitalist misery runs wide and deep, from acute poverty and hunger to live-streamed genocides in Gaza and Sudan. The reversals of the great communist revolutions in China and Russia have left our class disarmed. They’ve also helped to lay the groundwork for the AfD and its rotten ilk to gain a foothold within the working class.
Germany’s mainstream capitalist parties are exploiting fear over the AfD’s breakthroughs to advance their own anti-worker agendas. The CDU’s Freidrich Merz declared he would stay on as chancellor “for Germany’s democratic future” (Guardian, 9/21). Yet these same reformist parties have overseen decades of falling living standards. They have enabled and assisted the war crimes of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East and beyond. The ruling CDU in tandem with other EU rulers has contributed to the killings thousands of migrants with harsh immigration restrictions, and has fiercely defended Israel’s genocide in Gaza while brutally repressing pro-Palestine sentiment (Al Jazeera, 12/7/2025) While the AfD has proposed using military funds for mass deportations (Correctiv, 9/11), it’s the Merz regime that has launched a record-breaking € 377 billion ($436 billion) military rearmament plan to prepare for looming inter-imperialist war (Politico.eu, 10/27/2025).
Communism: only way to smash Nazis and liberal bosses alike
Whether they’re open Nazis like the AfD or “social fascists” like the SPD or the centrist fascists like CDU, none of the bosses’ political parties–including the Democratic Socialists of America–can begin to meet the needs of the international working class. None of the reformist misleaders can offer workers more than a few crumbs from the bosses’ table. As Zohran Mamdani, the fake-left mayor of New York City, holds yet another chummy meeting with the vile Donald Trump, we’re reminded that none of them can stem the crisis of capitalism or the inevitable rise of fascism.
The bosses’ flimsy political sideshows and blatant deceptions can be opportunities to convince workers that we must destroy capitalism root and branch to build a new communist world. With communist ideas leading mass workers’ movements, there is no limit to our power. We can smash not only the Nazi goons, but their lying liberal counterparts as well. Fight for communism! Join PLP!
What is fascism?
Capitalism is constantly riddled with economic and political crises. When these crises reach a tipping point, and the bosses’ state power is threatened from within or without, they shed the mask of liberal democracy and implement fascism, the rulers’ class dictatorship in its open form.
The conditions that typically lead to fascism include the drive toward global war; the rise of a militant working class armed with leftist and communist ideas; and the decay of a ruling class beset by a falling rate of profit and a lack of unity and discipline in their own ranks. While the best-known fascist regimes include Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini, Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, Haiti under the Duvaliers, and the Dominican Republic under Trujillo are other cases in point.