[Bromma] Against both imperialism AND fascism: A principled path for the Left

Kersplebedeb Note: We are posting the below by Bromma, whose work we have learned much from over the years, and which we have published in pamphlet and book form and on our site. The delay in its publication is down to us, and our own disagreements with the text as it stands — we had hoped to write a critique to publish alongside it. We have proven incapable of doing so, and so are publishing Bromma’s piece now. To clarify, our disagreement is primarily with the methodology and with underlying definitions and analyses of fascism and the three way fight.

Author’s Note: This is an unedited draft, written more than a year ago, that has been circulating informally. Much has changed over that period. But the basic arguments still seem relevant, and might be useful to anti-imperialists.  —Bromma, 10/25

Against both imperialism AND fascism: A principled path for the Left

Draft, 7/3/24

With the failure of State socialism and national liberation parties in the capitalist periphery…the far right including fascism is grasping at the leadership of mass anti-colonialism.  —J. Sakai, The Shock of Recognition, 2013.

I.   Notes on Hamas

1. Fascism Alters the Political Equation in Palestine

The enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend. For the US Left, this is so obvious in our domestic politics that it goes without saying. There’s a growing trend of insurgent fascists who believe that the US government is oppressive, and they are trying to overthrow it. But nobody thinks that makes them our allies.

Nevertheless, in the arena of global politics there’s a strong tendency by Western leftists to treat any enemy of Western imperialism as our friend: to soft-pedal the political differences we have with reactionary political forces—including opportunist dictators, other imperialists, corrupt ex-revolutionaries and right wing insurgents—as long as they criticize or conflict with Western imperialism for any reason. One of the most damaging aspects of this reflexive tendency today is the failure to recognize and confront what revolutionary women (and some other Left theoreticians) have exposed as a growing “anti-imperialist” version of fascism.

“Enemy of our enemy” thinking is a particularly serious issue for the international Left right now as activists try to evaluate Hamas and its role in Palestine. In response to Israeli genocide in Gaza, a large, energetic Left-led Palestine solidarity movement has captured the world’s attention. It’s a movement that shows strong potential for helping to stop the Israeli massacres of civilians, materially aiding Palestine’s struggle for national liberation, isolating Zionism and maybe even rebuilding the Left. But within this movement, illusions about Hamas and its ideological allies threaten to misdirect our solidarity.

The fundamental contradiction that has driven political and social struggle in Palestine for generations is the contradiction between Western imperialism, spearheaded by Zionist settlers, and the unceasing Palestinian struggle for self-determination. This conflict is now complicated by the rise of—and potential hegemony of—fascist movements among both the settlers and the Palestinians.

Murderous Zionist militias operate freely in the West Bank and Israel itself; they openly threaten to impose a fascist theocracy on Palestine and beyond. The Israeli government itself has essentially surrendered to fascism. At the same time Hamas, a fascist movement based on genocidal antisemitism, misogyny, parasitic capitalism, hatred of the Left, and Islamist theocratic totalism, has become a major force in Palestine. These two fascist forces have a sort of perverted synergy, each contributing to the success of the other, as I will discuss below.

Rebellious fascism has reshuffled the deck. Today, Western imperialism is scrambling to reestablish control over its wayward Israeli client, which is veering off script under fascist leadership. Meanwhile, the PLO and most Palestinians struggle to come to grips with Israel’s brutal slaughter, which Hamas and its allies intentionally provoked, without warning or consultation, on October 7. Millions of Palestinian civilians are being herded and slaughtered; trapped in the merciless collective punishment and collateral damage of Israeli fascists’ frenzied, genocidal and probably futile effort to destroy its Hamas doppelganger—a force which it despises, but helped create.

Hamas (along with its armed struggle partners) is clearly a seriously outgunned insurgent force. They have no capacity yet for the kind of massive genocide the Zionists are practicing. But that doesn’t change the goals or the violently reactionary reality of Hamas’ ideology, politics, and actions. In fact, the military struggle between Hamas and the current Israeli regime is a battle—however uneven—between two fascist forces, backed by two reactionary international united fronts. It’s a battle between two genocidal movements of deeply authoritarian capitalist men, for whom the massacre of civilians—even “their own” civilians—is insignificant collateral damage in a greater cause of male gangster domination. Two patriarchal populist movements—one state based, one insurgent—each promoting distorted “holy” mythologies; each alleging that they were chosen by god to rule powerful empires and crush all who stand in their way. Two brutal formations dedicated to ruthlessly destroying the Left and further subordinating women.

The Western Left knows and says a fair amount about Israeli fascism, which now effectively controls the government of Israel. We at least know about this fascist trend’s roots in settler colonialism (which has long been fascist in its relations with Palestinians). About its Zionist delusions of “chosen people” entitlement and superiority, its demonization and dehumanization of Palestinians and Arabs. Its misogynous theocracy, which it imposes by force. Its role in championing apartheid and building illegal settlements at the point of a gun. Its promotion of and participation in massacres, tortures, bombardments, sexual assaults, dispossessions and every kind of war crime. Its growing rebellious independence from the dictates of Western imperialists, even as it extracts all the military hardware it can get from them.

Most of the Left knows less and says much less about Hamas’ history and politics. We often pretend it’s just a nationalist anti-imperialist underdog acting within an imagined united front of resistance to Israeli occupation. Maybe we don’t really want to know. Just as we collectively didn’t really want to know about “anti-imperialist” Ruholla Khomeini and his Guardianship of the Jurist movement in Iran. Or about the Taliban and Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, or the insurgents of Daesh/Islamic State, or Muqtada al-Sadr and the other vicious right wing “anti-imperialist” warlords carving up Iraq at the expense of its people. From a certain perspective, it’s easier to not know; to concentrate on the very real injustices, oppressions and threats of genocide aimed at Muslims around the world. To just gloss over the reality of Islamist fascism and pretend that the enemy of our enemy is our friend.

But we need to know.

• Nazi-Loving Origins

Hamas was founded as the Palestine chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, a pan-Islamist, theocratic organization founded in Egypt in 1928. The Brotherhood’s original mission was to defeat a rising left wing movement and replace it with rule by political Islam and Sharia religious law.

Above all, it used religious sectarianism and anti-Semitism in a conscious attempt to combat secularism and the growing influence of the socialist and communist left—many of whom were Jewish—within the national movement, and to divide the working class. This was particularly evident in the industrial city of Alexandria which was ethnically very diverse. The Brotherhood’s anti-working class axis thus blended nationalism and religion with a reactionary social programme. —World Socialist Web Site

Although the Brotherhood has made tactical alliances with leftist forces at times, its hatred for the Left always­­ resurfaces. The Brotherhood worked with King Farouq to break Left-led worker strikes in the 1940s and beat up left wing university students for Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat in the 1970s.

Hassan al-Banna, the founder and absolutist leader of the Brotherhood, was an admirer of Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler—not just because of their shared antisemitism, but because of their shared views on holy wars of conquest, totalitarian society, and the patriarchal family. Al-Banna facilitated Arabic translation and distribution of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. During WWII, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Palestine supported the Axis powers and called for the expulsion of all Jews. Their hope was that the European fascists would take military control of the “Middle East,” and, with Brotherhood help, carry out the same genocidal measures against Jews that they did back home. The Brotherhood saw itself becoming a powerful ruling force in the Arab world through an alliance with Hitler and Mussolini. But this reactionary Islamist vision never came to fruition—in fact, it was strongly opposed by most Muslims in the region.

 Haj Amin al-Husseini, the early leader of the Palestine branch of the Brotherhood, had previously served as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, chosen by the British colonialists in 1921. The imperialists hoped that by coopting a well known Palestinian activist, they could keep a lid on rising anti-British agitation and resistance. They were wrong. Al-Husseini helped found the Muslim Brotherhood and quickly turned on his British sponsors, leading the failed Arab Revolt of 1936-41. Forced to flee, he traveled to Germany and became a Nazi collaborator. Al-Husseini assisted the German fascists with anti-Jewish propaganda and with the recruitment of a Muslim SS division (mostly from Bosnia). Friendly with Himmler, Eichmann and other top Nazi leaders, al-Husseini met at least once with Hitler. The Nazis funded al-Husseini, and arranged for him to regularly broadcast antisemitic and fascist speeches in Arabic to the Middle East.

After the end of the war, following a brief period of custody under French house arrest, al-Husseini returned to Cairo and was greeted by a Muslim Brotherhood hero’s welcome. By that time (1946) facts about the Nazi death camps were well known to the world. Still, the Brotherhood released an enthusiastic statement praising al-Husseini: “One hair of the Mufti’s is worth more than the Jews of the whole world.” Al-Husseini was indicted by Yugoslavia at the UN War Crimes Commission, but never arrested.

Over the decades, the Muslim Brotherhood has given rise to dozens of branches outside of Egypt, as well as many other political Islamist offshoots such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda and ISIS. During periods of base building or retreat, the Brotherhood and its descendants present themselves as charitable and religious groups. They organize extensive networks of schools, mosques and social service agencies, often funded by donors or outside sponsors, which they use to patiently promote their right wing views and build grass roots loyalty. But they also organize paramilitary groups and assassination squads. When they see an opening, they emerge as a disciplined street force and attempt to seize military and political turf— as they have in Palestine, in Egypt, in Jordan, in Syria, in Sudan, in Lebanon.

•  What Hamas Stands For

When it announced itself as a reinvigorated, militant “wing of the Muslim Brotherhood” in 1987-8, during the First Intifada, Hamas proudly endorsed the Brotherhood’s antisemitism, misogyny and pan-Islamist theocratic vision in its founding Covenant. Citing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an authority, the Covenant argues that rich “warmongering Jews” have control of the world media and were responsible for the French Revolution, “the Communist Revolution,” World War I and II—”through which they made huge financial gains”—and the League of Nations, “through which they could rule the world.” Hamas says, “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees.”

The Covenant speaks of the goal of establishing all of Jerusalem as a waqf, a resource belonging to the world Muslim community as a whole. Hamas’ conception of a “Muslim nation” refers to the goal of a restored transnational theocratic caliphate, with its capital in Jerusalem, extending across the Middle East and beyond. As the Covenant puts it, Hamas’ “geographical dimension is wherever Muslims are found, in any region on the face of the earth.” This transnational pan-Islamist viewpoint has been repeated continuously over the years, including by Hamas’s top leader Khaled Mash’al at a particularly optimistic moment in 2006:

The nation of Muhammad is gaining victory in Palestine. The nation of Muhammad is gaining victory in Iraq, and it will be victorious in all Arab and Muslim lands….These fools will be defeated, the wheel of time will turn, and times of victory and glory will be upon our nation, and the West will be full of remorse, when it is too late….

Today, the Arab and Islamic nation is rising and awakening, and it will reach its peak, Allah willing. It will be victorious. It will link the present to the past. It will open up the horizons of the future. It will regain the leadership of the world. Allah willing, the day is not far off…

Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination, but a fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing.  —Al-Jazeera TV, February 3, 2006.

Article 17 of the Covenant says that “the Muslim Woman has a role in the battle for liberation which is not less than the role of the man, for she is the factory of men.” Later, the Covenant adds, “The women in the house of the Mujahid, (and the striving family), be she a mother or sister, has the most important role in taking care of the home and raising children of ethical character and understanding that comes from Islam, and of training her children to perform the religious obligations to prepare them for the Jihadic role that awaits them.”

The Covenant isn’t an antique text from ancient history—it was written 36 years ago. Nevertheless, during a period of retreat and diplomatic isolation in 2017, Hamas issued an “update” or “addendum” to the Covenant, intended to soften the group’s image among the Arab ruling classes it had alienated, as well as among Western negotiators and gullible progressives. It carefully substituted “Zionist” for “Jew,” claiming that it was the Zionists’ own fault that the two became conflated. It still defined Palestine as a Muslim nation; only Arab residents were even considered “Palestinians.” But rather than reaffirming its formal affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, which had recently suffered a devastating defeat in Egypt, the new text attempted to present Hamas as a group of independent, democratic, non-sectarian national liberation fighters, focused on Palestinian self-determination, who happen to also be devout Muslims. It even endorsed “civil society institutions” and “trade unionist groups.”

Hamas has pointedly refused—then or now—to renounce the original Covenant. (An act which would likely cause mutiny within its ranks.) The 2017 tactical adjustment by Hamas was similar to how a temporarily “benevolent” Khomeini once promised to honor an anti-imperialist united front with the Iranian Left. Or how the supposedly “reformed” Taliban promised to uphold women’s rights just a few years ago. Hamas trimmed its messaging to suit its audience, without changing its reactionary essence.

We can be pretty sure about this because since 2017, when Hamas leaders speak frankly, in videos and on their own TV channel, the movement’s patriarchal, antisemitic, pan-Islamist and theocratic agenda is still regularly featured. There’s been no repudiation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s fascist ideology or politics whatsoever.

Hamas officials, clerics and media (including children’s media) refer to Jews as apes and pigs and call for their annihilation around the globe. They allege that Jews knead the blood of Palestinian children into Passover matzo. They also blame Jews for “spreading homosexuality.” (They condemn LGBTI rights as “deviance and moral decay.”) Hamas leaders and media also repeat the goal of an Islamic Caliphate that will extend beyond Palestine—in some versions, over the whole world. And they continue to characterize women’s primary role as producers and enablers of male warriors.

• Hamas Rule Over Gaza

I’ve discussed Hamas’ embrace of patriarchal theocracy and Nazi-style antisemitism. But we know much more about Hamas because they controlled Gaza for the 16 years leading up to October 7. While ruling from 2007-2023, Hamas demonstrated in practice its commitment to violent fundamentalist authoritarianism, which it imposed on its subjects, especially women, homosexuals, and leftists.

Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in 2006, something that surprised them and most observers. Their victory, based on winning 44 percent of the popular vote, was due largely to their unified, well-organized campaign—in contrast to that of the PLO’s largest constituent group, Fatah, whose overconfident campaign was divided and lackluster. Voters also used the election as an opportunity to protest against Fatah corruption and the Palestinian National Authority’s inability to make headway in negotiations with Israel and the Western powers.

After the election, Hamas uprooted Fatah’s mostly-social democratic officials and workers from Gaza’s Palestinian Authority schools, police and other government institutions at the point of a gun, replacing them with Hamas loyalists. Many were imprisoned or executed. This was essentially a coup. Fatah militants and Palestinian Authority employees fought to maintain their institutional presence in Gaza, and the struggle became extremely violent, verging on civil war; there were over 600 fatalities. The eventual outcome was decisive victory for Hamas, ensuring the group’s full political and military dominance in Gaza.

Hamas pushed Gaza hard to the right, enforcing a suffocating religious patriarchy that they layered on top of Israeli oppression. Women were essentially excluded from the group’s top political leadership, although they were mobilized to support Hamas’ campaigns and educational work. Hamas’ Sharia courts turned a blind eye to honor killings, child marriage, rampant male family violence and (male-only) polygamy. Women’s court testimony was worth half of a man’s. Divorced women lost custody of their children and even their visitation rights. Women without hijabs were driven off the streets by rock-throwing gangs; hijabs were required for girls to attend (sex segregated) schools.

Women’s public activities were severely restricted. Riding bicycles or motorcycles was considered immoral provocation. Legislation and organized street violence prevented women from dancing or smoking water pipes in public, from running in marathons, from having male hairdressers, from mixing with men at beaches or cafes. “Guardian” men were given veto power over women’s travel.

Virtue Committees demonized and punished dating, card playing, dog walking, hair gel and “immodest” dress. Bars, beauty parlors and amusement parks were burned down or shuttered. Homosexuality was strictly illegal, considered “deviance and moral decay”; gay men were imprisoned and tortured. Hamas banned books and shut down music concerts.

Many Palestinian leaders outspokenly criticized Hamas’ attempts to “Talibanize” Gaza, and protests succeeded in reversing some restrictions. But in many cases, secular and Left disagreement with Hamas policy was murderously suppressed; even people protesting over lack of food were brutalized. An extensive secret police force tracked and intimidated dissenters and potentially “immoral” people.

Although voters had hoped for an end to corruption, Hamas’ regime was run as an open patronage network. Many job-seekers had to sign a pledge of fidelity to Hamas and pay kickbacks from their salaries. Favoritism was widespread, and every donation or economic transaction—including charity from abroad and movement of goods through the tunnels from Egypt—was taxed to support the group.

The Hamas regime in Gaza received billions of dollars a year from the Palestinian Authority; hundreds of millions a year from Qatar, tens of millions from Iran, millions from private donors. Hamas capitalists controlled—still control—regional investments that generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and got income from smuggling operations all over the world. Individual leaders now own portfolios worth billions, and many live in luxury abroad. Impoverished residents of Gaza received little benefit from all this money, and had no say in how it was spent.

Hamas’ actions while ruling Gaza give a lie to their 2017 promises of “coexistence and tolerance….pluralism, democracy, national partnership, acceptance of the other and the adoption of dialog.” They show that Hamas stands for fascism in the form of a patriarchal theocratic dictatorship, harnessing all of society to serve a parasitic warrior class.

Naturally, many Palestinians view Hamas as a reactionary, untrustworthy, oppressive force. Polling done in July 2023 indicated that 62% of Gazans supported a ceasefire with Israel, and 50% wanted Hamas to accept a permanent two state solution based on 1967 borders—positions diametrically opposed to Hamas’ program. After many years living under a Hamas regime (there had been no elections since 2006), 70% of Gazan residents wanted the Palestinian Authority to replace Hamas in governing Gaza, and also wanted Hamas to give up its separate armed units. Ironically, one of the respondents’ biggest complaints was Hamas corruption.

It’s often reported in the media that support for Hamas has risen dramatically since October 7. Palestinian American pollster Amaney Jamal gave her own interpretation to Ezra Klein:

When you have these cycles of violence and when you have basically what’s seen as the indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians, especially in Gaza, this bodes well for support for Hamas, that, “OK, you know what? We’re going to support this terrorist movement because the world is not listening. Even when we were not supporting Hamas, we were told we were supporting Hamas, and we were punished for not even supporting Hamas.”—Amaney Jamal, Princeton, Arab Barometer Project

At any rate, many Palestinians (including those living in Israel) continue to strongly oppose Hamas’ actions; some accuse it of harming Palestinian civilians and being responsible for their terrible suffering after October 7. Nobody really knows the true opinion percentages; for one thing, it can be dangerous to express dissenting beliefs openly. What we do know is that guns and bombs, not opinions, rule Gaza right now. There’s no kind of democracy. Whatever Gaza’s civilians would prefer to happen, neither of the two main fascist forces—Zionist or Islamist—is paying any attention. And neither of them is giving up. So far, the horrifying civilian death and suffering on and after October 7 has left two contending and colluding groups of fascist men firmly in control. And has increased the likelihood of regional war—which both groups seem to desire.

• Agent Provocateur

 Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas….This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 2019.

The Zionist government has always kept a close eye on the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots. So it’s striking that Israeli officials aided and encouraged the rise of the Brotherhood in Palestine, starting in the late 1970s (before Hamas was even formally founded) and continuing until very recently. Yasser Arafat referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.” The specific aim of Netanyahu and other top Zionist politicians was to undermine the Palestinian Left—which both they and Hamas consider their deadliest long term enemy. Hamas performed well in its traitorous role. It succeeded, with Israeli assistance, in weakening the Left-led Palestine Liberation Organization’s struggle for a democratic secular Palestinian state. As part of this agenda, Hamas has violently attacked PLO militants, organizations and institutions, often with the Israeli military standing by.

We should note in passing that conservative ruling classes in Jordan and Saudi Arabia also funded and sponsored Hamas early in its development. Like Israel, they feared the influence of the PLO’s original radical anti-imperialism in their own countries. Generous external funding combined with Israeli material assistance and tolerance are what allowed Hamas to build hundreds of mosques, a university, and an elaborate welfare network that expanded their influence among youth, the poor, and people living in refugee camps—while also assembling, arming and training a parallel military force.

Hamas and Israel have a long history of seesawing collusion and contention. They seemed to follow a well worn script: imperialism (or in this case its agent, Israel) sponsoring and successfully weaponizing a fascist movement against the Left, only to have their Frankenstein creation escape the lab, with its own agenda. At any rate, it’s clear that Hamas has often served as a foil and agent provocateur for the Israeli radical Right, intentionally supplying Israeli hard liners with immediate bloody pretexts for deadly attacks against Palestinian civilians and the PLO. These manipulative provocations advanced the sectarian interests of fascist politicians in Tel Aviv and Gaza alike, feeding on mass resentment and the clamor for revenge.

Hamas has launched waves of missiles and suicide bombers at Israeli civilians, timed to torpedo negotiations for a Palestinian state. By violently disrupting the political equation, they make the PLO look weak and out of control. Each time, Hamas counts on the Israeli government to lurch farther to the right politically and lash out militarily. Both those developments are favorable for Hamas. While Israeli hardline regimes use Hamas’ provocations as cover for intensified violence against Palestinians—especially against civilians and PLO leftists—Hamas uses the exchanges of bloodshed to promote itself as a holy resistance force engaged in an epic, uncompromising religious war.

The October 7 attack was the latest instance of Hamas’ agent provocateur role, but on a larger scale than ever before; a big step up from even the group’s largest waves of “human bomb” attacks. Hamas, like everybody else in the region, knew that Israeli hard liners were itching for a fight. The Zionist fascists had been escalating their provocations against Muslims at holy sites in Jerusalem and aggressively expanding illegal West Bank settlements. They were making warlike statements; primed to respond with another frenzy of ethnic cleansing against Palestinian civilians.

Hamas saw this as a golden opportunity. By 2023, the group’s reputation in Gaza was at a low ebb. Its leadership once again cynically calculated that civilian bloodshed would be their mechanism for regaining the initiative and upstaging the PLO. The bloodshed required wasn’t just Israeli blood, but Palestinian blood.

The blood of the women, children, and elderly… I am not saying that this blood is calling for your [help]. We are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit, so it awakens within us resolve, so it awakens within us the spirit of challenge, and [pushes us] to move forward.” — Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, 10/26/2023.

Knowing what was bound to happen after October 7, Hamas made no plans of any kind to shield or defend Palestinian civilians.

When asked by a foreign reporter why Hamas didn’t use its extensive tunnel infrastructure to protect the Palestinian civilians from the Israeli attack, [senior Hamas official Mousa Abu-Marzook] responded, “Protecting Gaza civilians is the responsibility of the United Nations and Israel.… We have built the tunnels to protect ourselves from getting targeted and killed.”

Hamas was confident that it would survive as an organization; that, if necessary, most of its top leadership could escape through the tunnels to join their billionaire comrades in comfort abroad in Iran and Arab capitals, while new ranks of angry men in Gaza and the West Bank would be easier than ever to recruit.

At the time of the October 7 attack, Hamas and its allies in Iran, Russia and Syria were particularly eager to derail an impending alliance that Western imperialism was trying to broker between Israel, Saudi Arabia and the PLO. Destroying this deal is almost certainly one motive for the timing of the attack. It’s also somewhat possible that Hamas militants believed that the other Palestinian armed groups, plus Iran and some Arab states, might jump in and wage all out war on Israel.

But we can’t rule out another possibility: that Hamas colluded with Zionist fascists on their October 7 attack. These Israelis were already working overtime to radically accelerate Israel’s genocidal project against Palestinians. The Hamas attack was a gift to them. It’s hard to know if the vaunted IDF’s seemingly willful blindness to the impending attack, their decision to ignore very specific warnings, and their slowness to respond were all caused by simple incompetence, or something else. In any event, the Hamas attack was a win/win proposition for the fascists on both sides, who thrive on chaos, chauvinist hatred, war and death.

• Not Liberation

Revolutionary violence is almost always a necessary part of the struggle to overthrow colonial occupations and capitalist dictatorship. But the violence of fascist forces like Hamas has a particular character. It isn’t spontaneous anger. It isn’t intended to advance the armed self-determination of an oppressed people. It isn’t a product of consultation with the Palestinian population or anticolonial forces. In fact, its main goal is to marginalize other Palestinian groups. It’s accelerationist provocation, calculated to trigger massive retaliation by Israel, which can then be used for self-aggrandizement.

Hamas is like the agent provocateur in a mass demonstration, suddenly throwing molotov cocktails at the cops from the middle of a crowd of unsuspecting families, then bragging about how militant he is. Basem Naim, a top Hamas leader who safely exited Gaza just before October 7, recently commented to a left wing audience that the price Palestinian civilians pay for Hamas’ actions is high, but stated that “this is a price which must be paid.”

Hussein Ibish discusses how, on October 7, Hamas and its ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad “deliberately provoked a massive Israeli response” as part of their power struggle with the secular nationalist Fatah movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Fatah, of course, knows this full well, but a surge of nationalist sentiment and shared outrage at the mass killing and suffering of the 2.2 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza muffled nationalist leaders like President Mahmoud Abbas (also the chairman of the PLO) in publicly acknowledging Hamas’ breathtaking cynicism.

But now that we’re into the fifth month of the carnage with no end in sight, Fatah leaders appear to be sensing enough of a mood shift among Palestinians to permit such criticisms without unsustainable political blowback….

U.S., European, and Arab pressure for PA reform led Abbas on March 14 to replace then-prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh with economist Mohammad Mustafa. Hamas snidely called Abbas “out of touch with reality,” and implied that, following Oct. 7, it should have a direct say in any change of government within the PA. It was one of the first overt assertions of a newfound degree of self-appointed national authority by the Islamist group—which is portraying itself, on the basis of the major conflict it has engineered with Israel, as the real leader of the Palestinians.

The intensity and bluntness of the official Fatah reply strongly signaled that Palestinian nationalists are in no mood to give any ground to the fundamentalists.

“Those who caused Gaza to return to living under Israeli occupation and caused a nakba [catastrophe] to befall the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza, have no right to make dictates related to national priorities,” Fatah said, batting aside Hamas’ assertion of authority. “The real side that is out of touch with reality and the Palestinian people is the Hamas leadership that has until this moment failed to realize the extent of the catastrophe endured by our oppressed people in Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian territories,” it continued, shifting quickly into a narrative framework that, for the first time in major Palestinian politics, acknowledged the full extent of Hamas’ responsibility for deliberately provoking Israel’s entirely predictable onslaught.

Fatah’s statement flung the accusation of unilateralism back at Hamas, saying the Islamists consulted with no other Palestinians before launching “an adventure on Oct. 7 that has led to a nakba that is more severe than the 1948 Nakba,”—one of the most punishing accusations in the Palestinian political lexicon.

The statement then asks if Hamas is consulting with any other Palestinians while it negotiates indirectly with Israel to ensure the safety of its leaders, many of whom “live a life of luxury” in “seven star hotels”—implicitly in Qatar where most of the Hamas Politburo has resided since fleeing Syria in 2012. This exile and “luxury” has “blinded it [the Hamas leadership] to reason,” Fatah asserts, urging them to abandon their alleged policy of promoting “foreign agendas”—implicitly Qatari, Turkish, and Iranian—and “return to the national fold.”

Using a right wing version of polarization strategy, Hamas intentionally provokes chaos, suffering and death among unarmed civilians—Palestinian as well as Israeli—and then uses the disasters they have unleashed to enhance its sectarian influence and recruit a messianic cult of authoritarian men; “the men who write history with their blood and their guns,” as Ismail Haniyeh calls them.

“Today you [Israelis] are fighting divine soldiers, who love death for Allah like you love life, and who compete among themselves for Martyrdom like you flee from death.”—Hamas Chief of Staff Muhammad Deif

Except that it is mostly Palestinian civilians who are dying.

• Anti-imperialist fascism

I would argue that Hamas’ politics, social practices and culture can best be understood in the context of an international fascist trend arising in the crisis-ridden zones of globalized neoliberal capitalism. This trend has particular class roots, and taps deeply into male backlash against the destruction of traditional patriarchal institutions and expectations.

I was taught many years ago that the fascists were simply a particularly reactionary part of the bourgeois ruling classes, one that functioned for them as a kind of extreme extra-violent enforcement option. But that isn’t true. Fascism is much more than hyper-dictatorship. It has its own radical, populist insurgent dynamic and class agenda. Sakai gives this thoughtful description:

Fascism is a revolutionary movement of the right against both the bourgeoisie and the left, of middle class and declassed men, that arises in zones of protracted crisis. Fascism grows out of the masses of men from classes that are abandoned on the sidelines of history. By transforming men from these classes and criminal elements into a distorted type of radical force, fascism changes the balance of power. It intervenes to try and seize capitalist State power – not to save the old bourgeois order or even the generals, but to gut and violently reorganize society for itself as new parasitic State classes.

We can observe this trend at all levels of its development, from small aggressive street forces to large radical Right insurgencies, to actual fascist rule over major nations.

The modern islamic rightists, who began in 1927-28 with the founding of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, took religious ideological form but were started as a political movement against British neo-colonial domination. They were backed not by workers or peasants but by the middle-class bazaar merchants and traders. The core of the islamic rightists from the beginning were not theologians but young men who had middle-class educations as scientists and technicians (like today’s Mohammad Atta who supposedly led the 911 attacks), and who used assassinations and trade boycotts. One trend within this broader islamist political movement developed fascist politics and a definite fascist class agenda. The fact that everything is explained in religious ideological terms doesn’t change the fact that their program and class strategy fit fascism perfectly. 

The fascists wish to defeat the bourgeoisie as a class, but they have no desire to destroy capitalism. Instead, their goal is to be capitalism’s dictatorial master, leaving the bourgeoisie in place but ruling it by force. (We can see a current example of this in the theocratic kleptocracy of Iran.)

Fascist movements, which are always deeply misogynous, and always foster a sense of grievance and betrayal against racial, national or religious “enemies,” are dedicated to remaking society as a ruthless militarized patriarchy. To make this happen, they are committed to destroying the Left, women’s rights, worker organization and all other progressive movements. Fascist ideology requires unquestioning obedience, and employs messianic mythologies of a distorted patriarchal past, glorifying its militants as warriors of a chosen people, destined for conquest. As Sakai puts it, “Fascism never appears in public as it’s secret parasitic self but always in some other grandiose guise.”

Globally, fascists have exploited capitalist crisis, Left incapacity, and male backlash to take over major countries, like Russia and Iran. And they seem poised to take over others, like India, and the US. But in a development that is just as significant, insurgent mass fascist movements have also stepped into the vacuum of anti-colonial leadership created by the Left’s defeat. Sakai explains:

The new fascism is, in effect, “anti-imperialist” right now. It is opposed to the big imperialist bourgeoisie…, to the transnational corporations and banks, and their world-spanning “multicultural” bourgeois culture. Fascism really wants to bring down the World Bank, WTO and NATO, and even America the Superpower. As in destroy. That is, it is anti-bourgeois but not anti-capitalist. Because it is based on fundamentally pro-capitalist classes.

…. Fascism draws on the old weakening national classes of the lower-middle strata, local capitalists and the layers of declassed men. To the increasing mass of rootless men fallen or ripped out of productive classes – whether it be the peasantry or the salariat – it offers not mere working class jobs but the vision of payback. Of a land for real men, where they and not the bourgeois will be the one’s giving orders at gunpoint and living off of others.

Even in the 1930’s, fascism presented itself as a revolution against bourgeois elites. Now, the explosive emergence of reconfigured “anti-imperialist” fascism as a major world force introduces new dynamics that don’t always fit into the Left’s post-WWII anti-colonial paradigms. Today we have imperialist fascist states and also “anti-colonial” insurgent fascists. We have shifting international fascist fronts, fascist rivals fighting each other, fascists serving as foils and agent provocateurs for each other (as in Palestine), religious fascists and fascists who center national hatred and racism. And fascists who mix these features in various combinations, employing a range of strategies and tactics. Fascists represent a diverse new-old political trend, growing rapidly in a time of world capitalist stagnation, crisis and decay.

On the Left, we often default to Hitler’s Germany as a model for fascism. But although it is always a politics of reactionary men, and always features rigid authoritarianism and blind loyalty, not all fascism resembles Nazism. Even in the 1930s and 40s, fascism was culturally and politically different in Spain, in Italy, in Japan. One thing that’s become clearer over time is that patriarchal religious fundamentalism or religious totalism has a rising role in fascism today. Not just Islamist fundamentalism, of course. The largest fascist movement in the world, in India, is Hindutva fascism (which is anti-Muslim). There are also anti-Muslim Buddhist fascists in Myanmar; Jewish fascists in Israel and the US. And of course there are Christian fundamentalist fascists in North America, Europe, Russia and elsewhere.

•  “Main Danger” and Alliances

Today, some people on the Western Left use a binary “enemy of my enemy” rationale as an excuse to glorify Hamas, even declaring “We are Hamas,” wearing Hamas colors, waving Hamas flags and painting red triangles to target enemies. They endorse Hamas’ political attacks on the PLO. They make excuses for Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians and its collusion in the deaths and sufferings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. I sort of understand the impulse: wishfully positioning this militant group as if they were vanguard freedom fighters from the 1970s, waging an uphill battle against Western imperialism. But this is a false, cruel miscalculation for Western leftists to make.

Fascism isn’t national liberation “by any means necessary.” It’s the antithesis of national liberation. It’s the violent destruction of a nation. It’s the subjugation of its women, the crushing of its proletarian movement, the genocide of its minority nationalities and religions, the murder of its homosexual people. A pit of endless bloody war, authoritarianism, repression and disaster.

The contradictions that the proletariat, women, oppressed nationalities, LGBT people and the Left have with fascism aren’t differences of opinion within a united front. They don’t concern alternate “social policies.” They are fundamental antagonisms; matters of life and death. Fascists deploy violent street forces and establish dictatorial laws and practices that destroy the Left and working class movements, oppress minority nationalities and religions and subjugate women and LGBT people. Hamas, for one, has made its purpose crystal clear: it intends to replace the rule of Israel’s religious fascist dictatorship over Palestine with its own.

Among some solidarity activists, an apolitical discourse of “resistance” functions to obscure the politics of the various forces struggling in Palestine and therefore justify tailing after the Right. Anybody who militantly “resists” Israel and Western imperialism is praised. Some “realists” acknowledge that Hamas is a right wing group, but claim that it should be supported anyhow, because Western imperialism is the “main danger.” But fascist insurgency is not the same as Left insurgency. Conflating them as “the resistance” is, to borrow a phrase, “the anti-imperialism of fools.”

It’s particularly egregious for Western leftists to support fascists in the colonial world. Those who portray fascists in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Palestine, Nigeria, Syria, Indonesia and other nations of the global South as anti-imperialist forces are acting from a position of privilege to support male supremacy, genocide and vicious authoritarianism. They’re promoting appeasement of deadly enemies—not just enemies of the Left, workers and women but of self-determination itself. That betrayal undermines the Left’s credibility among radical women, oppressed nationalities and proletarian forces abroad and at home.

It’s ironic that US and European leftists, who live in the actual headquarters of Western imperialism, act so much more fastidious about our own insurgent fascists. Why not consider supporting the Proud Boys, or neo-Nazis? Aren’t our home grown fascists trying to overthrow the same globalist imperialist bourgeoisie that oppresses Palestine and a hundred other nations? Weren’t we just arguing that the capitalist ruling class right here in Washington DC is the “main danger”? Aren’t neo-Nazis also the enemy of our enemy and therefore part of “the resistance”? After all, Western fascists praise Hamas for demonizing and killing Jews, and for their accelerationist tactics.

In the same vein, how far will leftists go in supporting fascist movements abroad on the basis that they are “anti-imperialist”? If Hamas is praiseworthy, how about the Taliban, al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf?

The Left needs to think hard about what it means to support or ally with fascists. True, when it comes to political and military maneuvering under duress, we can “never say never.” There have been times when leftists formed tactical alliances with radical right-wing forces, organized crime groups and warlords. Usually these have been temporary—for instance, deals to acquire weapons, or to arrange transit to safer terrain. If the Left is strong enough, it may turn or coopt right wing forces.

But attempts at strategic or long term alliances between fascists and the Left have almost always blown up in the Left’s face. This is partly because fascists hate the Left—just as much as they hate the bourgeoisie—and they plot constantly to destroy us. And it’s partly because the Left has tended to underestimate depth of the insurgent aggrieved male populism that underlies fascism.

For example, Iranian leftists made an alliance with Ayatollah Khomeini in the late 1970s, trusting his rhetoric of anti-imperialist unity—and also buying into the illusion that left wing ideas would quickly win over his right wing social base. Male leftists even pressured secular Left women to start wearing hijabs as a gesture that would hopefully pacify or befriend conservative Islamists. Instead, once in position to seize power, Khomeini’s clerical fascists slaughtered the Left—something that was a human and political disaster for leftists, for workers, for women, for LGB people, and for all of Iranian society; one that continues to reverberate to this day.

A more recent example is the Muslim Brotherhood’s betrayal of the 2011 Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt. The Brotherhood joined into the dramatic protests against the Mubarak dictatorship, and initially gained respect for their participation, including their work organizing checkpoints and food distribution. At first, they were careful to avoid the appearance of trying to control the uprising, instead stressing the common need for freedom and social justice. Leftists and Brotherhood prisoners shared cell blocks in Mubarak’s prisons, and in some cases started viewing each other as comrades in arms. Secular liberals and leftists supported the Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi’s presidential candidacy over that of a military-backed politician after Morsi explicitly promised to seek consensus on a new democratic constitution.

But once in office, the President instead granted himself absolute power to ram through a Muslim Brotherhood-favoring constitution, enshrining Islamic Sharia as “the principal source of legislation.” Morsi’s “new” constitution also carried over many of the undemocratic features of the old constitution. Intent on Muslim Brotherhood domination, Morsi sidelined the Left and liberals, his supposed “allies.” (He even alienated other Islamist parties through arrogance and refusal to compromise.) Brotherhood thugs kidnapped and tortured critics of Morsi’s administration, while his government repressed journalists, leaders of Arab Spring protests, and labor organizations.

One year after the election, demonstrations against Morsi’s anti-democratic policies swelled, with up to 14 million people participating (in a nation of 84 million). Today, many Egyptians once again view the Muslim Brotherhood as a power-hungry terrorist group.

The Brotherhood’s autocratic power grab split the Arab Spring movement, and helped open the door for the return of military government in Egypt. Ironically, after being overthrown and violently crushed by the Sisi regime, a struggling Muslim Brotherhood is once again touting the need for “unity” in resistance to military dictatorship, and trying to build alliances with forces as far to the left as anarchists.

It’s not up to me to decide what kinds of alliances Palestinian leftists make. In Gaza, several small factions of PLO fighters are coordinating with Hamas militarily. There have been many attempts over the years to build unity between Fatah and Hamas, all of which have failed so far because of incompatible goals, sectarian demands and lack of trust. Similarly, the secular, Marxist, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which participated in the October 7 attack, has had hot and cold relations with Hamas (and with the PLO) for decades, depending on the twists and turns of struggle.

Today the pressure of Israel’s accelerated genocide has increased calls for anti-Zionist unity—calls coming from both inside and outside of Palestine. Having achieved the political initiative (as planned), Hamas—the long time hater and saboteur of leftists—is tactically maneuvering to try to gather as much of the Palestinian Left and the international Left as it can under its leadership. Whether any form of Left-Right unity is advisable—or survivable—for the Left in Palestine is a judgement call the various Palestinian forces must make. What would that kind of alliance mean, not just for their militias, but for the PLO, for women, LGBT people, worker activists, non-Muslims? Many Palestinian nationalists are asking these questions, and so should we.

The October 7 attack is similar to the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in that both exposed and widened similar fault lines in the international order. But each of these attacks, and the imperialist response, embodies a deepening contradiction between Western imperialism and insurgent fascism. I would argue that we Western anti-imperialists should not center, follow, glorify or support the fascists—including Hamas—in these conflicts. This is a dangerous, male opportunist error.

On a practical political level, leftists around the world should never underestimate the powerful violent potential of the fascists’ patriarchal mass base. We should never turn our back on fascists, for whom treachery comes as naturally as breathing.

Our entirely just political opposition to the Zionist settler state, genocide and Western imperialism shouldn’t be misdirected to celebrate a movement that’s opposed to actual national liberation for all Palestinians; that wishes to destroy women’s liberation, worker power, secularism and the Left; that sees itself as part of an international fascist movement. We should not expect oppressed people to sacrifice their lives or their fundamental rights for the sake of an unstable alliance with a deadly, reactionary, patriarchal force.

I would argue that in our global anti-imperialism, we should center our solidarity on political alternatives that are simultaneously antifascist and anti-imperialist. These antifascist/anti-imperialist alternatives, which are discussed more below, are the movements and seeds of movements that can advance proletarian politics and national liberation and rebuild the Left.

In every society infested with fascism and proto-fascism (meaning in virtually every society today), alternative antifascist/anti-imperialist movements, trends and tendencies exist, often besieged by both reactionary sides—the imperialist bourgeoisie and its subordinates, as well as the fascists. These antifascist/anti-imperialist alternatives always include rebellious women, because ultimately women who fight for liberation end up with no other choice but to fight both poles of reactionary men. The recent women’s uprising in Iran is a recent milestone in the antifascist/anti-imperialist struggle, which will likely be long and arduous.

Arduous or not, antifascist/anti-imperialist women and their allies are the essential core of the Left. This is who the Left should prioritize building unity with. Not Hamas, and not the tide of toxic male “anti-colonial” fascism it is part of, which is rising, not only in the Middle East and West Africa, but all over the world. To be Left, we must be both anti-imperialist and anti-fascist everywhere, all the time.

II. Antifascist Anti-Imperialism

•  Three Way Fight

Maybe the most important overall thing for the international Left to understand right now is how weak we are. I say this not because I’m defeatist. As I will explain, I believe that we have a way to rebuild, and a path to power.

 But there’s no way to sugar coat it: The Left, which once led movements of hundreds of millions and shook the foundations of world capitalism, suffered a world historic defeat over the last several decades, and is still in decline. This happened partly because imperialism, in response to our revolutionary threat, transformed itself into a new and insidious form of globalized neocolonialism. And it happened partly because of our own serious weaknesses, which we must now try to rectify. Defeat has consequences, and the Left is suffering those consequences now.

Today, there are three main political poles in the world: the imperialist bourgeoisie, a growing fascist trend, and the Left. Each pole has a broader following: respectively, imperial beneficiaries, a populist Right, and a range of progressive forces. Although there is sometimes collusion as well as contention among the three poles, they are all fundamentally antagonistic to each other today.

In other words, in our times, we are faced with two deadly enemies—the imperialist bourgeoisie and the fascists—within what has sometimes been described as a “three way fight.” Of the three main political forces, the weakest is the Left—us.

The global imperialist bourgeoisie, despite serious internal contradictions, maintains its chokehold over most of the world economy, and wields massive power through state violence, cultural hegemony and financial blackmail. Within the imperialist system, individual capitalist states continue to wield powerful repressive, ideological and cultural weapons against their insurgent enemies. Meanwhile, the fascist-led Right is on an upward trajectory, once again mobilizing movements of many millions, seizing state power or initiating insurgencies around the globe. Fascists have taken the revolutionary anti-bourgeois initiative away from the Left in much of the world.

As for us: Although there’s constant ferment and rebellion among the oppressed, the Left now exists mostly in a small number of long-surviving struggles (for instance, the Naxalite insurgency in India and the Zapatistas), a constant stream of experimental movements (many of which are short-lived)…and in potential. We are no longer the massive, vibrant, powerful, globally interconnected force waging war for world power, national liberation and socialism that that we once were. And yet, we face a battle for our survival.

 The stakes of the current three way struggle are enormous. As Sakai reminds us, the last time the imperialist bourgeoisie faced off with a big wave of fascist movements, millions of people died in the inferno of WWII. A different sort of “world war” between imperialism and Left-led movements fighting for national liberation and socialist revolution was also earth-shakingly violent, and continues in attenuated form today, with the Left largely on the defensive. Meanwhile, fascists have been competing with—and often crushing—the Left in many countries and regions. War on women is being waged simultaneously by both our enemies, bourgeois and fascist.

We need to rebuild. And we need to clarify what our social base is for rebuilding. We can’t afford to get this wrong.

1.  Denial and Male Opportunism

Many among us have so far refused to accept the full weight, causes or implications of the Left’s world historic defeat. There’s lots of wishful thinking on the Left, including the unwarranted assumption that we are still a massively powerful world player, or will become so quickly. Worse, many have convinced ourselves that any enemy of Western imperialism is our friend—a false delusion that allows us to overestimate our own significance on an imagined chessboard of world politics.

As a result, some leftists endorse misogynous authoritarian dictators who barely pretend to be anti-imperialist. Some hitch their wagons to the alternate imperialisms of right wing men’s regimes in Russia and China, hoping to create a “multipolar world,” which these leftists expect to “take advantage of” in unexplained ways. And as we see with Hamas, some fall into the trap of supporting the right wing anti-imperialist “resistance” of fascist men, excusing their poisonous ideologies and even participating vicariously in their provocations or their crimes against civilians. This despite the fact that these violent right wing men are just as intent on further subjugating women, repressing the working class and annihilating the Left as they are on overthrowing the bourgeoisie.

This self-destructive path of wishful thinking and compromised principles grows largely out of the same weaknesses that helped cause the world historical defeat of the Left to begin with—in particular, the betrayal and abandonment of the struggle for women’s liberation. In the aftermath of this historic betrayal, large sections of the (still male dominated) Left have lurched between male complicity with the bourgeoisie and male complicity with fascism.

Although fascism has women adherents, it is, as Sakai observes, “a male movement, both in its composition and most importantly in its inner worldview….Fascism is nakedly a world of men. This is one of the sources of its cultural appeal.”

As for the bourgeoisie: Male supremacy is embedded in the foundations of capitalism. This is still true of the updated globalized neocolonial version. Women still perform the overwhelming majority of the world’s labor, and make up the core of the proletariat. And women’s reproductive capacity and labor is fundamental to the existence of society. No capitalist ruling class can hold power without controlling and exploiting women.

For our part, in order for the Left to defeat fascism, overthrow imperialism and move forward to socialism, we need the leadership and collective power of proletarian and/or oppressed nationality women. This was demonstrated over and over again during the revolutionary movements of the 20th century.

 Yet most socialist and anticolonial male leaderships, after attaining state power, turned their backs on the struggle for women’s liberation, opting instead to treat women as a “natural resource” that these men could control, own and sell. The imperialist ruling classes homed in on this opportunist weakness, promoting corrupt neocolonial deals with ex-revolutionary men over how this supremely valuable resource—women—would be disciplined, monetized and commodified. Women exploited in huge factories and fields for global corporations, women in transnational domestic care industries, women sending indispensable remittances from overseas jobs, women coerced into sex tourism and surrogacy industries, women managing the crushing poverty created by predatory neocolonial debt—all in a climate of male violence; all denying women the family rights, labor rights, social rights, reproductive rights and political rights they had been promised by left wing men.

Imperialism’s neocolonial deals with ex-revolutionary men are part of a larger world phenomenon. As neocolonialism and globalization have transformed capitalism, old patterns of male supremacy have been seriously disrupted. Many men experience this shakeup as a threat to their long-standing positions of patriarchal authority over family women and women in society generally. This in turn has unleashed a violent male backlash and a free-for-all to decide who will be the new male winners and losers. This is an important part of the context in which modern fascism has exploded into motion.

Women & children have always been property …since the rise of patriarchy. But men’s world is being restructured now, including all the property. If capitalistic men can clash about whether to clearcut or bank their remaining forests, you can bet that they’re going to clash over their most important property–women & children….

This isn’t like the guerrilla wars of the last generation by national liberation movements in Vietnams and Cubas. That was then, this is now. Wars of globalization are primarily between different tribes of capitalistic men. These insurgents like in Iraq aren’t against Mercedes-Benz or Boeing. They aren’t against IBM or Shell. They are killing for their own slice of the capitalist life. To own their own women & territories & markets & cultures (four names for the same thing). Which is why these conflicts are a confusing mix of old and new, feudalistic and post-modern.  —Butch Lee, 2010.

The ongoing male war over ownership and control of women affects every area of politics. Within this war, it’s clearer than ever that both of our deadly enemies—the imperialist bourgeoisie and the fascist led radical Right—are totally reliant on the oppression of women to enable their parasitic social projects. Meanwhile, each of them, each in its own way, is trying to reverse the achievements of more than 150 years of women’s liberation struggles—struggles mostly led by revolutionary and/or anti-colonial women.

1.  A Path

Just as men searched for the Rosetta Stone to finally decipher hieroglyphics into Egyptian voices, women have long been searching for the password to actual liberation. The key is lying there right in front of us, but it is as hard to pick up as red-hot metal. This entire political world from jihads to anti-globalization campaigns, from leftist guerrilla armies to green parties, from Republican Party to anarchists, is a furious plain of men and men’s clashing cultures. Just as there are no angels or saints in Hell, only demons and the damned, so there are no women in power in the entire dimension of the political world as we know it. It is an entire dimension of men.  Some may ask, but don’t women hold up half the sky, as Mao Zedong  famously said? No, women hold up all the sky, but that old slogan confused oranges and apples. Women are  everywhere, from the 1st Armored Division to the Anti-War movement. But women are “embedded” in men’s movements as their pets and assistants and saviors and sex objects and laborers and just-like-men.  —Butch Lee, 2010

The fundamental role of male supremacy in the worldwide three way fight should point the international Left toward a better political path. This path militantly upholds women’s liberation, and especially the interests and leadership of proletarian and/or oppressed nationality women. This was always the pro-human path, the principled path towards freedom, the successful path. But today, as global imperialism upends the outdated forms of an earlier mode of male supremacy—breaking down the old rural patriarchy and concentrating women into huge migrant flows and giant transnational industries—oppressed women are even better positioned to become a nightmare enemy for capitalism and fascism alike…especially if the Left lives up to its responsibilities.

What would it mean concretely for the Left to choose this path? I’m no strategist for oppressed women; they will build their own autonomous movements, leaderships and armies. But I have some thoughts for fellow left wing men.

—Male revolution is over; it’s a contradiction in terms. The Left can only become strong if oppressed women rise, and we must rebuild according to that principle.

—The Left should be a weapon for oppressed women who rebel against imperialist and fascist men. We should unite with them to attack every form of male violence, control, exploitation, disrespect, discrimination and repression. This includes identifying and advancing progressive and revolutionary women’s independent wishes, needs and organization when they are caught within men’s battle zones.

—Male supremacy is inextricably and fundamentally bound up with class society, including our current form of class society—capitalism. Therefore, the fight against male supremacy has an irreducible and autonomous character. At the same time, the fight for women’s liberation overlaps, fuses and intersects with other anticapitalist struggles, such as the proletarian struggle and struggles for national liberation. The exact nature of that intersection depends on concrete circumstances. But there are no circumstances that call for the Left to liquidate the struggle for women’s liberation.

—To advance the struggle for women’s liberation and collective power, revolutionary women require autonomy, including their own theory, strategies, struggles, organizations, leadership, spaces and self-defense capacity. Oppressed women can be expected to unite with the Left only from a position of self-mobilization—and only if the Left unites with their self-determined interests.

— The Left must give particular priority to the struggles of proletarian and/or oppressed nationality women. This will advance justice, and also create the political synergy necessary for fundamental social change. At the same time, the Left in the global North should acknowledge that male supremacy functions everywhere within capitalism, including our own societies. Constant male violence, discrimination, exploitation of women’s paid and unpaid labor, and unceasing attacks on women’s reproductive rights are widespread in every part of the world. This reflects a deep social contradiction that the Left must confront on all levels in order to rebuild.

— As in the past, today there are ranks of fascist women and neocolonial women who stand alongside “their” men, opposing the liberation struggles of oppressed women and endorsing reactionary male agendas. Sometimes these women employ bogus neocolonialist or fascist “feminisms” to undermine the fight for women’s liberation or attack other freedom struggles. Examples of this include white opportunist bourgeois feminist trends in the West, and anti-Muslim discourses disguised as feminism (including the “pinkwashing” of Zionism). On the other hand, there are various subservient ideologies that promote themselves as anti-colonial feminism or religious feminism which deny or minimize the oppression of women by fascism. There are even postmodern “feminists” who deny that women exist as a biological sex and political subject, or that women are oppressed by systematic male supremacy. “Woman,” they say, is merely a malleable social construct.

Opportunism like this is to be expected. Left women will sort out the phony feminisms of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the fascists alike. But we shouldn’t lose sight of why reactionary men recruit these women to their causes: the existential threat that rebellious women and actual feminism pose to them. Without control over women, reactionary men are nothing.

1.  A Global Perspective

From an internationalist perspective, the Left would benefit from absorbing the insights of leftist women on the front lines of the three way fight—for instance, in the three way battle zones of Afghanistan, India, Iran, Kurdistan, Sudan, the Lacandon, Iraq, and Palestine. These women have a lot to teach us about simultaneously fighting fascism and imperialism, about the collusion and contention of our enemies, and about women’s survival and autonomous struggle in male free fire zones.

To provide one example, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan has always stressed that their long-time anti-imperialist struggle will fail unless they simultaneously fight against fascist Islamist fundamentalism. Fascism and imperialism—separately and in combination—have contributed to making Afghanistan the site of repeated bloody turf wars, with men from both poles of reactionary politics completely trampling on the interests of the nation. The fascists, while claiming to be anti-imperialist, repress and murder secular anti-imperialist women, while male terror and genocidal policies against minority nationalities on the part of the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and other religious fascist forces undermine the ability of women and the whole population to unite and achieve actual Afghan self-determination. RAWA says:

We believe that any and all manifestation of deference and submissiveness on the part of certain social and political groupings and individuals and literary circles vis-à-vis the fundamentalists is abject cowardice, and assert that perpetrators of such cowardice are bound to ultimately reveal themselves as accomplices in treason with fundamentalist traitors. We shall therefore struggle unrelentingly to expose all such collaborators.

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) hereby reiterates that only decisive and uncompromising struggle against fundamentalism is the key to the solution of the Afghan conundrum and the cessation of foreign interference in our country. We call upon all pro-freedom and pro-democracy Afghan organizations and individuals to wake up to the burden of the great sorrow of our people, to cast despair overboard, to consider any and all deals and compromises with the fundamentalist hangmen as high treason and to rally to mobilize the masses for the formation of a broad anti-fundamentalist front geared to exposing and ejecting religious fascists and establishing a society based on democratic values in Afghanistan.

—RAWA’s statement “On the 6th Black Anniversary of the Swarming of Fundamentalist Criminals Into Kabul,” 4/98

Iraqi revolutionary women, long time veterans of anti-imperialist struggle, have described how fascists leveraged the social instability, repression of the Left, and nationalist sentiment that were triggered by Western invasion and occupation in order to gain sectarian power for their own reactionary movements. These women call the imperialists and the fascists “two poles of terrorism” attacking Iraqi women and social justice.

The Occupation has provided a golden opportunity to the Islamic parties and movements to arbitrate in family life and inflict the most intransigent religious laws on women including wide use of violence.  Abduction, rape, honor killing, domestic violence, avert women from leaving home; splashing acid on women not observing Islamic code of conduct and imposing veil and chador are routine occurrence in the daily life of Iraqi women. –Houzan Mahmoud, Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, 2004

The anti-war forces [in the West] are of many kinds. The most dominating ones, which I would call the traditional left–unfortunately, they prefer to ally with political Islam forces, because they are anti-American, because they are anti-imperialist, and they don’t care what kind of hell they have created for us in Iraq. So in other words, the traditional left here in the west let us down. They don’t want to hear the secular voices in Iraq! And they don’t want to recognize us as a credible group, they have blacklisted me in many of their demonstrations… —Yanar Mohammed, OWFI, 2004

In 2019, thousands of Palestinian women demonstrated in 12 cities in the occupied territories as well as in refugee camps and the global diaspora, protesting widespread honor killings and other forms of violence against women, including colonial violence. Their slogan was “No Free Homeland Without Free Women.”

The mobilization came after years of what many observers regarded as a stagnation in the women’s movement, and an increased marginalization of women’s voices and concerns in the Palestinian national struggle. The action developed without the organizers resorting to traditional methods of mobilization – specifically, without the resources and networks of the women’s organizations directly affiliated with the established Palestinian political parties. The Tal’at group is independent, meaning that, unlike other Palestinian women’s organizations, political parties and formal institutions have no control over it nor the tools and tactics they use.

…. The same feminist activists who oppose structural patriarchy in Palestinian society also fight against colonialist policies. In doing so, they risk arrest and torture in Israel jails, being searched and humiliated at checkpoints, surveillance, having their freedom of movement taken away from them, being besieged, blackmailed, and denied access to healthcare services, and even having their right to self-determination taken away. As this younger generation of feminists emerges, it rejects the rhetoric of prioritizing national liberation and side-lining feminist discourses, instead arguing that the liberation of the homeland and the liberation of its women go hand in hand.

In return for the insights and leadership these radical antifascist/anti-imperialist women offer, the international Left should be extending concerted international solidarity to them, their organizations and their struggles. For the most part, this isn’t happening. Many left-led women’s struggles against male violence, labor exploitation, imperialism and fundamentalism in the colonial world are being virtually ignored by the international male dominated Left. New women’s movements—for instance, in Korea and China—also receive minimal attention or solidarity.

There is another important current example: The massive women’s uprising in Iran—a watershed political event.

The Woman Life Freedom revolution took place in September 2022 so as to put an end to the whole system of legal, state and judicial misogyny, thereby also aiming to free the whole Iranian society from oppression, injustice and discrimination. Now the world calls our revolution the first women’s revolution in human history, representing an immense, historic renaissance against religion and misogyny; a revolution that by putting an end to the regime of gender apartheid, will no doubt have an important impact not only on the situation of women, but on the whole Iranian society, the Middle East and even the world; a revolution that will no longer let any force regard women’s human identity, dignity, thoughts and bodies as the property of the “man”, the “family”, the “state” and the “nation”. We want the victory of this revolution to result in an end in inequality, women’s oppression and sexual slavery in all its forms, and to usher in women’s liberation from all forms of reaction. –Charter of Iranian Women’s Progressive Demands, 2023

This stunning, militant uprising has gained significant support from oppressed Kurdish and Balochi minority nationalities and grass roots labor collectives; over 500 people have been killed and 20,000 arrested by the Iranian regime so far.

Yet this mobilization has received tepid support from the international Left. Some Western leftists, like Asa Wistanley of Electronic Intifada, have adopted the Iranian regime’s propaganda that what is happening in Iran is not revolutionary at all, but a bunch of “counterrevolutionary” riots fostered by the CIA, MI6 and Mossad. Wistanley—who praises Hamas’ October 7 attack—even criticizes the Woman Life Freedom movement for supposedly cruelly killing and injuring fascist morality police. Does this twisted narrative arise because he and other leftists view the theocratic fascist Iranian regime as a “fellow” anti-imperialist force? Do some comrades think that the fight by anti-fascist Iranian women and their allies against male supremacy and religious fundamentalism somehow weakens the Left’s fight against Western imperialism?

1.  Patriarchal Anti-Imperialism

So it would appear. In fact we are advised by Wistanley and others that we should uphold Iran as a key component of an exemplary “Resistance Axis” fighting against Israel and against Western imperialism in the Middle East. This axis, strongly supported by Russian imperialism, is said to include the Iranian regime (which has given tens of millions of dollars and extensive military training to Hamas), the Syrian dictatorship, Hezbollah, Ansarullah (Houthi militants in Yemen), Hamas, and a range of other political Islamist right wing militias.

It’s true, this is an axis of resistance. But it’s a fascist-led axis; one whose members represent a known, proven disaster for women, minority nationalities, LGBT people, workers and the Left. Which is something left wing Iranian women, and many other left wing women, keep trying to point out.

Why would Western leftists lionize movements in other parts of the world that fight to replace the US bourgeoisie or Zionist occupiers with religious fascism, brutal national oppression and antisemitism, violent authoritarianism and sex apartheid? Is this what the Left is reduced to: trailing after fascist men? Is living under the terror regime of patriarchal theocratic dictatorships supposed to be as good as it gets for women outside North America or Europe?

This blind spot towards fascism on the part of much of the Western Left—essentially a male-directed colonial blind spot—is truly dangerous. It legitimizes our fascist enemies, while further weakening our own already-challenged political viability. It seriously undercuts our fight against imperialism. Unfortunately, the blind spot is neither new nor rare.

Years ago, in 1978-79, many prominent Western leftists such as Michel Foucault supported the rise of Khomeini in Iran, ignoring women who warned about the danger it represented. Later, during the US invasion of Iraq, we were lectured by some leftists that we must give “unconditional support to the Iraqi resistance,” including its most brutal fascists. Acid throwing male terrorists of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan were embraced by parts of the European Left as a supposed “anti-colonial” vanguard. After the Taliban returned to power recently, some Western leftists, including Jonathan Neale and Nancy Lindisfame, claim that these fascists should be viewed as the Afghan people’s choice; a reformed, valuable anti-imperialist force that “has concerns for the rights of women.” These academics literally mocked Afghan feminists who disagreed. Other Western Left intellectuals, including Judith Butler, have embraced Hamas, incredibly, as “part of the Left” because they oppose Israel and the US.

A sector of male centric leftists in the metropolis has decided to trail along behind fascists and other right wing forces, because those are the insurgent men who are currently winning the most battles and growing in power. This is a serious error; it makes the Left not just compromised but vulnerable. Groups like Hamas laugh at us as we trail after them, comprehending it as a sign of weakness. They wait until they’re done using us to legitimize them and give them political cover. Then they attack, unleashing brutal repression their local Left, on women and all non-compliant civilians.

If fascist men and bourgeois ruling class men would just fight each other, no problem. Good riddance. But the people who suffer most in wars between these two poles of violent capitalist men are civilians—especially women and children. Not just as casualties, but because ownership and control over women and children is the main prize these men are fighting over. Leftists are kidding ourselves if we think we can manipulate, choreograph or redirect these male wars of conquest; wars in which each reactionary side is almost always stronger than we are today. Given this reality, cheerleading one side or the other is not just a liquidation of Left politics (especially the struggle for women’s liberation), but a recipe for actual physical liquidation of rebellious women and leftists.

All the more reason for a women-centered Left to have our own independent plans: to mobilize and build unity around antifascist/anti-imperialist politics. To grow over time by exposing and resisting both of our reactionary enemies, aiming blows against both imperialism and fascism under our own authentic politics. To build secular Left and progressive movements led by women. Outgunned or not, revolutionary women are already engaged in this necessary process all over the world.

Male opportunism in relation to both of our enemies has gravely wounded the international Left’s prospects for rebuilding. On the one hand we have the neocolonial deals that ex-revolutionary men make with the imperialist bourgeoisie, selling out anti-imperialist women and deepening our historic defeat. On the other hand, some male opportunist leftists support vicious macho authoritarian strongmen like Ortega or Assad, and “anti-colonial” fascists like the Taliban or Hamas, all on the pretext that they fight against the imperialist bourgeoisie—something that might look superficially like some sort of shortcut, but is the deadliest of dead ends. Both of these variants of unprincipled male-centric politics make the Left justifiably suspect in the eyes of many rebellious oppressed women and their allies.

1.  A Woman-Centered Left

In my opinion, revolutionary feminists around the globe are correct: there is a clear objective basis for rebuilding a powerful Left centered on antifascist/anti-imperialist oppressed women. The potential social base is massive. Striking Bangladeshi garment workers, underground Afghan freedom fighters, women refugees demanding asylum and human rights, Mexican and Native American militants against femicide, Kurdish women’s armies, angry factory women in free trade zones, Iranian anti-fascist women, Indian militias combating male violence, activists against female infanticide, Palestinian women protesting honor killings, migrant farm worker activist women, advocates for women’s health, Zapatista women leaders, Iraqi women’s shelter workers, women prison rights groups, Sierra Leonean anti-FGM women, Korean 4B activists, Dominican fighters against child marriage, transnational domestic worker organizers, women’s self-defense, lesbian, reproductive rights and eco-feminist activists around the globe, revolutionary women theorists and cultural workers and journalists from everywhere: women eager to lead the fight against both fascism and neocolonial imperialism; women who demand an end to the male supremacy that both our enemies rely on.

The oppressed women who make up this real but so-far unconsolidated global social base have no future prospects within the male plans of imperialist or fascist forces except as property, baby factories or captive labor. And they have often been abandoned by the male directed Left. But given an antifascist/anti-imperialist international Left’s full solidarity, and armed with the resources we can offer, this is the social base that can revitalize the Left and permit it to be a weapon for fundamental social change and for building liberatory, human-centered communities. The rising of rebellious oppressed women, with full Left involvement and solidarity, is the best path—and the only revolutionary path—forward.

But the hour is late. Too many radical women have already been left in the lurch. And every minute donated to either of our deadly enemies—bourgeois and fascist—is a minute lost to building our own side of the three way fight: the Left; oppressed women’s side; the only side that can effectively challenge fascism, overthrow male supremacy and destroy imperialism as a system.

It’s an important point to understand that all those revolutionary sisters who went before us weren’t “wrong”.  Rebel women didn’t make a stupid move to go along with men’s revolutionary movements for the past 100 years. You get on the train where you can get on. It was reasonable to double the numbers of people fighting together to pull down colonialism and capitalism. Revolutionary men had some impressive thinkers, too. Only it didn’t work out. Now we know how men’s left parties and guerrilla movements end up. It wasn’t stupid to try it, but it’s stupid now not to learn the lessons. —Butch Lee, 2010