Throughout the 20th century fascist groups have looked to large corporations for support. Klas Ronnback traces a history of partnership.
The year is 1922, and in Italy Benito Mussolini is preparing to launch the March on Rome that will mark the start of his ascent to power. The only drawback is the expense of staging it, too heavy for the fascists to carry alone. Fortunately, several of the biggest companies in Italy have joined forces in the General Federation of Industrialists, and they are only too glad to save Mussolini’s day. 1
Cut to Austria in 1994. The far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) is about to take part in the general elections. It will be led by Jörg Haider, the man who has shown himself ready and willing to pay tribute to the Waffen SS, Adolf Hitler’s employment policy, and to rid Austria of all the immigrants it doesn’t possess. Running in the elections, however, also proves an expensive exercise. This time Reebok Austria comes to the rescue. Reebok, the famous maker of sports shoes and other apparel, who donate their money to the struggle for human rights; who are proud to have been the first company to leave South Africa in protest against apartheid; and who now decide that the FPÖ needs financial support to produce "The Jörg Haider Video" for the election campaign2.
The Behemoth of the 1930s
Mussolini was not the only fascist leader in the early part of the 20th century to receive corporate funding for his political project. In 1930s Germany, heavy industry players Thyssen, Krupp, Gelsenkirchen and Rheinmetall-Boersig; the chemical giant IG Farben (later Bayer, Hoechst and BASF); as well as bankers von Schroeder, Dresdner Bank, and Deutsche Bank all coughed up for Adolf Hitler.3 Since Nazi party demagogy was largely anti-capitalist, this might seem contradictory. But neither capitalism nor its exponents posed the problem – it was that the capitalist system was perceived to be controlled by Jews. In the words of Daniel Guerin: "Fascism’s game is to call itself anti-capitalist without seriously attacking capitalism", but instead transmuting it into anti-semitism or racism4.
It has been suggested that the core of national socialism in fact comprised a cartel of power blocs entwining the army, big business, the Nazi party (NSDAP) and the civil bureaucracy5. Big business grew more entangled with the state during the war both in Germany and Italy, creating what they called a "corporative" state, renamed by less enthusiastic onlookers the "Behemoth" or the "Moloch-state"6.
Hot gold
After the war, US policy towards Germany was heavily influenced by US investment bankers engaged in close relations with Hitler and with German companies. As a result, many corporations and business leaders who had profited from the Nazi regime were never tried in court7. Gold, jewels and other valuable assets worth billions were stolen from Jews during the Nazi era. Much of the loot was smuggled out of Germany – both before the war, to finance purchases in ‘neutral’ countries such as Sweden and Switzerland, and after, to remove it from the reach of allied troops. Among the companies who profited from this theft was an extensive range of Swiss banks8, including the Swedish SE-banken. SE-banken was to become a key component in the Swedish conglomerate Investor, owners of ABB, Ericsson and AstraZeneca9.
Much of the stolen capital was left in bank accounts, which have now been forced open for scrutiny. Litigation is underway; but the end is far from being in sight. If the current proposal is accepted by all parties, the Swiss banks involved will be forced to repay $1.25 billion to various ‘victim classes’10.
Not all the Nazi gold lay idle in accounts, however. An investigation by the US Treasury Department revealed that large sums had been invested in about 750 companies across several continents. An important figure in this process was Hjalmar Schacht (Hitler’s former finance minister and head of the Reichsbank), who had started his own bank in Dusseldorf after the war11.
In Austria mid-way through the 1950’s some of the leading Nazis were still on the run, fugitives searching desperately for a place to hide. Most Nazi sympathisers had magically converted to democratic ideals – at least on the surface – making safe havens rare. Most, but not all. The real hard core believers remained, and funded new groups on the rise. One of these was the Faber-Castell family, a familiar name on the packs of pencils in the art shops it still supplies12.
At about the same time in Great Britain Colin Jordan, perhaps Britain’s most notorious Hitler-worshipper, married Francoise Dior, heiress of Christian Dior. Dior brought with her the fortune her parents had made selling high-street perfumes13. In search of a pleasant scent, many people came to support the rebirth of fascism in Britain. Small wonder that Jordan’s political party all of a sudden had almost unlimited resources for its work.
South Africa’s oppressive apartheid state held power for many decades after the war, and continued to do so with the help of corporations. The US computer giant IBM enabled the regime to monitor the black population through electronic registries, and supplied additional computers to the armed forces14. A host of the world’s largest banks (including Barclays, NatWest, Standard Chartered, Citibank and Deutsche Bank) were willing creditors of the regime, their ready loans burdening the country as part of its foreign debt15.
The celebrated oil embargo imposed on South Africa in practice meant business as usual for Shell, British Petroleum (BP), Texaco, Mobil and others who continued to fuel the regime. Also carrying on their business with South Africa, despite demands for an economic boycott, were Rio Tinto Zinc, General Motors, Ford, BMW and General Electric to name but a few from the star-studded cast16.
In the USA during the 1980s the debate on racism and multi-culturalism was in full swing. As a ‘contribution’ to this debate, two heavily controversial books were published. The first, Charles Murray & Richard Hernstein’s "The Bell Curve", was a ‘scientific’ work claiming the genetic inferiority of black people to white. The second, Dinesh D’Souza’s "The end of racism", held that slavery had actually been beneficial to black people.
Had a small, underground group affiliated with the KKK or Aryan Nations published these works, not many eyebrows would have been raised. But their publisher was the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a major US think-tank. The AEI, in turn, is supported by numerous Fortune 500 companies, among them Dow Chemicals, American Express, Motorola, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Enron17. According to their internet homepages, they are "dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of freedom18" , an ideal which did not appear antagonistic to that of the far-right groups whose flames were fanned by these literary ‘contributions’. The National Rifle Association (NRA – the most influential gun-lobby in the US, heavily supported by the arms industry) strikes the same spark each time its chairman Charles Heston officially speaks of ‘white pride’ and ‘cultural warfare’19.
In the 1990’s the extreme right has found a new source of income: the music industry. So-called ‘white power’ music is selling for huge amounts of money annually, financing fascist and nazi groups in various European countries. One of its leading traffickers has been Sweden, which exports to many other countries as well as servicing a substantial home market20.
The music is largely sold through small companies such as Nordland, Rebelles Europeens, Rock-O-Rama, White terror records, Stormfront records, Hammer records, and NS8821. But if these companies are comparitively small, the industry as a whole controls multi-millions. The groups profiting include Combat 18, one of the most militant in Britain. They claim to have raked in hundreds of thousands this way, which they use for buying firearms22.
Small record companies are not the only culprits. The music and electronics giant Sony reproduced ‘white power’ music until watchdogs publicised the fact23. Another was Nimbus, one of the world’s leading CD and DVD-producers, now a subsidiary of Carlton Communications plc24.
That corporations have supported right wing (and even fascist) groups throughout history is well known. Many of today’s mega-corporations grew big that way. But today most corporations shun extreme groups. There is simply nothing to be gained from them at this stage; the groups are too small to have any real power. This explains the corporate withdrawal of support as soon as it is unearthed by watchdogs or by the media.
They prefer instead to support the more ‘acceptable’ groups on the right: neo-liberals, conservatives and populists for example. These are powerful, less extreme and therefore publicly acceptable: they can benefit the companies supporting them. In his book "Friendly Fascism", the sociologist Bertram Gross has proposed that future fascism will shed its 1930’s garb. A new fascist state is more likely to have ‘velvet gloves’ than ‘leather boots’; it will retain power by passifying people through consumerism and leisure, rather than through terror and violence25.
This strategy goes hand in hand with the agenda of most corporations. Together they form a "Behemoth", a "Moloch-state" for this Millenium. Only we can stop it happening.
[1] Guerin, Daniel: Fascism and big business. Pathfinder, New York, 1973.
[2] Hooper, John & Fossgard, Jan: "Haider race to power was helped by Reebok", The Guardian, February 10th 2000.
[3] Guerin, Daniel: Fascism and big business. Pathfinder, New York, 1973; "Keycode Bayer", Coordination against Bayer-dangers, http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Critical_Shareholders/bayeren.htm, 3rd April 2000; Lee, Martin: The beast reawakens. Little & Brown, Boston, 1997.
[4] Guerin, Daniel: Fascism and big business. Pathfinder, New York, 1973.
[5] "Science, Engineers and National Socialism" in Science, Technology and National Socialism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994
[6] "Science, Engineers and National Socialism" in Science, Technology and National Socialism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994; Guerin, Daniel: Fascism and big business. Pathfinder, New York, 1973.
[7] Lee, Martin: The beast reawakens. Little & Brown, Boston, 1997.
[8] "New Perspectives on Swiss ‘Neutrality’ and Banking Secrecy", World Jewish Congress, Policy Dispatch no. 16, 1996.
[9] Aalders, Gerard & Wiebes, Cees: The art of cloaking ownership: the secret collaboration and protection of the German war industry by the neutrals. Amsterdam University Press, 1996.
[10] Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation. http://www.swissbankclaims.com/, 3rd April 2000.
[11] Lee, Martin: The beast reawakens. Little & Brown, Boston, 1997.
[12] Lee, Martin: The beast reawakens. Little & Brown, Boston, 1997.
[13] Hill, Ray: The other face of terror: Inside Europe’s neo-Nazi network. Grafton, London, 1988.
[14] "Computers and the Apartheid Regime in South Africa", Stanford University, Computer Science Dept, http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~cale/cs201/index.html, 3rd April 2000.
[15] "Apartheid-Caused Debt: The Role of Swiss & German Finance", Jubilee 2000 South Africa/World History Archives, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/37a/index-a.html, 3rd April 2000; "Apartheid’s monied friends", Multinational Monitor, no. 9, 1988.
[16] "Business as usual with Pretoria", Multinational Monitor, no. 9, 1988.
[17] 1999 Annual Report. American Enterprise Institute, 1999; Lee, Martin: The beast reawakens. Little & Brown, Boston, 1997
[18] "About AEI", American Enterprise Institute, http://www.aei.org/aboutaei.htm, 3rd April 2000.
[19] "Gun lobby joins culture war", Josh Sugarman, Searchlight USA, http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/usa/usa_index.htm, 4th April 2000.
[20] "Från punkprotest till nazirock", Expo, no. 6 1996.
[21] Vit maktmusik. Brottsf örebyggande rådet, Brå-rapport 1999:10; Lowles, Nick & Silver, Steve, White noise – inside the international nazi skinhead scene. Searchlight, 1998.
[22] Lowles, Nick & Silver, Steve, White noise – inside the international nazi skinhead scene. Searchlight, 1998.
[23] "Czech Republic", Institute for Jewish Policy Research, http://www.jpr.org.uk/antisem/countries/czechrepublic/czechrepub.htm, 3rd April 2000
[24] Lowles, Nick & Silver, Steve, White noise – inside the international nazi skinhead scene. Searchlight, 1998; "Guide to Carlton", Carlton Communications plc, http://www.carltonplc.co.uk/home.html, 12th April 2000.
[25] Gross, Bertram: Friendly fascism: The new face of power in America. Evans, New York, 1980.