The Long Second World War

World War II is still being fought. Not on the battlefields of charging men and burning tanks, but in the battlefields of the hearts and minds of people in the twenty-first century. Why? Because World War II is the seminal event of modernity and because of the confrontational showdown between communism and fascism, to which the western democracies were just “fascist-lite” in the Marxist imagination. The reinterpretation of the aftermath of World War II is still ongoing much to the detriment of the heroic nations who fought against fascist militarism and eliminationism then served as the bulwark against communist totalitarianism and expansionism during the Cold War.

It is a cheap retort to apply the term “Marxist” to the “Woke” who dominate the left side of western politics in today’s age. It is often hurled as nothing more than a dismissive or pejorative epitaph without much intellectual force behind it; a sort of rhetorical scoff and brush of the hand with a sense of contempt by those who employ it. It is, nonetheless, accurate. Not because the Woke Marxist mob really believes in the coming collapse of capitalism and the transition into end of history communism (maybe a small minority remain true believers), but because the understanding of history and politics by the Woke is fundamentally Marxist in its conceptual understanding. The Long Second World War is evidence of this.

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In the Marxist mind, the Second World War was a precursor conflict to the inevitable clash between reactionary capital and social hierarchies against progressive labor and egalitarian solidarity (among workers or, more broadly and more recently, any oppressed social group) that will be waged at the end of history. Neo-Marxist dogma asserts fascism is an outgrowth of capitalism, the manifestation of “late-stage capitalism” as it declines from the weight of its own contradictions, inequalities, and oppression. The “bourgeois” forces of faith, family, and nationalism (or patriotism), especially, end up rallying to the cause of degenerate capitalists who find their protector in the dictator and fight to preserve their privilege and power against the rising tide of revolutionary consciousness. From the Marxist purview, fascism is a universal problem and not a uniquely German problem. Therefore, the Anglo-American (western) view of Nazism as the specifically German manifestation of fascism owed to Germany’s unique history and twentieth century crises is just a rhetorical propaganda ploy. As Bertolt Brecht wrote, fascism is “a historic phase of capitalism.” The reconceptualization of fascism and capitalism as being part of the same historic phase of history is the great achievement of twentieth century Marxism that now stands as the new Marxist dogma.

History is never a dead reality since history lives on in the memory of those who are alive. History is not the mere statement of facts, names, and dates—it is the conceptual relationship we have with those events and people which include facts, names, and dates but is never reducible to mere facts, names, and dates. History is the story we tell about the past and how the past lives on in the minds and hearts of present generations through those stories we tell. In those stories we develop a conceptual relationship with what we call History.

To this end, World War II is still being fought and it will always be fought. While many may have their heads in the sand on this issue, the World War II industry is alive and well: on television screens, in Hollywood, in publishing, on social media, in daily conversation at bars, cafes, and homes. And some of those conversations can be horrifying to a historian or anyone deeply familiar with World War II history.

The story of World War II has generally been told from the western, predominately Anglo-American, perspective as well as the Marxist perspective. The western view, which we may say is also the democratic and capitalist understanding of the story, is that the western allies bravely defended liberty, democracy, and (eventually) human rights from the brutalism and “crimes against humanity” unleashed by German fascism and Japanese imperialism. World War II is seen, therefore, as the triumph of the democratic-capitalist polity in politics, the advancement of liberty, democracy, and human rights especially once the victory of the western allies was cemented through the fall of the Soviet Union after the Cold War. Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History” is a good example of the western story: fascism was evil, democracy imperfect but good, then after defeating fascism the final showdown between democracy and communism (another evil like fascism) was waged during the Cold War. The Cold War is implicitly part of the Long Second World War in which three ideologies contended for political supremacy in the twentieth century: democratic-capitalism, fascism, and communism. Philip Bobbitt’s The Shield of Achilles is another work, like Fukuyama’s, that reads history in this narrative conceptualization.

The post-1945 Marxist view of politics and history understands fascism as a violent stage in the decline of capitalism. Germany suffered this declination first. However, the decline of capitalism is inevitable and, therefore, the violence witnessed by fascist politics in the 1930s and 1940s is waiting to be unleashed again. Someday soon (if not already), it will erupt in an even more violent outburst than in the Second World War—we will fight another world war, a final battle between the reactionary forces of capital and social hierarchy and power against progressive labor, egalitarian solidarity, and the authentic freedom found in the dignity of the facticity of existence. From the Marxist perspective, the western alliance against fascism was a stand of last resort; hadn’t the capitalist and democratic powers prior to Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and the invasion of France in 1940 stood on the side of Hitler’s Germany? Furthermore, the defeat of German fascism wasn’t the defeat of fascism itself—fascism is brewing in the very countries that defeated Germany: America, Australia, Britain, Canada, France. Therefore, World War II was but one event in the long confrontation between capital (fascism) and labor (socialism), hierarchy (fascism) and equality (socialism), power (fascism) and liberty (socialism). While this story conveniently leaves out how socialists, communists, and other leftists—especially in France—capitulated to Nazism prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union (a majority of elected French socialist parliamentarians voted to collaborate with Nazi Germany in 1940 which would bring Petain to power), it is the story told by contemporary Marxists and their acolytes. Anyone who is active on social media knows this is the case, especially on TikTok and Twitter.

The Marxist story of the Long Second World War means that the western allies were ultimately accomplices of fascism and Nazism. Evidence for this is always what the western allies did after 1945. Yes, the Nuremburg Trials put to death some of the worst fascist and Nazi leaders, but many others escaped. They escaped with the help of the Catholic Church, the United States, and the British Empire, French collaborators were pardoned and rehabilitated by the newly formed French government after liberation who then served France in their colonial wars in the 1950s and 1960s. Fascist officers and party members who escaped the Nuremburg Trials were also allowed to reenter mainstream politics and played a role in the postwar settlement, the formation of NATO and the EU, and turned capitalist foreign policy concerns against the Soviet Union which led to the Cold War. The alliance between western capitalists and Soviet socialists during World War II was short-lived because the logic of dialectical materialism necessitated it as much as the inherent contradictions of capitalism ensured it. The postwar actions of the western allies revealed themselves to be sympathetic to fascism because all capitalists are secretly fascist to begin with because fascism is “a historic phase of capitalism.”

“Tankie,” a term used to describe leftwing activists who are militantly opposed to capitalism, are the most ardent peddlers of this story. Only the Soviet Union is heroic and good in the story of World War II (also ignoring the Soviet crimes while invading Poland in 1939). The insistence of this narrative usually comes down to the simplistic story spun from the Marxist view of things: the Soviets lost the most civilians and soldiers fighting the Germans; the Soviets suffered the worst of any of the Allies; the western allies didn’t contribute much to the fight (always neglecting the immense amount of money and supplies the western allies gave the Soviet Union); and only after Germany had been irrevocably weakened through years of attritional fighting on the eastern front did the western allies finally attack on D-Day where western front fighting paled in comparison to the east (this is also not really true as the intensity of fighting in Normandy, Hürtgen Forest, and Battle of the Bulge were quite intense for their scale and therefore comparable to the intensity of the famous battles of the Eastern Front). One can say that the Tankies are the faithful Marxists in the broad sense of politics and history: they truly believe capitalism is, ultimately, synonymous with fascism and that the fight against fascism is really a fight against the final breaths of collapsing capitalism violently lashing out to protect itself as it dies.

The Marxist view differs from the western view in that it only sees the ideological conflict of the twentieth century in dualistic terms. There was no threefold ideological contest as the western allies conceived of it: democratic-capitalism, fascism, and socialism. There was only a twofold contest: capitalism and socialism, with fascism being an outgrowth of capitalism and therefore belonging to the ideology of capitalism and the penultimate expression of capitalism. This permits the Marxist to lump the western allies and fascist powers of the Axis together. In fact, it can be read as a battle between fascism and socialism because fascism is the last stage of capitalism—capitalism becomes fascism in the Marxist worldview.

There is, of course, a conundrum in understanding the Marxist vision of the Long Second World War. Is the enemy capitalism or is it fascism? Marx’s magnum opus, Das Kapital, excoriates “capital” and the early Marxists assailed capitalism as its enemy since fascism had not yet emerged as a political phenomenon during the lives of first-generation Marxists. By the 1930s and accelerating with the outbreak of World War II, Marxist rhetoric was aimed both at capitalism and fascism. Today, capitalism and fascism remain linked, but with a greater emphasis on fascism within the eschatological imagination of Marxists. Because capitalism dies in fascism and the final battle is between the last vestiges of capitalism (fascism) and socialism, we can say that the enemy is fascism because fascism is the final enemy, the symbolic anti-Christ which mobilizes the passions of the righteous faithful under the red banner to slay the oppressive and vicious enemy as it lets out one last roar. This helps us understand the sudden and prolific rhetorical war against fascism that has swept the politics of leftwing discourse and the constant implications of capitalism and fascism in Marxist discourse.

But the Marxist ability to continue fighting the Long Second World War isn’t the only thing to be concerned with. The far-right is also reimagining World War II in their rehabilitation of fascism and Third Position politics and economics as the proper path out of global capitalist domination and the decadence of liberalism while also maintaining rhetorical opposition to socialism and communism. It may not be too much concern for Boomers and the old guard of the Academy who do not have TikTok, but TikTok really is awash with far-right propaganda relating to World War II. A search of World War II videos reveals cleverly edited shorts of Wehrmacht and SS soldiers in combat, with quotes of leading fascist thinkers as tanks, planes, and explosions visually emerge over the 10, 15, or 30 second video with seductive new wave and phonk music playing in the background. I am a millennial, and this is concerning to me because my generation and Gen-Z—having been raised with digital resources and apps—will soon come into leading positions of power, influence, and work throughout the world. Many people around my age and younger turn to digital sources for their information. Dismissive scoffs toward us and the new generation doesn’t do anything positive other than to confirm a sense of arrogant superiority among the older to the younger which creates a sense of generational strife. Coming to terms with digital reality and utilizing it to advance our own cause in the defense of the Good, True, and Beautiful must be something we are concerned with rather than turning our heads in embarrassment or dismissiveness.

In Fascism In Its Epoch, Ernst Nolte explained how fascism was the great “anti-”movement. It was anti-modern(ist), anti-capitalist, anti-socialist, anti-bourgeois, and anti-clerical. While fascism—once it went mainstream and started gaining political power—softened some of its anti-bourgeois and anti-Christian rhetoric, its seduction, then as now, rests in its cult of victimhood and grievance much like how Eric Voegelin said of Hitler’s seductive corruption of the German people. Fascism gives an easy explanation for why life sucks and why the modern world is seemingly falling apart, often scapegoating a conspiratorial cabal plotting against the people (the kind of rhetoric that is becoming mainstream once again). In being the great anti-movement, fascist politics easily consumes those who seek to blame anything and anyone for their problems. This is very much the environment we find ourselves in today where the far right thrives, so it is unsurprising we are equally witnessing a reemergence of far-right politics.

The modern fascist imaginary regarding World War II argues that contemporary global capitalism is in its final stages (it shares with Marxism this agreement) and that it was imposed onto the world and onto “authentic cultures” by America’s victory in the war which has led to the destruction of those authentic cultures with the false anti-culture of American (capitalist) consumerism. The fascist imaginary is instinctively anti-American. It sees the fascist defeat in the Second World War as the result of the “Arsenal of Democracy” that came roaring across the Atlantic to bolster the Soviet Union in its dire hour of need and, eventually, crushing European civilization in the postwar settlement as American consumeristic capitalism was forced over Europe as the condition for American protection against the Soviet Union. This new imagination is also visible across Twitter where emergent conservative and other rightwing social media personalities and accounts attack “global capitalism” and the United States (American capitalism) as much as they condemn socialism, communism, and the Soviet Union. The United States really is conceptually conceived as the “bad guy” in World War II in the neo-fascist mind.

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World War II is still being fought. Not in the streets of Stalingrad, the fields of France, or the beaches of the Pacific, but in the hearts and minds of the 8 billion people living today. While we may not know how many of those 8 billion are participating in this conceptualization of the greatest war ever fought, the simple fact is many millions are. The power of social media, television, and books ensure millions, if not tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, are being exposed to the continuing struggle as it relates to the Long Second World War. World War II never ends in this sense; the war is continuously fought in the minds of the people who memorialize it, visualize it, write about it, and talk about it regardless of their “expertise” on the war.

This is not something we can remain blissfully unaware of. World War II is the most captivating event of the modern mind because the modern world was created out of the fire of that terrible war. How we relate to the war still matters and will matter. It is not enough to resist the Marxist and neo-fascist (re)conceptualizations of World War II; we must also be steadfast in offering a story that can inspire and revivify our own spirit, to bring us an understanding that we are not mere animals colliding in a battle of material composition but spirits with a destiny linked beyond this earthly rock stretching across space and time. To this extent there is much work to be done, but Victor Davis Hanson and Hillsdale offer us hope that out of the darkness of the Second World War there is still light at the end of this long journey. The Good War is worth fighting.

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