Chapter 33 Chapter 5 Defend against powerful enemies together 7

7 So far, as a historian, the author's pen must relay other scenes, so as not to fall into the narrow stereotype of emphasizing only the West.For so far little of what has been said in this chapter has dealt with other, larger parts of the world.In fact, as far as the conflict between Japan and the East Asian continent is concerned, all the joints are not unrelated to the situation in the West.Because at that time Japan's domestic politics were being controlled by the extreme nationalist rightists, while the main force of China's resistance against Japan was the Communist Party.As for the Latin American region, it has always enthusiastically followed the trend of European consciousness and enthusiastically imported various current socialist ideas such as fascism, communism, etc. Naturally, it is also related to a certain extent.Mexico is the most prominent among them. Under the leadership of President Cardenas (1934-1940), the torch of the Great Revolution was rekindled in the 1930s; during the Spanish Civil War, he enthusiastically supported the Spanish Republic.In fact, after the defeat of the Republican government, Mexico is the only country in the world that continues to recognize the Republic as the legal government of Spain.However, for the vast majority of Asian and African regions and the Islamic world, fascism has never been—and will never be—the enemy of these countries and their people, no matter whether it is an ideology or a national policy of an aggressive country. Not to mention their only enemy.Their real deep hatred is "imperialism" and "colonialism"; and the vast majority of imperialist forces happen to be countries that practice liberal democracy: countries such as Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the United States.More importantly, except for Japan, which is the only exception, all imperial hegemony is dominated by white people.

Logically, the enemy of an enemy is a friend.It is therefore natural that the enemy of imperial power may become a partner of those who break free from the colonial shackles and strive for freedom.Even Japan, although within its own colonial confinement, has its own peculiar retrogression—the people of South Korea, China and other places can testify to this—but for Southeast Asia and South Asia, the Japanese can show The attitude of the fighters of non-white peoples, and called on the local anti-colonial forces to rise up against the whites.The struggle against imperialism runs counter to the struggle against fascism.For this reason, although Stalin made a treaty with Germany in 1939, although the western leftists were greatly frustrated, the communists in eastern India and Vietnam did not think there was anything wrong, but happily concentrated on dealing with Britain and France.However, in 1941, Germany rebelled against the Soviet Union. In order to play the role of comrades, the Communist Party in the colonies had to change their wishes and plans.Such an approach was not only unpopular, but strategically unwise, because it was the moment when the Western colonial empires were at their weakest, if not collapsing, then extremely vulnerable.As a result, other local leftists who did not mind the iron-fisted restraint of the Communist International took advantage of this opportunity to carry out large-scale activities. In 1942, the Indian National Congress launched the "Quit India" movement.Subhas Bose, a Bangladeshi radical, formed an Indian Liberation Army for the Japanese. The members came from prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Indian army at the beginning of the Japanese invasion of India.The anti-colonial militants in Myanmar and Indonesia are also playing in their hands, believing that the war is a godsend.The most incisive and almost absurd example of this unscrupulous anti-colonial logic is a radical Jewish fringe group in Palestine.It negotiated with Germany (via Damascus, then under the French Vichy government), and asked Germany to help it liberate Palestine from British rule.This incident is the most important event of the Restoration Movement in the eyes of this group of people-a certain militant in the group, that is, Yitzhak Shamir, who will become the Prime Minister of Israel in the future.But measures like these do not indicate that the colonial people have a conscious preference for fascism.However, since the Arab nation in Palestine was at odds with the Zionist immigrants, the anti-Semitic views of the Nazis naturally liked them.As for India, which is located on the South Asian continent, there must be many people who believe in Nazi myths and think they belong to the so-called excellent race of Aryans.But these are mostly exceptions (see Chapters 12 and 15).

The anti-imperialist and colonial liberation movements, after all, leaned to the left and eventually merged with the global anti-fascist movement, at least towards the end of the war.The reason for this must be explained.The Western left is actually the cradle of anti-imperialist theories and policies, and the support for the colonial liberation movement also comes from people on the international left.Since the Bolsheviks formed the Congress of the Eastern Peoples in Baku on the Caspian Sea in 1920, the Comintern and the Soviet Union have become the main force.What's more, many of the future leaders and advocates of the independence movement belonged to the Western-educated elite in their home countries.When they went to the colony's suzerain country, it was often only in the circle of local liberals, democrats, socialists, and communists that they could find a warm atmosphere that was free from racism and opposed to colonialism.These people all belong to the modern reformers, and the so-called nostalgic medieval mythology, Nazi theories, and the strong racial xenophobia in them are nothing but a replay of the traditional "local consciousness" and "tribalism" in their eyes, and they only represent their own country. A backward state that has been exploited by imperialism.

To put it simply, based on the principle of "the enemy of the enemy is my friend", cooperation with the Axis forces can basically only be a tactical means.Even in Southeast Asia, although Japan's rule was not controlled like the old empire, and it was imposed by non-white hands on white people, this situation could only last for a short period of time.The reason is that the Japanese themselves have an extremely narrow racial consciousness, so their willingness to liberate other colonies is naturally not very high (in fact, this period of Japanese rule was really short, because Japan was quickly defeated).And fascism, or so-called Axial nationalism, was not very attractive to the colonists.On the other hand, take a figure like Jawaharlal Nehru, although he did not hesitate to throw himself into the "British Withdrawal from India" revolt of 1942, the crisis year of the British Empire (on this point, He is very different from the Communist Party), but Nehru has always believed that India after independence and freedom should establish a new society that pursues socialism.As the big brother of socialism, the Soviet Union will surely become an ally of India-the Soviet Union is full of models, and may even become a model for India to establish a country.

The leaders and spokespeople who advocated the liberation of the colonies were themselves often a minority among the masses they sought to save.But this fact has made it even more congregated with anti-fascist forces.Because the spiritual feelings of the vast majority of the colonial people are more easily moved and mobilized by the same demands of fascism.Such feelings include traditional ideas, religious and ethnic exclusion, misgivings about the modern world, and so on.If it weren't for the Nazis' incomparable sense of racial superiority, they would have been inspired by the Nazis.But in fact, although popular support was available, it was not fully mobilized by any party at that time, at least it never played a major political role.Although in the Islamic world, Islam did undergo a large-scale mobilization between 1918 and 1945, the Hassan al-Banna Islam Brothers Party, which was deeply hostile to liberalism and communism, even became a catharsis in the 1940s. The standard-bearer of Egyptian grievances.The organization's incorporation of Nazi ideology and its application of more than temporary tactics, its hostility to Zionism, testify to the implications.But in the end, some of the people who really came to power in Muslim countries, even though they stood on the shoulders of the fundamentalist masses, actually belonged to those who advocated modern reform.The school-level military officers who launched the Egyptian Revolution in 1952 were intellectuals after liberation.They had been associated with a small number of communist groups in Egypt whose leadership happened to be mostly Jewish (Perrarlt, 1987).As for the concept of a sui generis "Pakistan" in the Indian subcontinent (a product of the 1930s and 1940s), it has been described by some as "the elaborate design of a group of secular elites. Oppression advocated, on the other hand, in order to compete with the majority Hindu population, had to describe its political society as an 'Islamic' type of religious society, rather than a movement for national separatism" - this description is quite correct ( Lapidu, 1988, p. 738).In Syria in the Middle East, the pioneers of mass mobilization were the Arab Baath Party, founded in the 1940s by two French-educated teachers in Paris.Although their ideas are full of Arab mysticism, they are ideologically socialists through and through, and they are firmly opposed to imperialism-Syria's constitution does not mention the Islamic faith.The political situation in Iraq (until the outbreak of the Persian Gulf War in 1991) was a mixture of various nationalist military officers, communists, and Baathists, all with different names but equally committed to the Arab world. Unity, and the pursuit of socialism (at least in theory) - notably not what they were striving for together.As for Algeria, due to special local reasons and the country's revolutionary movement has a broad mass base (including a large number of labor immigrants to France), the Algerian revolution has a strong Islamic component.Yet (1956) the revolutionaries agreed that "their revolution was a struggle against colonialism against the tide of the times, not a religious war." (Lapidus, 1988, p. 693) A social-democratic republic was proposed, and Algeria became a constitutional one-party republic.In fact, only in the era of anti-fascism can the authentic communist party gain widespread support in some parts of the Islamic world.Among them, Syria, Iraq, and Iran are the most prominent.It was not until quite a later period that the secularists' political calls for modernization and reform gradually faded under the revival of fundamentalist thought (see Chapters 12 and 15).

The developed Western countries are anti-fascist, and their colonies are anti-colonial. The conflict of interests between the two sides will inevitably resurface after World War II.But the people in front of them got a temporary rendezvous, and jointly found a point of intersection in a vision of the transformation of the post-war society in the future.The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the colonies just bridged the gap between the two sides.For on the one side they represent the anti-imperial spirit, while on the other they signify a total devotion to victory.However, the war in the colonies was different from the European stage, and the end of the war did not bring political fruits to the Communist Party.Only in a few exceptional cases did the war against fascism combine with the liberation movements of the national society.For example, the Japanese aggressors were both colonists and fascists towards China and North Korea.For the Indochinese Peninsula (Vietnam, Khmer, Laos), the French colonial government was not only the enemy of the local people's pursuit of freedom, but also succumbed to the Japanese side when the Japanese army swept across Southeast Asia.Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung, and Ho Chi Minh, the Communist Parties of several countries played triumphant songs after the war.As for the leaders of other colonies waiting to be liberated, although most of them came from movements led by leftists, their activities from 1941 to 1945 were somewhat influenced by the defeat of the Axis as their first task.However, although their actions were restrained, they also had an optimistic yearning for the situation after the defeat of the Axis forces.Today's two superpowers clearly do not take kindly to the old colonial policies - at least on paper.And the most powerful empire in the world is now governed by a party that is known to be staunchly anti-colonial.The power and legitimacy of old colonialism are now severely undermined.The beauty of free hope seems to be stronger than ever before.The factual development in the future was indeed the case, but under the stubborn resistance of the traditional empire, people paid a bloody price for it.