by New Unionist

About the author: New Unionist is a monthly publication of the New Union Party, a socialist political party based in Minneapolis.

Fascism is nationalism in its most extreme form. It came to power in Germany in the 1930s in the social breakdown of the Great Depression.

The Nazis offered the German people shelter from the storm through their mystic ideology of “blood and soil.” They claimed the conflicts among Germans—especially the class struggle between workers and capitalists—were caused by the evil manipulations of those of non-German blood who infiltrated themselves among the Germans.

These “outsiders” were, of course, the Jews. If the Jews were gotten rid of, the Nazis said, the German people of all classes would stop fighting each other and would be united in a common “folk community...