5-16-07, 9:10 pm PDt

May 9 marks the end of the war against fascism and Nazism in Europe in 1945. It will be largely ignored by the government and the media of Australia as it has been for a number of years.

The reason is clear. For the ruling classes of the western world it was the wrong war and its outcome was a disaster for imperialism around the world. While the Soviet Union became the main victim and lost more men, women and children in the conflict than all the other nations combined, it was a great victory for the Soviet Union. That country, above all, was responsible for the destruction of Nazism and the complete overthrow of the Hitler regime. The Soviet Union emerged from the war with enormous political prestige.

Following the defeat of fascism the national liberation movements developed around the world and nearly all of the former colonial countries won their independence – India, all the African nations, PNG, Indonesia, China which had been carved up by the various colonial powers and, of course, the oil-rich Middle Eastern countries.

The Chinese revolutionaries defeated the Japanese and European occupationists and formed the People's Republic of China under the leadership of the Communist Party of China. The Vietnamese defeated the French colonialists and then the attempts of the United States, Australia and other countries to occupy their country. Again it was the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam that led their struggle for independence.

All these developments were an enormous blow to imperialism and were blamed on some 'communist plot' and particularly the 'evil empire' as the Soviet Union was called by Ronald Reagan. The process of national liberation is still going on.

It took years of Cold War propaganda to destroy the image of the Soviet Union in some countries and to turn history on its head, even to the point of making the Soviet Union 'the enemy'.

Eventually the western powers did succeed in breaking up the Soviet Union with the assistance of traitors such as Gorbachev and Yeltsin and they believed that this was the end of communism and that capitalism would rule the world forever. The United States and its allies in Europe and Australia began an offensive to re-establish their complete worldwide domination and return other countries to colonial status.

But despite the overwhelming military, economic and political strength of the western powers, the United States in particular, their attempts to turn the clock back are failing. The US and its allies are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their aim, to secure for themselves complete control over the oil resources of the Middle East and the Caucasus region has turned sour. In the meantime the US has lost the continents of Latin America and Africa. People's China is challenging the economic domination of the United States.

Once again the western powers are reaching out for the fascist weapon just as the German ruling class did in the 1930s. The German fascists were initially backed by the British, American and Australian leaders.

Today the fascists are back in some Eastern European countries even though they use the cloak of democracy. They are attempting to avenge the defeat that they suffered in WW2 at the hands of the Soviet Union. This is what is happening now in Estonian and Poland and even the election of Sarkozy in France can be seen as the return of right-wing extremists and neo-fascists to power. In Britain, the US, Australia and elsewhere long held democratic rights are being torn up by extreme rightwing governments.

But these developments are not a sign of strength but of weakness and desperation as revolutionary movements sweep Latin America and as the partnership between the Russian Federation and China becomes stronger by the day. There are also new winds blowing in the former Soviet Union. The Russian parliament has just decided to restore the hammer and sickle emblem on the flags of the Russian Army.

Working class and people's struggles are sweeping the world on every continent on a scale never seen before in history. There are now more communist party members throughout the world than ever before. That is the spectre that haunts the capitalist and imperialist powers.

From The Guardian