The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings from History-By Laurence Rees Public Affairs, 2025

We meet ordinary Germans who fell in line with a regime that promised them peace and prosperity. Interviewed decades after the destruction of the Third Reich, some still looked back wistfully to the days before the war. “You saw the unemployed disappearing from the streets,” recalled Erna Krantz from Bavaria. “There was order and discipline … It was, I thought, a better time”.

Laurence Rees

The fury of Nazism, which was bent on the unconditional extermination of every Jewish man, woman, and child within its reach, passes the comprehension of a historian, who tries to uncover the motives of human behaviour and to discern the interests behind the motives. Who can analyse the motives and the interests behind the enormities of Auschwitz? We are confronted here by a vast and ominous mystery of the degeneration of the human character that will forever baffle and terrify humanity.

Isaac Deutscher-

The most appropriate, indeed the only relevant, general proper name for the Germans who perpetrated the Holocaust is “Germans.” They were Germans acting in the name of Germany and its highly popular leader, Adolf Hitler.

Daniel Goldhagen

“Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.”

― Leon Trotsky, Diary in Exile, 1935

The Nazi Mind by the writer, historian and broadcaster Laurence Rees has been described as a “groundbreaking narrative history” of the motivations and mentalities behind the Nazis and their supporters. As will be seen in this critical review it is essentially a rehash of his previous histography that not only downplays the social and economic and political forces at play in the Nazis rise to power but compliments Daniel Goldhagen’s theoretical premise that “Ordinary Germans” were to blame for the rise of German fascism and the subsequent murder of six million jews.[1]

Rees uses previously unpublished testimony from former Nazis and those who grew up in the Nazi system to try and gain insight in to the psychological and social composition of the Nazis.

But as this perspective document elaborates “ Nazism was an expression of the most reactionary and brutal tendencies of German capitalism. That is the key to understanding it. Hitler’s rise from a Viennese homeless shelter and the trenches of World War I to becoming a megalomaniacal dictator cannot be explained by the social composition and psychology of his supporters. He owed his power to the ruling elite, which placed him at the head of the state. The millions that Thyssen, Krupp, Flick and other industrial magnates donated to the NSDAP, Hitler’s appointment as chancellor by Hindenburg, the symbolic figurehead of the army, and finally the agreement of all the bourgeois parties to the Enabling Act are eloquent testimony to the fact that the vast majority of the ruling elite had placed themselves behind Hitler when all other mechanisms to suppress the working class had failed.

The members of the National Socialist movement originated, at least up to its seizure of power, almost exclusively from the middle classes. It recruited from among artisans, peddlers, the civil employees and peasants, whom the war, inflation and crisis had robbed of any faith in democratic parliamentarianism and who longed for order and an iron fist. At the head of the movement were officers and NCOs from the old army, who could not reconcile themselves to Germany’s defeat in World War I. However, the programme of the National Socialist movement was anything but petty bourgeois. It translated the basic needs of German imperialism into the language of mythology and racial theory. The dream of a “thousand-year Reich” and the hunger for “Lebensraum (living space) in the East” expressed the expansionist urge of German capital, whose dynamic productive forces were constricted by Europe’s closely meshed system of states. Racial hatred provided consolation for the German petty bourgeois in the face of his absolute powerlessness and prepared him for a war of extermination.”[2]

Program and perspective

One of the most notable aspects of Laurence Rees’s entire body of work, and that can be said of most historians writing on this subject, is the cursory attention given to issues of program and perspective. In all his books virtually nothing is said about the actual policies pursued by the Social Democrats and the Stalinists, from the German Communist party which demoralized and split the working class, and cleared the way for the Nazi victory. This disinterest dates back to when Rees wrote to me in 2008, saying “I'm afraid I simply didn't have space to include a discussion of these issues- fascinating as they are - in the Behind Closed Doors book. I decided to begin the story in 1939 and therefore felt it wouldn't be helpful to refer back to this history. I'm sure others would have written the book differently, but for better or worse, that's what I thought was the right way forward. Equally, I'm afraid I can't go into my views on Trotsky here, as I would need several thousand words to represent my thoughts on that intriguing time properly. I believe my friend, Professor Robert Service, is currently writing a comprehensive biography of Trotsky, so it will be exciting to see his thoughts on the subject.[3]

As I said to Laurence Rees at the time, Robert Service was a regrettable choice of historian to assist him with Trotsky. In 2010, Robert Service wrote a biography of Leon Trotsky.[4] The Marxist writer David North called the biography “character assassination”, writing that Trotsky: A Biography is a crude and offensive book, produced without respect for the most minimal standards of scholarship. Service’s “research,” if one wishes to call it that, has been conducted in bad faith. His Trotsky is not history, but rather an exercise in character assassination. Service is not content to distort and falsify Trotsky’s political deeds and ideas. Frequently descending to the level of a grocery store tabloid, Service attempts to splatter filth on Trotsky’s personal life. Among his favourite devices is to refer to “rumours” about Trotsky’s intimate relations, without even bothering to identify the rumour’s source, let alone substantiate its credibility.”[5]

While there are some things to like about Rees’s new book unfortunately it is a reflection of the current historical consensus that ordinary Germans played a crucial part in the rise of Nazis and bear indirect responsibility for the murder of six million jews in the Holocaust. Rees not only believes that “ordinary Germans” were to blame but “such horrors occurred not because the Nazis were Germans, but because they were human beings”.

Rees’s belief that all humans, given the chance, can be murdering fascist monsters echoes William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, who believed that forces of human evil lurk deep in man’s soul or psyche. They can easily gain ascendancy, as they inevitably must, over the restraining moral influences of civilisation.

As North says, “Most of you are, I am sure, familiar with William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, which argued that barbarism is the natural condition of humanity. Release a group of ordinary school boys from the usual restraints of civilisation, and they will, within a few weeks, revert to a state of homicidal savagery. This misanthropic work flowed from the conclusions drawn by Golding from the experiences of the Second World War. “Anyone who moved through those years,” he later wrote, “without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.” The popularity of Lord of the Flies reflected the bewilderment and despair provoked by the horrors of World War II. This mood was strengthened by the political relations that arose in the aftermath of the war. It became more challenging to engage in a discussion of the nature of the Third Reich after 1945 than it had been before that time. In the reactionary political environment of the Cold War, it was no longer considered appropriate, especially in the United States, to dwell too seriously on the relation between fascism and modern capitalism.[6]

There is little new about this “new history”. Daniel Goldhagen’s book[7] set the benchmark for this so-called theory. Although a substantial number of historians condemned his book,[8] It still went on to poison the minds of a younger generation, which swallowed hook, line, and sinker his right-wing historiography.

Brandi Lopez, one of those younger historians, wrote in a 2016 essay: "The term 'ordinary men' was used throughout several of my sources." It was about the people that became the leaders of the Nazi party, Hitler’s right hand men as well as the people that became soldiers following his orders blindly and in the end becoming willing executioners. These individuals began as ordinary men, farmers, fathers, and everyday people. In Daniel Goldhagen's “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.” Goldhagen’s basic thesis is that most German people became willing executioners in the Holocaust. He states, “eliminationist’ hostility toward the Jewish people was so deeply ingrained in Germany”, that’s how the people were willing to do whatever it took to rid the country of them.

In Laurence Rees’s “Auschwitz: A New History”, he mentions Hoss and his story. His family was a simple farming family, and for them to sell their goods, they had to go through a Jewish man. His father and mother ingrained in him that the Jewish man was scamming them out of money, and the reason his family struggled was because of this. Most of the people that were in the sample size said they resembled more of “real Nazis” than an “Ordinary German”. This article explores the theories of the perpetrators, the evidence, and ultimately, the sample size itself. Some graphs display a visual representation of the number of men who identified with a specific occupational rank, such as elite occupations, lower-middle-class workers, etc. [9]

The best refutation of Goldhagen’s “ordinary Germans” is by the Marxist David North, who wrote: The methodological flaw of Professor Goldhagen’s book is indicated in its title: Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Let us stop right there: What is meant by “ordinary Germans?” For those of you who would like a textbook example of an “abstract identity,” this is it. This is a category that is so broad, it is capable of including virtually everyone, except, presumably, Germans of Jewish parentage. What, after all, makes any particular German an “ordinary” one? Is it a hefty girth and a fondness for knockwurst and sauerbraten? Is it blond hair, blue eyes and a penchant for sunbathing in the nude? Is it a talent for abstruse philosophizing and a passion for 300-pound Wagnerian sopranos? A concept built upon such foolish and arbitrary stereotypes cannot be of any scientific value in the cognition of objective reality. But if we should attempt to include in our definition more serious sociological characteristics, the worthlessness of the concept of “ordinariness” becomes immediately apparent. In 1933, German society possessed a complex class structure. Was the “ordinary German” at the time of Hitler’s accession to power a factory worker, a ruined shopkeeper, a demoralized member of the lumpenproletariat, a heavily indebted peasant, an East Prussian land-owning Junker or an industrial magnate?

If all these elements of diverse social strata are to be lumped together as “ordinary Germans,” it simply means that the concept of “ordinariness” does not reflect the internal antagonisms and conflicts of German society as it existed in 1933. What Goldhagen, therefore, offers his readers is not a scientific examination of German society as it really was constituted in 1933, but rather—and it is unpleasant to say this—an idealized portrait of a homogeneous society that uncritically substantiates the Nazi myth of a unified German Volk, defined by race and blood.[10]

Another problem with Rees’s book is his take on the Holocaust; for Rees, the political, social and economic reasons for this terrible event are not important. What is essential for Rees is the psychological reasons behind the Nazis genocide of the Jews. Rees joins a long list of writers and historians for whom the Holocaust is unfathomable and should not even be attempted to be understood.

If a Marxist like Isaac Deutscher- can write “The fury of Nazism, which was bent on the unconditional extermination of every Jewish man, woman, and child within its reach, passes the comprehension of a historian, who tries to uncover the motives of human behaviour and to discern the interests behind the motives. Who can analyse the motives and the interests behind the enormities of Auschwitz? We are confronted here by a vast and ominous mystery of the degeneration of the human character that will forever baffle and terrify humanity. “What chance do the rest of us have?.

North answers, “ The situation is rationalised too often with the argument that the Holocaust is such a terrible event that it simply defies a rational explanation. If, as Adorno said, it was no longer possible to write poetry after Auschwitz, it was presumably also no longer possible to place much confidence in the historian’s ability to comprehend the forces that drive the social—or, more precisely, the antisocial—activity of man. Historical science and political theory were seen as powerless in the face of such unfathomable evil.[11]

As I mentioned earlier, there are some aspects to appreciate, but overall, Rees’s work perpetuates a very right-wing historiography. As Leon Trotsky once said, “Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.”

 

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[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_Willing_Executioners

[2] National Socialism and the Holocaust-https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/foundations-ger/09.htmlthe theory

[3] https://keith-perspective.blogspot.com/

[4] Trotsky A Biography-Robert Service-Pan 2010

[5] In The Service of Historical Falsification: A Review of Robert Service's Trotsky-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/11/serv-n11.html

[6] The Myth of “Ordinary Germans”: A Review of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners-https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/russian-revolution-unfinished-twentieth-century/15.html

[7] Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust Paperback – 1 Feb. 1997 by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

[8] Historians criticise Goldhagen's book-www.wsws.org/en/articles/1997/11/gold-n17.html

[9] Lopez, Brandi J., "German People and the Holocaust" (2016). Capstone Projects and Master's Theses. 12. https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/caps_thes_all/12

[10] The Myth of “Ordinary Germans”: A Review of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners-https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/russian-revolution-unfinished-twentieth-century/15.html

[11] The Myth of “Ordinary Germans”: A Review of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners-https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/russian-revolution-unfinished-twentieth-century/15.html

How to Spot a Fascist: Umberto Eco Harvill Secker Paperback – 13 Aug. 2020 Alastair McEwen (Translator), Richard Dixon (Translator)

 "The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class, destroy its organisations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery.”

Leon Trotsky, in " Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It, "

“It would be so much easier for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares". Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and point our finger at any of its new instances - every day, in every part of the world.”

― Umberto Eco, Il fascismo Eterno

“ but we know. and have always said, that the bourgeoisie is attached to fascism. The bourgeois and fascism stand in the same relation to each other as do the workers and peasants to the Russian Communist Party.”

― Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings: 1921-1926

“Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his assassination: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

― Jack London, The Iron Heel

How to Spot a Fascist is a collection of three distinct yet profoundly thought-provoking essays on freedom and fascism. 'Ur-Fascism' examines fourteen essential characteristics of fascism. Like the great German author Gunter Grass, Eco was briefly a young fascist. Unlike Grass[1] Eco was not vilified for it. When Mussolini was at the height of his power, Eco was a young child lacking the knowledge and capacity to grasp the criminal character of the organisation he was associated with. He Writes in “Ur-Fascism:

“In 1942, at the age of ten, I received the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles (a voluntary, compulsory competition for young Italian Fascists — that is, for every young Italian). I elaborated with rhetorical skill on the subject “Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?” My answer was positive. I was a smart boy.”

Umberto Eco was undoubtedly one of the greatest writers and historians of the 20^th Century. If he were still alive during this modern period of history, he would not have hesitated in calling the latest incumbent in the White House a fascist.  Donald Trump fits most of the criteria cited by Eco in his 1995 essay.

Eco writes “If we still think of the totalitarian governments that ruled Europe before the Second World War we can easily say that it would be difficult for them to reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances. Suppose Mussolini’s fascism was based upon the idea of a charismatic ruler, on corporatism, on the utopia of the Imperial Fate of Rome, on an imperialistic will to conquer new territories, on an exacerbated nationalism, on the ideal of an entire nation regimented in black shirts, on the rejection of parliamentary democracy, on anti-Semitism. In that case, I have no difficulty in acknowledging that today the Italian Alleanza Nazionale, born from the postwar Fascist Party, MSI, and indeed a right-wing party, has now minimal connection to the old fascism. In the same vein, even though I am much concerned about the various Nazi-like movements that have arisen here and there in Europe, including Russia, I do not think that Nazism, in its original form, is about to reappear as a nationwide movement.”[2]

While Eco has several brilliant insights into Italian fascism, his work also has significant weaknesses. One of which was his blindness towards the betrayals of Italian Social Democracy. As Leon Trotsky points out, “ Italian fascism was the immediate outgrowth of the betrayal by the reformists of the Italian proletariat's uprising. From the time the First World War ended, there was an upward trend in the revolutionary movement in Italy, and in September 1920, it resulted in the seizure of factories and industries by the workers. The dictatorship of the proletariat was a real fact; all that was lacking was to organise it and draw from it all the necessary conclusions. The social democracy took fright and sprang back. After its bold and heroic exertions, the proletariat was left facing the void. The disruption of the revolutionary movement became the most critical factor in the growth of fascism. In September, the revolutionary advance came to a standstill, and November already witnessed the first significant demonstration of the fascists (the seizure of Bologna)[3]

Leon Trotsky was one of the first Marxists to not only define what exactly Italian fascism was, but also to warn of the danger it represented to the Italian and world working class. One of his earliest attempts to define fascism was in November 1931 when he wrote a letter to a friend titled "What is Fascism”. He wrote,

“The Fascist movement in Italy was a spontaneous movement of large masses, with new leaders emerging from the ranks. It is a plebeian movement in origin, directed and financed by big capitalist powers. It issued forth from the petty bourgeoisie, the slum proletariat and even to a certain extent, from the proletarian masses. Mussolini, a former socialist, is a “self-made” man arising from this movement. The movement in Germany is primarily analogous to the Italian movement. It is a mass movement, with its leaders employing a great deal of socialist demagogy. This is necessary for the creation of the mass movement.

The genuine basis is the petty bourgeoisie. In Italy, it is a significant base, comprising the petty bourgeoisie of towns and cities, as well as the peasantry. In Germany, likewise, there is a large base for Fascism. In England, there is less of that base because the proletariat is the overwhelming majority of the population; the peasant or farming stratum is only a relatively insignificant section. It may be said, and this is true to a certain extent, that the new middle class, the functionaries of the state, the private administrators, etc., etc., can constitute such a base. However, this raises a new question that needs to be analysed. This is a supposition. It is necessary to explore just what it will be. It is essential to foresee the Fascist movement growing from this or that element. But this is only a perspective which is controlled by events. I am not affirming that it is impossible for a Fascist movement to develop in England or for a Mosley or someone else to become a dictator. This is a question for the future. It is a far-fetched possibility. To speak of it now as an imminent danger is not a prognosis but a mere prophecy. To be capable of foreseeing anything in the direction of Fascism, it is necessary to have a definition of that idea. What is Fascism? What is its base, its form and its characteristics? How will its development take place?”

This short volume, 'How to Spot a Fascist,' was republished in 2019 and is an essential contribution to understanding today's fascist movement, led by Donald Trump. Eco was an insightful and compassionate writer, but he did not live to see the fascists come back. In the same year as Eco’s collection of essays, Christoph Vandrier’s book Why Are They Back was published by Mehring Books. As Vandrier’s recounts in the book after 81 years after the fall of the Third Reich, the neo-Nazi right has become a major political force in Germany. The book provides a valuable lesson in how to fight today's fascists by learning the lessons of the past.

 

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[1] Günter Grass and the Waffen SS-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/05/gras-m04.html

[2] Ur-Fascism Umberto Eco: June 22, 1995 The New York Review of Books  theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism

[3] How Mussolini triumphed-www.wsws.org/en/special/library/fascism-what-it-is-how-to-fight-it-leon-trotsky/02.html

Letter to Deutsche Bank in protest at its termination of publisher Mehring Verlag’s account

I want to condemn in the strongest terms possible the action of your bank to terminate the account of Mehring Verlag and the managing director’s private account.

This act of censorship is aimed at sabotaging Mehring Verlag’s work and impeding the distribution of its books. No other reasonable explanation can be found. Mehring Verlag and its predecessor have maintained an account with Postbank, now fully integrated into Deutsche Bank, for 45 years without any incidents.

As a recent statement on the World Socialist Website states, the closure of the managing director’s private account, entirely unrelated to the publishing house, constitutes personal harassment.

This is not the first time Deutsche Bank has targeted left-wing organisations. The Maoist organisation, MLPD, had its accounts terminated in 2009 and again in 2017. It was only by legal action of the MLPD that the bank relented.

“The attack on Mehring Verlag reveals what the ruling class in Germany fears most: the spread of ideas that threaten the foundations of its tottering, rotten capitalist system—namely, the program of socialism. As the great French writer Victor Hugo said 150 years ago: “One can resist the invasion of armies; one cannot resist the invasion of ideas whose time has come.”[1]

Only through a broad-based campaign in the working class can this act of censorship be defeated. I urge all my readers to protest the arbitrary termination of Mehring Verlag’s account.

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[1] In an act of political censorship, Deutsche Bank terminates publisher Mehring Verlag’s account-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/06/25/dmzc-j25.html

 

The New Age of Sexism: How the AI Revolution Is Reinventing Misogyny Laura Bates Simon & Schuster, £20, pp320

“We are hurtling towards a seismic shift in terms of really every aspect of our society is on the brink of being transformed by emerging technologies and, in particular, artificial intelligence.”

Laura Bates

“I’d also like to live in a world in which women can do whatever they want, without fear of what men might do to them. But we don’t live in that world. Our present reality demands that both men and women accept the existence of the sexual asymmetry, even if that means curtailing our freedoms.”

Mary Harrington

“The women of the property-owning class will always fanatically defend the exploitation and enslavement of the working people, by which they indirectly receive the means for their socially useless existence.”

Rosa Luxemburg

“Fucking ain’t fair, act accordingly” (Female Dating Strategy blogpost, 2021)

The New Age of Sexism is a lucid, well-written and deeply researched book on how right-wing and fascist forces are using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to attack minorities and women in general.

The subject matter contained in the book is, to say the least, disturbing. The degradation of male-female relations has reached a new apex with the use of this latest technology. AI, virtual reality, robotics, and the metaverse have delivered a “new age of misogyny” and, according to Bates “, We are standing on the edge of a precipice”.

As Barbara Ellen writes, “One recurrent theme is that women are no longer being 'merely' harassed, they are also being erased–replaced by increasingly realistic pornographic tech-proxies. Among them is a new generation of sex robots that can be purchased online and delivered to your door. Some models have mechanically articulated necks to simulate orgasm. Others give oral sex with back-and-forth head motions that Bates likens to a “pecking chicken”. Although vocal interaction can be enabled with sex dolls, many men don’t want it. It wrecks the fantasy – they prefer them mute.”[1]

The book is graphic in its accuracy, the rise of cyber-brothels, in which, believe it or not, robot sex workers take care of your every sexual need. Bates recounts in the book how a robot called Kokeshi: “A silicone shell being offered up as a warm, willing, breathing, talking, consenting sexual partner.” Bates comments that the robot's labia have been torn off. “Perhaps bitten off. I feel sick.” Writes Bates. Even more disturbing is that she finds sex dolls made to look as young as five, with child vulvas, holding teddy bears.

Although Bates wonders why society accommodates this parallel universe, the answer is not far away. In one chapter, she examines the rise of the so-called Metaverse and its control by oligarchs like Mark Zuckerberg and his global Meta empire. Zuckerberg's promotion of a “virtual-reality social world” is a big money maker, and so lightly policed as to be non-existent, providing a license to print money by the billions.

As Laura Bates writes in a Guardian article: “Mark Zuckerberg has grandly promised: 'In the metaverse, you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine.” It’s the sort of promise that might sound intensely appealing to some men and terrifying to most women. Indeed, the deeply immersive nature of the metaverse will make the harassment and abuse that many of us endure daily in text-based form on social media feel 100 times more real, and will simultaneously make moderation 100 times more challenging. The result is a perfect storm. And I am speaking from experience, not idly speculating: I spent days in the metaverse researching my book, The New Age of Sexism.  She continues, “I visited worlds where I saw what appeared to be young children frequently experiencing attention from adult men they did not know. In one virtual karaoke-style club, the singers on stage were young women in their early 20s. However, based on their voices, I would estimate that many of the girls behind the avatars were likely around nine or 10 years old. Conversely, the voices of the men commenting on them from the audience, shouting out to them and following them offstage were often unmistakably those of adults.”[2]

The role of Meta and other social media websites, which are easily accessible on the latest smartphones, in spreading and profiting from this online abuse and illegality is well-documented. Although not documented in the book is the role played by corporate advertising in helping perpetrate this abuse. But as Thomas Scripps writes “The real problem is the poison spilling out of a rotting social system—from misogynist ideologies to the glorification of violence, wealth and selfishness—for which these technologies are a conduit, and the conditions of social neglect which make young people emotionally susceptible: the most vulnerable dangerously so. Conditions which also hinder the social dialogue necessary to help children learn how to interact healthily with new technologies and form genuine relationships.[3]

Meta is not the only one profiting from this sexual degradation and exploitation. Companies such as Elon Musk’s (X) and Sundar Pichai's (Google) are in charge of the algorithms, datasets, systems and search engines that promote and deliver this disgusting filth.

If the growth of cyber brothels was not enough, Bates tackles an equally disturbing phenomenon, and that is the massive rise of deep fake pornography. Bates has been the target of this illegal behaviour. In the book, she describes a panic attack after being sent deepfake pornographic images of her. Bates’s experience is just the tip of a massive iceberg of this kind of abuse.  A report by the Children's Commissioner for England makes the following points.

“The growth of the online world is a technological revolution, the likes of which haven’t been witnessed in centuries. The internet has enhanced our lives immeasurably by opening up education, communication, and research in ways that those of us who are now well into our adulthood might never have imagined. For children growing up in 2025, who are among the first generations to have never known a solely analogue life, being online is second nature.

It is an incredible asset in our daily lives, but it has also fundamentally changed the nature of how we interact with one another, how we stay safe, and how we maintain our privacy. For most children, if not all, it has introduced a darker side. They are forever in their digital playgrounds.

Every day, children tell me about the violent, upsetting or degrading things that are shown to them online by algorithms designed to capture their attention. That’s why, as Children’s Commissioner, I have been relentlessly focused on driving for greater safety online. It has also been driven by what I observed in children’s changing behaviour during my years as a teacher and headteacher, as they learned to navigate life through a digital lens. But the subject of this report – sexually explicit ‘deepfakes’ – is not one I was familiar with until more recently, despite having worked with children every day of my professional life. Of all the worrying trends in online activity children have spoken to me about – from seeing hardcore porn on X to cosmetics and vapes being advertised to them through TikTok – the evolution of ‘nudifying’ apps to become tools that aid in the abuse and exploitation of children is perhaps the most mind-boggling. [4]

There is no doubt that Bates is a sincere activist and her books are an essential part of opposing this alarming abuse of women, but her work is only half the story. Bates, by her admission, is not comfortable debating, and her critics are caricatured or derided as “male” or, worse, “Right-wing”. My criticism of her is not from the right but from the left.

In my review of Lost Boys by James Bloodworth, I examined the reactionary movement that has been somewhat lightly termed the Manosphere. The Manosphere quaintly refers to a motley collection of websites, blogs and online forums promoting misogyny, masculinity and opposition to feminism. It promotes racism, antisemitism, anti-intellectualism, climate change denial, homophobia and transphobia. This movement has become a recruitment centre and training ground for what can only be termed trainee fascists.

There is a flip side to Manosphere, and that is the rise of the Femosphere, which Bates has studiously avoided examining in any detail. This movement was spawned by the growth of the right-wing #MeToo movement.[5] The Femosphere, it must be said, is equally as reactionary as the Manosphere movement.

Bates has so far not commented much, if at all, on this right-wing movement, which has been written about in numerous academic papers and been fabled and glamorised in equal measure in books such as Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Stephanie Lacava’s I Fear My Pain Interests You.

In her excellent article [6], Rachel Healy examines the work of Dr Jilly Kay, specifically her use of the term "Femosphere" in a paper published in 2024. [7] Healy writes that “Kay has been researching a reactionary turn among young women, and how a backlash against mainstream feminism has created new spaces online. In the femosphere, instead of “incels” – male involuntary celibates – there are “femcels”, and instead of pickup artists there are female dating strategists and so-called “dark feminine” influencers who encourage women to find men to support them financially.”

It is not within the scope of this brief review to examine everything in Kay’s excellent research paper, which is freely accessible on the web. One of the more disturbing features of this so-called new feminist movement has been its adoption of the same fascist ideas as its male counterparts.

Kay quotes from an FDS podcast episode, which discussed a Reddit post entitled “40 Years a NEET: Reflections of a Stay-At-Home Son. One of the hosts said:

“I think men like this can’t be saved, I believe that the only that can be done about them is to allow them to perish on their own time […] we shouldn’t slaughter people for being like this but, like, they’re going just not to reproduce because again, they don’t have the drive to find a wife, they’re not gonna have kids, and I think it’s just better if their bloodline dies out, honestly, that’s probably just the best thing for society […] the only men who deserve to have families and kids are men who are gonna model ambition, drive and healthy relationship dynamics.”

The only difference between this group and their Manosphere counterparts is that the men have more ready access to guns than their female counterparts. It is undoubtedly only a matter of time before one of these trainee female fascists decides to launch a murderous rampage in the name of modern feminism.

To be blunt, this type of reactionary feminism would not look out of place in Nazi Germany. Their modern-day eugenicist ideas will be embraced by fascists worldwide. They make the same arguments that were put forward by the nazis. Only a cursory read of Mein Kampf would confirm that.

There is nothing progressive in this modern feminism, as Kate Randal points out. There is more talk of gender today than at any previous moment in history. The #MeToo campaign in the US has supposedly brought the conditions of women to the fore like never before. The Global media and Hollywood are animated by hardly anything else. But this is a fraud. The women receiving nearly all the coverage belong to the upper echelons of society, the richest five or ten per cent. Working-class women are largely absent from this discussion, except for a few token exceptions that highlight the rule. As Rosa Luxemburg once wrote, “The women of the property-owning class will always fanatically defend the exploitation and enslavement of the working people, by which they indirectly receive the means for their socially useless existence.[8]”That is true today as it was in Luxembourg’s day.

 

 

London-based author and activist Laura Bates, 37, is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, a website that collates first-hand accounts of sexism from women around the world, using those experiences to press for change. She’s also the author of bestselling nonfiction titles including Misogynation and Men Who Hate Women, as well as novels for teens that grapple with issues such as revenge porn and slut-shaming. Her new novel is Sisters of Sword and Shadow.

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[1] Sexism with a silicone face-observer.co.uk/culture/books/article/sexism-with-a-silicone-face

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jun/10/the-misogyny-of-the-metaverse-is-mark-zuckerbergs-dream-world-a-no-go-area-for-women

[3] Adolescence: Gripping realism explores social pressures behind young male violence- violence-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/03/24/fbxd-m24.html

[4] “One day this could happen to me” Children, nudification tools, and

sexually explicit deepfakes April 2025-assets.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wpuploads/2025/04/Children-nudification-tools-and-sexually-explicit-deepfakes-April-2025.pdf

[5] See - She Said: The origin story of the #MeToo campaign, or a version of it- it-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/11/21/bcwe-n21.html

[6] www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/29/welcome-to-the-femosphere-the-latest-dark-toxic-corner-of-the-internet-for-women

[7] The reactionary turn in popular feminism-www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2024.2393187#abstract 

[8] Women's Suffrage And Class Struggle by Rosa Luxemburg (1912) 

Trotsky in Exile by Peter Weiss- Atheneum-Hardcover – 1 Jan. 1972

 

Horatio, I am dead,

Thou livest, report me and my cause aright

To the unsatisfied.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2

“But who then, at that time [during the Stalinist repression], protested? Who stood up to shout his disgust? The Trotskyists can claim this honour. Following the example of their leader, who paid for his stubbornness by receiving the blow of an axe, they fought Stalinism totally, and they were the only ones. At the time of the great purges, they could no longer shout out their revolt except in the frozen vastness to which they were dragged to be more easily exterminated.”

Leopold Trepper: The Great Game

One of my favourite bookshops is the Amnesty International in Hammersmith, London. It is neither pretentious nor ostentatious, just a straightforward second-hand bookshop. I like it because you occasionally find a gem of a book. One such book was Peter Weiss’s Trotsky in Exile. I usually steer well clear of books on Trotsky’s life because they are inadvertently written by writers who are politically hostile to Trotsky and generally not worth reading, let alone reviewing. However, this play or book is different.

“Trotsky in Exile” is a play by German playwright and artist Peter Weiss, first performed in 1968. The play is a fictionalised account of the last years of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s life. Trotsky was residing in exile in Mexico and under constant threat from Stalin’s assassins.

The play is structured as a series of dialogues between Trotsky and various figures from his past and present, mostly revolutionaries, including his wife, Natalia Sedova, his son, Lev Sedov, and his former comrades in the Bolshevik Party. Through these conversations, Weiss explores Trotsky’s revolutionary ideology and his views on the Soviet Union under Stalin. The more Weiss read, the more he became a strong opponent of Stalinism. In 1967, this led him to meet one of Trotsky’s most important biographers, Isaac Deutscher.

Weiss's portrayal of Trotsky as a complex and conflicted figure is an honest one. Outside of Trotsky’s writings on the impact of exile and political isolation on his family, this is one of the few books that examines his personal life in detail. While being faithful to Trotsky’s politics, Weiss employs Brechtian theatre devices, such as music and dance, to create a sense of distance and alienation. This style serves to underscore the play’s political and ideological themes, highlighting how history and ideology shape individual lives and experiences.

Peter Weiss (1916-1982 is arguably one of Germany’s most important artistic figures. He was an extraordinarily talented artist. He worked as a painter, novelist, filmmaker, and dramatist throughout his life. Weiss was comfortable in German literary and artistic circles. He was fond of Bertolt Brecht, seeing The Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in 1930.

In the 1960s, Weiss had a friendship with the German-born, Swiss writer Hermann Hesse. In a letter to his long-time friend Hesse in 1961, Weiss writes, “I am very preoccupied with the art which first comes about when reason, rational thinking is switched off. I have been unable myself to resolve this conflict: sometimes it seems to me that the most essential lies in the dark and the subconscious, then however it occurs to me that one can only work today in an extremely conscious way, as if the spirit of the times demands that the writer does not lose his way in regions of half-darkness.”

Unlike most of his generation of artists, Weiss was deeply interested in the seminal experiences of the twentieth century – the crimes of fascism, the October Revolution, and its subsequent betrayal by the Stalinist bureaucracy.

It is hardly surprising, given the political hostility to Leon Trotsky and the Trotskyist movement in general, that a play that is broadly sympathetic to Trotsky and his revolutionary life has hardly been performed, let alone written about. With 2016 marking the 100th anniversary of Weiss’s birth, no attempt was made to stage "Trotsky in Exile".

As Stefan Steinberg writes, “To my knowledge, the play is unique in its attempt to portray Trotsky’s life and political struggle on stage. The work has its flaws and, on occasion, reveals the influence of Weiss’s discussions with Ernest Mandel, the leader of the Pabloite Unified Secretariat. What is striking about the play, however, is Weiss’s valiant effort to correct all manner of Stalinist falsifications, to restore Trotsky to his rightful place in history as a leader of the Russian Revolution alongside Lenin and as the principal Marxist opponent of the Stalinist degeneration in the Soviet Union.

Of great interest also in Trotsky in Exile is Weiss’s recognition of the central role of culture in assessing the October Revolution and Trotsky’s historical significance. Weiss had studied Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution and devotes a scene of his play to a discussion among Lenin, Trotsky and leaders of the Dadaist art movement. In Zurich in 1916, Lenin is known to have met political co-thinkers in the same café frequented by Tristan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck and other leading lights of the Dada movement. With legitimate poetic licence, Weiss brings the remarkable figures together in a discussion about the prospects for art in a post-revolutionary Soviet Union. A later scene features Weiss’s old mentor Breton in discussion with Trotsky and Diego Rivera in Mexico.”[1]

In the 1960s, Weiss became increasingly politically radical. One form this radicalisation took was, as mentioned by Steinberg, was Weiss’s conversation with Ernest Mandel.[2] Weiss had no fundamental understanding of Mandel’s politics. Mandel broke from orthodox Trotskyism. As Max Brody points out

“Mandel sought to provide the economic justification for the rejection by Pabloism of the revolutionary role of the working class. He claimed capitalism had reached a new stage, in which the imperialist powers had resolved the inner contradictions that resulted in the barbarity of the early 20th century. He initially referred to this new period as “neo-capitalism. “To make the central point from the outset, Mandel’s embrace of Pabloism did not flow from an incorrect economic theory, but the reverse. His economic analysis was based on his rejection of the revolutionary role of the working class as the harbinger of capitalism's demise.[3]

Weiss’s inability to understand the differences between orthodox Trotskyism and the Pabloism of Ernest Mandel was behind his decision to include Joseph Hansen in his book. However, Weiss did not know that Hansen was heavily involved in the assassination of Leon Trotsky. However, once Hansen’s treachery was in the public domain, Weiss should have at least told his readership of Hansen’s role in the assassination of Leon Trotsky.

According to a document entitled  The Role of Joseph Hansen “The initial stages of the (Security and the Fourth International)investigation uncovered recently declassified documents, which revealed the conspiracy that prepared Trotsky’s assassination and the fatal role played by agents who had managed to infiltrate all the major political centres of the Fourth International. The ICFI uncovered documents relating to the activities of agents such as Mark Zborowski, who became the principal assistant of Trotsky’s son, Leon Sedov. Zborowski played a key role in the murder of Sedov and other leading members of the Fourth International in Europe.

Another important Stalinist agent, who supplied the Kremlin with valuable information on Trotsky’s activities, was Sylvia Caldwell (née Callen), the personal secretary of James P. Cannon; however, the most significant information uncovered by the ICFI related to the activities of Joseph Hansen. Documents discovered in the US National Archives and others obtained through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that Hansen, immediately after the assassination of Trotsky, sought out and established a covert relationship with high-level US government agents. One such document, a letter from the American Consul in Mexico City to an official in the State Department, dated September 25, 1940, reported that Hansen “wishes to be put in touch with someone in your confidence located in New York to whom confidential information could be imparted with impunity.”[4]

Weiss’s radicalism and defence of Leon Trotsky against the slander of the Stalinists led to his investigation by the East German Stalinist police, following the publication and production of Trotsky in Exile. Weiss, in the eyes of the Stasi, had become a traitor.

The Stasi’s “Operational Information No. 551/69” of September 5, 1969, reported “that the enemy side is making massive efforts to win over and misuse famous authors for deliberate and destructive ideological purposes,” and “it should be recognised that the enemy has succeeded in turning the author Peter Weiss, who has been successfully featured in our theatres. The Stasi report described Trotsky in Exile as a “clear commitment to anti-Soviet positions” and made clear it favoured a total ban on the work and its author in the GDR.

To conclude, as Weiss writes, “ Every word that I write down and submit for publication is political. It is intended to reach a large audience and achieve a specific effect. I submit my writings to one of the communication media, and then they are consumed by the audience. The way in which my words are received depends to a great extent on the social system under which they are distributed. Since my words are but a small and ever-diminishing fraction of available opinions, I have to achieve the greatest possible precision if my views are to make their way”[5]

 

Notes

1.   The Heritage We Defend David North, 1988. The Heritage We Defend was first published in book form in 1988. Its origins lie in the political struggle waged by the ICFI and the Workers League, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party of the United States, from 1982 to 1986, to defend Trotskyism against the nationalist opportunism of the ICFI’s former British section, the Workers Revolutionary Party.

2.   Peter Weiss The Necessary Decision- Ten work points of an author in this divided world-NLR I/47•Jan/Feb 1968

3.   Hanjo Kesting-The Writer’s Resistance (Peter Weiss) NLR I/139•May/June 1983

4.   The mechanism of revolution in the documentary theatre- Gideon Tsunami, The German Quarterly, November 1971, Vol 44 No 4

 

 

1

 

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[1] The false friends of Peter Weiss, German dramatist, filmmaker and novelist-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/20/pete-o20.html

[2] See Mandel's review of Weiss’s Book www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1971/xx/exile.htm

[3] The ICFI’s exposure of Ernest Mandel’s “neo-capitalism” and the analysis of the global economic crisis: 1967–1971-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/09/rvtn-s09.html

[4] www.wsws.org/en/special/library/foundations-us/48.html

[5] 2.Peter Weiss The Necessary Decision- Ten work points of an author in this divided world-NLR I/47•Jan/Feb 1968

Lost Boys by James Bloodworth (Atlantic Books, £14.99).

 

‘Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on,’

 Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

“A revolution does not deserve its name if it does not help with all its might and all the means at its disposal- if it does not help women, twofold and threefold enslaved in the past, to get on the road of individual and social progress. A revolution does not deserve its name if it does not take the greatest possible care of the children ... for whose benefit it has been made. But how can one create ... a new life based on mutual consideration, on self-respect, on the real equality of women . . . on the efficient care for children-in an atmosphere poisoned with the roaring, rolling, ringing, and resounding swearing of enslavers and enslaved people, that swearing which spares no one and stops at nothing? The struggle against 'foul language' is an essential condition of mental hygiene just as the fight against filth and vermin is a condition of physical hygiene.”

― Leon Trotsky, Problems of Everyday Life & Other Writings on Culture & Science

“The women of the property-owning class will always fanatically defend the exploitation and enslavement of the working people, by which they indirectly receive the means for their socially useless existence.”

Rosa Luxemburg

Lost Boys by James Bloodworth is a journalist's examination of the reactionary movement that has been somewhat lightly termed the Manosphere. The Manosphere quaintly refers to a motley collection of websites, blogs and online forums promoting misogyny, masculinity and opposition to feminism. It promotes racism, antisemitism, anti-intellectualism, climate change denial, homophobia and transphobia. This movement has become a recruitment centre and training ground for what can only be termed trainee fascists.

It is not surprising that Bloodworth did not want to research and write this book. He replied to his editor, saying, “Why would I want to do that?”. He writes, “Today I feel a bit like a funeral director in the aftermath of a mass casualty event. I would have preferred things to have turned out differently, but considering they haven’t, I intend to put my knowledge to some practical use. Having spent so much time researching the manosphere – including interviewing and interacting with hundreds of men and spending months at a time embedded on a course which purportedly taught men how to become ‘high status alpha males’ – I feel as if I have something worthwhile to contribute.”[1]

Indeed, why should anyone want to associate and talk to a bunch of Nazi like scumbags who give two thousand pounds to learn how to hunt down woman and on some occasions rape them and then brag about their behaviour of social media.

The origins of this so-called pickup movement can be traced back to Neil Strauss’s 2005 bestseller, The Game. His book turned the art of seduction into a woman hunt, which sees women as nothing more than prey and being treated as such. The men within this movement have no comprehension of history but their attitude towards women would not look out of place in the Nazi Party of German fascism.

To his credit, Bloodworth exposes these trainee fascists. He reveals the close links between the manosphere and the far Right, including fascists like Donald Trump. Trump’s fascist partners in the While House who dismiss their enemies as “beta”. His vice-president, JD Vance, describes himself as “red-pilled”. As Bloodworth points out, the rise of the Anti-feminist backlash coincided with the growth of fascist forces worldwide, and it reminded him of Sinclair Lewis's dystopian novel, It Can’t Happen Here, which enjoyed a resurgence during the first Trump presidency. As Sinclair wrote, " Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.’  However, his political understanding of how and why these members of the lumpen proletariat and deranged petty bourgeois are cannon fodder for a fascist movement is limited.

Bloodworth’s new book was inspired by his watching of the Netflix series Adolescence. He writes, “It is a striking film that is masterfully shot and powerfully acted. It has also generated a worthwhile public conversation. Much of this conversation has been constructive; however, some of it has been animated by a desire to change the subject – to talk about anything but misogyny and the radicalisation of young men on the internet. I found Adolescence surreal to watch at times.”[2]

As Thomas Scripps writes in his review of the Netflix series, “The reality, as we have been shown, is that the problems are well beyond an individual family’s ability to resolve. Perhaps the most common expression throughout the series is “I don’t know”, or some variant, from kids and adults alike; they are buffeted and bewildered by forces beyond their grasp.

The role of smartphones, the Internet, and social media, in particular, is well-contextualised in this broader social landscape. It would be foolish to deny the role they play in creating an unprecedented level of exposure to peer pressures and corporate advertising, declared and undeclared, and in streamlining the passage of individuals damaged by these influences into darker waters. But the real problem is the poison spilling out of a rotting social system—from misogynist ideologies to the glorification of violence, wealth and selfishness—for which these technologies are a conduit, and the conditions of social neglect which make young people emotionally susceptible: the most vulnerable dangerously so. Conditions which also hinder the social dialogue necessary to help children learn how to interact healthily with new technologies and form genuine relationships.”[3]

So far, the opposition to the rise of the “Manosphere has not come from working-class women, but has taken the form of the middle-class movement centred around the #MeToo movement, which is already eight years old. As the Marxist writer David Walsh wrote, “The ostensible aim of this ongoing movement is to combat sexual harassment and assault, i.e., to bring about some measure of social progress. However, the repressive, regressive means resorted to—including unsubstantiated and often anonymous denunciations and sustained attacks on the presumption of innocence and due process—give the lie to the campaign’s “progressive” claims. Such methods are the hallmark of an anti-democratic, authoritarian movement, and one, moreover, that deliberately seeks to divert attention from social inequality, attacks on the working class, the threat of war and the other significant social and political issues of the day.”[4]

One of the more outspoken and articulate critiques of the “Manosphere has come from the pen of the writer Amia Srinivasan. Her book The Right To sex,[5] while containing so worthwhile observations, it essentially promotes the #MeToo movement's right to unsubstantiated and often anonymous denunciations and sustained attacks on the presumption of innocence and due process.

Srinivasan is the darling of all the radical groups, who fall over themselves in promoting her idea of social justice.  Her brand of modern-day feminism is dominated mainly by selfish, upper-middle-class champions of “women’s rights”. Srinivasan writes, “It’s essential in any radical political tradition. It’s no surprise that utopian writing always has these wacky ideas. I mean, think about More’s Utopia, full of these strange possibilities, because the same political imagination that leads to the disclosure of new possible social arrangements also sometimes generates some crazy shit. The broadening of the sense of what’s possible, as well as what’s delightful about human life, has to be central to a radical politics.

As Kate Randall points out, “ The fight for women’s rights is a social question that must be resolved in the arena of class struggle, not in the rarified atmosphere of the corporate boardroom and Hollywood. As Rosa Luxemburg once explained: “The women of the property-owning class will always fanatically defend the exploitation and enslavement of the working people, by which they indirectly receive the means for their socially useless existence.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes

James Bloodworth is a journalist and author whose writing has appeared in numerous British newspapers, as well as in many US publications. His book Hired: Undercover in Low Wage Britain was longlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2019 and was selected as The Times Best Current Affairs and Big Ideas Book of the Year in 2018. He has produced and presented documentaries for Channel 4 television and has appeared on many podcasts. He has a new book, Lost Boys: A Personal Journey Through the Manosphere, scheduled for release on June 5, 2025, the result of a five-year investigation into the subculture.

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[1] Adolescence’ and the Marketisation of Childhood, by James Bloodworth – 4 April 2025-https://leftrenewal.org/articles-en/bloodworth-adolescence/

[2] ‘Adolescence’ and the Marketisation of Childhood, by James Bloodworth – 4 April 2025-https://leftrenewal.org/articles-en/bloodworth-adolescence/

[3] Adolescence: Gripping realism explores social pressures behind young male violence-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/03/24/fbxd-m24.html

[4] One year of the #MeToo movement-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/19/year-o19.html

[5] The Right to Sex: Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2022 Hardcover – 19 Aug. 2021-Bloomsbury