“Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction… It is the naked dictatorship of finance capital.”

– Georgi Dimitrov

1.1) Fascism as a Permanent Feature of Colonial and Neocolonial Rule

From the standpoint of the Communist Party Marxist Kenya (CPMK), fascism is neither an episodic phenomenon nor solely a European export. For the oppressed peoples of Africa, fascism has never disappeared; it was the fundamental logic of colonial rule, and it continues in the postcolonial period as a modality of imperialist domination and bourgeois comprador rule. European fascism was merely a late and intensified form of the colonial violence that Africa endured for centuries.

In Kenya, British settler colonialism was marked by racial terror, land dispossession, forced labour, mass internment (e.g. the detention camps during the Mau Mau War), and legalised white supremacy. This system bore all the features of classical fascism: a racist ideology of national superiority, a reactionary mass base among settler-colonialists, political repression through emergency laws, and the fusion of monopoly capital with the coercive state.

Post-independence, this system was not dismantled; it was Africanised. The comprador and bureaucratic bourgeoisie, under the leadership of Kenyatta and Moi, inherited and sustained a repressive neocolonial state machine. Today, fascist features persist in the Kenyan polity and across Africa: Militarised police repression of workers, students, and peasants; Surveillance, assassinations, and detention without trial; Extreme inequality and the violent protection of capitalist property relations; Patriarchal, ethnic-chauvinist and moral-religious reaction. Thus, in Africa, fascism is not returning; it is evolving in new neocolonial forms, as a reactionary defence mechanism of global capitalism in decay.

1.2) Contemporary Manifestations of Fascism in Africa

Reactionary Movements and States

While Africa has not witnessed mass fascist parties in the mould of Mussolini or Hitler, fascistic state formations and ideologies have emerged. These include: Paul Kagame’s Rwanda: A militarised surveillance state with neoliberal growth masking severe political repression, mass killings in the DRC, and suppression of internal dissent under the guise of national unity. Yoweri Museveni’s Uganda: A personalist dictatorship using anti-LGBT ideology, militarisation, and imperialist alliance with the US AFRICOM structure to maintainrule. Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the former Janjaweed militias: Armed forces organised for genocidal counter-insurgency, linked to ruling capitalist factions and foreign capital.

In Kenya, the regime of Ruto deploys fascist violence against dissenting youth, slum dwellers, workers, and peasant protests under the umbrella of “law and order”. The Finance Bill 2023 was passed amid brutal crackdowns, police murders, and the growing use of digital surveillance.

Imperialism and the External Origins of Fascistic Logic

Fascism in Africa cannot be understood without imperialism. NATO states and multinationals fuel authoritarianism and militarisation through: AFRICOM and foreign military bases (e.g. in Djibouti, Kenya); Proxy forces and mercenaries (e.g. Rwanda in Mozambique, RSF in Sudan); Economic subordination through debt, austerity, and NGO-capitalist alliances.

Fascism in the neocolonies is thus both domestically rooted in the comprador state’s repression of popular classes and externally induced by imperialist strategy to stabilise investment and suppress revolution.

1.3) Class Forces and the Structure of Fascistic Rule

Fascism in Kenya and similar African contexts represents the armed alliance between comprador-bureaucratic capital and imperial monopoly capital, with backing from both domestic militarised elites and international finance institutions. It serves to crush: Workers’ struggles in the public and informal sectors; Peasant revolts over land and agrarian dispossession; Student and youth protests for dignity and employment; Women’s resistance to patriarchal violence and economic marginalisation.

The mass base of these fascistic regimes often includes: Lumpenised youth mobilised through state violence and reactionary moralism; Rural and urban petty bourgeoisie fearing proletarian advance; Ethnicised or religiously aligned reactionary elements defending elite interests. The state apparatus, under conditions of deepening capitalist crisis, turns from a mask of democracy into a machine of open class war.

1.4) Is There an “African Fascism”?

The CPMK argues that what appears as ‘African fascism’ is in fact the continuation of colonial logic under neocolonial management. While there are locally specific manifestations, ethnic ideologies, militarised NGOs, evangelical reaction, patriarchal authoritarianism; the structural role is the same: to defend imperialist interests and suppress revolutionary transformation.

Where mass fascist parties are absent, NGO managerialism, state terrorism, and militarised capitalist populism (e.g. Magufuli, Kagame, or even Ramaphosa’s suppression of Marikana miners) act as their functional equivalents.

1.5) Imperialist crisis turned inwards

From Kenya to Sudan, from Congo to Nigeria, the spectre of fascism in Africa is not a new visitor; it is the spectral continuity of colonialism, the nervous response of monopoly capital, and the comprador class’s last defence against proletarian revolution. Fascism in Africa is imperialist crisis turned inward. Anti-fascism, therefore, must be anti-capitalist and anti- imperialist in essence.