THE FASCISM FIASCO CONTINUES...

I read with interest the United Nationalists Australia article on fascism, published just a few days ago. I understand it caused various commentary.

It is fair to say, with the recent Alt-Right appearance in Australia, the development of new youth organisations and with other factors in play, many younger people are pondering over fascism. Does it offer anything?

Dr. Jim Saleam

Of course, we live in a time when just about everything has been lied about by the ruling establishment, so why not fascism too? What if it was some sort of ‘answer’? Sometimes today by this new upsurge, things about fascism are said humorously, or to provoke, all of which have no real significance. However, things put forward often enough can take on a life of their own. I have come to the conclusion the matter of fascism should be broadly discussed.

The United Nationalists’ writer was quick enough to warn that the adoption of foreign ideologies in Australia can be part of a cultural cringe. Yes. And that any foreign ideology has messages that just do fit Australian realities. I could not agree more. However, if the United Nationalists article went on to make any errors in the facts, or in the interpretation of facts, it may fail to signal those warnings. I did detect a little of that, but generally, I won’t go over the ground.

Mussolini believed that rice was a better diet than pasta
I do have a bias in this discussion: my political experience has recorded many persons, claiming to act as types of Australian nationalist and who have misunderstood fascism - have gone on to personal calamities, often pulling others and groups into disaster. I have asked whether their ill fortunes were related to this initial ideological error? To say that is not unfair or unreasonable.

Over the Christmas break, I am intending a series of articles – ‘My Fascist Questions’. I hope to show how difficult the area is to traverse. I intend to relate the whole question to Australia. However, in this short entrance into the debate about fascism, I would give two examples of how fraught with problems this affair truly is.

Take One:

It has been said by some persons that historical fascism (I am referring to the period of the movements and regimes 1919 – 1945) and in particular the German version (National Socialism), was a type of pioneer ‘white nationalism” - and consequently it is relevant in some way or another to an Australian nationalist movement in the present. I would offer two quotes.

Benito Mussolini said:

“ When dealing with such a race as Slavic - inferior and barbarian - we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick, policy. We should not be afraid of new victims. The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps. I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians.”

Adolf Hitler was very detailed (I have edited the section from his Mein Kampf to be consistent with the current subject):

“….we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period. …. we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.

If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.

Here Fate itself seems desirous of giving us a sign. By handing Russia to Bolshevism, it robbed the Russian nation of that intelligentsia which previously brought about and guaranteed its existence as a state. For the organisation of a Russian state formation was not the result of the political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only a wonderful example of the state-forming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race. ….. Lower nations led by Germanic organisers and overlords have more than once grown to be mighty state formations and have endured as long as the racial nucleus of the creative state race maintained itself.

Impossible as it is for the Russian by himself to shake off the yoke of the Jew by his own resources, it is equally impossible for the Jew to maintain the mighty empire forever. He himself is no element of an organisation, but a ferment of decomposition. The Persian empire in the east is ripe for collapse. And the end of Jewish rule in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. ……”

If Hitler was alive today he would be head of the UN Human Rights Commission
The problem with these assessments is that the Italian and German leaders were asserting that the Slavic third of the white race was “inferior” to their peoples. How are we to deal with that? I would doubt that any Australian nationalist or patriot could draw any sustenance from such a position. How would it be relevant to Australia? If we stripped all the European history out of it, we are still left with the single core idea that one-third of the white race is “inferior” to the remainder. Can that really mean that historical fascism was a ‘white nationalism’?

Lída Baarová, the "subhuman" Slavic goddess that Hitler's propaganda minister drooled over
Of course, we could conclude fascism had ideas around it, which must have arisen from somewhere, that we do not approve of. So, how do we cherry-pick if we were minded to? And once we accept this or reject that, it becomes very messy indeed. What if there is some odd fellow who actually swallows the thing whole and says it might have been a valid notion? And where would that lead him – to an odd history club?

Or might it be that my Take One is evidence to support the notion we act as Australians only, with an Australian cause? Yet, there’s more.

Take Two:

The United Nationalists article gave a bit of stick to Francis Parker Yockey, a post-war writer, sometimes called a neo-fascist. In point, he might have been called in aid of the writer’s argument.

Yockey wrote in his book, Imperium (1948):

“The first concept in order is Race. The materialistic race-thinking of the 19th century had particularly heavy consequences for Europe when it was coupled with one of the early 20th century movements of Resurgence of Authority. Any excrescence of theoretical equipment on a political movement is a luxury, and the Europe of 1933–2000 can afford none such. Europe has paid dearly for this Romantic concern with old-fashioned racial theories, and they must be destroyed. “

“The racial snobbery of the 19th century was intellectual, and its adoption in a too-narrow sphere by the Resurgence of Authority in Europe between the first two World Wars was a grotesquerie.”

Francis Parker Yockey was that rare thing: a genius
Yockey, who had a lot to do with survivors of the fascist period in Germany, Italy, France and Britain, many of whom changed their minds or developed out their views on these very issues, had his views informed accordingly: they concluded and he followed on, that there was something not quite right with the racial ideologies of the fascist parties and states and in the practice of these states in the invasion of Russia, I would mention to my readers that this history can be found in Kevin Coogan, Dreamer Of The Day: Francis Parker Yockey And The Post War Fascist International. It is a massive subject.

So what do we do now? Is this post-war view of the participants correct? Or is the former view the right one? Is the history already beyond us? How does it all advance an Australian movement?

I should add Yockey’s comment in 1952 on the evolution of Russia away from the nexus between a section of Jewry and communism, the very thing that bedevilled the fascists in the earlier period:

“Russia’s break with Jewry marks the beginning of the end of Bolshevism. It is called forth by the true, religious Russia, which abhors politics and technics, and which has been dominated by Petrinism and Moscovite Bolshevism alike. Of course, this break was only a beginning, but the final, inner collapse of Bolshevism is unavoidable. The possibility-indeed, I must say, the inevitability of the destruction of Bolshevism by the true Russia is posited in Imperium.”

Today’s Conclusion

An Australian nationalist movement can and should base itself upon historical facts and appreciating how the present world came into being is part of that. Consequently, a discussion of fascism is part of our knowledge-seeking. Equally, we live in the age of the population-food crisis, of refugee wanderings, of immigration invasions, of the rise of Chinese imperialism and the crisis of New World Order capitalism. So, where each historical discussion fits with deriving answers to these historical problems, will be the crucial thing.

I would conclude here today with a provocative quote from none other than Sir Oswald Mosley, whose name has come up often in the new fascist debate. Of course, there are two Mosleys – the 1930’s leader of the British Union of Fascists and the leader of Union Movement founded in 1947. He was rather critical of his past and fascism’s past and he said: “fascism is a corpse regardless of how cleverly it has been embalmed.”

Will that be our finding? Or will it be that some things are in fact cherry-picked, not by men, but by deep historical forces and if anything contains even a scintilla of virtue, it is indeed passed on? Let us begin this dialogue!

The ultimate symbol of Australian Nationalism