ON KAMERADSCHAFT

by Welf Herfurth*


This is an article about German nationalism - specifically, about the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) - and what other nationalists outside Germany can learn from the NPD's practical approach to politics and creating a ‘parallel society’.

The NPD has been achieving good results in German state elections recently, and may even do well in upcoming federal elections. But, aside from some electoral success (which is not as hard as one might think for the 'Far Right' to achieve in Europe), the NPD have experienced some success in building up a mass support base in Germany as well - an extra-parliamentary support base. Their thinking is that nationalism must first become a popular mass movement as well as an electoral one: it is this that should be given a priority.

Nationalists, of course, are aware of how adverse the political situation is for nationalism in Germany. It is a general rule, I think, of modern politics that the more strategically important a country is in the nationalist struggle, the more repressive it will be.

France and Germany, by my own estimation, are the most repressive states on the Continent. Which is not to say that censorship and persecution are not equally strong elsewhere: but that the liberal-Zionist establishment seems to stand to lose more if France and German go nationalist, the two countries being widely acknowledged as the two leading powers on the Continent? It is fair to say that were nationalists to gain power in France and Germany, followed by Britain, Spain and Italy, the other European countries would fall like dominoes – Europe itself would see a pan-European nationalist revolution. Which is why the liberal, pro-USA and pro-Israel establishment devotes so much time to persecuting and censoring nationalists in France and Germany.

But this alone does not explain, I think, precisely why the nationalist struggle in Germany in particular is so important. Most nationalists are very sympathetic to German nationalism, out of a sense of solidarity: which is why Le Pen's Front National, and the British National Party, for example, cultivate ties with the NPD. But, surprisingly enough, there is little evidence of any desire to imitate the 'German model' of post war nationalism. Which is surprising, considering the number of Nutzis, for instance, who are present in the movement.

But it is evident that the Nutzis are only interested in one period of German history – the period of the Third Reich, and its inception - and in nothing that came before or after; their desire is to bring about another Hitlerian revolution (what Francis Parker Yockey called 'The European Revolution of 1933') in 'white' countries across the world. Everything is interpreted through the Nutzi ideological prism: Bill White's website, www.overthrow.com, regularly classifies the NPD as a 'National Socialist' party - ie, Nutzi and American. One would expect the Nutzis to display some form of Germanophilism, an exaggerated respect for German political and cultural achievements (which one finds in the thinking of Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Yockey, both non-Germans). But, ironically, Nutzism and its related 'white power'/white nationalist offshoots have very little interest in German nationalism since the war.

The position I will be taking in this article is a very unusual one and might be hard to understand for non Germans. I am recommending here that nationalist movements outside of Germany pay attention to the 'German model' and deliberately isolate some of its elements and incorporate them into their own ideologies and practices; their aim should be to minimise the parochial elements unique to their own countries (America, France, Australia or whatever) and become more 'German' and more 'Prussian'.

Our starting point here is Spengler's famous essay 'Prussianism and Socialism' (1920). Spengler's essay can be seen as a sketch of a certain economic and social system which was later embodied in German National Socialism. But it was more than an economic program, but a style of life, which transcends National Socialism. The Nutzis who appropriate National Socialist uniforms and symbols are using the outer trappings of 'Prussianism', leaving the basics and fundamentals untouched. The German Nationalists, today's NPD, and the German trade unions led by August Bebel (a figure praised by Spengler) contain the German or 'Prussian' spirit, which Spengler describes as follows:

I should like to make clear what I mean by the term "Prussianism." The name, of course, refers to an area of Europe where certain attitudes took on impressive shape and began to evolve. But Prussianism is, first and foremost, a feeling, an instinct, a compulsion. It is the embodiment of spiritual and intellectual traits—and that means also of certain physical qualities—that have long since become the distinguishing characteristics of a race, or rather of the best and most typical representatives of this race. Certainly not every person born in England is "English" in the racial sense; and not everyone born in Prussia in genuinely "Prussian." This word denotes everything we Germans possess by way of destiny, will, inner drive, and ability, and nothing of our vague ideas, desires, and whims. There are true Prussian types in all of Germany—I am thinking of men like Friedrich List and Hegel, of certain inventors, scholars, engineers, and organizers, but especially of a particular type of German worker. Since the Battles of Rossbach and Leuthen there have been many Germans who in the depth of their souls have harbored a small strain of Prussianism, a potential source of energy which can become active at great moments of history.
As yet, however, the only real Prussian achievements have been the creations of Frederick William I and Frederick the Great: the Prussian state and the Prussian people. ('Prussians and Englishmen', 11, in 'Prussianism and Socialism')

He goes on to say that:

To the Prussian way of thinking, the will of the individual is subsumed under the will of the totality.
The officers’ corps, the members of the civil service branches, August Bebel’s army of workers, and ultimately the German Volk of 1813, 1870, and 1914 have all felt, willed, and acted as a suprapersonal unity. This is not just herd instinct; it is an expression of sublime strength and freedom, something which the outsider can never understand. Prussianism is exclusive. Even in its proletarian form it rejects the workers of other countries together with their egoistic pseudo-socialism. ('Prussians and Englishmen', 13)

The essential thing is that such a spirit exists beyond a program, or even a party which competes against other parties in elections. As Spengler writes:

Socialism, i.e., Prussianism as it is not yet understood, is a real entity of the highest order.
Marxism is literature. Literature can become obsolete; reality either conquers or dies. We need only compare socialist criticism as it is heard at international conventions with but one socialist fact, the party of August Bebel. The popular phrase about ideas making history, when understood as it should be, is nothing but the special pleading of literary gossips. Ideas cannot be expressed. An artist can see them, a thinker can feel them, a statesman or soldier can make them real. Ideas become conscious only through the blood—instinctively, not by means of abstract contemplation. They make their existence known by the life style of peoples, the symbolism of deeds and accomplishments. And whether or not people are aware of them, either correctly or falsely, is a trifling matter. ('Marx', 21, in 'Prussianism and Socialism')

So, this is what the NPD possesses which many other nationalist organisations outside of Germany do not: a uniquely Prussian and communitarian (if we reject the Blairite overtones of such a word) spirit. This manifests itself in the NPD's extra-parliamentary activities, especially in the eastern parts of Germany: it runs kindergartens, discos, youth groups, community volunteer organisations which assist pensioners... Volunteer organisations like the fire brigades, Technische Hilfswerk (a equivalent of the Australian SES), Red Cross, etc, are full of nationalists and in some parts of Germany these organisations are fully controlled by nationalists.

The ‘infiltration’ of nationalists became such a problem that in 2005 the interior minister of Brandenburg, a state in the eastern part of Germany, called for the banning of nationalists in any volunteer organisation. Unfortunately for the minister this was rebuked by the very same volunteer organisations with the warning that if nationalists should be not allowed to become members the services would have such a shortage of volunteers that many units would not be able to function.

These techniques for building up grass-roots support are nothing new: after all, the Italian Fascists and the German National Socialists used them, and had borrowed them from the Italian and German communist parties. But the essential thing is that the NPD uses them in the service of an Idea (as Spengler defines them): which, if put into words, is to be expressed (vaguely) as feeling of Volksgemeinschaft, or Kameradschaft, of Germans helping other Germans. Moreover, this is done in a disciplined (I should say self-disciplined) and almost militaristic manner, and out of a sense of duty. Spengler writes that:

Service—that is the style of Old Prussia, similar to that of Old Spain, which also created a people by engaging in knightly warfare against the heathen. Not "I" but "we"—a feeling of community to which every individual sacrifices his whole being. The individual does not matter; he must offer himself to the totality. All exist for all, and all partake of that glorious inner freedom, the libertas oboe dientiae which has always distinguished the best exemplars of Prussian breeding. The Prussian army, Prussian civil service, and August Bebel’s workers’ brigades are all products of this breeding principle. ('Prussians and Englishmen', 12)

This is pre-State politics, pre-parliamentary politics. It shows that, in order to be 'nationalist' in Germany, one need not have control of parliament; that or a massive army of panzers and Messerschmitts.

The 'Prussianism' of the German people can be expressed in an extra-parliamentarian and communitarian way, by small actions which, taken together, benefit the totality. The NPD understood that grass roots level involvement is the key to electoral success. While all the other parties talk about the problems in the society, the NPD and other nationalists work in and within the community to solve the problems first hand.

Media commentators are always remarking that the German economy is a mess, which is true. Germany, like France, is one of the richest countries in the world, but has high unemployment and low levels of economic growth. It would be easy to blame this on purely economic causes, as the critics of the German government want to do; certainly, Chancellor Angela Merkel's tax hikes have made the German economy (already unhealthy under Schröder) worse. The economists prescribe solutions which are purely economical: cut taxes, get rid of the excessive restrictions on hiring and firing workers, and cut down on the excessive social security contributions employers are forced to pay, and the German economy will be fine again. Because of the increased economic growth, Germans will be too busy enjoying themselves to notice the creeping immigration problem (and the economic growth will only attract more immigrants).
And, not only will the immigrant problem recede from the consciousness of the average German, so will Germany's servitude to Israel and America, forced upon it by Germany's defeat in the war and sixty years of Holocaust-brainwashing. What German would care about redressing past historical injustices - eg., the expulsion of the Germans from the East, or the Morgenthau Plan - when he is making money?

This is more or less the plan the liberal-democrats have for Germany (and for France and the other 'sick' countries of Europe). Economic growth, and a solution to Germany's unemployment problem, is desirable, of course. But it is likely that neither will be achieved under Merkel's government, or the one after that, or the one after that. The Germans, at this point in time, have an inability to get their act together. What is lacking is not only decisiveness, but, importantly, a feeling of goodwill, or, as I would put it, Volksgemeinschaft.

The enemies of German nationalism are always comparing today's economic circumstances to that of 1932: each election victory by the so-called "Far Right" is a sign of "rising Neo-Nazism" which will see the arrival of a "Fourth Reich", and so on. This is all nonsense, of course: but one similarity exists between the Germany of 2006 and the Germany of 1932, and that is the absence of the feeling of a Volksgemeinschaft. The German National Socialists were accused of having a rather vague program before they took office; that is, they did not have a plan. But they did have a sense of Volksgemeinschaft, and it was their appeal to Germany - their call for Germans to start helping other Germans - which led to the turnaround in the German economy. It was the same spirit which existed in the catastrophic aftermath of WWII and the deliberate devastation of Germany through the Morgenthau Plan - that this time the Germans will pull through, through co-operation and effort.

One cannot induce that spirit through self-abnegation - self-abnegation which exists in Germany today, where Turkish immigrants are considered "German" and massive government funds are earmarked as compensation payments to Jews who were "gassed" by Germans during the war (and then many turned up alive again). Germany's economic problems go beyond the economy - it is not merely a matter of taxes and trade union laws.

But the same applies to the rest of Europe. Britain, for instance, has low unemployment figures (at least on paper); but it suffers from more or less the same problems as does Germany - for one, social isolation and a paralysis in the face of immigration, which erodes the British identity and threatens to depopulate the British Isles of white Britons altogether. Just as serious is the sordidness of British life, especially British urban life. This is symbolised by the rise of the 'chav' - the Briton who dresses up as a Negro, engages in petty and violent crime, destroys himself through drink and drugs, fathers illegitimate children (all supported by the welfare state) and drops out of school in his teens.

We are seeing the rise here of a new social type, a new type of ‘Untermenschen’, which will spread to the Continent as well. These problems are exacerbated, in Britain, by a traditional spirit of liberal individualism, which, as Spengler would say, is part of the British soul, as it were. But again, they can be partly relieved by the infusion of Volksgemeinschaft - imported from Germany. The same goes for France, and the same for Spain and Italy.

The key is for nationalists to organise themselves into hierarchical, disciplined, extra-parliamentary communitarian organisations - activist organisations. This spreads the word on the ground that nationalism (whether it be in Australia, Britain, France or Spain) is a good thing - that the media is distorting nationalism when it portrays it as the exclusive domain of skinheads intent on beating up foreigners. But, more than a good public relations exercise, such activism also embodies a new Idea - the Prussian Idea - of self-sacrifice and dedication to the good of one's community. (It goes without saying that this is the community which is indigenous to those countries - not the community of Kurdish asylum seekers or Albanian day labourers).

At this point, the reader will be wondering how a French nationalist can become 'Prussian', if 'Prussianism', as Spengler defines it, is something so uniquely German. But, while 'Prussianism' is of the blood, it can be transferred. Yockey wrote that Mussolini 'Effected the transformation of Italy by infusing it with the Prussian-German Socialist Ethos' ('Stronger Power-Currents in an Age of Absolute Politics' in 'The Enemy of Europe'), in the 1920s, and that 'In this century, it is of scant importance what language a European speaks and in what geographic area he was brought up. Of importance only is the spirituality that permeates his inner life. Europe’s Churchill’s and Toyne’s prove that it is possible for Americans to be born and raised in Europe. The example of Mussolini shows that an ethical Prussian can be born and raised in the Romagna, and the examples of Ezra Pound, William Joyce, Robert Best, Douglas Chandler, and others show that Europeans can be born or raised in America'. ('The Demise of the Western Nations' in 'The Enemy of Europe')

Indeed, I would argue that all of the fascism of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s was an expression of the German Idea - that Mosley, Mussolini, Quisling and the rest were 'Prussian' in the same way that Mussolini was. But one of the main differences between European nationalism then and now is that the fascists were proponents of corporatist economic programs, of remodeling Europe's capitalist economies on the basis of the corporatist guilds of the Middle Ages. Even the post-war theorists of neo-fascism, such as Yockey and Evola, were attracted to the idea. But this essay is not endorsing corporatism, or any economic program - or, indeed, any program which can be expressed in a political manifesto for an organisation trying to get itself elected to parliament. One of the shortcomings of modern nationalism is that it thinks too much of these things: draw up a manifesto, and try to get elected with it - as if this were the way that politics works.

The NPD's approach, on the other hand, is to concentrate on three battles: the battles for the streets of Germany, the battles for the minds of the intellectuals and, finally, the battle for the parliaments.

Again, community-based activism is something that the Maoists, for instance, attempt to do; but their main tool is guerrilla warfare and intimidation of the peasant population. After the rural areas have been won over, the Maoist insurgency can concentrate on the cities, in particular, the capital. We nationalists, of course, differ from the Maoists in our choice of means and ends; but the idea of 'communities first' is a good one. Nationalism has to be expressed as a style, as a way of life, before it can become an electoral movement.

Before drafting this essay, I discussed the idea of Volksgemeinschaft, and what the German nationalists were attempting to do with it, with an apolitical friend. He accused us, German nationalists, of using a myth - of a uniquely German or 'Prussian' spirit – which did not in fact exist. The German nationalists were creating Volksgemeinschaft through the act of living it. I could have argued with him that 'Prussianism' is not a fiction; but this would have been beside the point. The Holocaust, one could argue, is an extrapolation, but it has been an extremely profitable one for the Jews and one which has brought post-war Germany (and Europe) to its knees; Zionism, or rather, the Jewish claim to Palestine, is a myth, but it is one that ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the former Palestine and led to the creation of the most powerful State in the Western world.

So how can nationalists here in Australia imitate the German example? The essential thing is to take small steps at the beginning. Nationalists can buy goods and services off other nationalists. (For instance, at a skinhead concert, a tattooist was pointed out to me as a fellow nationalist. If I wanted a tattoo, I was told, I should go this man. And indeed I should: why spend money on a tattooist who is apolitical or not a nationalist?). Nationalists can also join volunteer community organisations - such as volunteer fire brigades, the SES, Red Cross, Scout groups, ect.

Unions, too, are examples of large, extra-parliamentary, community-based organisations (which is why communists have traditionally spent so much time and effort infiltrating them). Suppose that one powerful trade union had a hundred, or two hundred, or more, nationalist activists - that would be a powerful force. (It needs not even be a blue-collar union - imagine that the white-collar financial services unions had a large nationalist membership). There are many possibilities in this direction.

Equally as important, if not more so, is to break down stereotypes of what a nationalist is. On Jewish-produced TV shows and in Hollywood movies ('American History X', 'Oz', and so forth), nationalists are portrayed as skinhead misfits who end up in jail, for instance. With her lowbrow and populist attitude, Pauline Hanson reinforced the notion of Australian nationalists as being stupid (and a few are - but there are many stupid leftists, as well). When meeting non-nationalists, it is important to make a positive first impression as a person, as a human being - and then let them know that you are nationalist. Often they are surprised that someone with education, and a good job, can be a nationalist. Their perception, fed by the Jewish-owned media, is that anyone who is an 'extreme' nationalist is a "Nazi" who is covered in swastika tattoos, etc. So the discovery that a normal, decent intelligent human being can be a so-called "Nazi" is a big shock to them.

Politics is not a collection of truths, but of facts, as Spengler would say. What matters is what is done.

The German nationalists have very little: not much in the way of an intellectual, worked-out ideology (in the way that the Marxists do); they cannot use uniforms, or salutes, and, for their national flags, must use old German Imperial flags as a symbol of Germany before it was reduced to vassaldom. But, in their discipline and their service to the community, in their comradeship, they represent the true Germany, the German Idea.

And it is this what matters; the organisation of the German people into a community which does not hate itself, which thinks and acts as a totality. Never mind the fact that today's Germans do not see themselves as 'Prussian' and hate themselves and their history; so long as a small minority is the standard-bearer of the German Idea, Germany is preserved. By liberating Germany from bondage to NATO and Israel, and reconstructing a new Germany (really the old Germany) on the basis of Volksgemeinschaft, the German nationalists will liberate Europe and the West as well - but only if nationalists world wide follow their example.

*Welf Herfurth is a political activist who lives in Sydney / Australia. He was born and raised in Germany. He can be contacted on herfurth@iinet.net.au