THE PARIS HILTON SYNDROME

by Welf Herfurth

This article concerns something that receives little attention from nationalists: celebrities and popular culture, and their influence on both our liberal democratic system and our consumerist society. More specifically, it concerns the role of women in our liberal democracy and popular culture. This subject matter is very much part of our lives: one cannot avoid the celebrity trash gossip magazines, American TV shows, and the role prominent women in our liberal democracy (such as Hilary Clinton). Moreover, our economy relies, to a great extent, on both consumerism – especially a consumerist lifestyle promoted heavily to women, through advertisements and celebrity culture – and female labour.

From a political view, does any of this matter? Do the antics of Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan matter? Did Princess Diana matter? A person with an old-school, left-wing point of view would say, ‘No’. The fetishisation of celebrity women in our culture is a symptom of the fetishisation of capitalist consumer commodities. Once capitalism is abolished, the only women who will appear in advertisements, films and the like will be female communist role models – factory workers, rice paddy farmers, mothers bearing socialist babies and the like.

After the advent of the New Left, the analyses – of images of women in a capitalist society, as expressed through popular culture – became a little more sophisticated. The stern Soviet and Maoist bromides became somewhat old-fashioned, and the neo-Marxists argued that there was something deeper going on.

Here I will be taking an approach similar to that of the New Left – but will drawing upon Evola instead of Marcuse. Bill White, before his Nutzi phase, used to write some intelligent articles. One of them was on the subject of women in American popular culture, and used some Evolian concepts. (Unfortunately, it is no longer available on the Internet). Evola, I think, is a thinker who is the most suitable for this sort of thing. After all, many of his ‘spiritual types’, or ‘races’ (as he defines them) possess masculine and feminine characteristics. In essays like ‘Do we live in a gynaecocratic society?’ (1936), he said nearly all there is to be said on the subject. The present article will add little to the discussion – much of what Evola has written has yet to be surpassed – but the articles from the 1930s and 1940s are lacking in that they are out of date. They appear dated because Evola did not live in our age – the age of Angelina Jolie, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and the Hilary Clinton presidential campaign bid.

1. Evola’s spiritual types

Evola’s work, as readers familiar with him know, defines a number of spiritual types, which are known to us through myths, religious texts, folklore and the like. Evola believes that these contain metaphysical truth – and that the task of the Traditionalist scholar is to interpret them. He regards descriptions of ancient events in the Bible, for instance, as history which is literally true – that is, accurate descriptions of the metaphysical states of affairs.

Evola often begins his narratives of ‘metaphysical history’, of the various ages of the metaphysical development (or, in his view, degeneration) of man, by positing a primordial ‘solar’, ‘Uranian’ spirituality, which is followed, in time, by the appearance of ‘Demetrian’, ‘Titanic’, and ‘Amazonian’ spiritualities (among others). It is the Amazonian spirituality which we shall first examine here.

The Amazonian spiritual type represents an interesting combination of both male and female spirituality. To Evola, Amazonian is both a reaction and a transmutation. ‘Demetrian’ spirituality is feminine, maternal, egalitarian, pacifist, collectivist – the closest there is to modern day pagan worship of ‘Mother Earth’ and the New Age cults. (Possibly, there is a link here to modern environmentalism as well). In contrast to this, there is the coarse ‘Titanic’ spirituality – cruel, masculine, militarist, phallic (in a purely physical way) and forever seeking after the higher, spiritual state as represented by the ‘Uranian’ and ‘solar’ spirituality. (There are several myths of giants and other demonic races who sought to attain the ‘solar’ spirituality by force – by storming Mount Olympus and so forth – and being punished by the Gods for their impudence). Amazonianism is a reaction against the coarseness of the Titanic spirituality, and is a defence of the virtues of Demetrianism. In Evola’s narrative of metaphysical history, the two rival spiritualities – the ultra-female Demetrian and the ultra-masculine Titanic – clashed, and produced a feminine spirituality which was not quite one or the other. Amazonianism is feminine, all right, but has taken on assertive, masculine and warrior characteristics. (Evola, of course, has nothing against militarism and the warrior: only the expressions of militarism without a higher, ‘solar’ spiritual aspect. The militarism of the Titanic spirituality is militarism devoid of any transcendent spirituality: it is the use of force only to attain purely material goals).

This Amazonianism is prevalent today. As Evola writes:

The woman often asserts her primacy in new 'Amazonian' forms. Thus we see the new masculinised sportswoman, the garconne, the woman who devotes herself to the unilateral development of her own body, betrays the mission which would be normal to her in a civilisation of virile type, becomes emancipated and independent and even bursts into the political field. And this is not all. (‘Do we live in a gynaecocratic society’ (1936), translation copyright © 2003 Thompkins and Cariou).

2. Amazons go pop

One can say that those tendencies identified by Evola in 1936 continued into the modern age. Indeed, to look at the popular culture of the last ten or so years, we can say that we are living in the age of Amazonianism. Women warriors abound: killer cyborgs, fighter pilots, deadly martial artists, female soldiers… One only has to think of Lara Croft, television shows like ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’, the remake of ‘Bionic Woman’, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, ‘Battlestar: Galactica’ (in which every single female character is an Amazon of some kind), ‘Dark Angel’, films such as ‘G.I. Jane’ (a 1997 film which was a portent of the future), ‘Kill Bill’, ‘Charlie’s Angels’… Even Guinevere, a more Demetrian figure, was reinterpreted as a bow-wielding Amazon-type in the 2004 film, ‘King Arthur’. (Of course, there are plenty of films and TV shows from the recent past with women warriors – there is ‘Barbarella’ (1968), the sixties British TV series ‘The Avengers’, the seventies version of ‘Bionic Woman’, Sigourney Weaver in ‘Alien’ (1979) and its sequels, the Afro-American kung-fu heroines of the seventies Blaxploitation films, the Linda Hamilton character in ‘Terminator 2’ (1991). There are also the multitude of heroines in American comic books. But it is only recently – in the past ten or so years – that the Amazonian woman warrior has reached the forefront).

Now, I am not such a prude that I dislike all American popular culture. I have enjoyed at least a few of the above films and TV shows. But the striking thing is their unreal depiction of women. A reviewer of ‘Charlie’s Angels’ (2000) at the Vanguard News Network site acerbically noted that the film simply wasn’t real: no amount of martial arts training, and psychological ‘positive thinking’, could give women the physical strength to overpower a man in a fight – it simply doesn’t happen. They do not have the strength, or the aggression. He cited an anecdote of an incident he witnessed in a parking lot, where a man was berating a woman for her poor driving manners. The woman was twice the man’s size, but put up with the man’s tirade and nodded meekly before climbing back into her car. In a ‘Charlie’s Angel’-type universe, she would, of course, given him a roundhouse kick or thrown him over her shoulder in a judo manoeuvre.

We all know from real life that female aggression is the exception and not the rule. War is a man’s business, and it is men who do most of the fighting (and dying) on the battlefield. True, there were female communist soldiers in the Vietnam War, and in the Soviet Union’s so-called ‘Great Patriotic War’: but again, these are exceptions.

So why is it, then, are women, in today’s action-based films and TV shows, increasingly depicted as flying fighter jets, kickboxing, shooting, breaking necks, etc., like men? Why are there women who are portrayed as having inhuman physical strength – a strength which exceeds that of the male characters (e.g., the superwomen in ‘Buffy’, ‘Xena’, ‘Battlestar’, ‘Bionic Woman’)? They are often shown bending steel bars, terrorising hapless male characters, and engaging in protracted martial arts contests with other warrior/killer women – all the things that men, or at least the men in the absurd pop fantasy world, should be doing.

Popular culture is all about fantasy – a character like James Bond, who is a connoisseur of fine wine, food and clothes, a great lover, a successful gambler, an unbeatable action hero – appeals to male fantasies. Possibly, the new wave of women warriors appeals to female fantasies. That is, the women who like these films and TV shows have wanted to do these sorts of things, but now, under the aegis of feminism (which teaches that women can be equal to men in every way), they can see those fantasies put up there on the big (or small) screen.

Nationalist writers who have touched upon the subject usually blame it on a conspiracy – a conspiracy, by the writers, directors and producers of Hollywood, to turn women into men, to masculinise them. Usually these analyses are couched in white nationalist terms: the white race is dying, and needs more children; but, because of feminism and other modern ills, white women are not reproducing enough.

Western popular culture, which is tremendously influential, certainly encourages ‘feminist’ childlessness. One can think of a few of the female warrior characters mentioned above who do have children – e.g., the Uma Thurman character in ‘Kill Bill’ – but childlessness, and the absence of the comforts of the hearth and home, are the rule. The women characters lead a transient life of adventuring, and children, husbands, mortgages and homemaking only serve to get in the way. (A hit single from the ‘Charlie’s Angels’ soundtrack was, appropriately enough, titled ‘Independent Woman’).

Whether or not white women are staving off pregnancy, in order to imitate the feminist pop icons, is beside the point. Likewise, it is beside the point whether or not white women should be bearing as many children as possible (and Evola would be vehemently against that notion). The point is that we are seeing an eruption of Amazonianism. Why?

Many white nationalists would blame it on the ethnicity of the group which controls Hollywood and the American TV studios, record companies, etc. – this group, they charge, wants to ‘Destroy the white race’ through promoting feminist childlessness, and race-mixing. Evola’s interpretation, in contrast, is that the explanation is metaphysical: we are living in a dark age (what he calls the Dark Age) which is seeing the eruption of spiritualities which are the negation of the Uranian, solar spirituality that he favours most. In other words, pop-culture Amazonianism is merely a sign of the times, and there is no one ethnic group foisting it upon us. It is an explanation I myself tend to agree with.

I should note here that a recent trend in the celebrity news media is to dwell obsessively on celebrity pregnancies. The media is in a frenzy of speculation over whether or not Nicole Kidman, or whoever, is pregnant, and stars who are already pregnant receive maximum news coverage. Certainly, 2007 was, in the world of the trash media, the Year of the Pregnant Celebrity. Which has drawn protestations from some female journalists, who complain that the trash media seems to think that the pregnancies of these celebrities is more noteworthy than their artistic accomplishments. (I myself think that the artistic accomplishments of the majority of both male and female celebrities in the 2007 were not very noteworthy, myself – so maybe celebrity pregnancies make better copy than anything Kidman, Heath Ledger, Naomi Watts, Russell Crowe and the rest have done this year).

Related to this is the practice of celebrity adoption, particularly the adoption of children from the Third World. Madonna and Jolie have adopted children from Africa, and, in Madonna’s case at least, have removed the child from its birth parents. Africa, of course, is portrayed in the Western media as a continent wracked by war, poverty, famine, corruption, repressive government, and barbaric sex crimes. And, what is more, Westerners – who are, in the liberal democratic discourse, citizens of a globalised world – are obliged to take care of Africa’s problems, through aid and peacemaking efforts, but also through adopting orphans from Sudan or wherever, and giving them ‘a better life’ in the West. Certainly, to judge by their actions, the Madonnas and Jolies seem to think that way. (Likewise, immigration of Africans, on humanitarian grounds, is another form of aid. That is, African immigrants from war-torn, oppressive countries, have the ‘right’ to a life in the West, to share in its abundance and prosperity).

3. Aphroditism and consumerism

It is a fact that women are very big consumers of luxury consumer goods: that is, consumer goods that we could easily live without – expensive clothes, shoes, home furnishings and the like. Any man who has ever leafed through a woman’s magazine, or watched a TV program on woman’s beauty ‘needs’, would draw the conclusion that women’s inner thought processes revolve largely around hair and skin care, makeup, diets, the prevention of ageing, makeovers, ‘looking good’ by buying the right clothes and shoes (and wearing them the right way) and the like. In comparison, men seem to pay little attention to these things: advertising aimed at men, for instance, gives the message that men are creatures whose sole preoccupations are beer, sport, cars and DIY home repairs.

My own conclusion is that the advertisers, magazine editors and others are largely correct: the vast majority of men, and women, are interested in those subjects, almost to the exclusion of anything else. I say this because those advertisers, manufacturers of luxury consumer goods, etc., would hardly be able to make a living otherwise, and they do – the market for women’s rejuvenating skin creams, for instance, is huge. Partially, this is all a result of living in a technologically-advanced society where machines do much of the ordinary, hum-drum chores of the household for us. Traditionally, women in the past had to look after the house, and attend to the domestic chores. But they did not have the labour-saving, and time-saving, devices that we have now. Food had to be consumed quickly because there no refrigerators; washing had to be done by hand. Children had to be looked after, with direct supervision, and now the TV functions as a babysitter. Because of automatic dishwasher, the washing machine and all the other domestic labour-saving devices, women who stay at home become bored, and tend to go shopping to relieve that boredom. Which is natural: many shopping malls are pleasant places, and buying a new consumer item – especially a luxury – can generate its own short-lived ‘high’, just like a cigarette, a cup of coffee, or a win at a poker machine. As a result, the instinct which leads a mother to provide for her children, the hunter-gatherer instinct, is inverted, and turned towards consumerism. And, for adolescent girls, spending on luxury items becomes a competition, fuelled by peer-pressure. They feel compelled to keep up with the likes of Paris Hilton – but do not have the means to keep up, i.e., Hilton’s inexhaustible wealth.

In addition to shopping-mall consumerism, another pleasure is the celebrity gossip magazine, covering the dreary trivialities of the lives of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, and the rest, and the latest sordid escapades of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Princess Diana continues to generate news stories almost daily, even though she has been dead for ten years, and obviously, there is a market for every new scrap of information about her. (Incidentally, in my own experience, the majority of people interested in the British Royal Family are female).

The reason why such figures generate such fascination among women is vicarious identification: or rather, women want to be like Angelina Jolie and Princess Diana – they want that money, that luxurious lifestyle, the clothes, mansions, expensive holidays in luxury resorts, and affairs and marriages with handsome wealthy men. They also want to have their cake and eat it, too: that is, they want that lifestyle, and children – hence the media obsession with the pregnancies of wealthy female celebrities. All of this represents an escape from the routine, budget-restricted life: and the fact that the grass is always greener.

There is also an element of drama in the lives of these celebrity women, and danger: did Katie Holmes marry a Scientologist nutcase? Will Brad return to Jennifer Aniston and abandon Angelina? What does Kate Moss see in the out-of-control drug addict Pete Doherty? Will Victoria Beckham drop dead from an eating disorder? The media constantly focuses on scandal, infidelity, marriage troubles, anorexia and obesity, and general drama of all kinds – and where there is no drama and scandal, the media invents.

To a certain extent this is natural. Often, more politically-correct observers are surprised by the extent of two things: a) women’s tendency to place other women on a pedestal (e.g. Princess Diana, Jacqueline Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Grace of Monaco and other celebrities, who exist on a hierarchical plane far above the masses); and b) women’s appetite for luxurious consumer goods. One has to recall the socialist ‘queen’ of Argentina, Evita Peron, a beautiful woman who clothed herself in expensive furs, wore expensive jewellery, etc. A true socialist should never do such things, but Evita was wildly popular with her constituency - impoverished, lower-class women - who approved of Evita’s ostentatious displays of wealth and conspicuous consumption.

Even though we live in a liberal democratic society, the masses still seem to feel the need for royalty, or at least, elevated figures of great wealth, beauty and refinement.

Vicarious identification, and wish-fulfilment, is at the heart of the fascination with the likes of Jolie and Princess Diana. But what of Lohan, Hilton and Spears? No woman would want to be like them, surely? I say this because these women are the unfortunates of the celebrity world: they are always in trouble, always having trouble with husbands and boyfriends, always going on self-destructive, booze- and drug-fuelled rampages (which often lead to arrest). And, not to put a fine word upon it, they are trash – they lack class.

For all her money, Britney Spears is trailer-trash, a lumpenproletarian who celebrated her wedding to the hip-hopping Kevin Federline with a wedding reception at KFCs. In addition, both Spears’ and Lohan’s careers are in decline: I know, from reading the entertainment pages, that Spears’ new album was outsold by a new release by the Eagles, and that Lohan is virtually broke from spending her wealth on drugs, dresses, extravagant holidays, houses, etc. No doubt many women envy the wealth of Hilton, Lohan, Spears (and that of a comparatively minor, but equally self-destructive celebrity, Amy Winehouse); but few would envy their lives. And then there is the question of sexual morality: conventional, conservative sexual morality – which still governs much of our lives – frowns on Hilton and her pornographic videos, etc., and certainly would not approve of a woman in real life who mimicked her behaviour, and that Lohan and Spears.

All of this is a kind of rebellion. But, instead of being a political rebellion, it is an individualist one. The energies that would be channelled into activism are now channelled into consumerism, escapism, and debauchery.

In my view, the cult of Lohan, Spears and Hilton is a symptom of what Evola calls ‘Aphroditism’. As Evola writes, in a rather sensationalistic passage:

Baumler wrote this, in the introduction to the already mentioned selected writings of Bachofen: "In the streets of Berlin, Paris or London, all you have to do is to observe for a moment a man or a woman to realise that the cult of Aphrodite is the one before which Zeus and Apollo had to beat a retreat...The present age bears, in fact, all the features of a gynaecocratic age. In a late and decadent civilisation, new temples of Isis and Astarte, of these Asian mother goddesses that were celebrated in orgies and licentiousness, in desperate sinking into sensual pleasure, arise. The fascinating female is the idol of our times, and, with painted lips, she walks through the European cities as she once did through Babylon. And as if she wanted to confirm Bachofen's profound intuition, the lightly dressed modern ruler of man keeps in leash a dog, the ancient symbol of unlimited sexual promiscuity and infernal forces"... Woman and sensuality often become predominant motifs almost to a pathological and obsessive degree. In Anglo-Saxon civilisation, and particularly in America, the man who exhausts his life and time in business and the search for wealth, a wealth that, to a large extent, only serves to pay for feminine luxury, caprices, vices and refinements, has conceded to the woman the privilege and even the monopoly of dealing with 'spiritual' things. (‘Do we live in a gynaecocratic society’ (1936), translation copyright © 2003 Thompkins and Cariou).
This explains, to my mind, the cult of Lohan, Spears and Hilton – trashy women who lead opulent lifestyles, who have public affairs, make pornographic films and who, despite their lumpen-esque behaviour, still occupy a privileged place in our society. They are like the pagan priestesses of the Venusian cults of the ancient world. (It can be said, too, that the explosion of pornography (and nudes in advertisements at newspaper stands, billboards and the rest) in the modern age, especially Internet pornography, is another sign of the resurgence of the cult of Venus, so to speak).

Men are the biggest consumers of all this pornography. But this is precisely the point: they are bound, spiritually, to this cult of Aphrodite, as manifested through ubiquitous pornography, nudity in advertising, etc., which has been created by other men (usually in the United States). They wallow in decadence while their countries, politically and economically, go to ruin. The situation is not so different from that of Germany in the time of the Weimar Republic, when the young men of Germany indulged in ‘Aphrodisian’ sensuality instead of defending their country against communism, and working to fix their country’s myriad foreign policy and economic problems.

4. Women in politics

The reader may point out that here I have neglected to examine another form of Amazonianism: the rise of the woman Statesman. At the time of writing, Hilary Clinton is making a bid for the White House – and many liberal feminists are supporting her campaign, regardless of what her actual policies are, because they feel that ‘It’s time for a woman president’.

Margaret Thatcher and Indira Ghandi were two women who set precedents for women being Heads of State (and it is no coincidence that Thatcher’s propagandists compared her to the British warrior queen, Boudicea, a decidedly Amazonian figure who will soon have a Hollywood film, in the style of ‘King Arthur’ (2004), made about her). But more interesting is the role that women play in getting male politicians elected. As 50% of the electorate, they play a vital role, of course: but they also, as wives and partners, play a role in motivating men to run for office. One only has to look at the instrumental roles Cherie Blair and Hilary Clinton played in elevating their respective spouses. Some wives, like the former Australian prime minister John Howard’s wife, and George W. Bush’s wife, seem to play a minimal role; others, like Cherie Blair, Hilary Clinton and wives of despots such as Marcos and Suharto, are a driving force.

This is natural, to a certain extent. Wives and female partners often tend to encourage their spouses to achieve more, to do more with their lives, to obtain the respect that they rightfully deserve (‘How could you let x work colleague speak to you like that?’), to occupy the station in life that they truly deserve. There are many examples from literature and popular culture (Lady Macbeth being one of the most famous). To a certain extent, this is all healthy, and the consequences are not always as evil as in the cases of Blair, Clinton and Macbeth.

Part of the problem in nationalism is not merely the lack of female members, but the lack of female members who are driving forces in men’s lives. Instead of constructive political activism, many men use nationalism as an excuse for drunken get-togethers, where the conversation consists of complaints about the behaviour of certain ethnic minorities. Without motivation, without the desire for success and achievement in politics, and all the appropriate skills for success, professionally and in the community, nationalists will accomplish little. They will also fail to attract admiring, supportive spouses.

And this, I think, is one of the many reasons why women are not attracted to nationalism (at least in the Anglo-Saxon countries): they see little in the way of material and social benefit. A woman who is a former trade-union lawyer can achieve a great deal of success in the Australian Labor Party, by simply mouthing all the things that the unions want her to say; but a similar career path, leading to similar success, is not available in nationalism – either for a woman or her spouse.

Having said that, an increase in the number of women members will not cure all ills. One only has to look at the Australian communists, who attract plenty of young women, all right – but women who are, in my experience, bitter and twisted because they feel persecuted against and discriminated against because of their sexual orientation.

One of the other things that women find unattractive about nationalism is, I think, its emphasis on women’s role as the progenitors of the white race – specifically, their responsibility as progenitors – brood mares, so to speak. (Both fascism and communism, historically, tended to laud women as child-bearers, homemakers and housewives. Nowadays, of course, women see this as too limiting). While, of course, the majority of women will end up having children at some point in their lives, there are metaphysical types – or what Camille Paglia calls ‘sexual personae’ – besides The Mother. (Indeed, the image of woman in nationalist propaganda, especially white nationalist propaganda, is often evocative of Demetrian spirituality – the exception being, of course, that the Demetrian, lunar mother type in nationalist propaganda is racialist.

Demetrianism is egalitarian, rejects hierarchy, and treats all people and all races as being equal. Nationalism, of course, does not reject hierarchy, and makes distinctions between the races. Its propaganda emphasises that it supports the notion of white motherhood, not motherhood in general). Nationalists should, I think, try and give women more options – and not restrict the role of woman to The Mother. After all, we nationalists do not want to produce another generation of bored housewives like those of the fifties, sixties and seventies, who resorted to anti-depressant pills and other legal drugs to relieve their boredom.

The solution? We do not want go down the communist route – communist ideology draws on Amazonian imagery (e.g., women as soldiers, factory workers in overalls and the rest). At the same time, it should be pointed out that fascism, historically, while championing the role of woman as mother, also possessed a modernist, feminist tinge (often overlooked by hostile communist and liberal commentators), making icons out of Amazonian figures like Leni Reißenstahl and Hanna Reitsch. Fascism owed its successes in winning the support of millions of Europeans, and many European women, because, I think, it was flexible in its ‘party line’ when it came to women.

5. Masculinity in nationalist politics

I was discussing the contents of this article with a friend of mine who is a nationalist intellectual and who writes articles for nationalist publications. I mentioned that I would touch upon the subject of Amazonianism in popular culture. Inevitably, we started talking about a related issue: the subculture of male ‘nerds’ in the West who are vociferous consumers of American pop culture (especially with a science-fiction or fantasy theme): e.g., films, television shows, comic books, manga, anime, role-playing games, computer games and the rest.

These men, who are often physically out of shape and badly groomed, seem to live in a world of pop fantasy which is completely disconnected from reality. They seem to have little interest in politics or anything else that happens in the real world. They also have little interest in anything which is part of the tradition of ‘high’ Western culture (that is, novels, films, plays, operas, paintings, sculpture which is not mass-produced American or Japanese junk). If a film does not have a science fiction or fantasy theme, they will not watch it: trying to sell them on the virtues of classic filmmakers, such as Godard, De Sica, Jean Renoir, for instance, is a futile task.

In the West, the phenomenon of ‘nerdism’ is ever increasing. From a nationalist standpoint, nerdism is harmful: it is, in fact, a selfish form of consumerism, of liberal individualism, which is about as bad as Paris Hilton, indiscriminate credit-card driven consumerism – in fact, it is probably the male equivalent. Young, impressionable women waste huge amounts of disposable income on shoes to increase their physical allure; young men, ‘Warhammer’ figures, to retreat from traditional masculine imperatives like finding a mate. (A young man playing a ‘World of Warcraft’ game can be transformed into a hero – that is, a hero on the Internet. In this, they are not so different from the ‘keyboard commandoes’ of nationalism, who are heroes on the Internet, but politically ineffectual in real life).

Again, I am not being prudish here: games like ‘World of Warcraft’ and the like are fun. But these young men are concentrating on these mass-produced entertainments to the point of excluding everything else; and, if they do not concentrate on some of the other problems afflicting our civilisation – e.g., the demographic threat posed by immigration – they will, in the end, have no popular culture entertainments left to enjoy. (E.g., the actors in any upcoming fantasy epics will all be non-white; traditional European themes, based on medieval European, and Celtic and Teutonic folklore, will be replaced by Hindu or African ones).

So how do we attract such young men to nationalism? Well, the problem is just that: how to attract them. Why should they want to be nationalists?

The answer is, I think, by appealing to a sense of heroism. Nationalist ideology, at its best, rests on, among other things, confrontations and glorious struggles against our enemies (who are, more often than not, the communists). Nationalist man is very much a heroic, martial man: someone brave enough to march down the street, in a demonstration, and stand side by side with his comrades, waving a nationalist flag and enduring the jeers, screams and provocations of the assembled communist Left who seek to ‘smash fascism’ by smashing him, physically. Martyrs in the nationalist canon, like Daniel Wrestström, are glorified – just like Boromir in ‘Lord of the Rings’. (More than a few observers have pointed out the correlation between nationalist ideology and epic fantasy – in particular, their glorification of daring, heroic feats). Nationalism, too, has a place for the physically slight men who are not street fighters – men like Goebbels, John Tyndall and William Pierce – who function as agitators, writing politically provocative speeches and articles, an act which, in our present age of politically-correct anti-free speech laws, carries its own risks. One can say that it takes a certain type of man – a man with guts – to want to become a nationalist. And this, I believe, is how one can appeal to the nerds: by offering them, like the army recruiters of old, the prospect of a life of excitement and danger (while hoping, of course, that none of them meet the end of the unfortunate Daniel Wrestström).

6. The Traditionalist rebellion

Fascism, and much of post-war nationalism, has always promulgated the one metaphysical type: the ‘heroic’, ‘solar’ type of spirituality. In Evola’s writing, the heroic spiritual type as an attempt to regain the primordial Uranian and solar spirituality, lost after the successive waves of distortions and deviations of previous epochs. The heroic epics of Hercules, Gilgamesh and others describe spiritual journeys – not mere adventures – which are quests for that lost, solar spirituality. It is masculine – Evola uses the term virile to describe it – but not the coarse, phallic masculinity of the Titanic type.

Now, this brand of metaphysics is bound to appeal to men in the current age, which is very much a feminised age. I am not talking here of the proliferation of Amazonianism in pop culture, or Aphroditism, etc., but in the structure of our economy itself.

I once read a statistic (which I am unfortunately able to find again and reproduce here) that most of the hundreds of thousands of jobs created in Australia in the last ten or so years have gone to women. Anecdotally, this seems to be the case: in our everyday dealings with the banks, the electricity companies, government agencies like the educational institutions, the hospitals, social security, the Road Traffic Authority and the like, are staffed by young (20s, 30s) white-collar women, who are (again, statistically) more likely than not to be single. Our lives, in the West, have become bureaucratised, thanks to the proliferation of government red tape, rules and regulations for everything, and most of the bureaucrats one encounters in one’s daily dealings with the banks, government institutions and the like, are, more often than not, from this class of young white-collar women.

So men are bound to encounter ‘bureaucrats’ of this type, again and again – dealing with bureaucracy is inevitable in today’s world – and certainly, this must have a demasculinising effect on men over the long term, especially given that our conventional morality tells us that it is a man’s responsibility (and a man’s alone) to support his wife and his children. That, of course, has changed, with the rise of the single-parent household: but the perception that a man has these moral responsibilities still lingers, and certainly, I know many men still have them. And the question is whether having households without fathers – in Australia, we have 750,000 people on sole parent’s benefit, the majority of them being female sole parents – is, socially, good or not. I myself would say no.

So why are there so many women in employment? The answer is, economics – or at least, the economics of the post-1970s period. The inflation of the 1970s - following the break-up of the Bretton Woods system of the gold standard and fixed exchange rates – led to an economic deterioration which was so widespread, and so ruinous, that men were unable to support their wives and children on one wage, as they did in the 1950s and 1960s. So women were forced to go out and work.

The solution to the problem is, of course, economic. In economist’s jargon, we need to increase the capital-labour ratio in favour of labour: that is, capital, invested in the market, has to become plentiful in comparison to labour. A bidding war for workers, between rival capitalists, will begin, and wages will go up – which will enable men to support wives and children on one income again. (That is, of course, that single income will be enough to pay for high house prices (for houses located near the city centres) and the modern consumerist lifestyle. Some would say no, and that a two-income household is necessary to meet such demands).

But, of course, such a solution is nowhere insight, especially given that incompetents today are in charge of running the economies of the West, as evinced by declining share market values, inflation, high interest rates and all the other ugly economic phenomena.

In the meantime, until the economy is fixed once and for all (and I myself am convinced that, under the system of liberal democracy, the economy will never be fixed, i.e., it will never benefit the good of the wider population but only to big business and its shareholders). Instead of purely economic solutions, we need nationalism of the kind described above – one that resurrects the imperial, solar and ‘virile’ virtues, in defiance of the present depraved age of Aphroditism, Amazonianism and all the anti-Traditionalist spiritualities. Nationalism becomes an act of rebellion.

Subconsciously, I think, the masses are Traditionalist: the ‘solar’ virtues are what the men and women of the West want. So we nationalists must be prepared to give ‘heroism’, in Evola’s sense, to them.

*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

The Tyranny of Individualism in a Liberal Democratic Society

by Welf Herfurth

(This article contains one sick photo. I included it in the article to show how perverted society has become at least in my opinion - Welf Herfurth)


Introduction

This is an article divided up, roughly, into two halves. The first concerns liberalism, or what liberalism has become. It details a transition in liberalism – from a cult of elections and parliaments, to a cult of doing your own thing (even if that involves sexual and other debauchery). The second half outlines what I consider to be the New Right antidote to the poison of modern liberalism, and explores some of the ideas of a liberal democratic anti-intellectual, Karl Löwenstein, who, in 1937, wrote a paper describing some of the political techniques used by the fascist political movements of the time. Some of those techniques are still being used by nationalists around the world (Hungary, Sweden, Russia, Britain, etc.), and, in my opinion, we in Australia can apply them equally as successfully here.

What is liberalism really?

Nowadays, one can read, in the Western liberal democratic press, daily denunciations of General Musharaff of Pakistan and the Burmese Junta. The two dictatorships have attracted media attention recently because of their flagrant crackdowns on ‘liberal democratic’ political opponents (or at least, opponents who the Western media assumes are liberal democratic).

Now and then, other dictatorships and/or authoritarian regimes will occupy the spotlight. One recent case is Georgia, which is led by an American-backed liberal democrat, Mikhail Saakashvili, who came to power through an ‘Orange Revolution’-type coup (nicknamed the ‘Rose Revolution’) in 2003, but is now in danger of being overthrown, and now, as a result, has declared a state of emergency and is using state repression – including tear gas and rubber bullets – to subdue the populace.

A perennial target of the Western media is Vladimir Putin. Despite his massive support among the Russian people, and massive election results in his favor, the Western media still considers him to be ‘undemocratic’ and ‘illiberal’, and upholds his critics – small groups of ‘liberal democratic’ dissidents, who have no popular support, and no agenda beyond being anti-Putin – as being more ‘democratic’, and certainly more morally worthy.

So we have a collection of countries – Burma, Pakistan, Fiji, Russia and others – which are manifestly illiberal and democratic in the eyes of Western liberal democrats. But what is it, exactly, that makes our liberal democracies so good? Why are they preferable to these dictatorships and authoritarian regimes? The answer is, simply, that people in liberal democracies are ‘more free’ – in fact, they are ‘free to do their own thing’.

To explain. One of the objections the Western liberals have against Iran is that supposedly Iran (along with other conservative Islamic States) imposes a strict dress code upon women. Women are allowed to dress freely in the West, as well as engage in nude sunbathing and the like: part of that, in my view, is because of the Western cultural heritage (particularly in the northern European countries) which traditionally has given more freedom to women compared to, for instance, the Mediterranean cultures of North Africa and the Middle East. But according to the liberals, this freedom has nothing to do with the West and its cultural heritage, but is, or at least should be, universal. What is more, that freedom should be forced on to countries with a low regard for the freedom of women, and even on ones (like South Africa or Papua New Guinea) with a high incidence of rape. Israel is held up as a model to other Arab nations – ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ – because of, among other reasons, its high degree of personal freedom (which translates into a thriving gay and ecstasy culture). Such a level of freedom is ‘Western’. Consistent liberals, however, will acknowledge that liberal freedom cuts both ways: a recent article in the British Guardian newspaper denounces the fact that the secularist regime in Tunisia encourages harassment of women wearing the hijab and men wearing beards.

A country needs more than a high level of personal freedom to qualify as a ‘democracy’ in the eyes of the West, of course. For one thing, there must be a separation of powers: the executive, judiciary and legislature must be separate. And, as Carl Schmitt would say, there must be debate: all legislatures must go through the farcical process of debating the pros and cons of each piece of legislation before the members vote on it (even though the passage of each bill is determined, well in advance, along party lines). The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, allows plenty of debate, all right – mostly on the topic of how best to kill, starve or drive out the Palestinians, or who to bomb first (Iran or Lebanon or Syria?). Because of the daily debates in the Knesset, Israel qualifies as a ‘liberal democracy’.

On top of that, there are other requirements: elections, a multi-party system...

These days, however, there are many countries which do have elections, and an ostensible multi-party system, which are still condemned as ‘un-free’ and ‘un-democratic’: Russia, Belarus, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Venezuela. The Western liberals claim that the governments of these respective countries repress the political opposition, fail to hold elections which are completely, a 100% ‘free and fair’ (that is, meeting the Jimmy Carter electoral observer-standard), reduce the legislature to a rubber stamp, and censor journalists. The worst thing about these countries is that they do not see changes of government: an opposition party is rarely, if ever, voted in: so they are de facto single party States. So, then, these countries are situated in the hazy no-man’s land between complete dictatorship and complete liberal democracy. (And even pro-Western countries like Singapore and Malaysia fit into this category). Some are worse (or better) on the liberal democratic scorecard than others: Russia and Syria tolerate opposition political parties more than Saudi Arabia and Iran – just barely. In many cases, e.g. Russia, Belarus and Iran, a real opposition exists. In other cases, e.g., Venezuela and Egypt, there is a political opposition which does win seats in parliament, but suffers from repression.

Again, though, we have to ask: what is all this freedom for? Surely elections, multi-party systems, frequent changes of government, the freedom of the press to snipe and criticise the government of the day, parliamentary debates, cannot be an end in themselves? Was Iraq invaded to give the Iraqis these dubious blessings? No: the answer is that the Iraqis were not free, as the Israelis are (or as Americans are) – not free to be gay, for instance, or drop ecstasy pills, or consume pornography, or to cross-dress. The Iraqis, and the Iranians, must reach the lofty status of Israel, which sent a transvestite singer to the Eurovision song contest – and won. Ahmedinejad attracted much Western condemnation for his insistence that ‘There are no gays in Iran’ (a mistranslation: he really said that there is no gay culture in Iran like there is in the West). The most strident criticisms against the Iranian political system is that it is run by Mullahs (democratically elected or not) who ‘repress the rights of women’ and repress gays.

This freedom occurs within a context, a structure, of course: in the West, and in Israel, the consumption of drugs like ecstasy is not legal, or de facto legal. It is merely widespread and socially acceptable – the outcome of a liberal society. (Whereas the consumption of heroin and ice, on the other hand, is not socially acceptable). It is fine to use drugs like ecstasy, marijuana and cocaine, or be a homosexual, or dress as a Goth or an Emo, or for a man to dress as a woman, so long as it does not harm others (to the extent that the consumption of ice and heroin does). If women are to be allowed to dress immodestly (immodestly in comparison to Iranian standards), this does not stem from traditional Western freedoms granted to women, and to tolerance of nudity, but to a woman’s universal right to freedom of self-expression.

Some countries are more socially conformist than others: Japan springs to mind. Ironically, America, up until the 1960s, used to be a very conformist country. One only has to look at the films from that time, the fashion magazines, newsreel footage, to see this. Francis Parker Yockey wrote on this topic in Imperium (in the chapter ‘America’, under the heading ‘World outlook’). The passage is lengthy, but is worth reproducing here in its entirety:

Every American has been made to dress alike, live alike, talk alike, behave alike, and think alike. The principle of uniformity regards personality as a danger and also as a burden. This great principle has been applied to every sphere of life. Advertising of a kind and on a scale unknown to Europe is part of the method of stamping out individualism. Everywhere is seen the same empty, smiling, face. The principle has above all been applied to the American woman, and in her dress, cosmetics, and behaviour, she has been deprived of all individuality. A literature, vast and inclusive, has grown up on mechanizing and uniformizing all the problems and situations of life. Books are sold by the million to tell the American “How to Make Friends.” Other books tell him how to write letters, how to behave in public, how to make love, how to play games, how to uniformize his inner life, how many children to have, how to dress, even how to think. The same principle has been extended to higher learning, and the viewpoint is nowhere disputed that every American boy and girl is entitled to a “college-education.”... A contest was recently held in America to find “Mr. Average Man.” General statistics were employed to find the centre of population, marital distribution of the population, family- numbers, rural and urban distribution, and so forth. Finally a man and wife with two children in a medium-sized town were chosen as the “Average Family.” They were then given a trip to New York, were interviewed by the press, feted, solicited to endorse commercial products, and held up for the admiration of all those who fell short in any way of the desirable quality of averageness. Their habits at home, their life- adjustments generally were the subject of investigation, and then of generalizing. Having found the average man from the top down, his ideas and feelings were then generalized as the imperative-average thoughts and feelings. In the American “universities” husbands and wives attend lecture courses on marriage adjustment. Individualism must not even be countenanced in anything so personal as marriage... The men change from felt hats to straw hats on one certain day of the year and on another certain day discard the straw hats. The civilian uniform is as rigorous— for each type of occasion— as the strictest military or liturgical garb. Departures from it are the subject of sneers, or interrogation [...]

All one can say is: how things have changed. America is now the land of the non-conformist, in every way in which Europe was supposed to be. In Europe in the twentieth century, the cultivation of one’s personality – i.e., emphasising one’s differences from the rest, one’s eccentricities – was always tolerated, if not encouraged. (The one exception? Nationalism: if you are a nationalist, and against multi-cultism, you are a Nazi, fascist, racist, bigot, etc., etc).

Non-conformism was part and parcel of the European aesthetic and intellectual tradition. America, though, had always resisted this – being the land of the conformist, the ‘square’, the ‘average man’. That was until the 1960s. I would hazard that the main cause was the shift in American popular culture. In the fields of music and film, the role of the individual genius, in revolt against society’s norms, came to the forefront. Even the films like Top Gun and Flashdance, which embody the ethos of the conservative 1980s – supposedly a return to traditional ‘American values’ – celebrate the heroic, non-conformist individual. There are still plenty of ‘average Joes’ depicted in American popular culture, but the protagonists of television shows like Desperate Housewives and House are eccentrics – the ‘average Americans’ are background characters.

The odd thing is that this attitude of individualism, eccentricity and non-conformity has filtered through to the American (and Western) population at large, and, in the end, has become a new kind of conformity. Everyone has to be different: the subsumption of oneself to a group, or a higher ideal, or to anything besides one’s own individual desires and preferences is an offence against the liberal spirit of the age. And it is this individualism which lies at the heart of modern liberal democracy. A country like Germany may be only barely liberal democratic – with its State control of the media, its repression of nationalists and Holocaust deniers, its thousands of political prisoners. In this, it is not so different from a country like Egypt or Tunisia. But where Germany is genuinely liberal democratic is its parliamentary debates, its multi-party system – and its tolerance of ethical hedonism and individualism. One cannot wear a ‘fascist’-style political uniform: that would be ‘Nazi’. But one can prance around, high on drugs, in a strange costume, at the Berlin ‘Love Parade’, a kind of annual Mardi Gras event where the attendants openly consume party drugs like ecstasy – while the police turn a blind eye. (In Singapore, or Belarus, it would be a different story).

Freedom and degradation

My own views on this are as follows. Freedom to take drugs in public, or for gays to marry one another, or to dress ‘differently’ (i.e., dress like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan) are low on my list of priorities. Freedom to take a revisionist view of German history, and the history of the Second World War, or to criticise immigration, are, on the other hand, very high. My view is that if that freedom is not possible, then other freedoms are not worth having at all. From my perspective, Russia is more free than the West. Russia, like the West, makes the Allied-Communist interpretation of the Second World War, part of its State ideology; but, unlike the West, it is indifferent to those who disagree with the government’s line on those subjects. Russia does not persecute people who take an alternative view of the history of WWII; and it could not care less if Russian nationalists oppose immigration. A German with a long history of nationalist activism, like myself, can walk the streets of Moscow a free man; but is in danger of arrest if he visits his own country.

Regarding the other freedoms – which my liberal democratic countrymen prize so highly – I am largely indifferent: the consumption of drugs, liquor, pornography, etc., have been part of civilisation ever since it existed; likewise, individualism, the right to act ‘crazy’ or different’, is part of European culture and history. (One only has to look at the Weimar Republic, with its cult of drugs and individualism. Because of the lack of individual identification with the community and the State, the Republic fell apart; out of the ashes arose the Third Reich).

But a recent incident has forced me to reconsider my views. Recently, I took a holiday in the United States, and, while in San Francisco, happened to be in a main street where a local, American version of the German ‘Love Parade’ was passing through. As in Germany, the revellers were high on drugs, prancing around to music, and wearing outlandish clothes. Being a good tourist, I started taking photos on my digital camera. I then saw, out of the corner of my eye, a grossly overweight, middle-aged bearded man, entirely naked except for a pair of sneakers. He had shaved all the hairs off his body (except for the hairs on his face), and, judging by his even tan, must have been a frequently-practicing nudist. I then became aware that he was masturbating – openly, in front of everyone. I must admit I was completely taken aback. Thinking that no-one back home would believe me, I took photos of the man. He looked up, saw me, and continued to masturbate – and even struck poses. Finally, he finished doing what he was doing. Another of the attendees – another overweight person, this time a woman, dressed in strange attire (somewhat reminiscent of a Viking costume) – came up and hugged him.


The man clearly must have been on drugs: ecstasy, fantasy, ice, goodness knows what. The essential thing is, it dawned on me that: this is the ‘freedom’ that George W. Bush speaks of; that he defends; that he insists on imposing on other countries through the unilateral use of military force. Liberalism has changed: from a doctrine of pluralism (manifested through a multi-party electoral system, parliamentary debates, a free press giving dissenting views) to a doctrine of complete individualism free of any restraints.

The liberal argument now is that individuals should be given the maximum amount of freedom, and be allowed to do what they like, so long as those people are not ‘hurting others’. With this principle in mind, the Netherlands allows the smoking of marijuana; it also allows gay men to organise sex parties. Unfortunately for the Dutch liberals, the principle was challenged recently, when it was revealed that gay men, infected with AIDS, would lure young men to these parties, drug them with a date rape drug (called, appropriately, ‘Easy Lay’) and inject them AIDS-infected blood. This caused a scandal.

But, presumably, the liberal position is: organising sex parties is OK; gays should be allowed to do what they like; they only cross the boundary between right and wrong when they hurt others – and injecting men with AIDS-infected blood is ‘hurting others’. The same principle applies to the revellers in the San Francisco Love Parade: the revellers high on drugs, masturbating publicly in the nude, were not ‘hurting others’. There may be laws on the books against indecent exposure, and the consumption of party drugs, but these are written by prudes, moralists, ‘wowsers’ (as the Australians like to call them). It’s OK for people to let their hair down once in a while and break those minor laws. Why not let people be free individuals and do their own thing? What is wrong with that?

Freedom and Tradition

The answer is long and complex. I will give it as follows.

Evola, in his work, gives an outline of the various kinds of spiritualities, as they have appeared in human civilisations: he identifies, following Nietzsche, a ‘Dionysian’ spirituality, which is a spirituality of shamanism - achieving altered states of consciousness through the use of drugs, alcohol and revelry. Evola has ambivalent views towards ‘Dionysianism’: on the one hand, he believes that it is an attempt to reach a mystical state of being which is truly ‘Traditionalist’; on the other hand, he thinks that is a mindless, debased spirituality, which breaks down all barriers, all hierarchies – between the sexes, between the classes, between all ethnic groups. What is more, ‘Dionysianism’ is a feminine spirituality – which explains the frequent association of the god Dionysos with female worshippers and revellers. Evola, of course, has nothing against femininity: merely the feminisation of men. Evola’s preference, as his readers know, is for the ‘Olympian’, ‘Solar’, ‘Apollinian’ spirituality, which is ‘virile’ (from the word viros, meaning male).

Now, all this is rather metaphysical: but Evola was a nationalist philosopher, or at least a philosopher of a kind of nationalism which many nationalists today are sympathetic with. Certainly they reject ‘Dionysianism’, or at least, the debased elements. And clearly, in my view, the phenomena of the Love Parade, and the behaviour I saw there, fits into the category of ‘Dionysianism’. As a New Rightist, then, I must reject it. Evola writes of the ‘lunar’ spirituality, which rejects hierarchy and authority, and regards all men as ‘one’ – no matter their race or social position. Certainly, the self-debasement of the Love Parade fits into that category too.

And it is a small leap from the ‘lunar’ spirituality of the Love Parade to the ideology of the Antifa. The Antifa objects to nationalism because that ideology draws distinction between races, and refuses to acknowledge the non-Western immigrant as being the equal, and deserving equal rights, as the indigenous Westerner. The Antifa accepts the immigrant, and the gay, as ‘brothers’. The stereotype of the ‘Lefty’ or ‘Crusty’ is someone who wears his hair in dreadlocks, Rastafarian-style, to show his affinity with the Negro, and smokes marijuana, which, as anyone who has tried it knows, is a notoriously egalitarian drug (which makes one accepting of all people and all things).

All rather complex and metaphysical, true: but Evola’s descriptions get right to the heart of things. He was an eloquent man; not surprisingly, he was a poet as well as a philosopher, and could be described as the ‘poet of fascism’. No-one managed to put the tenets of that ideology in clearer terms than he did.

New Rightism in action

All of this raises one question: what is that we from the New Right offer, precisely, which is in contrast to the individualism of the Love Parade and George W. Bush’s America? It is all very fine to talk of he nationalist’s affinity for ‘Olympian’ spirituality – one can be as ‘spiritual’ as one wants – but how does it manifest itself in our actions?

As part of the research for this article, I have been looking at a number of film clips of nationalist rallies on YouTube, from Hungary, Rumania, Russia, Italy, Sweden, Britain, Greece. Despite the national differences, a number of similarities emerged. (These similarities were even present in the film clips from different times: I watched one of National Front demonstration in the 1970s, and one in 2007).

One writer who identified those core elements is an American political scientist, Karl Löwenstein, who wrote a classic article, ‘Militant democracy and fundamental rights’, in the ‘American political science review’, volume 31/no. 3, 1937. The article is one of the most influential ever written: it consists mainly of recommendations for a series of ‘anti-racist’, ‘anti-fascist’ laws (against wearing uniforms, ‘defaming ethnic groups’, etc.) which have been put into practice by Germany, France and a number of other Western countries which have sought to clamp down on resurgent ‘fascism’ and ‘Neo-Nazism’ in their midst. It ought to rank as the holy scripture of the Antifa movement: except that Löwenstein preaches the state repression of nationalism, not in the name of multi-cultism, but of liberal democracy. But I will not dwell on this side of the Löwenstein doctrine, important as it is, here. I will instead quote a number of things he has to say on the subject of ‘fascism’ (loosely defined). In my view, he could almost be speaking of nationalism today. He remarks on the surprisingly international character of fascism:

A closer transnational alignment or “bloc” of fascist nations, a “Union of Europe’s Regenerated Nations”, a fascist International of the multi-colored shirts, is clearly under way, transcending national borders and cutting deeply across historical diversities of traditionally disjoined nationalisms. The modern crusaders for saving Western civilization from Bolshevik “chaos” – a battle-cry which in all countries gone fascist has proved invaluable – for the time being sink their differences and operate jointly according to a common plan. Under this missionary urge, which is one of the most astounding contradictions of a political system based on the superiority complex of each individual nation, what exists of distinguishing marks in program, ideology, and nationally conditioned premises of Realpolitik shrinks to insignificance [...]
He writes, disparagingly, that:

Fascism is not a philosophy – not even a realistic constructive program – but the most effective political technique in modern history. The vagueness of the fascist offerings hardens into concrete invective only if manifest deficiencies of the democratic system are singled out for attack. Leadership, order, and discipline are set over against parliamentary corruption, chaos, and selfishness; which a cryptic corporativism is substituted for political representation. General discontent is focussed on palpable objectives (Jews, freemasons, bankers, chain stores).... In brief, to arouse, to guide, and to use emotionalism in its crudest and its most refined forms is the essence of the fascist technique for which movement and emotion are not only linguistically identical [...]

So how precisely does the ‘fascist technique’ work? Löwenstein writes:

Concomitantly, the movement organizes itself in the form of a semi-military corps, the party militia or private army of the party. Under the pretence of self-protection, the original nucleus of the personal bodyguard of the leaders, and of the stewards for the maintenance of order in meetings, is developed into a large fighting body of high efficiency equipped with the fullest outfit of military paraphernalia, such as military hierarchy, uniforms and other symbols, and if possible arms. Again, this technique has strong emotional values and purposes. In the first place, mere demonstration of military force, even without actual violence, does not fail deeply to impress the peaceful and law-abiding bourgeois. Its manifestation, so alien to the normal expressions of party life, is, as such, a source of intimidation and of emotional strain for the citizens. On the other hand, while democratic parties are characterized by the looseness of their spiritual allegiance, the military organization of the fascist parties emphasizes the irrevocable nature of the political bond. It creates and maintains that sense of mystical comradeship of all for each and each for all, that exclusiveness of political obsession in comparison to which the usual party allegiance is only one among many pluralistic loyalties. When party allegiance finally transcends allegiance to the state, the dangerous atmosphere of double legality is created. The military routine, because it is directed against despised democracy, is ethically glorified as party of party symbolism which in turn is part of the emotional domination. Disobedience towards the constituted authorities naturally grows into violence, and violence becomes a new source of disciplined emotionalism. The conflicts with the state – unavoidable when this phase of active aggressiveness is reached – increase the common sentiment of persecution, martyrdom, heroism, and dangerous life so closely akin to legalized violence during war. In addition, the movement is, within its own confines, genuinely democratic. A successful roughneck forwith rises to distinction in its hierarchy [...]

The quasi-military structure and attributes of fascism are one of its distinguishing features:

The uniform has a mystical attraction also in avowedly non-militaristic countries. The effect of military display on the “soft” bourgeois is all the more last because he contrasts the firmness of purpose of accumulated force in fascism with the uncontrolled fluctuations of normal political life. In politics, the only criterion of success is success. Fascism has been irresistably successful in other countries; thus far, it has never met with a reverse. In any democratic country, be it traditionally ever so sober and balanced, the existence of a political movement organized as military force makes the average citizen uneasy and creates the feeling of restiveness which emotional politics needs [...]

He then goes on to list a few more of the ‘essential techniques’, and lists means of combating fascism through legislation:

All democratic states have enacted legislation against the formation of private para-military armies of political parties and against the wearing of political uniforms or parts thereof (badges, armlets) and the bearing of any other symbols (flags, banners, emblems, streamers and pennants) which serve to denote the political opinion of the person in public. These provisions – too light-heartedly and facetiously called “bills against indoctrinary haberdashery” – strike at the roots of the fascist technique of propaganda, namely, self-advertisement and intimidation of others. The military garb symbolizes and crystallizes the mystical comradeship of arms so essential to the emotional needs of fascism [...]

That ‘militarism’ is applied, by the fascist, as follows:

Political strife carried by the fascists to the extreme of organized hooliganism made the fundamental right of assembly more or less a sham. Creating disturbances in or wrecking meetings of opposing or constitutional parties not only proved a favorite test of the fighting spirit of militarized parties ((“meeting-hall-battles” – “Saalschlacht”), but also deterred peaceable citizens from attending meetings of their own selection. The task of the police to keep peace and order at meetings and public processions became increasingly difficult. The ordinary criminal codes being wholly insufficient to curb the deliberate tactics of extremist parties, more stringent legislation was introduced in Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, and proposed in Switzerland [...]

Löwenstein describes the method of the ‘provocative march’:

A different problem arose when it became obvious that fascist demonstrations, processions, and meetings were held in districts where they could be considered only as a deliberate provocation because of the hostility of the bulk of the people living in these quarters. If, in such cases, disturbances occurred, they were actually created by the opponents. Exploiting this situation was one of the favorite methods of rising fascist methods whereby they could stand on the constitutional right of free processions and assembly [...]

He details, interestingly, the use of the weapon of ‘political abuse’:

Overt acts of incitement to armed sedition can easily be squashed, but the vast armory of fascist technique includes the more subtle weapons of vilifying, defaming, slandering, and last but not least, ridiculing, the democratic state itself, its political institutions and leading personalities. For a long time, in the Action Française, the finesse of noted authors like Daudet and Maurras developed political invective into both an art and a science. Democratic fundamentalism acquiesced, because freedom of public opinion evidently included also freedom of political abuse, and even malignant criticism was sheltered. Redress had to be sought by the person affected through the ordinary procedure of libel, thereby affording a welcome opportunity for advertising the political intentions of the offender [...]

In an unintentionally amusing passage, he takes note of the distinctly fascist method of using martyrs to exalt one’s cause – and dubious martyrs at that:

More patently subversive is fascism’s habit of publicly exalting political criminals and offenders against the existing laws – a practice which serves the twofold purpose of building up the revolutionary symbolism of martyrs and heroes and of defying, with impunity, the existing order. It is still remembered that Herr Hitler, in August, 1933, when the rowdies of his party murdered, under particularly revolting circumstances, a political adversary in Potempa and were sentenced to death by the court, proclaimed his “spiritual unity” with them. Only Czechoslovakia and Finland have provided against this practice of morally aiding and abetting the political criminal [...]

Fascism as technique?

At first, when I read Löwenstein’s article, I was somewhat offended by it – in particular, by his characterisation of fascism as being mere ‘technique’, not a real ideology. After all, fascism attracted many intellectuals who gave fascism a well thought-out philosophy, an intellectual basis. And certainly, the post-war ‘neo-fascist’ writers – Yockey, Thiriart, Evola – gave fascism a real intellectual grounding. But, the more I thought about it, the more I saw that Löwenstein’s contention was true. After all, it has to be admitted that nationalism – which Löwenstein would classify, rightly or wrongly, as ‘fascist’ (and certainly his followers in the Bundesrepublik do) – is vague. What the liberal democratic media calls ‘policy detail’ has never been our strong suit. We are not used to contesting in elections, like the mainstream liberal democratic parties, and, when we do, we do not produce budgeted, carefully-crafted plans to improve children’s health care, combat global warming, fix petrol-price gouging, etc., like the Labor and Liberal parties are doing at this Australian federal election. Part of this is sheer lack of experience and money – whereas the mainstream liberal democratic parties have plenty of both, and are very good at organising the logistics of elections.

New Rightism, more than anything else, is an ‘action’ movement, not a ‘talking’ movement, and the heart of our policy, if not worldview, lies in our day to day living: living in community, working in the community, transforming it through our actions.

Nationalism, of course, does tend to elevate people who have fallen in battle – either through actual military conflict, or in the context of a political struggle – into martyrs. Of the film clips I saw, one was a commemoration of a Swedish nationalist martyr – Daniel Wretström, a 17 year old Swedish nationalist killed by immigrants; the other, a wreath-laying ceremony in Hungary commemorating the country’s servicemen who had fallen in WWII.

The ultimate historical fascist martyr figure is, of course, Horst Wessel. There is a scene in ‘Triumph of the Will’ where assembled National Socialist personages sing the Horst Wessel Lied, accompanied by the inevitable salutes and giant banners: the camera focuses on Göring for a few moments, and one can see the beginnings of a tear forming in the hard man’s eye. Without a doubt, nationalists – whether today in Greece or Hungary or Russia, or in yesterday in France or Germany – rely heavily on emotion. These emotions are: indignation, against our liberal democratic and communist enemies; a feeling of the rightness of the cause; self-sacrifice; self-abnegation (which comes from service to a higher goal)… All of this is transmitted through formalities and ceremonies: the Swedish nationalists, for instance, put on a candle-lit vigil and procession for the young Wretström. (Swedish nationalists have set up a site, outlining the rules for the annual march, and meeting points, at: http://www.salemfonden.info/index_eng.php ). Whereas, in a liberal democracy, the Berlin Love Parade has replaced the torchlight processions of the SS: individuality takes the place of community as an object of veneration in the Bundesrepublik.

Even liberal democrats have to admit that, compared to the political street theatre of nationalism, their brand of conventional politics is mundane. There is nothing in mainstream conservatism, social democracy, environmentalism, liberalism, etc., to compare with it. There is a real pleasure in being part of a crowd of demonstrators, marching past communists who are swearing, spitting, jeering, singing communist anthems, who are being held by mounted police (as in one of the old National Front film clips). It is a peculiar pleasure, to be sure, and not for everyone. But once one has a taste of it, one becomes addicted. I am often chastised by liberal democratic friends, and I have plenty of them, for being part of the so-called ‘Neo-Nazi’ nationalist scene: I retort to them, ‘What am I meant to do? Join the Liberal Party, attend boozy functions, sit among fat, middle-aged men in suits, and listen to speakers like Tony Abbott and Peter Costello drone on about the unions?’ The mainstream liberal democratic parties do not give anyone much of a scope for real political activism. What they are about is power to political parties but not the people they claim to represent. New Rightism, on the other hand, is activist-based: and it has the potential to encompass nearly all spheres of life.

One other advantage of nationalism is that it is virtually indestructible. The National Front imploded after reaching a peak in the late 1970s: but it is still in action, albeit with reduced numbers, and this time demonstrating against Islamic immigration and gay marriage. Certain of the problems afflicting Britain have changed, but others remain the same. The prime example of nationalist indestructibility, though, is Germany and Eastern Europe. The Allies and the Soviets embarked on a campaign of unprecedented genocide against Germany and its Allies – with the intention of eliminating ‘fascism’. But nationalism has grown back. Part of the reason for nationalism’s success is that, being a technique, it is easy to apply in all manner of times and places.

So why do some nationalist movements in some countries grow and others do not? I am biased on this. My belief is that, if the British nationalists, for instance, invested as much time and effort in constant, round the clock demonstrations – and taking the ‘war’ to the enemy, the communists and Antifa – as they do in trying to win council seats, they would achieve better results (and certainly earn themselves more media notoriety that way). The Internet has proven to be a boon to nationalism, but it has also made nationalists stay at homes – preventing them from going out, mixing with other nationalists on group activities (like hiking trips), meetings, conferences and the like, and engaging in demonstrations and rallies.

The demonstration is really at the heart of nationalist ‘technique’. Demonstrations are a public show of power: they are political street theatre. What matters in a demonstration is force, strength. Large numbers are required – and flags on poles to make the nationalist crowd look bigger than it really is. Loudhailers, loudspeakers mounted on cars, whistles, drums (the National Front in the 1970s made effective use of drums), ect, are all important for drowning out the hateful cries of the enemy (with their inevitable boring chant of ‘Nazis out!’). It becomes a pitched battle between the nationalist and the communist counter-demonstrators: and the biggest and loudest crowd wins.

I myself recognise the supreme importance of this: and the importance of getting as many nationalists and New Rightists as possible to attend a demonstration, and take the blows directed at them by the communist enemy. But nationalists, it has to be said, spend too much time on doctrinal disputes. On the National-Anarchist and New Right mailing lists, for example, there was a recent debate on whether or not ‘New Right’ and ‘National-Anarchism’ were appropriate names for our ideas. Should we not look for alternative names? Alternatives were suggested: e.g., ’New Left” (the affiliate of the New Right in Portugal actually calls itself ‘New Left’), ‘New Reason’ instead of ‘New Right’. One of the objections to the use of the term ‘New Right’ was that it may be confused with the Anglo-Saxon neo-liberal movement of the same name from the 1980s (as if the average man can remember back that far). As for ‘National-Anarchism’, are not nationalism and anarchism mutually exclusive concepts?

All of this is somewhat missing the point. The early fascist activists cobbled together an ideology which was ‘Left’ as well as being ‘nationalist’: no doubt it confused a good many people. A typical response would have been: ‘I can’t tell if you people are Left or Right: your ideology is an incoherent mish-mash’. (Some commentators characterised German National Socialism, when it first appeared, as ‘conservative Marxism’). I am sure that Mussolini’s movement started off without a name: and that finally, at some point, someone felt that they had to give their rather loose collection of ideas a proper name, and someone came up with ‘fascism’. But what is in a name? And why do political ideas have to be consistently ‘Left’ or ‘Right’? Political theories, in my view, are not mathematical proofs, where every step proceeds logically from the other. The essential thing is to go out and do. The trouble is that the liberal democratic system wants the Left and Right to fight one another; it is happy with the Left-Right divide; it likes the simplicity of the concepts; it does not want people to think; rather, it wants them to be conditioned, to categorise themselves as green or socialist or conservative. That way, a person only sees himself in terms of that category: the ideology does the thinking for him. Which is why Greens feel that they have to fight nationalists, despite their similarities: Bob Brown and the Green Party have ordained that nationalism is evil, racist, and has nothing to do with environmentalism; so the individual ends up not thinking for himself, and instead obeys his party leaders and the dictates of the mainstream political consensus.

What to do

Sometimes, when I look at the hostility nationalism generates – from the ‘militant democratic’ governments of Germany and France, in particular – I wonder why it is these governments are so afraid. Look at the footage of any nationalist march, and all you will see – in the last analysis – is a large group of men and women carrying flags and banners, walking along a road. But, from the way the liberal democrats and communists behave, such activities are heinous, and must be stopped by any means necessary. Nationalism will lead to a second Holocaust, etc., etc. (even when the marchers are British or Russian). My pragmatic response, though, is: so what? A bunch of people are marching down the street, waving flags with old Teutonic and Celtic symbols on them – what harm does it do? I wonder what would happen if the German government banned the prohibition of uniforms or Holocaust literature. Would mass riots and discord ensue? Would the Bundesrepublik cease to exist overnight? Simply because ‘fascism’ in the 1920s and 1930s became a Europe-wide movement, embracing millions of men and women, is no reason to believe that it will happen again. The pettiness and stupidity of the ‘militant’ liberal democrats expresses itself in actions like the withholding of two years worth of mail to Ernst Zündel, for example.

Having said that: laws come, and laws go (Holocaust denial in Spain has just recently been legalised again) and there is no body of legislation in existence anywhere which has succeeded in shutting down nationalism completely. The Russian nationalists wear masks and uniforms at their rallies, and use the Roman salute; they also engage in paramilitary training, and even own their own Kalashnikovs. The Italians, on the other hand, labour under the same restrictions as the Germans: but that does not stop them from putting on large demonstrations. It is all a matter of working around the Löwenstein-style laws.

The main strength of our movement is our organisation – our ability to mobilise large numbers of people for mass action. This, of course, occurs only under optimal circumstances – we waste a good deal of time debating doctrinal differences among ourselves, instead of going and doing what we do best. No doubt the demonstrators in Sweden, Hungary, Russia and other countries have, as individuals, a number of doctrinal differences with one another: but the main thing is that they were sufficiently united, and organised, to take to the streets in defiance of communism and militant anti-racism. Ideally, I would like political activists from all over Europe to converge on London – in particular, the financial district (the City of London) – for an annual pan-European anti-capitalist march. And if police and the media, and the communist enemy, descend en masse upon the march, all well and good. That will garner the attention that we need. Because of the location, we would be sure to get worldwide English media coverage, which is considerable.

The main thing which is holding us back is wrong thinking – and lack of courage, or at least, an unwillingness to offend bourgeois proprieties. One German poster, at a mailing list I frequent, wrote recently:

The so-called "free nationalists" are only free from responsible behaviours. They mimic American dress codes and copy antifa strategies which basically makes them appear as dangerous, violence-prone hooded hoodlums. If you disguise your face you not only have something to hide - you also won't garner any sympathies from the populace...

That is a common fallacy among some nationalists. The fact of the matter is that the German populace have been trained to hate all forms of German nationalism; the same goes, to a milder extent, for the rest of the world. They are conditioned, Pavlov-style, to react with disgust. Non-German nationalism in the West is fast going the same way – that is, our liberal democratic masters in the media, the church, the parliament, the trade union leadership, the university, are training the Western masses to find it nearly as equally as abhorrent. The notion, then, that this hatred (and that is what it is) can be done away with by aping bourgeois manners, is wrong.

Related to this is the fact that many people – especially young people – like outlaws and rebels. You can appeal to more people by trying not to appeal to anyone at all, by being yourself and by making your own values in contrast to the norms of the society you live. In popular culture, this fact has been known at least since the 1950s: James Dean, Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley, were marketed, deliberately, as moody, dangerous rebels – and all three of them made fortunes as a result. Many rock bands nowadays are still being marketed as being rebellious as the Rolling Stones or the Sex Pistols. Although rock and roll rebellion has now become something of a tired old cliché, the youngsters never seem to get tired of it, as we see with the continuing popularity of likes of the EMO cult. Almost everyone understands this, except for the nationalists who are desperately trying to look respectable and liberal-democratic. Instead of acting independently and doing what has to be done ,they are more concerned about what the apolitical consumer orientated Zombies thinks about, and trying to appease them.

Other nationalists have described their reluctance to refer to the Antifa enemy as precisely that: the Antifa. Why? Because if the Antifa are anti-fascist, it implies that their enemies – us – are ‘fascist’. And we can’t have that. I am surprised that Australians, of all people – a people who wrested this country from the Aborigines, and built a country and a State literally from the dirt, facing great personal hardship and struggle – are afraid of a mere word.

To conclude: what we in the New Right offer is an alternative. Löwenstein is quite right when he says that ‘fascism’ is a method, of confrontation – and investing the political struggle with an honour, dignity and nobility (although he would not use those words). At the risk of sounding ‘irrationalist’ or ‘anti-intellectual’, we New Rightists have to make use of the method (and I am stressing the word method) and get to work – the time for talking is over. We have to show the world our anti-liberal alternative – our alternative to the tyranny of individualism in a liberal democratic society.

*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

THE STRATEGY OF TENSION

By Welf Herfurth

Introduction
This article has been written with a view to outlining an overall strategy for nationalist groups to follow – a course of action. In the weeks since the APEC demo, it has become clear to more than a few observers that our communist and militant anti-racist (Antifa) opponents are incapable of debating with us intellectually, and indeed are incapable of intellectual expression. A long, intellectual article posted at the New Right blog will have, in the comments section, abuse and threats of violence from our communist opponents – and never a discussion of the ideas and personages involved (e.g., Babeuf, Stalinist economics, Lorenz von Stein, de Benoist...). And, again and again, we at New Right (as do many other nationalists in Australia, whether they be German or not) get tagged with the ‘Neo-Nazi’ label – this is despite the fact that we here, at this site, have made our opinions clear on German National Socialism and the phenomenon known as Neo-Nazism (or Nutzism, as we disparagingly call it).

Having said that, the reaction from our communist opponents is, I think, beneficial. It can only benefit our cause, as I shall explain below, and part of our strategy ought to be to continue to provoke similar reactions in the future.

1. What is a Neo-Nazi?

Neo-Nazism is an attempt to revive German National Socialism in the modern era. As we know, German National Socialism was a form of fascism. There are a number of definitions of what fascism actually is, or was. Fascism can be defined as a radical form of socialism for the petit bourgeoisie (Hayek’s definition, and the definition of many other free-market conservatives who locate German National Socialism on the Left of the political spectrum, not the Right); or as an attempt to introduce a Traditional order in the modern world (which is how Evola understood it)... What distinguishes German National Socialism from other forms of fascism (Quisling’s, Mosley’s, Mussolini’s) is its adherence to the Führer principle. Simply put, National Socialism needed a Führer figure to hold it all together, and was nothing without him. As the German historian and liberal anti-Nazi Martin Broszat writes:

National Socialism was not primarily an ideological and programmatic, but a charismatic movement, whose ideology was incorporated in the Führer, Hitler, and which would have lost all its power to integrate without him. Hitler was never merely the spokesman for an idea that would have had an equivalent importance and existence without him. On the contrary, the abstract, utopian and vague National Socialist ideology only achieved what reality and certainty it had through the medium of Hitler. Thus there could be no effective opposition against Hitler in the name of the National Socialist ideology. Where this was none the less attempted, as for example by Otto Strasser and his mainly intellectual following, the features of the National Socialist ideology, which were composed of emotions, resentments and dreams, were exchanged for an ideology directed towards concrete material action (which was consistent in that respect and naturally permitted no omnipotent Führer) and failed to appreciate the charismatic foundation of the National Socialist movement. It had been far more typical of the general attitude of Party functionaries from the various ancillary organisations of the NSDAP
before and after 1933 that however much they thrashed out bitter quarrels amongst themselves they did not as a rule turn against Hitler, but tried to win him over to their respective interpretations of the National Socialist ideology and programme. That is they basically recognised him as the interpreter of the correct ‘idea’ and did not question his supreme authority to rule on ideological matters too. (Martin Broszat, ‘The Hitler State: the foundation and development of the internal structure of the Third Reich’, 1969, p.29).

So, in order for there to be a Neo-Nazism movement, there has to be a neo-Führer, who takes Hitler’s place symbolically as the integrating, charismatic head of the revived Nazi movement. The communist and militant anti-racist opponents of Western nationalism understand this instinctively: which is why, whenever they are on the look out for a ‘Nazi’ revival, are always hunting for the ‘new Führer’, whether he be Dr James Saleam, the ‘Reverend’ Patrick Sullivan, David Palmer, Jack van Tongeren.

On the other hand, it could be argued that there can be a ‘Führer’-less form of ‘Neo-Nazism’. The NPD is accused, by the German and international media, of being ‘Neo-Nazi’ all the time, even though it has no charismatic ‘Führer’ figure. In all fairness, the NPD does have a few things in common with the old German National Socialist and fascist movements. For starters, both are mass-movements, which emphasise extra-parliamentary organisation; both form women’s and children’s groups, and other groups which embrace people from all walks of life, all professions, with the intention of being more than political parties; both are on the Left, politically speaking, in many of their social and economic policies; both are radical and uncompromising; both have suffered persecution at the hands of liberal democratic States; both tend to make a mystique of street action and confrontations with communist opponents; both of course, are German and nationalist. One could, on that basis, apply the description ‘Neo-Nazi’ to the NPD. But, again, there is no Führer, and my argument (and Broszat’s) can be no German National Socialism, old or new, without a Führer-figure.

One of the problems of identifying the likes of the NPD with ‘Neo-Nazism’ is that so many other ideological groupings have appropriated parts of the National Socialist doctrine. Do we castigate the Greens, for instance, for being environmentalist, when one of the first environmentalist politicians was Adolf Hitler? A few scholars acknowledge the influence Hitler’s National Socialism had on Swedish social democracy – the welfare-statist brand of socialism which, in turn, influenced the British Labour Party (in the 1960s) and the Australian Labor Party (in the 1970s). In fact, one of the definitions of German National Socialism could be: welfare-statist social democracy plus dictatorship.

Incidentally, one can see how the Führer-as-integrator principle works for other political ideologies. Chavezism, for instance, is inconceivable with Chavez: in that respect, Chavezism is more ‘Neo-Nazi’ than the ideology of the NPD.

Oddly enough, the communists adhere more to the Führerprinzip, or ‘leader principle’, more than we nationalists do. Communism, even today, is nothing but a gallery of ‘great leaders’: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Che, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Jong-Il, Kim Il-Sung, Tito, lesser lights like Salvador Allende... Their word is law: none of the members of the communist parties are allowed to question the rulings, on any conceivable subject, by these men. Communism is the most authoritarian movement in the history of the world; it is also the most bound up with personality cults, ‘Great Leaders’ (or ‘Dear Leaders’). Hitler and Mussolini, of course, imitated this (and many other parts) of communist doctrine, and German National Socialism could be described as being little more than German Stalinism.

The advantage of the communist application of the Führer principle is that it discourages questioning, thinking and debate. Were the followers of communism allowed, for once, to question where socialism is going, what they, through their activism, are doing to achieve it, what a communist Australia would actually look like, communism would collapse. Or rather, belief in communism would collapse. Socialists would ask, for instance, how it is that mass immigration of Africans, Muslims and Indians helps the Australian working-classes – when these immigrants (especially the more disadvantaged ones, like the Sudanese) would compete with Australians for welfare benefits. And what on earth do gay rights have to do with socialism? Surely capitalism cannot be to blame for discrimination against gays? And why support socialism in Cuba when Cuba uses fierce state repression against gays? There are no answers to these questions: which is why the communist Führer principle is needed. It keeps communists from thinking.

2. What is wrong with Neo-Nazism?

To me, ‘Neo-Nazism’, particularly in its Nutzi, uniform fetishist form is a bizarre, antiquated and ultimately self-defeating ideology. Enough of it has been said here elsewhere at the New Right site. (See the article, ‘Freaks in the movement’, archived at http://newrightausnz.blogspot.com/2006/07/freaks-in-movement-this-is-statement.html ).

But, obviously, what I and many other nationalists dislike about ‘Neo-Nazism’ is not what our opponents on the mainstream Left dislike about it. To them, the objection to ‘Neo-Nazism’ is simple. During the Second World War (itself started by Germany, when it invaded Poland in 1939), Germany gassed eight million people, using weapons of mass destruction, and threw the corpses into giant ovens. Some were turned into soap; others into lampshades. The horrible, shrivelled corpses at Dachau and Bergen-Belsen are testimony to the evil of the ideology of German National Socialism, which committed the most terrible crimes of the twentieth century.

Now, according to the communists and the Antifa, the ‘Neo-Nazis’ want to bring back that order, and start gassing, not only Jews, Poles, homosexuals and gypsies, but anyone who is not a white European or of European descent. Alan Moore’s classic 1988 graphic novel, V for vendetta, offers a good summary of the communist and Antifa view of Western nationalism – and the consequences of a ‘fascist’ return to power. The graphic novel depicts a dystopian Britain in the late 1990s, where 1930s-style fascists have taken over the world and have killed a good many Jews, homosexuals, Pakistani and Caribbean immigrants in death camps, and like Dr Mengele, carried out sadistic medical experiments on the inmates. The mainstream Left sincerely believes that propaganda like V for vendetta depicts nationalist goals accurately: they believe that we nationalists are all working together towards the same goal – of eliminating, through death camps, the ‘racially impure’ (whatever that means) members of Western society.

The Antifa demonise their opponents, making them out to be satanic. Militant anti-racism plays on nothing but fear: it is pure emotion. And it is purely negative, as well: ask them what their political policies are on inflation and interest rates, for instance, or conscription or abortion or the death penalty, are – and they have no answer. Because of the lack of foundations, the lack of arguments, they can only appeal to fear. They are more a belief-system than a political ideology, and with their appeals to fear and irrationalism, plus the almost religious attribution of satanic qualities to their opponents, they resemble a cult, like the Raelians or the Scientologists.

In the Antifa and mainstream ideology, the New Right and the National-Anarchists are part of the same ‘Neo-Nazi’ conspiracy. A few individuals of the mainstream Left have expressed their trepidation that naïve youths (who have been insufficiently indoctrinated, i.e., not converted to Marxist-Leninism) may go over to the National-Anarchist side, not understanding that the National-Anarchists are ‘Neo-Nazi’ fakes. In the communist scenario, the naïve youths, after becoming members of a National-Anarchist group, will eventually be led down the path to ‘Neo-Nazism’. Possibly, the new National-Anarchist recruit will be brought to a secret cavern by the other members, where he will find framed portraits of the Führer and George Lincoln Rockwell, and swastika flags, on the walls. The secret ‘Führer’ of the movement shall doff his anarchist garb to reveal a homemade brownshirt uniform. He will then unveil a fantastic plan to take over Australia and build death camps, run by blonde, Nordic women in ‘Ilse the She-Wolf of the SS’ uniforms, and fiendish doctor-sadists like Mengele.

Regardless of whether or not one believes in a National Socialist gassing of eight million people, the interesting thing is that the communists have a long backlog of atrocities of their own to atone for – and they do not apologise for them. While many nationalists push a revisionist line, the communists do not. Confront a communist with the nine million Russians killed by Lenin and Trotsky – during the Red Terror, and the mass famine deliberately triggered by the Bolsheviks to pacify the Russian population – and he will shrug and regurgitate the old Leninist cliché that ‘One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs’. Then there is Mao, whose Great Leap Forward killed 18 to 34 million people (depending on whose figures you believe); Pol Pot; and lesser-known figures like the Ethiopian communist Mengistu Haile Mariam. Even Castro, who is fondly regarded by Australian communist groups, killed thousands after his takeover of Cuba.

My point is that, given communism’s track record, people ought to hold communism’s past atrocities against Australian communist groups like Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative and others. How do we know that these groups do not have a secret plan to collectivise Australian agriculture, and starve millions of Australians to death? Will Australian soldiers be rounded up, Khmer-Rouge style, bound with nylon ropes and have their necks broken with blows from pick handles? (Or perhaps they will be given the softer, North Vietnamese communist version: internment in a ‘re-education’ camp until they get their thinking straightened out?). And what of the capitalist class? Will the Packer family be liquidated on the spot, or will they be forced to work with their hands (for the first time in their lives) in the fields of our newly-collectivised farms, while communist overseers, wearing black pyjamas and carrying Kalashnikovs, jeer at them and curse them? (‘No rice for you today, Mr Packer! Work harder!’).

4. The reality

I am, of course, being facetious here. The Australian communists do not have the demonic drive of a Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Pol Pot, Mengistu: they do not have what it takes to bring about a revolution.

Even more important is the fact that no communist revolution has come about by the revolt of the working classes against the capitalists. All the communists in history have won power as a result of war. Lenin won power only after Russia’s catastrophic defeat, at the hands of Germany, in WWI; the Bolsheviks emerged from the ashes of the Russian Civil War as the most powerful and unified force, and took advantage of the subsequent chaos to impose a dictatorship. Likewise, every subsequent revolutionary owes their successes, not to mobilising the working classes, but from defeating their opponents on the battlefield. (One exception is Mengistu: but Mengistu came to power through a military coup, and was able to used soldiers to liquidate any bourgeois-liberal, monarchist or rival communist opponents).

The truth is that the old-school communist revolutionaries had a unique genius, lacking in today’s Western communist parties, for exploiting the political opportunities that arose as a result of chaos. That chaos is not present today, and it is unlikely that today’s communists would know how to harness it to their advantage.

And so today’s Australian communists, who are schooled in the theory, but not practice, of communism, naively believe that power will be theirs for the taking, once the inevitable downfall of capitalism gets going. Marxist theory proves, scientifically, that the capitalist mode of production will go the way of feudalism – into the dustbin of history. All the communists have to do is agitate at the universities and TAFEs (by selling the Green Left Weekly and trying to encourage students to attend pro-Chavez rallies), march at trade union anti-Work Choices rallies, and run in elections. Then revolution will come about. Australia will turn into Cuba, except it will be a Cuba where people of all sexual orientations will be free to do their thing…

In truth, the only communists to hold true to historical communist practice are a few isolated groups around the world who have taken up the path of armed struggle. The Maoists in Nepal, who adhere to a Pol-Potist ideology and are engaged in an off-again, on-again war against the Nepalese State, are classic, old school communists. Given the disarray of the Nepalese politics, it is not inconceivable that the Maoist revolution could succeed, and a handful of revolutionaries could end up imposing their will on a reluctant, and hostile Nepalese population. Naturally, however, such conditions are not likely to replicate themselves in Australia.

5. What to do

Unfortunately, much confusion exists among nationalists as to who our enemies are. Nationalists tend to speak of ‘the Left’, and lump together all the disparate factions of the Left into a single group: ‘lefties’, ‘crusties’ and the like. But the fact of the matter is that the communists, and the anarchists, for instance, are unaware that we nationalists exist – at present. The only faction of the Left who are aware of us, and consider us to be a serious threat, are the Antifa, the militant anti-racists – who strive selflessly to avert a second Holocaust by posting photographs, names, addresses, telephone numbers, etc., of nationalist activists on the Internet.

It should be mentioned that it is doubtful that the Antifa are really ‘Left’ at all. Although they adopt a Trotskyist rhetoric (‘smashing fascism’ is a Trotskyist phrase), they do not seem to support communism or anarchism – nor even the watered-down social democracy of the Labor Party. No, they believe in racial harmony and the brotherhood of man – and the use of violence to enforce it. They believe in the same pan-racialist, multi-racialist ideology as the Labor Party, or the Democrats, or the Greens – but, in their case, they make that ideology political. Schmitt defines the ‘political’ as any conflict that is raised to the level of war between two or more parties: and certainly, the Antifa are political by Schmitt’s definition. But they are not Left, and, in Australia, they are not do not possess the numbers, the discipline and the organisation of the European Antifa. (According to postings on Stormfront, European nationalist activists are disappointed by the calibre of the Australian Antifa. Indeed, the Antifa in the Netherlands, for instance, is so powerful that it controls neighbourhoods, and hides illegal immigrants who are being sought by the police there). Here, their warfare is psychological. They could not summon up the numbers needed to ‘smash fascists’ at an APEC or anti-Work Choices rally; the communists, however, can.

The point is, though, the communists are not aware of us. They do not acknowledge we exist, and to them, we are an irrelevancy. After all, history is inevitably progressing towards communism: does not the hostility of the Australian electorate towards Work Choices show this? We nationalists do not fit into the grand scheme of things. To the communists, nationalists are ‘Nazis’, and ‘Nazism’ was a tool of the German capitalist classes, who sought to lure the German working-classes away from communism. The capitalist class of Australia, however, is not, at the moment using ‘Nazism’ and ‘Fascism’ to trick the Australian working-classes; it is using the Australian Labor Party. Fortunately for communism, the Australian proletariat will eventually wake up to the Labor Party. The upshot is that communists and other like-minded progressives need not pay any heed, for the time being, to the ‘Neo-Nazis’ of New Right and other nationalist groups.

Were they to notice us, however, their reaction would be along the lines of: the ‘Neo-Nazis’ of New Right, National-Anarchism and other nationalist groups are in the pay of the Australian capitalist class and possibly the federal government itself. These ‘Neo-Nazis’ are trying to lure the Australian working-classes away from their salvation, communism. Really, all capitalism is ‘fascist, racist, imperialist’ – ‘Neo-Nazism’ is capitalism with the mask torn off. The solution? ‘Smash fascism’, use violence, use any means necessary…

The communists can be expected to say many things along these lines, and no doubt they will end up alienating potential members (e.g., left-leaning university students) with their hyperbole and bellicose rhetoric in attacking us; they will also, inadvertently, generate more publicity for us than we could manage to achieve ourselves. It is also possible that, by doing so, they will succeed in making us more attractive to the politically uneducated (that is, not indoctrinated with Trotskyism) university student.

I will, at this point, digress, and bring up the subject of Hugo Chavez, and in particular, one of the techniques he uses to get attention for his ideas. Recently, Chavez announced that he plans to bring his ‘Bolivarist revolution’ to Venezuelan high schools, and alter the content of high school text books along ‘Bolivarist’ lines, filling them up with the crapulous mumbo-jumbo of communist and other progressive ideologues (including the Colombian guerrilla groups). The reaction to Chavez’ announcement was entirely typical. Liberal democrats, in Venezuela and the United States, reacted with outrage, and demanded that Chavez adhere to the norms of free speech and liberal democracy. Chavez’ supporters (and he has many) reacted with enthusiasm.

Nowhere did anyone declare that Chavez’ policy was well-intentioned, but needed to be examined more closely, etc., etc., in the way that the Labor Party, for instance, reacts to any of John Howard’s policy announcements. No: Chavez polarises people, he splits them down the middle. You either love him or hate him. But this is precisely what Chavez wants. He wants the liberal democrats, the Bushophiles inside and outside Venezuela, to hate him; and he has, over many years, become awfully good at it. He instinctively knows what to do in order to get his opponents frothing at the mouth, hurling invective and hyperbole, making themselves look foolish, and piquing the interest of the otherwise apathetic masses. And he has done this, not once, but many times; he is, to a certain extent, a one-trick pony, pulling off the same stunt again and again. His opponents have such little regard for him that they do not see how they are being manipulated by the master. The solution to Chavezism? Incorporate him into the system, and treat him with respect: hold press conferences with him and George Bush, where the latter defers to him as respectfully as he would to Ehmud Olmert or Ariel Sharon.

One can see the parallels with Australian nationalism: all the communists at APEC had to do, for instance, was to invite the National-Anarchists up on stage and ask them to speak; the audience would have listened respectfully, and applauded – just as they did with the indigenous Australian woman at the start, and the North American conscientious objector – and National-Anarchism would have been neutered.

This will never happen. The communists can be expected to react with hostility and hyperbole, every time; and the same reaction can be provoked every time. In that sense, they are as predictable as machines.. The communist policy is always the same: no platform for fascists! No free speech for Nazi scum!

So how do we provoke them? How do we get their attention? Well, we only need to repeat APEC a thousand times over – APEC with more and more permutations. But it is essential to keep up the ‘Left’ talk, the ‘Left’ symbolism, the ‘Left’ imagery, the ‘Left’ sloganeering’, and the ‘Left’ methods of mass organisation, mass activism, extra-parliamentarism, and anarchistic, non-hierarchical, decentralised organisation. Such an approach will ensure that the communists will work themselves up into a state of hysteria: we are using their symbols, their ideas, to lure the naïve young away from progressive, multiracial, tolerant communism and towards ‘Neo-Nazism’ and capitalism. They will be unable to help themselves, and unable to see that the best means of ‘smashing’ us would be to give us equal rights and equal time at their rallies, and possibly in their publications as well.

The Australian communist groups appear to recruit using what I call ‘chaff-cutter’ methods. They attract literally hundreds of young Australians, mainly students. But many of the prospective new members are naïve about the communism of a Socialist Alliance or Socialist Alternative: they believe that these organisations are liberal, like the mainstream political parties – that they encourage free thought and free debate. But the prospective member learns, very quickly, that Lenin and Trotsky had, in advance, worked out the answer to every political problem in existence – and that he had better recognise this or ship out. Subtle, and then not so subtle, peer pressure is used to bring a recalcitrant into line. Eventually, the prospective member gets fed up and ceases his association. He is a liberal and an individualist – both traits fostered by our liberal democratic society – and, at the same time, like many idealistic young people, wants to do something good and progressive. But the inflexibility which lies at the heart of any Marxist-Leninist party, and which is communism’s greatest strength (and greatest weakness) repels him.

The scenario is not all bad, however, for the communist group: a small minority of the prospective recruits will stay on and the communist group is left with a small hard-core. Communism is, above all, a ruthless ideology, which often turns on its own (there is no need to cite the many examples from history). But their recruiting and indoctrination policies – more reminiscent of a cult than anything else – get results. The wheat is separated from the chaff.

Here, though, we nationalists can step in – and pick up the chaff. And, it has to be said, we are not going to expand as a movement by recruiting the same old faces from Stormfront Down Under – the same old white nationalists and Australian bush patriots who have been hanging around the nationalist scene for years and years. No, we are only going to expand by recruiting people who have a fresh perspective which comes from being on the outside of the existing nationalistic scene.

In this connection, it is advisable that nationalists go out and attend as many political meetings as possible: lectures on Lenin, Trotsky, Chavez, etc., delivered by Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative, Resistance. But not only political meetings of the left; nationalists should attend also meetings of the mainstream parties like, here in Australia, the Liberal party, the Greens, ect.
The best course of action is to go there, as normal, intelligent people, and ask questions about their beliefs, and try and engage them in the debate they are so averse to. This is a New Right Australia strategy.

6. Mistakes made

Recently, a nationalist friend of mine – a man with a long and distinguished career in Australian nationalist activism – showed me a nationalist publication which he had helped edit and publish. It was a handsome production. But, while looking through it, I found a caricature of an African immigrant – a giant African immigrant, stalking the streets of some Australian city, with a knife in his hand, and, needless to say, up to no good. I chided my friend for inserting such a crude caricature with overtones of old-fashioned racism: it could have come straight off Tom Metzger’s website. My friend joked, half-heartedly, that at least the cartoonist didn’t draw blood dripping from the African’s mouth. I rested my case.

On the back of the publication there was a reproduction of a beautiful painting, done one hundred years ago, of the inauguration of the first Australian federal parliament. Looking at the picture, I found myself confused as to who the intended target audience of the magazine was: monarchists? Old Australian types who voted for Menzies in 1949? Often this Australian nationalism is an emotional nationalism, with no intellectual foundations, no ideology. Ask them to define what is ‘Australian’, and they will have no answer.

Even if one is not a republican, one will find such imagery incongruous. Granted, governor-generals are part of Australia’s past: but the emphasis is on the word past. Any young person (and the only people who could revel in such patriotic Australian imagery must be very old indeed – at death’s door if they voted for Menzies, anyhow) would find such a nationalist publication off-putting – as dull as a school trip to a museum of Australian history.

As for the cartoon of the African – and there were similar crude caricatures throughout the magazine – there are other, more tasteful ways to address the question of immigration. Link immigration to globalism, for one; or point out how immigration drains Australia’s resources (e.g., water resources) and is bad for the environment… No need to use pictures of blonde, nordic women cuddling blonde, nordic babies, either.

Oddly enough, I agreed with around 90% of the publication’s content: the difference between their approach, and New Right’s, was one of emphasis, and of imagery. Thinking it over, I saw that the whole problem could be summed up in the form of a parable.

Suppose that Henry Lawson, or Jack Lang, or some other Australian ‘bush’ socialist could be transported in time to 2007. We nationalists would explain to him that the old Australian Labor Party, which championed white working man’s racialist socialism, has ceased to exist; in its place is a party of namby-pamby multi-cultism. The union movement, too, is no longer interested in fighting immigration: all it wants is the abolition of Work Choices and federal and state Labor government. Indeed, the union movement has lost the political power it once had – only 17% of the Australian workforce is unionised. The way forward for socialism – for a system where labour dominates capital, and not the other way around – is to restructure the entire political and economic system. That means changing liberal democracy. But that goal, in turn, can only be achieved by building up a mass movement on the streets, which will bring about radical change through mass pressure. To build a mass movement, we need to bypass the unions and the political parties, and start taking our message – of racialism and socialism – directly to the masses. What’s more, we need to talk the language of today – not the language of 100 years ago.

Unfortunately, our way is, for the moment, blocked – by communists, who, like parasites, attach themselves to every progressive cause, whether it be anti-globalisation or the trade union struggle for better wages and conditions. They are unpopular, in the minority, and they adhere to a theory which has been falsified by history. But they are convinced that their cause is the only moral one, and every political ideology contradictory to their own (including ours) is evil and immoral, and should be destroyed, by violence if necessary. Their bark is worse than their bite, but they are still numerous enough, and hostile enough, to prevent nationalists from reaching the masses and becoming a true, mass political force. And so one of the prime necessities of our movement is to unblock the communist blockage…

And that is what I would tell Henry Lawson.

In relation to this, it should be asked: why, if the communists have been going at it for so long, are they so unsuccessful? The communists enjoy all kinds of advantages that we nationalists do not: the media coverage they receive is generally favourable (e.g., see the media coverage of the APEC demonstrators); they can display their names and faces with impunity (at least, they will not be treated as harshly as a so-called ‘Neo-Nazi’ nationalist); they have numbers, nice newspapers, propaganda fliers, badges, flags, banners... And they can attend any demonstration for any cause whatsoever – anti-globalisation, anti-WorkChoices, anti-war – without being set upon by the other demonstrators. And, furthermore, most of Australia seems to support their positions on, for instance, the war in Iraq, or WorkChoices (or perhaps it is the case that the communists attach themselves to popular causes). And yet, they have made little to no headway in all the years they have been here: the communist revolution is further away than ever, and they cannot get one MP elected to state or federal parliament...

The answer, or the beginning of an answer, came to me when I was leafing through old issues of the Australasian Spartacist newspaper from the 1970s. This is a long-running Trotskyist-communist newspaper, which began in 1973 and which is still running today. More or less, it makes a cult, a fetishistic cult (like the Nutzi-cult of Hitler), out of Trotsky and Lenin: every political event – from the war in Iraq, to a trade union dispute in Sydney, to a scuffle between two rival communist groups holding stalls at a university – is interpreted from the perspective of Trotskyist Marxist-Leninism. The frightening thing is that there is no difference between the writing style, and ideas, of the 1970s issues written thirty years ago, and the issues written today. Which raises the possibility that the same person has been writing all the articles for that newspaper all along – and getting nowhere. This obsessiveness, and the refusal to countenance anything other than orthodox Leninist and Trotskyist view of socialism and politics, makes me speculate that the authors of Australasian Spartacist, and other communist publications (like the Green Left Weekly) are literally insane.

And this is why the communists have been failing in Australia for so many decades: they cannot ditch Lenin and Trotsky. It is not that Australians do not want radical socialism; it is that they cannot understand what two dead Russians – who died a long time ago – have to do with a political struggle in Australia today. (The same could be asked of many nationalists today: why is Hitler, for instance, so important?).

7. Conclusion: The strategy of tension

Something else that leapt out of those old issues of Australasian Spartacist was an account of the famous ‘Battle of Lewisham’ in Britain in 1977, which was an epic confrontation between the British National Front and hundreds of communist protestors in South-East London. The clash was violent, leading to hospitalisations, and the police use of tear gas, riot shields, etc., against the protestors. Reading the venomous account of events from the communist perspective, I was reminded of the (far smaller, by comparison) Battle of APEC. Economic, and to a great extent, social, circumstances in Britain in 1977 differed from those of Australia in 2007: but otherwise, nothing has changed. The National Front in the 1970s was a mass-movement with a popular base, and left-leaning; it won a certain amount of support from the British working-classes, effectively challenging the communists and socialists in what the latter two regarded as their own domain. The communist response was to ‘crush fascism’. Hence, the ensuing confrontation at Lewisham.

Perhaps (depending on whose account you believe) some members or supporters of the National Front, who were still bourgeois in outlook, and still held to liberal democratic ideas, found the idea of a political confrontation with communists off-putting; that is, they did not want to suffer verbal abuse from communists, and have bricks thrown at them, and be assaulted. Which is a natural enough reaction. But they did not realise, and many nationalists in Australia today do not realise, the political value of these confrontations. Suppose that 500 or a 1000 nationalists from all around Australia joined up to march through Sydney or Melbourne. The police would be out in force, as would the media; and so would the communists. The spectacle would ensure more media coverage for nationalism than we could generate by ourselves (through pamphleteering, etc., or through websites); and, at the same time, events would radicalise our membership and draw them closer to one another. And the communists would do all of this for us for free. If we are to look at it in economic terms, the return from a demonstration pays even more than the investment in pamphlets and websites.

And all of this can be done tomorrow. Some liberal media commentators will argue that events like the Battle of Lewisham came about because of the high inflation and high unemployment in Britain in the seventies; which is untrue. All one needs is a large body of nationalists who are prepared to go out and demonstrate: then the communists will show up, and behave like they have behaved for the past ninety years. Like monkeys in a zoo cage, they will jump up and down, shriek and spit. And the average Australian will wonder what all the fuss is about, and some of them may even become interested in nationalism as a result.

The essential thing is this: all demonstrations have to be well-organised, for a worthy cause, and above all, disciplined!

We at New Right do not endorse violence. One can, however, use the metaphor of war: that is, any confrontation with communists is a battle in a political war. A good many nationalists in Australia and elsewhere are in political fairy-land; they think they can form a nice little bourgeois liberal democratic party, and be treated with the same respect, and enjoy the same rights, as all the other liberal democratic parties. But, once their parties get up and going, they are due for a shock. The communists will use non-liberal democratic means to deny them their rights. And, possibly, a more effective Antifa will spring up and oppose them with the same means.

Christian Blocher’s Swiss People’s Party (SVP) recently held a rally which was set upon by the Black Bloc of Left-wing Chaotics (an Antifa Black Bloc), who caused an enormous amount of property damage and disruption. The group was arrested, and the rally went ahead. Christian Blocher’s party posted a triumphant account of events at http://www.svp-udc.ch/internet-tv.html . But Australian nationalists cannot expect to get off as lightly. Which is why we must take the war (again speaking metaphorically) to the enemy.

And, while I am not a militarist, I must state my belief that this kind of confrontation is good: it cleanses, it purifies, it bonds the ‘soldiers’ – who are made up of disparate social groups who may have otherwise never have come into contact with one another – together. And, psychologically, to go on the attack is much better than going on the defence: which is the posture many nationalists take now, confining their ‘activism’ to the Internet and not trying to get their ideas out to the Australian community. Which is why we at New Right Australia/New Zealand endorse a strategy of tension. And we endorse direct political confrontation, with the goal of smashing political dogmas, and forming a real social alternative.

*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