What went wrong with the NPD? What went right?

My last article got me thinking about German politics again and had me mulling on the question, 'What went wrong with the NPD?'.

The decline of the NPD, and the rise of the AfD, touches a sore spot with me: I've always liked and admired the NPD, and viewed it as the model we Australian nationalists ought to follow; at the same time, I now acknowledge that the NPD approach hasn't generated much in the way of success. Is it the case, then, that 'neofascists' and 'Neo-Nazis' won't ever do well at elections (at least in Western Europe - let's leave out the examples of Jobbik and Golden Dawn)?

Should the NPD be considered a 'Neo-Nazi' party? My answer is: absolutely. I could reel off a list of the similarities between the NSDAP and the NPD. But I can detect some crucial differences: 

1) No charismatic leader. The NPD has been led by men who may be ideologically sound but are not as brilliant as Germany's former Führer: Voigt, Apfel, Pastörs... Which is strange, considering that National Socialism is structured around the 'leadership principle' and what Hitler called 'personality' (that is, the cult of personality around great men). And not just National Socialism: all of the fascism of the 1920s and 1930s revolves around this notion of the importance of charismatic and attractive leadership. Were some fascist from that period to time-travel to the present, the first thing he'd ask of the NPD is, 'Who's your leader? Is he smart? Do people respect him? Does he deliver a good speech? Does he look good in photographs and newsreels? Is he well-dressed? Do women like him?'...

The NPD leadership don't have well-defined media personalities: simply put, no-one knows them nor can they remember, after seeing them, who they are. This is not true of the leaders of the populist parties - men and women such as Farage, Le Pen, Wilders, Åkesson - who are memorable, and well-presented. Compared to them Voigt looks scruffy and ordinary; he reminds everyone of their father. What a contrast Frauke Petry of the AfD presents. It's a great advantage when your party is headed by such a well-dressed, and distinctive, woman.

Oddly enough, the populists - with their understanding of the visuals of politics and politicians - stand closer to Hitler and the NSDAP than the NPD.

2) No uniforms. The NPD has badges, banners, flags, drums, bugles, just like the NSDAP, and does marches and rallies just like the NSDAP. But it doesn't do salutes, doesn't wear uniforms and doesn't structure itself as a paramilitary organisation. It can't do those things because of the law. One might say that this is a good thing, because very few groups can wear a fascist-type uniform with panache and style, and besides which, wearing uniforms - LARPing, as Colin Liddell, a foe of National Socialism, contemptuously calls it - distracts from the doctrine, the politics.

But the fascist doctrine is embodied in the uniform, and the salutes, and the paramilitary ranks. Men in civilian clothes, in business suits, won't bring about Yockey's 'Age of Authority' (that is, age of fascism).

I sometimes ask myself what would happen in Germany were the uniform ban, and the salute ban, lifted. The German nationalists would go back to wearing uniforms in a thrice. Perhaps they wouldn't look good; perhaps the Germans don't have the fashion sense that they did seventy years ago. As one British journalist put it, 'WWII was the last time the Germans dressed well'. But maybe the NPD would manage to pull it off - and enjoy tremendous success.

3) The constitutional order. The trinity of nation, state and party lay at the heart of the National Socialist doctrine, and the Führer - with his special (one might say mystical?) - insight into the minds and hearts of the German people serve to mediate the three. This is the rationalisation, the justification, for the constitutional arrangements adopted by Germany in the years from 1933 to 1945 - arrangements which differ radically from today's and which give National Socialism its character.

We know that the NPD don't think much of the present political system and the Grundgesetz, or Basic Law, imposed on Germany by the Allies and their collaborators: the NPD can't attack the Bundesrepublik openly, but it's safe to assume that their feelings towards it are negative. The question is, would they replace it with the old legal, constitutional system which existed before Germany's defeat - with the essentials of that system at least? Would the offices of the chancellor and president be combined into one; would all other political parties be abolished; would the parliaments of the Länder (states of Germany) be abolished; would Germany become a state with parliamentary elections for candidates one party only... Enquiring minds want to know.

I myself favour Germany returning to the old ways, simply because the system as it stands now doesn't work anymore - if it ever did - and can't be saved. (Or more accurately, it won't be saved: to amend the Basic Law, a majority of votes from the Länder are required, and such votes for an amendment - to deal with the Merkel problem - won't be happening any time soon).

Three alternatives exist: Germany can stay where it is, Germany can turn back to the old days of the NSDAP, or Germany can turn back to the old days of the KPD and SED. (Perhaps a fourth possibility exists: Germany can become an Islamic state under shariah law).

I much prefer the second option to the others. German nationalist intellectuals have to make the case for it. With his brilliant analyses of the Weimar constitution in the 1920s, Carl Schmitt exposed its flaws for all to see, and helped - inadvertently - to weaken Germany's faith in Weimar. Perhaps some modern nationalist intellectual could perform the same service with the Basic Law and the Bundesrepublik.

Barack Obama, Political Zombie

Sometimes the worse thing you can do to a politician is give him a second term, and this is one of those times. Obama knows this. He didn't look like a winner on this campaign, and he didn't on victory night. His facial expression was, 'What the hell have I gotten into?'. Likewise, many an American voter will wake up tomorrow and say, 'What the hell have we done?'.

The problem is that Obama is out of ideas, and the economic and political problems which were there, at the start of the election, haven't gone away and won't go away. What will he do about unemployment? Anaemic growth? The weak dollar? Rising costs for food staples, oil and other commodities? Perhaps he'll try a program of 'stimulus', fuelled by public works and deficit spending - no, that's been done. Or devalue the currency some more: QE4, QE5, QE6... But that's been done.

The only thing left for Obama to do, when it comes to the economy, is to hike taxes - on income tax, capital gains, dividends, estate tax - and remove the tax loopholes on the Alternative Minimum Tax. Obama desperately wants this because of 'fairness'. But the House of Representatives isn't controlled by the Republicans, so, he won't be able to do that. He's the closest thing to a dead man walking: a lame-duck president who has a four-year term to sit out. Obama's second term will be 2008's mouldering corpse. Eventually - it will take a couple of days - even the dimmest liberal media commentator will see this...

(As we know, the big cuts on dividends, capital gains, income tax, etc., were introduced by Bush Jr., and they are set to expire - that is, be replaced by higher tax rates - in January 2013, unless Congress acts. If the higher rates take effect, it will be the biggest tax increase since Herbert Hoover's in 1931 - the tax hikes which, the supply-side commentators argue, caused the Great Depression. The markets are understandably jittery about such a prospect. With any luck, the legislators will muddle through, and come up with a compromise, as they did late last year. But it's just possible that Obama will get the 'fairness', i.e., the tax hikes, he's been asking for, simply because of the fiscal cliff).

Many reasons are being put forth as to why Romney didn't win. The supply-siders, such as John Tamny, will say that Romney didn't endorse a return to the gold standard (in fact, he did promise to set up a Gold Commission, which was more than Obama did); the 'liberal' Republicans - which is about 98% of the party leadership - will say that Romney should have reached out more to Mestizo voters (despite the fact that Mestizo voters didn't cast the deciding vote); American nativists, Far Rightists, racialists, white nationalists, will say that Romney should have campaigned against illegal immigration and thus 'energised the base' of white Republican Party voters more. Some blame the trade unions, and others make dark mutterings about taking the vote away from women, who, supposedly, voted for Obama in droves.

I don't have the answer. Except that I observe this: Afro-American voters vote for Obama because he's one of them - he's their man. The mainstream media notes this, and more or less acknowledges that the Democrats, and Obama, will take the black vote for granted. This is even though the Afro-Americans are suffering under Obama. (Similarly, black South Africans will vote for the ANC, even though life, for them, is bad under ANC; Mugabe's tribe voted, and continues to vote, for ZANU-PF...). Whites, though, are held to a different standard of morality: they aren't mean to vote for a Romney because he's white. No, they are morally obliged to vote for Obama.

In contrast to the liberal media, the right-wing media tells white Americans (and Hispanics and Afro-Americans) to vote for Romney because Romney and the Republicans will 'restore the republic as intended by our Founding Fathers', because they restore 'liberty and free markets, as intended by our Founding Fathers', and similar such nonsense. In other words, they are meant to vote 'conservative' on the basis of abstract and universalist principles. In reality, Afro-Americans, and Mestizos, don't abide by such principles. They play by the rules of tribalist politics, identity politics.

Supposedly, the white nationalists are meant to abide by a tribalist, ethnicist politics. By that reasoning, they should have endorsed Romney. The leaders of white nationalism and American Far Right nativism should have told their followers - and they do have a sizable following - to do all they can for Romney, to get out there and vote for their man Romney, and despite the fact that white Americans won't necessarily be better off under Romney.

But these leaders (and I won't name names) didn't. They smirked, they sneered, they talked Romney down, they told their following that 'Voting changes nothing', 'America and the white race are doomed', 'Things have to get worse before they get better', 'Democracy and politics are a farce', and on and on.

AFRO-AMERICAN: Votes for Obama because he's black;

WHITE NATIONALIST: Don't vote for Romney, he's not pure enough, 'Voting changes nothing', 'Romney and Obama are the same', race doesn't matter.

To repeat: Afro-Americans are suffering under Obama. They are suffering under his economic policies, and his immigration policies - immigrants are consistently snapping up most of the jobs created under the Obama Administration, and taking them from white and Afro-Americans. But they vote for their man. I can think of one or two of Romney's policies which would have had a positive effect on the lives of white Americans, but that's besides the point: someone who's white, and who promulgates racialist, ethnicist and identity politics, should have endorsed Romney, and done everything in their power to get him elected - because he was white.

Quite a few white American 'conservatives' vote Republican because of dog whistle signals - they pick up on, subconsciously, the fact that the Republican Party is the party of the married white person who owns a home or has a mortgage (as Steve Sailer points out). I'm sure that there's an enormous anger, among that segment of the American population (which is quite sizable), against the Obama voters and supporters: the college students, the Jewish-American hedge fund managers, the fat cat public sector unionists, the hipsters, the Hollywood actors and directors, the rock stars like Bruce Springsteen, the stupid soccer moms, the homosexual journalists at The New York Times, The Washington Post... Were I a white American 'conservative', my first impulse would be to approach one of these Obama voters and say, 'F*ck you, for making my life, and the lives of my countrymen, that little bit harder for the next four years'. The same goes for all the Australians, Canadians and Europeans who support Obama.

But really, I can't castigate these Obama-supporters: they are, after all, voting according to type, just as much as the African-Americans, who want their 'Obama phones', are. No, it's the white nationalists, the movement purists, in America, who deserve the anger.

White nationalism really is a contrived, ahistorical, abstract and universalist ideology. In a way, it's a form of Christianity: one is obliged to unconditionally love one's brethren, simply on the basis of their race, and ignore any unique ethnic, national and regionalist features. Such an enterprise is doomed to fail, of course, and historically, has never been enacted. Perhaps this is why white nationalism is so purist and aloof from the doings of the real world. Because it is so abstract, and doesn't take into account political realities, it counsels its followers not to engage in politics, in any shape or form.

America is a weak country under Obama, and for that, European nationalists should be grateful. Had Obama the gumption of a Franklin Roosevelt or a Winston Churchill, he would have invaded Greece and Hungary by now to 'stop fascism' by stamping out the Golden Dawn and Jobbik; he would have also loudly remonstrated with Germany and told it to stop bullying its fellow European nations (or perhaps, solicitously, offered those bullied nations some Marshall Plan-type aid - to get them on their feet again). But America (and Israel) have lost all interest in Europe, and will only pay attention if and when Germany starts inclining on the same path as Greece and Hungary. But by then it will be too late. We nationalists can pray and hope.

As for the American whites, well, they'll have to start looking at the political possibilities - outside of libertarianism, conservatism and white nationalism.

The Menace of Unity: To Uniform or not to Uniform?

Much of the nationalist political struggle isn't about impressing one's ideas on 'ordinary people' (however they may be defined), but about positioning oneself and one's ideology in relation to other nationalist groups. One does that in a number of ways. One can write articles and books explaining why one's 'line' is different from the other fellow's (in much the same way Lenin did for most of his political career, churning out endless treatises on why a rival Marxist theoritician's path was the wrong path, or why such-and-such a faction in the Russian socialist movement were bounders and blockheads). It's a useful and extremely important exercise - Lenin's diatribe writings have stood the test of time and are still used, by the contemporary Left, today. But there are other, more subtle, and more practical means: one of these is the multi-denominational event, when a bunch of nationalist individuals and groups turn up to listen to one another's speeches, or just socialise. The question is, how is one to stand out? Suppose you are hosting other nationalists at some venue, like King Henry VIII receiving some foreign dignitary (the King of Scotland, or the French Ambassador) in the TV show The Tudors (2007-2010). Your first duty is to impress upon them the power of your organisation. That means festooning the back wall with a giant banner with the logo of one's group, wearing a special, very distinctive t-shirt and cap with one's logo, and maybe even going so far as wearing tie-pins, belt buckles and rings with one's logo. That sounds excessive, but I can name at least three or four nationalist tendencies and groups which do a roaring trade in a range of nationalist, Far Right and racialist paraphenalia associated with their particular group. Skinheads will go to the extent of having jacket patches and even tattoos with their group symbols. All of this 'visual propaganda' serves the purpose of sending a variety of messages - unspoken messages - to the groups of the opposing tendencies.

As I wrote in my last post, the nationalist scene is awfully competitive in some Western countries. The question is, how does a group stand out? How does it leap ahead of the pack? Forget chopping and changing one's ideology to appeal to a mythical 'Joe Normal': how does one get noticed by Joe Normal in the first place? How does one distinguish one's group from all the other groups?

I'm not an expert, by any means, on Hungarian Far Right politics. But I'm willing to believe that, ten years or so ago, there were a variety of Hungarian nationalist groups and parties on the scene. Jobbik, for the time being, has crushed them all. Its ideology is uncompromising, extreme, inflammatory, unapologetically anti-Semitic and pro-fascist (that is, pro-Arrow Cross, the great wartime Hungarian fascist party). We all know the clichés of modern political science (first popularised by Hitler in Mein Kampf) to the effect that the masses only like blacks and whites, extreme polarisations: they don't like subtle politics. What's more, they want The Truth with a capital 'T': and, in Hitler's politics, that means saying downright inflammatory and offensive (usually offensive to x ethnic group) things which stand to get one in trouble, while lauding oneself for one's courage and even foolhardiness. ('There's just something about me: I must speak the truth, even if I go to jail for it'). The Hungarian masses, certainly, don't want soft soap from a Far Right Hungarian nationalist: they want to hear about how the Jews, homosexuals and gypsies are poisoning Hungarian life, and they expect to hear it from that nationalist politician alone (no liberal democratic politician, no matter how "conservative", will dare a word against Jews, gypsies and homosexuals). Similarly, while there must be "moderate" Islamist parties in Afghanistan, somehow it's the Taliban which rises to the top (in occupied Palestine, it's Hamas, in Lebanon, Hezbollah). And, on the Left, the Third World is littered with the wreckage of socialist (but not Marxist) parties which were passed over in favour of the communist ones. Fascism, Islamism, Communism: three brutally simple, and durable, doctrines.

But, in addition to having a frank, uncompromising, extremist ideology, Jobbik had another ace in the hole, and that was the Magyar Gárda. This was a militia - an unarmed militia - composed of men who wore uniforms resembling those of the Arrow Cross. The Magyar Gárda, to me, looked perfectly inoffensive: their get-up had a quaint Central European feel about it - except for the military boots, you could be forgiven for thinking that they were peasant herdsman who lived in the mountains... But their appearance drove the liberal media and politicians into a frenzy. Footage was shown, on TV, of the Magyar Gárda marching, with headlines like 'The Rise of the Far Right in Europe' - these were reports portending all sorts of calamities. Really it just a bunch of men marching in uniform (but not in the armed forces, or the police), but, to go by the liberal media, you could be forgiven that the sky had caved in.

We see the same phenomenon repeated elsewhere - e.g., with the treatment of the Patriots of the Ukraine, another paramilitary-type group. And, no doubt, if a similar uniformed (or half-uniformed) bunch of nationalists were to appear in Britain, the liberal establishment would go into a frenzy, and demand that the old 1936 law against the wearing of uniforms 'for political purposes' be dusted off and applied again. (Some nationalist commentators argue that the English Defence League does break the uniform law. In their view, the fact that the EDL hasn't been jailed only proves that the EDL are in collusion with the state).

Why is this? The reasons are twofold, in my view.

The first reason is the fact that there is a sort of uniform. White Western people aren't mean to wear uniforms of any kind: they are meant to, aesthetically, 'Do their own thing' and 'Be an individual'. Muslims, to be sure, are allowed to dress the same, or nearly the same. Hijabs, Chadors and Burkahs all help conceal a Muslim woman's individuality and mark her out as belonging to a particular ethnic and religious group. The same goes for the austere dress of the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox Jews (then there are the moderately religious Jews, who wear kippahs but don't wear black 19th century clothes, like the Haredim). In the West, negating one's own individuality, by dressing the same way as the fellow next to you, is really, really dangerous - if the negator is white. This sort of self-negation suggests that you don't put your own unique tastes and preferences first: instead, you put them second, to something else - collectivism.

The second reason is the militarist discipline - the fact that these outfits, boots, etc., look military, and that the marchers are acting in a unified, disciplined way (which is what a march is). Again, the liberal establishment disdains this and abominates it as a sort of collectivism. Men (especially white men) concentrated on a single purpose, a single goal, subordinating themselves, like rowers in a rowing race, and acting in a unified, harmonious and even mechanical way: that's dangerous. It may even lead to socialism, and hence, following Hayek's book, The Road to Serfdom (1944), serfdom. Hayek's book was a impassioned, brilliant defence of 'Anglo-Saxon liberties' which were, at the time of writing, being challenged by the Communist and Fascist alternative. Hayek's fear was that the collectivisation and planning of the war effort would carry on in to peace time, after the successful conclusion of the war, in the Anglo-Saxon countries... What is socialism but the mechanisation and militarisation of peacetime activities, e.g., economic ones? Another, unspoken fear of the Hayeks is - what if such a system actually works? Now, in 2012, we have plenty of evidence that it doesn't work: if the East Germans - the most disciplined, self-subordinating, efficient and 'Prussian' of all the peoples of Europe - couldn't make communism and the planned economy work, well, no-one can: certainly not Cubans or North Koreans! But you never know...

Aside from that angle - that 'Fear of marching white men is really a fear of socialism' - it's also a reaction that is purely aesthetic. The typical establishment liberal finds the sight of Jobbik-style marchers more disgusting than, say, the sight of two gay men kissing.

At any rate, fighting against the white man's desire to subordinate oneself to a group is a lost cause. We have plenty of subcultures - Goth, Emo, skinhead, metal, and so forth - based on a visual and aesthetic conformity. But even outside that, there's the trade unions...

The latter example is a particularly illuminating one. For around about two weeks now, construction workers in the CFMEU and other unions have been blockading the building site of a department store building in the Melbourne Central Business District: among their litany of complaints is that the construction company - Grocon - won't let union members identify themselves, on site, by allowing them to wear union patches on their jackets or stickers on their helmets. Symbols (and the feeling of belonging that these symbols give them) are important to these men - important enough to lose pay over. This morning, acting upon a court order brought against the strikers, by Grocon, mounted police attempted to break the blockade. (See the picture above). Some poor horses were punched, and some of the strikers were pepper-sprayed... (The TV news footage shows a bemused Chinese immigrant woman staring out of a McDonald's window at the goings-on: all the strikers, and the policemen, were white). The media gleefully recounted that it was like the 'good old days' of the industrial militancy of the 1970s and early 1980s. (I saw two bearded student types, one of them waving an Industrial Workers of the World flag: anarcho-syndicalists, trying to associate themselves with this episode of militancy?).

I pass the building site, and now the strikers, every day on my way to work (I had a union flier thrust into my hands one day). These men are real blue-collar: they seem to be of a particular type - Aussie, middle-aged, often overweight, and they smoke and swear a lot. But what is striking is that they dress more or less alike: they wear a kind of semi-uniform. It's a long way from neofascism, but we have to remember that fascism emerged, originally, from anarcho-syndicalism (which in turn was based on 'spontaneous' worker's socialism sprouting out of trade union militancy).

At any rate, I didn't get to see the riot this morning. But it's good to pay attention to such things: they haul you out of the incestuous confines of nationalist politics. If we were to put all the members of the various racialist, nationalist and Far Right Australian groups together in Lonsdale Street in Melbourne - there wouldn't be half the number of union strikers that were there, in that same street, that day. Granted, the unionists had a strong economic incentive to be part of the union and participate, but, at the same time, they are losing money every day of the strike. (Not as much as Grocon, which claims it is losing $370,000 a day). All of that unified effort, collectivism, self-sacrifice and abnegation of one's own individuality - on behalf of white men. Gives one pause, doesn't it? Why can't nationalism do the same?

My advice to any nationalist group is: do what Jobbik did, and get some gear together, get it on, and give the appearance (appearance is the operative word) of renouncing your identity and subordinating yourself to the group. It doesn't have to be a military-style uniform: it could be a t-shirt, a belt-buckle or a tie-pin.

'To uniform or not to uniform?' is a question which has been asked, countless times, in post-war nationalist circles. There is a whole thread, on the neofascist forum IronMarch.Org, about it, with many intelligent arguments, for and against, on both sides. Reading it makes one aware of the role played by the uniform in politics, whether it be on the Far Right or the Far Left.

I found this comment, from Benjamin Noyles, particularly insightful:

It depends on your aim, In some cases it may be that being militant and threatening, alienating and frightening may just be the only way to get anyone to pay attention to you. Certainly almost nobody in the group below would have been known if they did not activly go out of their way to offend everyone - it got them speaking venues in university events across america, tv interviews, radio shows, full media coverage, the works. The Uniform was just a tool to get people to change their perceptions so in this sense they were artists rather than a sincere political movement. They knew that the american right wing was going to be dead unless it learned to embrace it's shadow. what does it look like when an artist of all people babbles in an interview about how they are not this or that and they don't want to upset anybody.

Like with a musical subcluture being marginalised can also be the appeal for some, and can in time make itself acceptable.



- Really it all depends what your aim is at the time and the task you are doing.

He's right, he makes a good point. We have to consider the political and intellectual context of the times, of course. America was in the period of the early 1960s, so ably depicted in the TV series Mad Men (2007-2012), when the WASP hegemony of America (and the West) was at its full height) and the New Left was just beginning to cast its dark shadows over Western lands. The American Far Right, at the time, was starving. The likes of Rockwell just couldn't break through to mainstream America in order to warn them of 'The Negro and Commie Jew-fink menace'. He had tried, unsuccessfully, to work with respectable Far Right conservative organisations, and even front groups for (what he called) National Socialism; but he came away burned each time. He recounts the story in his autobiography This Time the World (1961) (I re-read parts of it tonight for the first time in years, and I still find it as brilliant and demented as ever). One can say he went too far, but one has to laud his courage for doing what he did in the first place. His theory may have not been that sound, but in his actions, he showed himself to be a real fascist and a real showman - an heir to Goebbels...

Am I counselling nationalist groups to dress like the Rockwellian Nazi bad guys in The Blues Brothers (1980)? No, and even the mere suggestion of such a thing brings out some strong opposing reactions from nationalists - even nationalists who post on a neofascist message board like IronMarch.Org. I'm making the point that Rockwell (who was well aware of it) broke the media embargo against Far Right nationalism and racialism with his methods, and, I'm sure, for a time, blew every single rival nationalist and racialist group out of the water.

Back to the Basics: Hardcore Neofascism for Britain

Poor old Nick Griffin! The Guardian has written a piece on Fatty Nick's denunciation (in a "report" authored by him, and released last week) of the English Defence League for excessive "Zionism". There's also a 48-minute speech, by Griffin, which, according to Counter-Currents, is 'An excellent exposé of the English Defence League and the Counter-Jihad movement as a Jewish-controlled false opposition'. Wait a moment: 'Jewish-controlled'? Doesn't that sound... "Nazi"? Isn't it the case that "Anti-Semites" who peddle zany "conspiracy theories" about Jews are dragging the British nationalist movement down? Aren't they all "Nutzis"? These were the Griffinite positions of five or so years ago; anyone who remembers the Griffinite line from then must be chortling now...

I must confess I have a personal stake in the matter. Five or so years ago, there were quite a few nationalist activists on the Australian scene who preached the Griffin doctrine (which I now call 'Breivikism'): the movement, in Australia, would only take off if all the "Nutzis", crazy anti-Semites - including me - could be purged. Continental Far Right-style, anti-Islamist populism was the order of the day. In all fairness, Far Right populism has done well on the Continent - especially on the Western side (or Europeans closely related, by dint of culture, to the Western side - e.g., the Scandinavian nations Finland, Norway and Sweden). It was a reasonable assumption that the same type of tactics could be applied, and meet with similar success, in Britain. Given that the nationalist movement had been, for the thirty or so years prior to the advent of Griffin, doing so badly, five years ago I was inclined to give Griffin the benefit of a doubt and wait and see if his new approach would work. But I was certain that Breivikist, populist anti-Islam wouldn't take off in Australia, simply for the (obvious) reason that we don't have a large Muslim population (unlike Britain, France or Holland). Yes, we have plenty of Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, and a burgeoning Indian population: but not that many Muslims. Europe, on the other hand, is in danger of being Islamised and Africanised out of existence (although the Breivikist anti-Islamics take care not to mention the Africans - that would be "racist").

We all know how the Griffinite project turned out. He went as far as he could go towards Ziophilism of the Breivik and Wilders type: but then two other groups - the English Defence League and the new British Freedom Party - went even further. The EDL had great success in mobilising British working-class people, especially (previously apolitical) soccer hooligans and chavs, and leading them on exciting, Mosley-type, BUF-type marches, and into confrontations with the police and activists for Islamism and "anti-racism". Just like the old days of the 1930s - or the 1970s, when the National Front did more or less the same thing.

As to why Griffin's project failed - I could blame the man himself (he's turned into a British version of Pauline Hanson, and is quite clearly in it only for the money now). But, more than that, nationalist political parties have a short shelf life. They are conceived, as political units, in certain historical and cultural circumstances which are unique to them and their time. The National Front came into existence in the turbulent 1970s, when the first wave of mass non-white colonisation of Britain was getting started; the British National Party, in the early 1980s, when that first wave became a solidly-established, and stoutly-defended, bridgehead. Now, of course, in 2012 - to use a WWII metaphor - the invaders have broken out of their bridgehead, have seized Paris and Brussels, and are now standing at the Rhine. The killer blow to Britain is about to administered. Or perhaps it won't be over quickly: Britain will suffer a slow, agonising death, the death of the thousand cuts (one such cut we saw at the Olympics opening ceremony). In any case, British nationalists are in a different position than they were in 1974 or 1982. They have to adopt new tactics, a new ideology, a new charter. Which means that old warhorses like the British National Party, or the National Front, have to be put out to pasture. (The same thing could be said of that relic from Australia in the late 1990s - Pauline Hanson's One Nation).

At any rate, the Guardian reports that there are now (by nationalist standards) a massive number of British nationalist and Far Right parties on the market:

The most striking aspect of this year's elections was the number of far right parties competing alongside the BNP. In England, local elections were contested by 149 candidates from far right groups other than the BNP, and in some areas these out-performed the 30-year-old party. In Dudley, for example, the BNP was forced to watch its old and more ideologically extreme rival, the National Front, attract more votes. This owes much to a series of personality clashes and ideological splits that have spawned an increasing number of groups, including Britain First, British Freedom, British People's party, England First, National Front, English Democrats, Democratic Nationalists and the Britannica party. Most lack resources and members, but their emergence reflects a scene that is in transition and has not yet decided on its destination.

This really gave me pause. How the devil is a British nationalist group to distinguish itself from the competition? How is to become, in the jargon of business, a 'market leader'?

The answer, I think, is this. The British groups - or the leading ones, such as the EDL, British Freedom Party and the British National Party - have swung as far as possible to the 'left' of the Far Right, that is, towards Wilders and Breivikism. Now it's time to swing back the other way - towards Mosley, Lord Haw-Haw and John Amery, some of the most decent and principled men British politics in the 20th century has ever produced.

As for visuals, nothing conveys power and punch like this:



This is, of course, Jobbik, who revive the ideology, and appearance, of the wartime Hungarian Arrow Cross, but aren't a revivalist party as such: they have their own look and own ideology (unlike John Tyndall and Colin Jordan's 1960s-era group, the National Socialist Movement):



Nothing wrong with uniforms as such, just make them original uniforms.

But wait, aren't paramilitary uniforms banned in Britain, under the infamous 1936 Public Order Act? Well, that Act is open to interpretation. In any case, to judge by the evidence (and I am willing to be contradicted on this point), the Act's provisions against 'uniforms for political purposes' weren't used to arrest the members of the National Socialist Movement: other provisions were used instead. (The Act has been used, quite a few times, since then, and not always against nationalists: e.g., the Act was supposedly used against the British miners during the miner's strike of 1984). Most arrests, detentions, prosecutions, of nationalists since the 1960s have come about through the breaking of laws forbidding freedom of speech on race. An excellent article, on the history of the "anti-fascist" and "anti-racist" laws and their applications to British nationalists and fascists, can be found here: 'British Fascism and the Measures Taken Against It by the British State' (1998) in the Libertarian Alliance journal. (I advise all nationalist activists, especially nationalists with a bent for law, to read it).

I'm inclined to believe that the National Front, which used many of the street tactics of fascism (just as the EDL does today) refrained from outfitting its members in uniforms because it wanted to distance itself from the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, and the uniformed clowning of the 1960s NSM (and other related Rockwellian groups) - not out of a fear of being shut down by the provisions in the Public Order Act.

Let's, for the moment, go to the Continent, where even more repressive "anti-fascist" laws apply. The German constitution expressly forbids the wearing of uniforms. But what of this? Here are pictures of the latest offshoot of the German Freie Nationalisten / Autonomous Nationalist tendency. They are a nationalist 'flash-mob' called The Immortals. They wear freaky V for Vendetta masks:







In truth, I find these plastic masks very frightening. They remind of the Autons from Doctor Who:



Or worse, that Michael character from John Carpenter's Halloween (1978):

I think this is pretty terrible. Masks, of course, have their own power; in classical theatre, they allowed actors to assume the personalities of the characters they played on stage. The impression conveyed the Immortals' mask isn't exactly positive.

The fascists of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, didn't wear masks, of course. Fascism is about, among other things, naked publicity, drawing attention to yourself and your cause. The showing of one's face, in public, is a dangerous enterprise for someone on the Far Right, considering that so many communists in Europe were prepared to harm or even kill you, or, at the very least, apply pressure to have you removed from your place of employment, your home, etc. The showing of one's face was an indication of one's courage, foolhardiness, and pride.

But as for uniforms, especially paramilitary uniforms - that's a different thing altogether. I'm sure that reams of material have been written on the psychological effects of seeing large numbers of men march by, in paramilitary uniform; or being part of a group of men in paramilitary uniform. Academics (who specialise in writing treatises on fascism) will say that uniforms confer, on their wearers, a feeling of belonging, cohesiveness, identity, and of status, power and authority - which is all correct. But, simply put, men like uniforms, because they make men feel, and look, good. And there's a feeling of safety in numbers, too, when the group is primarily of uniformed men: and a nationalist needs that feeling, when he is facing down a crowd of hundreds, if not thousands, of Trotskyites, anarchists, Antifa, who are literally baying for his blood. (Wearing a suit and tie - the 'uniform' of the conservative - just doesn't cut it in those circumstances). The militant Left, too, believe in safety in numbers: they indulge in foolhardy acts of provocation and violence because they are part of a large group, and large groups tend to be less inhibited about these things.

At any rate, aren't the Immortals, pictured above, wearing uniforms 'for political purposes'? Granted, the German law doesn't use that phrasing, but the intent is the same. When you think of it, there are plenty of groups and subcultures - e.g., anarchists, skinheads, even 'Gay Pride' protesters who wear identical pink shirts - who are political and who adopt uniforms of one sort or another. What makes the fascists unique is that they use paramilitary uniforms.

I think that the Public Order Act, in Britain, really needs to be tested, pushed to its limit, by British nationalists who wear paramilitary outfits. We need to see what the definition of a 'uniform for political purposes' is. Granted, the British state will use any excuse to ban a march or arrest members of a nationalist group. But...

I've come to the conclusion that, for a country like Britain, things have deteriorated too far to be arrested by a mere, reflexive and reactionary British Far Right conservatism. The old institutions don't have to be preserved, they must be destroyed (and they are being destroyed, by the anti-white clique that controls Britain, anyway). Perhaps only a Libyan-style uprising could work. At any rate, the British parliament needs to be shut down, and elections suspended for at least ten years. Britain, too, needs to become a republic and to exile, permanently, the Windsor family.

As regarding policy: the white man has to reclaim sovereignty, in his own lands, before one can make the really big, important decisions - on the nationalisation of property, on which immigrants to keep and which ones to expel, and so forth. The communists in Russia, Cuba and China understood this: they seized power first, and made up policy later, improvising, and responding, to a large extent, to the unique circumstances their individual countries faced.

So political power, for nationalists in Britain, can only be achieved by a white, working-class and radical political party, with a Marxist and anarcho-syndicalist base (in other words, a party like the old fascist parties). The old 'preservationist' brand of Enoch Powell Far Right conservatism just won't cut it.

As it is, if present trends continue, there won't be a Britain in fifty years: there'll be, instead, a new country - Afro-Indo-Islamistan - where Africans, Indians and Muslims are the dominant ethnic groups, and the 'old' British are relegated to a minority.

Ideologically, of course, the Lord Haw-Haws, Mosleys, Amerys, and, by extension, the Hitlers and Mussolinis, have to be embraced, not spurned. The words "Nazi" and "Fascist" shouldn't be rejected: they should be seen as badges of honour. Isn't there something clean, clear cut, appealing and reassuring about the 'old' ideologies? One knows what one is; one knows where one stands. I'm sure that the Indian Maoists - one of the few genuinely Marxist groupings around today - feel the same about their simple, clear-cut ideology. It's not a case of fetishism or nostalgia; no, it's a case of, to paraphrase Nietzsche, 'How one becomes what one is'. That is, acknowledging and embracing one's true self. Which is quite a change from the British nationalist movement of today, which has become schizophrenic under the influence of the Nick Griffins and Tommy Robinsons.