We've featured some Trump campaign tweets and campaign ads that inadvertently (or not) feature Nazi imagery: eagles, red triangles, soldiers, rune stages, etc. It's happened either through dog whistling or gross incompetence. Either way isn't very encouraging.
Here are four past examples where Trump campaign tweets or ads have featured Nazi imagery: Meaningful Coincidences
So what gives when a recent Trump advertisement promises that if elected America will be a "unified reich"? Gross oversight? Freudian slip? Jesus, these fucknuts are just not very good with the internets. Or just using that for plausible denial. This has happened five times now.
Oh yeah, Walker also paid for one abortion and urged his girlfriend to have another, yet is campaigning as a strict "pro-lifer" forced birther. Liar. Hypocrite. And ignorant. A incompetence trifecta.
Walker on China putting fluoride in our water supply corrupting our air:
“Do you know we don’t control this air? No matter how much money we put in controlling our air, it goes over to China or to somewhere else, and it messes it up. All of a sudden, it comes back over here. All we’re doing is spending money.”
It messes it up.
Let's face it, Walker is a barely coherent hypocrite, and, yeah, I'll go there, a token, a pawn for rich, white people using him to show how not racist they are, while adding a malleable vote for Team MAGA. He's an embarrassment to Georgia and the nation. But not the GOP! His Democrat opponent is also African-American, with a proven track-record. And I know why people who dig Walker don't dig Raphael Warnock; his education:
Warnock graduated from Sol C. Johnson High School in 1987, and, having wanted to follow in the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr., attended Morehouse College, from which he graduated cum laude in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology. He credits his participation in the Upward Bound program for making him college-ready, as he was able to enroll in early college courses through Savannah State University. He then earned Master of Divinity, Master of Philosophy, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Union Theological Seminary, a school affiliated with Columbia University.
I think it's safe to say today, the GOP's base is leery of people with too many degrees. Universities are seen as bastions of left-wing radicalism. Obama they didn't like because he seemed too professorial, as if he was talking down to us. They loved that Bush had a tendency to mangle his sentences. Despite the fact he's a teetotaler, I think it was during the Bush/Gore election he was chosen in a poll as the guy those asked would most want to share a beer with (with whom they'd most like to share a beer?) I think a lot of people find those who use "whom" suspect. I was once sneered at as being "some kind of college boy" for using the word "ludicrous" in a small dispute.
I'm sure there's a racial component in the animus towards Warnock or Obama for some people. I don't want to say that everyone who was leery of Obama hated that an African-American guy was so educated. But to think there aren't people who dislike him for his eloquence, intelligence and academic record would be as naive as to suggest all of his antagonists are somehow racist. Sadly, I think it's basically the old antipathy for the "uppity negro." I'm sorry to offend by using the expression, but what's really offensive is the attitude to which it refers.
I think part of Walker's appeal are the very things that people who want serious and effective governance find so ridiculous; he's a party-line parrot with enough charisma to pull off a viable campaign. His tenuous grasp on subjects such as air quality is really just folksy charm. Bonus that he's African-American, as is the incumbent. It reduces a lot of the extra weight from the racial baggage in the South. That both candidates are black, in a state like Georgia, is a step in the right direction, especially given the state's large African-American population. Atlanta is a very important part of African-American "psychogeography."
But the Walker revelations mentioned in The Atlanticdon't seem to have affected the polls one iota. In my opinion, I think this joke of a candidate doesn't even deserve to be elected village fence-watcher, but the GOP is shameless, and will pull any stunt and put any dunce up for election, no matter how stupid, bat-shit crazy, or ignorant. As long as they can get elected and help create a GOP majority, so the big boys can play around and wreak more havoc on this country than they did from '16 to '20 with that ridiculous, piss-bathing, bloviating turd I won't even deign to name. Imagine if the turd made a comeback?
For shame. Georgia, if you elect this nitwit, you deserve all the incompetence headed your way. Plenty of you are buying this Super Gulp of snake oil....you already elected the heinously hateful Marjorie Taylor Greene, just how much lower are you aiming?
Call the Guinness Book, I think a record is being set for "Largest shit smear on the idea of democracy" in history. Except for Hitler maybe. He was elected, innit?
(BTW, that "shit-smear" isn't specifically Walker, but Greene, Boebert Gosar, Palin....along with the whole atavistic crew of "slap-your-head in disbelief" candidates the GOP has managed to get elected.)
Heck, MJT loves comparing opponents to Nazis. Legally-required vaccines? Nein! MJT nearly blew a gasket...acted like Fauci was advocating racial purity tests in order to shop at Wal-Mart. So, yeah, I'll invoke lil' 'Dolphy, as we liberals so affectionately call out Dear Leader, that is, if Lucifer isn't around.
And I know that all this is ridiculous and is as "See Dick Run" is to Shakespeare, satire-wise. About the same relationship MJT and Walker are to legitimate politicians.
Enough with know-nothings and wearing ignorance like a badge of honor. I want smarty-pants professors, educated people, eggheads, and intellectuals in office. Call me crazy. I'm tired of listening to politicians dumber than I am; because to be frank (as opposed to Bill or John), I ain't very clever to start with....
The way I figure, there are at least four explanations for why Trump campaigns and allies have used explicit Nazi symbolism on at least four occasions in the past few years: Trump or someone on his team is signaling his sympathy to neo-fascists; someone in the ad or design agencies his campaign hires is sympathetic to neo-fascism; someone in the agencies his campaign hires is making a statement about Trump's authoritarian tendencies in order to mock him; or it's all just coincidence.
If it is coincidence, then it's careless to the point of incompetence, and maybe the universe is giving us a wink and a nod. I've never seen another candidate get caught employing Nazi symbolism as many times as Trump....and just ask Harvard "symbologist" Robert Langdon. Symbols matter!
Feb., 2021
CPAC is forced to explain why the stage at their meeting is a perfect Odal (or Othala) rune, an unusual and counter-intuitive shape used in the WW2-era by SS units and subsequently by Neo-Nazis.
The Trump campaign is criticized for T-shirts that evoke the NSDAP's leftward-looking Parteiadler eagle clutching a circular symbol of the nation.
The America First Commitee (1940) was a group created to oppose US entry into WW2. Some of its most prominent speakers were known for their antisemitism (chiefly, Charles Lindbergh) and some held pro-fascist views.
In 1943, The America First Party (unrelated) was founded by Gerald L. K. Smith. Smith was an antisemitic and white supremacist firebrand, and after various forays into politics, he turned to fascism, contacting William Dudley Pelley, and attempting to contact Hitler. He eventually joined Pelley's Silver Legion of America, a fascist group modelled on the Nazi Sturmabteilung, the SA, aka the "Brownshirts."
He was later affiliated with the Christian Nationalist Party, which advocated deporting Jews and African-Americans, and attacked Catholics for good measure. The party's official magazine also published articles denying the Holocaust.
This of course doesn't mean Trump believes these things, but using a slogan with such precedents of dubious quality is well, not reassuring.
The Trump campaign uses an inverted red triangle to illustrate an attack on far-left "mobs", especially Antifa. Facebook takes it down. Why? Because the Nazis pinned inverted red triangles on the uniforms of prisoners in concentration camps to identify them as political enemies: social democrats, liberals, socialists, communists, anarchists, people who helped Jews, trade unionists, and Freemasons.
You may know that the pink triangle identified homosexuals and of course a yellow Star of David identified Jews. A chart showing the various prison badges can be found here.
The Trump campaign Tweets an image which includes soldiers dressed in Nazi-era German uniforms (In the red stripe, bottom right; the links have clearer images).
Analysis by Ishaan Tharoor in the August 30 Today’s WorldView newsletter of The Washington Post.
In a recent speech by Biden:
“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” Biden said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism.”
The GOP goes bonkers. In light of recent posts, it's worth a read. Tharoor notes that scholars disagree as to what fascism is, exactly. It's like we know it when we see it, but given the variety of its expression, it's hard to pin down with a precise definition.
See this one about CPAC using an Odal rune-shaped stage. The Odal rune being a favorite of neo-Nazis. It also mentions a Trump campaign Facebook ad using an inverted red triangle to illustrate an attack on antifa and liberal enemies. Like the yellow Star of David for Jews, the triangle was used to identify political prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.
It's an academic paper, but I also add a link to a retrospective by the Saturday Evening Post on the same topic. (Apparently all fascists in the US are "star-spangled"....Why not Yankee Doodle Death Camps? Or The Reich's Red Glare?)
Star-Spangled FascistsWhite Shirts, Silver Shirts, White Camellias, and plain, old Nazis: here is the 1939 field guide to America's hate groups.
One such group was the Crusader White Shirts. They were founded by KKK alumnus George W. Christians in the early 1930's; Christians had also founded the American Fascists, previously the American Reds. He once claimed to be so red he made the Russians look yellow. So I guess he took whatever extremism he could find. Antisemitism was the constant....despite his fascist moniker, he often promoted himself as a communist. Keep 'em guessing. This, I should add, is consistent with another theme we keep running across: that the lines to the political left and right are curved, circle towards each other, and meet up. It's almost as if the specific ideology is incidental to the extremism, whatever it may be.
Christians fancied himself something of a Templar, which is another recurring theme in this little niche of history. Oslo fascist
terrorist Anders Breivik claimed to be a Templar. Blackwater/Xe
mercenaries were said to use Templar-related call signs, and ex-employees have testified that there
was a culture of Christian supremacy and a Crusader mentality among their operatives. They were also linked to the Knights of Malta.
The famous bit of Nazi propaganda you can see above has Hitler himself pictured as a knight, a "standard bearer," and what some say
is specifically a Grail knight; legends say the Templars are the grail guardians. This is all what I have previously felt is an underlying Romanticism in the fascist mindset....Fascism recalls a mythical great past, because the future is scary and the present often sucks; the fascists politicize nostalgia, a powerful emotion; Peter Pan as impish storm-trooper....And one can't help but think of the slogan:
Make America Great ....Again. If the brown-shirt fits....
The fascist mindset of the 1920's, as articulated by Futurist poet F.T. Marinetti, makes it possible to think of fascism itself as a work of art. A sophisticated "happening" that goes beyond politics into the reorganization of society to such a point that perception itself is affected. Everything from dates and times to weights and measures undergo an almost magical renaming, one long ceremony in which dark forces brazenly possess the powerful and speak through them, dictating inhuman programs and pogroms, inner psychoses manifest in one large orgy of hate and apocalyptic violence. The uniform of a fascist is less appealing than a mad hobo's tattered rags. The tipping point is razor-thin. Leading a nation into total war is a coin-toss away from sleeping in one's own shit.
(Footnote: the point where even sculptures along the axes of the world quiver,
shake, beg for coin, move in square, 2-axes movements, like forks
wielded by mechanical men in spray-painted bed-sheets.)
Marinetti would disagree and proclaim that the "Toot!" of the factory whistle every morning is the daily recurrence of Fiat Lux! And on the 7th day, rest....
(Foonote 2: "....today" is always a hot, stinking mess, and tomorrow is the apocalypse. Unless of course you go to the fascist strongman who can "get 'er done...." Fascism is personality-driven; it's not about ideas; whether swastika or hammer and sickle, it doesn't matter; it's the power of emotion in the ceremonial Black Mass of the state religion, the charismatic warrior-priest to follow. History as a series of "great men".)
An ongoing fascination, these Templars....in the end, George Christians may just have been a lunatic:
Christians was investigated by U.S. Army military intelligence who
described him as having "a brilliant mind but of erratic temperament",
and as posing no threat.Raymond Moley described him as a "harmless lunatic"
In 1934, Pat McGrady, author of Fascism in America, visited Christians in Chattanooga for New York's Jewish Daily Bulletin....thought that Christians was not as much of a "nut" as some made out, saying:
He is a clever fellow with a fine appreciation of the
limits of our broad liberties of speech and action which he strains in
promoting his personality and an economic scheme which, if effective, is
enough to surrender the rights and properties of the people into the
hands of whoever may be strong enough to grasp control of a despairing
nation.
Despite his intelligence, McGrady identified in Christians a deep
ignorance of the principles of Fascism and of its practice in Germany
and Italy, fostered, he thought, by the narrow sources on which
Christians was able to draw in Chattanooga in understanding World
affairs. This made the question of whether Christians was really a
Fascist, a moot one.
In his 1943 book Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America, Christians was described by John Roy Carlson (Arthur Derounian) as "an odd combination of comedian and sinister revolutionist", strongly anti-Catholic but not anti-Semitic.
Another pro-Nazi, KKK alumnus was a dude with the unlikely name of George E. Deatherge. Death urge? Thanatos much? He founded a group called the Knights of the White Camelia, based on a group linked to the first (1860's) version of the KKK. Deatherge mixed with anti-Jewish circles until WW2 forced all these dickheads out of business. Good thing. The tactics of the original KWC included "harassment, floggings, and sometimes murder." Apparently, groups with this name have cropped up in our time, in Florida and Louisiana, probably elsewhere....
There was a brief flare-up in the USA known as the "Brown Scare" under the Roosevelt administration, during the war, when a number of fascists were put on trial for sedition and/or tax-related charges. Christians was arrested for sedition in 1942; Deatherge was charged in 1944 under the same law, the Alien Registration Act, aka the Smith Act. He was arrested on 12 counts of sedition and conspiracy, eventually serving 8 out of 15 years in prison. He was one of 30 defendants in his 1944 trial, know as the "Great Sedition Trial of '44."
Roosevelt's crackdown was effective. These groups were all but destroyed. No mass incarceration like the Japanese, just a targeted approach.
Nazi leader Julius Kuhn was arrested as early as 1939, for tax evasion, and re-arrested in 1943 on charges related to his activity as a foreign agent. He was deported in 1945 and later imprisoned in Germany under their postwar de-Nazification laws. He was released shortly before his death in 1951.
This page on the Brown Scare is a neat little summary, specifically mentioning Kuhn and Pelley, but it doesn't speak about Deatherge and Christians.
So, these were just a few of the many would-be American führers, not to mention the thousands of rank and file sympathizers, of fascism in America. Had the Japanese not attacked pearl Harbor, the US may never have entered the war. Man-on-the-street interviews from the time show that many Americans saw the war as a European problem we'd best stay out of.
There were a number of fascist outfits in the US before WW2, but the only outright Nazis were the German-America Bund. They were actually in contact with the Reich. Their leader, Fritz Julius Kuhn, was a German immigrant and member of the Nazi party. That said, relations with Germany were somewhat fraught and the Bund, despite some success, never seems to have been really important to Berlin.
Julius Kuhn
The Bund started life in the mid-20's as the Free Society of Teutonia. From 1933 to 1935, they were known as the Friends of New Germany. Reshuffling, time-biding, a lot of this reorganization was made in collaboration with Berlin, but it doesn't seem like anyone in Berlin really cared all that much. Whereas the Bund was in contact with German officials who issued directives, meetings between reps from the Bund and the Germans government were more often than not "disappointing."
Bund flag
The Bund flag is kind of odd. It has the three Nazi colors: black, white, and red, forming an Iron Cross. But the golden, 3D swastika looks like an Art Deco trophy. It's kind of silly.
The "AV" stands for Amerikadeutscher Volksbund, butisitreallynecessary? A flag shouldn't need subtitles. The Bund flag is a failure on all levels from the POV of vexillology.
Bund youth group flag
The flag of the Bund's youth group has a starker color scheme, with a Celtic-type cross and thesig rune...comic-book villainy. Weird how it shares zero in common with the flag of the parent organization. One would never look at thee two flags and think that they are somehow related.
As I stated above, after the US entered WW2, American fascist leaders were either sent to prison or otherwise silenced. After war was declared on the Axis, some groups found discretion was the better part of valor, and closed of their own accord. But just 2 years prior (cue dithering harp music):
....the zenith of the Bund's activities was the rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on February 20, 1939....Some 20,000 people attended....Most shocking to American sensibilities was the outbreak of violence between protesters and Bund storm troopers.
Charlottesville"s "Unite the Right" rally comes to mind; it shocked many in the nation, but it shouldn't have. Fascists negotiate with their fists.
As the memory of WW2 fades, young people seem willing to pick up the Tiki-torch and run with it, but they run nowhere. Fascism is a dead end. Don't be surprised by fisticuffs; fascism fetishizes violence, and fascists attack in packs, like dogs:
Survival of the Fittest.
Might makes Right.
Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.
Violence is part and parcel of fascist ideology, violence is their currency. Fight Club. A glorification of the jackal. An almost suspect over-glorification of the family. The homosocial, coded violence of the soldier, the athlete, the Proud Boy....
The word "fascist" has been tossed around so much it's somewhat lost its power. Ho-hum hipster yawn. Been there, done that. Like the boy who cried wolf. But I think it's something to take seriously. White sheets and all-black uniforms have given way to polo shirts and less menacing attire, but the goals remain the same. It's easy to be lulled into a false sense of security, perhaps because our lives are relatively short. WW2 finished a mere 25 years before I was born. Fascism was never fully vanquished, just forced underground, and then only barely.
We're a violent society, inflation has skyrocketed, our climate is going berserk, and we're still in the uncertain throes of an ugly pandemic. Some positive Star Trek version of society could emerge as we sit on the brink of environmental and economic challenges (collapse?) the likes of which we haven't seen in centuries. But I have a feeling things will get worse before they get better. Make the country great. Again. I'd focus on making it tolerable, or even functional, first....
Cool. Back on 420 in 2020, Dr. Juan Francisco Fuentes Aragónes, Professor of History at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, wrote an article which surveys the colored shirt movements in Europe of the interwar period. Not just fascists, but communists and even moderate groups like the Social Credit Party, even Scouting.
Shirt movements were....the expression of an old relationship between clothing and politics, body and power, but also the consequence of the dramatic circumstances of the interwar period, dominated by the mysticism of violence, the “brutalization of politics” (Mosse 1990, 159-81), the prominence of young people and masses, the charismatic power of the leader and the importance of “senso-propaganda” (Chakhotin 1940, 170) in the new political culture of the 1930s. Totalitarianisms that emerged at the time understood perfectly the enormous potential of these uniformed movements for the conquest or conservation of power and for training the masses, or their youthful and radical avant-gardes, in their regimented conception of life. This is why the history of the shirt movements is also that of totalitarianism in its golden age.
Good stuff. I'm surprised I didn't run across this paper while I was looking up information for my previous posts.
Uniforms aren't as much in fashion now as in times past, but as we saw in our post about the Proud Boys, there is still a drive towards uniformity. The PB's prefer black and yellow Fred Perry polo shirts (business casual Freitag?)
Skinheads have long favored Fred Perry or Lonsdale shirts and Doc Marten's boots. The color of the laces, at least in Florida circa 1990, meant something: red for leftists, so-called "redskins" or SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) skins; white laces were used by Neo-Nazi skins.
Skinheads, with their "look" and propensity for violence, are the less-organized heritors of the "shirt movements" of the 1930's.
Also worth a mention are the color codes of gang bandanas: eg blue for Crips, red for Bloods. Not political, but it is analogous in that a specific color of an article of clothing signifies an allegiance, and the wrong color in the wrong place could lead to an unpleasant and violent misadventure.
Anyway, the article probably means I won't need to do another post about fascist paramilitaries in Europe!
I actually came across Aragónes' article while looking up info on the Baeguisa (백의사), the fascist "White Shirts" or "White Clothes Society" of Korea. Ardently anti-Communist, they were funded by the CIC, or Counterintelligence Corps, a precursor to the CIA. Not sure if this outfit predated, postdated, or same-dated the OSS.
NK News writes about the Baeguisa and their assassination campaign of the 1940's....US-financed fascist terrorists. Par for the course. Info in English about these guys is scarce, so enjoy Aragónes' article instead....
Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and now, China. Blue is the new Black (shirt):
The Blue Shirts Society (藍衣社), also known as the Society of Practice of the Three Principles of the People(Chinese: 三民主義力行社, commonly abbreviated as SPTPP), the Spirit Encouragement Society (勵志社, SES) and the China Reconstruction Society (中華復興社, CRS), was a secret ultra-nationalist faction that modeled Italian fascists in the Kuomintang (KMT, or the Chinese Nationalist Party).
Not going into the history of China, though. Just adding this rather awkward quote to update the list.
The Blue Shirts during the 1930s became one of the most influential and
feared political movements in China. To both contemporaries and
historians, however, the Blue Shirt movement has been a shadowy force,
known mostly through hearsay, with little solid information regarding
its doctrine or its activities. Now, on the basis of memoirs,
interviews, and especially Japanese intelligence reports of the 1930s, a
rough picture of this secret organization can be pieced together. And
the image that emerges is not simply a terrorist organization, but a
political faction that reflected the concerns and ideals of many Chinese
during the troubled Nanking decade.
Augustus Sol Invictus (born Austin Mitchell Gillespie, 1983), is a Florida lawyer and political candidate who drew attention some years ago when he ran for the U.S. Senate to represent Florida on the Libertarian ticket. When word got out that he'd once gone to the Mojave Desert and ritually sacrificed a goat, then drank it's blood, he didn't deny it. No indeed. He'd been a Thelemite, a loud and proud pagan, and made no bones (nor gristle) about it..
But the O.T.O. gave him the (jack?) boot.
Maybe it was the goat. Maybe it was his hard-right politics. As a lawyer, he's represented white supremacists, terrorists, and other hard-to-like defendants. He also was a speaker at the infamous Unite the Right rally, had previously praised eugenics, and promoted white supremacy. Not to mention he wants to see the world set on fire. Going through online references to Invictus, he doesn't seem to last very long in any group with which he affiliates. I don't think a guy like him takes orders very well. When you read the letter transcribed below, you'll see what I mean.
If it was a clean kill, I have no quarrel with a goat sacrifice; ridiculing it, well, is simply hypocritical. Muslims and Orthodox Christians do it, Jews did it; heck, some passages in the Talmud depict priests at Solomon's Temple wading
up to their knees in blood, and others describe 1.2 million animals
being slaughtered on one day. Certainly hyperbole, but I've read enough to know the courtyard of the Temple was a scene of constant smoke, fire, sizzling fat, and puddles of blood.
In recent news, Invictus was acquitted in a domestic abuse case (apparently the accuser didn't show). Charges of stalking, harassment, and domestic violence have been reported to police against him about 10 times. But in April this year, all charges against him in his latest trial ended up with a "not guilty" verdict. Read about his legal issues here.
There are already some good articles about Invictus online; this one is especially good at situating Invictus within the current fascist spectrum and is much defter than my attempts in recent posts. It focuses on the idea of "Imperium" articulated by Francis Yockey. I was really struck by this passage:
Fascism’s key....is syncretic, mixing in aspects of the
left to create a shifting, yet totalizing, political system.
Libertarianism....has the unique ability to mainstream far-right positions, and
really to be the only crossover point that organizations with
hard-right politics would normally have. Invictus himself seems to
maintain very common talking points from the Libertarian Party, but
mixes them with a sort of social commentary about the need for dominant
leaders, a “cult of violence,” and the need to return to the idea of
Imperium....he seems to
portray a frenetic and confused political menu that focuses on strength
and power and keeps a great deal of open fascist ideals just under the
surface.
A second article by the same author is also instructive. The writer, Shane Burley, is clearly not sympathetic to Invictus' views, but he manages to keep it fair; in fact, this second article is a response to a letter Invictus wrote to Burley, thanking him for the first article, which focuses on his ideas, rather than the sensational "Goat-blood drinking Florida Man" angle of most other articles about him.
From that second article, I'd also like to quote a paragraph that goes into something my previous posts have addressed: the meeting of left and right:
One thing that did stick from Yockey, and we are seeing today in many
sides of the New Right, is a call for unity between the Right and Left.
Yockey called for a "red-brown alliance," which would be the association
between fascists and anti-Zionist communists (since he saw the Jews as
essentially the primary problem), and this has been much of the
discussion of a Third Positionism that sees both capitalism and
communism as problematic. Today, we see this incredibly present in
National Anarchism, National Revolution, and National Bolshevism, as
well as various strains of racialist Asatru/Odinism and parts of the Alt
Right. It should be noted that they do not borrow from the Left in
terms of underlining ideas, but just in tactical notions like opposition
to capitalism and support of deep environmentalism.
National Bolshevism. Asatru/Odinism. Deep environmentalism. Left/right unity. Almost like a list of keywords for my recent posts....I've addressed each and every one of these topics in the last 12 months.
The letter I reproduce below has been widely discussed online. I only post it now because I got a call last week from a friend I hadn't seen in 30 years. "I'm in Marseilles!" Next day we're in Toulouse eating Camembert and I tell her about my recent forays into occultism and fascism. And she asks, "Have you ever heard of Augustus Sol Invictus? Cuz I went to school with him."
Coincidence
much? I'm writing posts about the occult and avant-garde roots of
fascism, and a woman I haven't seen in 30 years pops in from across the
Atlantic to tell me she went to grad school with the contemporary
personification of the occultist/artist/fascist idea I've been recently
manhandling. Oh yeah, Invictus writes poetry with titles like All is burning: it is the endand Set the World on Fire.
From the time of his religious renunciation and departure to the
wilderness to the time of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville
and its aftermath, Invictus discusses his first-hand experience of the
brutal world of radical politics, including the public betrayals and
catastrophes and the private heartbreaks and changes in course.
This
friend of mine was in a class with Invictus as a grad student and
describes him as a friend (at the time, anyway) and a decent guy. But
he hadn't yet revealed his fascist beliefs, and domestic violence
wasn't probably something they yukked about over sandwiches. My friend
is quite a feminist, she wouldn't truck with no violent misogynists.
She describes him as seeming "lost" and "in search of an identity." She emphasizes that Gillespie made sure to legally change his name before getting his diplomas, so that they carried his new name. Becoming Invictus was becoming a new person. She feels that the person before and after were truly like different people.
Some
time later, in 2013, my friend received Invictus' famous
"renunciation" letter, which I present here. It was originally sent to
his colleagues at DePaul University College of Law
(a Catholic school, BTW) and he sent to my friend as well.
(Update 13/07: Hey. I just re-read the article about Augustus. The letter that I shared with you was originally sent to our cohort & the professors at Rollins College Crummer School of Business....He sent a different letter to DePaul....When my Rollins cohort received our letter, the other people on our team dug around and found that letter that he wrote to DePaul on a DePaul message board.)
When that email arrived 2 days before finals, the school was so fearful of a
mass shooting episode that students were allowed to do their finals
from home. The grad program was effectively shut down for three days. Young Invictus even received a visit from the FBI.
The
first page of the scan is blurry but you can read the transcript
below. I don't feel this is a violation of Invictus' privacy. He sent
it to his entire cohort and every professor in the program; and it's reproduced online already.
He clearly meant it to be a public declaration. And the guy may run for
office again one day. Domestic violence? Shit. The GOP will excuse sex offenders. Sacrificed goats? No worries.
Remember a few years back, "I am not a witch...."
As NPR said of Christine O'Donnell's ad in 2010: "It should go without saying that if in your first TV ad as a candidate
for the U.S. Senate you feel compelled to announce: "I am not a witch,"
you're in deep trouble."
Whoooo-ooo-ooo! (That's a ghost noise BTW). Cue rattling chains!
According to a recent video (2022) Invictus posted on YouTube, he's once again Catholic. Tridentine (Pre-Vatican II), naturally.
So,
here's that letter. It must be intended to be ironic to a certain
degree, no? A "winning handshake"? What? No discussion of the paper
stock of his business cards? Is this Sol Invictus, or Patrick Bateman?
(Bateman: "This Confession Has Meant Nothing.")
--------- -------- -------- -------
Sent: Sat, Apr 20, 2013 1:01 pm
Subject: FW: On My Renunciation & Departure from Civilization
To the Grey World of Man:
They
say that only failures become revolutionaries; that those who
perpetrate violence in the name of a great cause only do so because they
have failed at everything else in life. In other words, they only become revolutionaries because they have achieved nothing of value in the “real” world.
Witness
ye the glory of my life at 29 years of age: I have four children, each
of whom should be the envy of every parent in the world; I have attained
a Baccalaureate Degree in Philosophy with honors; I have attained a
Doctorate in Law, cum laude; I have acquired licenses in the profession
of law in the States of New York, Illinois, and Florida; I am scheduled
to acquire two more such licenses in North Carolina & Massachusetts;
I am Editor-in-Chief of a poetry journal; I run an independent
publishing company; I have opened my own law office in downtown Orlando;
I am an MBA candidate; and I have accomplished a few other things that
will remain off the record for now.
I
am of genius intellect & cultured, well-educated & creative,
well-mannered & refined. I am God’s gift to humankind where the
English language is concerned, and I also happen to have a basic
knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian. I am musical
& artistic; I am athletic & possessed of militant
self-discipline; and I am many other things. I have a Cadillac & a
poodle, multiple computers & a personal library; I live in an
apartment downtown, right across the street from the courthouse; I have
been to Paris & Vancouver, to Cairo & Dubrovnik, to Mexico City
& Siracusa. I dress better than all of you, pronounce my words
perfectly, and have a winning, professional handshake. I am everything
you ever wanted to be.
I
challenge any of you, then, to accuse me of being a failure in this
artificial civilization of yours. For it is beyond dispute that I have
played your petty game, and I have won.
But
your game no longer holds any interest for me. Your architecture is
vapid & worthless, as is your decadent culture, the mindless drivel
you call music, the filth you call democracy. You waste your lives
watching pure excrement on television, shopping at the strip malls,
planning your vacations to resorts & theme parks. The Internet, with
its infinitude of information, is used for reading celebrity gossip
& watching sitcoms. You have begun to reduce argument to memes &
human communication to trite sound bites. Life has become trivial – and
if you cannot feel the human spirit decaying, you are already dead.
As
for those in the profession of law: The vast majority of you are
nothing more than parasites. The only reason you eat, the only reason
you can afford to have roofs over your heads, is that the lives of
others have been ruined by the very laws & social order you claim to
be legitimate. You feed off others like worms, and were this world
& their lives just & in order, you would be out of work. Look
upon your lives, and repent.
This
modern civilization of which you are all so fond deserves naught from
me but the violence of my contempt; and if you were strong enough, you
would hold the same contempt & turn your torches upon the world as I
shall.
WITNESS YE MY RENUNCIATION:
I
hereby renounce my licenses to practice law, my diplomas, my
affiliation with Rollins, DePaul, and the University of South Florida,
my United States citizenship, my membership in the Roman Catholic
Church, my law firm, my publishing company & poetry journal, and all
of my material possessions.
To
those who believe that this great renunciation is evidence of mental
illness rather than the initiation of a spiritual journey: If my example
stirs nothing in you, if you can see no further than the confines of
what your secular humanism & its hallowed psychiatry allow, then
there is nothing I can say to you that would wake you from your slumber.
You are less than the beast in man. You are fungi. Would to God that
you pass quickly from this Earth.
HEAR YE MY FINAL WORDS IN PEACETIME:
I
have prophesied for years that I was born for a Great War; that if I
did not witness the coming of the Second American Civil War I would
begin it myself. Mark well: That day is fast coming upon you. On the New
Moon of May, I shall disappear into the Wilderness. I will return
bearing Revolution, or I will not return at all.
This post goes out to Luis, with apologies....apologies because it's kind of a mixed bag....it was an enlightening experience to see how my writing is affected when I have an audience in mind!
In a recent post titled The Avant-Garde, Occultism, and Fascism, I looked at fascist leaders and their connection to the arts and the occult. In some cases, such as Germany, Italy, and Spain, the fascists controlled their respective countries. In others, such as the UK and the USA, the fascists were not in power, and the Second World War caused those movements to fold. That isn't to say that fascism disappeared, simply that the organized fascist parties and their paramilitary wings could no longer operate when their countries were engaged in total war against fascism itself. They morphed into something more....discrete. The far right has never gone away, and it's aims and ideals remain as strong as ever among what would seem to be a growing number of people.
Sparked by an exchange with a long-time reader in Portugal, I decided to take a look to see how fascism manifested there. Portugal has about 10.3 million people, with a large population abroad. France counts large numbers of Portuguese residents who have come here to find work. Portugal is not as wealthy as the rest of Europe, so a lot of people leave for brighter pastures, accumulate some money, and return. When I went to Luxembourg, I visited several bars catering to a Portuguese clientele and was surprised to hear a Portuguese radio station.
At the dawn of the 20th century, Portugal was a constitutional monarchy, which was overthrown in 1910. The result was the First Portuguese Republic. The Republic was fragile, the period tumultuous, and in 1926 a coup ended it, resulting in a military dictatorship. This Ditadura Nacional (national dictatorship) was followed by the corporatistEstado Novo. (follow that link to "corporatism" for more info)
The leader of the "new state" wasAntónio de Oliveira Salazar,and he would remain in power until his death in 1970. Before Salazar came to power, however, there wasfull-on fascist party jockeying for power.
Francisco de Barcelos Rolão Preto (note the mustachee!)
The Portuguese National Syndicalist Movement was founded during the transition to authoritarianism and unified a “political family” which had played an important role in the crises and downfall of the Parliamentary Republic (1911–1926) but had been marginalized during the establishment of stable dictatorial rule under Salazar at the beginning of the 1930s. National Syndicalism belatedly unified fascist currents arising from the large but divided post-war radical right. It attracted the most radical members of the parties and ideological pressure groups created during the twilight years of the Parliamentary Republic. Before it was outlawed and its leaders exiled in the mid-1930’s, National Syndicalism had set up an organization that included a sizeable army sector and had organized several coup attempts against the Salazar regime. As in other authoritarian contexts, the consolidation of the “New State” of Salazar meant the dissolution and repression of native fascism.
Preto was exiled by Salazar in 1934, who denounced the NS for being "inspired by certain foreign models" (German Nazism). He also condemned their
exaltation of youth, the cult of force through direct action, the principle of the superiority of state political power in social life, [and] the propensity for organizing masses behind a single leader.
National Syndicalist symbol.
The "corporatist state" envisioned by Salazar was similar to that of Italian fascism and the original corporativismo of Benito Mussolini, but there were considerable differences in their approach to governing. Salazar admired Mussolini and was influenced by his Labour Charter of 1927, but he distanced himself from Fascism itself, which he considered a "pagan Caesarist political system" with no legal or ethical limits....Salazar also viewed German Nazism as espousing "pagan elements" that he considered repugnant. Just before World War II, Salazar declared his opposition to '"might over right.". Deeply Catholic, capitalist, and conservative, but not "fascist" in the strictest sense of the term.
Could this denunciation of "paganism" be due to the occult influences on Nazism from Ariosophy and the Thule Society, and the mystical Freemasonry that D'Annunzio embraced? Or was it the nationalistic mysticism of Nazi (Thule) and Fascist (Imperial Rome) mythology? Salazar was far too Catholic to accept that stuff, and too pro-Capitalist to accept the "socialism" of his German and Italian counterparts.
Preto and followers
Although some scholars consider Salazar's government fascist, some say it wasn't; conservative and authoritarian, but as one can see in the quotes above, he denounced fascism. Could we say he was a fascist but not a Fascist?
Not to split hairs, but in these posts I speak of "Fascists" and "fascists". Fascism is a specific ideology which incorporated many notions often associated with the left. Hitler, D'Annunzio, and Mussolini were Fascists. As were Mosley, Pelley, Franco, and Preto. But Salazar, despite his secret police, authoritarianism, and brutality, was not. I think. Fascistic, yes. But not a large-F fascist. His Catholicism and Capitalism would seem to preclude it. In the end, I'm not sure most people were all to concerned with the fine print. The secret police, repression, and torture were more on their mind. One should also bear in mind that I'm far from an expert on the subject, and scholars are still debating exactly what constitutes "fascism". Maybe we should just call a spade a spade, but it's hard to apply the label to a man who specifically denounced it and exiled those who identified as such....I'm open to other points of view and don't really object to applying the label to salazar and O'Duffy. Hell, I've called Trump a fascist, with a small "f" anyway....
In fascism's heyday, in the 1930s, many regimes that were not functionally fascist borrowed elements of fascist decor in order to lend themselves an aura of force, vitality, and mass mobilization....[Salazar] crushed Portuguese fascism after he had copied some of its techniques of popular mobilization.
Hence the exile of Preto in 1934. Portuguese National Syndicalism had unified elements from among the post-war radical right. Preto wrote "our organic syndicalism is essentially the basis of current syndicalist thought among Mussolini’s friends." Before it was outlawed and its leaders exiled in the mid-1930’s, National Syndicalism had organized several coup attempts against the Salazar regime. No love lost there.
The Blue Shirts used the so-called Roman Salute and, after the example of other movements, followers called Preto "the Chief" (Chefe). "Duce," "Fûhrer," "Caudillo," etc... He was apparently genuinely revered by his followers. He was in close contact with German and Italian delegates, publicly exalting the fascism of both nations.
After WW2, however, Preto renounced fascism and joined a left-wing movement. The idea that the far-left and far-right lead to the same place is not as odd as it may first appear.
After World War II, Rolão Preto abandoned fascismand joined the left-wing forum Movement of Democratic Unity, and he published a volume entitled A Traição Burguesa ("The Bourgeois Betrayal"). The book criticised fascist regimes for becoming victims of social and political compromises with the bourgeoisie.
In 1945 he thought that "neither the glorious clarions of nationalist
mysticism nor the powerful social projections of Nazi efforts can make
us forget what Nazism represented — the deception of the revolutionary
hopes that gave birth to National Socialism".
Salazar was not a big-F fascist, he was still brutal dictator. I have a friend whose father spent 7 years in a Lisbon prison for distributing communist newspapers, where, among other tortures, his captors sought information by pulling off his fingernails.
After his death in 1970, the country fell once again into turmoil. Fortunately for Portugal, a moderate military faction emerged, staged a coup, and turned the country over to civil authority. In 1975, the country staged its first election in 50 years and today remains a stable democracy.
Researching the Portuguese Blue Shirts, I also found this
was the nickname for yet another group of fascists, in Ireland (and of course, in Spain). Ireland and Portugal have some similarities. Both have a smallish population, are historically less wealthy than the rest of Europe, Catholic, and have a large number of citizens living abroad.
Eoin O'Duffy
Ireland was occupied by Anglo-Normans waaay back in 1169. Jumping ahead some centuries, years of struggle culminated in the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). This happens to be the period during which fascism was emerging, and in Ireland, where nationalist sentiment was riding high after a successful guerrilla war against England, it's not surprising fascism found adherents.
One admirer was Eoin O'Duffy, a veteran of the war, a former commander in the IRA, and a former police commissioner. A group organized by and for vets, the Army Comrades Association (ACA), asked O'Duffy to lead the group in 1933, and he began to transform the organization along the lines of his fascist principles.
ACA flag
O'Duffy was offered and accepted leadership of the ACA and renamed it
the National Guard. He re-modelled the organisation, adopting elements
of European fascism, such as the straight-arm Roman salute,
the wearing of uniforms and huge rallies. Membership of the new
organisation became limited to people who were Irish or whose parents
"profess the Christian faith". O'Duffy was an admirer of Benito Mussolini, and the Blueshirts adopted corporatism as a chief political aim....
O'Duffy and the National Guard
The history of the period is too complex for me to summarize, but the quote above indicates some elements O'Duffy adopted from fascists in Italy and Germany.
The uniforms, the "Roman" salute, the rallies, the cry of "Hoch O'Duffy!" ("Hoch" = "Heil"), corporatism....O'Duffy openly admired Mussolini, and started a newspaper to promote corporatism (like Preto), and voice opposition to "alien" control and influence.
In the early stages of the 2nd Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935, O'Duffy offered Mussolini
to send 1000 Blueshirts to help the Italians. He and some of his men also made an appearance at the 1934 International Fascist conference in Montreux, arguing against antisemitism. The goal of this conference was to create a Fascist International to oppose the Communist Internationale, and identified fascist movements in 39 countries, including Portugal. Despite Salazar's reservations about Fascism, he certainly found enough affinities to send a delegation to this conference, oddly the same year he exiled the "hard Fascists" of the National Syndicalists. The Portuguese delegation included reps from Acção Escolar Vanguarda (Vanguard School Action) and União Nacional, headed by António Eça de Queiroz (future head of the National Radio Station of Portugal). There were no representatives from Italy, Nazi Germany, or the British Union of Fascists. From the outset, he conference was divided over the role of Nazi Germany, antisemitism, and role of race in international fascism. As we've already seen, the Irish delegation opposed antisemitism, as did the organizer of the conference, Eugenio Coselschi.
In 1936, O'Duffy also led a contingent to assist Franco during the Spanish Civil War.
By this time the Blueshirts had already been banned, changed name, been subsumed by another group, and succumbed to infighting. After his return from Spain, O'Duffy continued to network with German and Italian spies for the fascist cause, without much success. O'Duffy's personal affairs had become something of a mess and worsening alcoholism led to his early death at the age of 54 (1944).
It's rather ironic he was taken by drink. According to Wikipedia
O'Duffy believed in the ideal of "cleaned manliness". He said sport "cultivates in a boy habits of self-control [and] self-denial" and promotes "the cleanest and most wholesome of the instincts of youth". He said a lack of sport caused some boys to have "failed to keep their athleticism, but became weedy youths, smoking too soon, drinking too soon".
Not that sport is inherently fascist, but it does bring to mind the then-current concept of "Muscular Christianity" and the emergence of organized sport and other outdoor activities, such as Scouting. Nazism was certainly big on athleticism, physical culture, and clean living, at least outwardly. Hitler was like a pin-cushion of uppers and downers. But, hey, he was a vegetarian.
Physical culture was a prominent part of the Nazi propaganda machine. Fascism is a strange hybrid when it comes to technology; on one hand it exalts nature and hearkens back to a glorious, mythical past, yet it also embraces the might of technology. Italian Futurism was very influential on fascism in Italy, with its machine-age stylings and love of bells, whistles, electricity, planes, trains, and automobiles; yet fascism in general also placed importance on the relationship of the people (blood) and the natural world (soil). We wrote about this sort of "green" or "ecofascism" at the beginning of June. In many ways, fascism was a Romantic reaction to a rapidly-changing world, both suspicious of and taking technology in hand.
1936
In the final season of Peaky Blinders, we find anti-hero Thomas Shelby navigating his way through the interwar political landscape. One of his adversaries is British fascist Oswald Mosley, (see my previous post), and he also gets tangled up with Irish fascists. Odd intersection; until researching this post the talk of Irish fascists was new to me.
In one scene, Shelby explains that
Since I've entered politics, I've learned that the line doesn't go out from the middle to the left and the right. It goes in a circle....You go far enough left, eventually you'll meet someone who has gone far enough right to get to the same place. Working-class socialists like me, working-class nationalists like you. The result? National Socialism.
Well... since I've
entered politics, I've learned that the line doesn't go out from the
middle to the left and the right. It goes in a circle. I'll show you.
You go far enough left, eventually you'll meet someone who has gone far
enough right to get to the same place. Working-class socialists like me,
working-class nationalists like you. The result? National Socialism.
And that's me, in the middle. Just a man trying to make an honest living
in a very dark world. You have friends in Dublin, Laura McKee, who are
actively fighting for a Fascist Ireland. And you are acting on their
behalf, ain't you? When Jack Nelson comes to London, I can give him
access to Oswald Mosley and to Fascist sympathisers in the House of
Commons and the House of Lords, on both sides of the divide. Fascism is
quite the thing... among the very best people. And with your help, I can
also offer him Dublin.
Read more at: https://tvshowtranscripts.ourboard.org/viewtopic.php?f=287&t=51644
Well... since I've
entered politics, I've learned that the line doesn't go out from the
middle to the left and the right. It goes in a circle. I'll show you.
You go far enough left, eventually you'll meet someone who has gone far
enough right to get to the same place. Working-class socialists like me,
working-class nationalists like you. The result? National Socialism.
And that's me, in the middle. Just a man trying to make an honest living
in a very dark world. You have friends in Dublin, Laura McKee, who are
actively fighting for a Fascist Ireland. And you are acting on their
behalf, ain't you? When Jack Nelson comes to London, I can give him
access to Oswald Mosley and to Fascist sympathisers in the House of
Commons and the House of Lords, on both sides of the divide. Fascism is
quite the thing... among the very best people. And with your help, I can
also offer him Dublin.
Read more at: https://tvshowtranscripts.ourboard.org/viewtopic.php?f=287&t=51644
Preto is a good example; after WW2 he denounced fascism and became involved in left-wing politics. In France today, many supporters of far-right leader Marine Le Pen are ex-Communists. (In yesterday's legislative elections, her party is set to win 90 seats in the French parliament, far beyond expectations).
Before the Second World War, the explicitly fascist French Popular Party (1936-1945) was founded by ex-Communists. Putin's guru Alexander Dugin also recognizes this circular model; his "Nazbol" (1993-2007) group, the National Bolshevik Party, used the Nazi flag; red field, white circle, black icon. But instead of a swastika, they used a hammer and sickle.
National Bolshevik Party
French Popular Party (like the NS and ACA, a cross)
Not to seem trivial, but I would be remiss not to discuss Slovenian group Laibach, musical outlet of the political art collective NSK (New Slavic Art). As a country in which both Communism and Fascism have taken their turns, Slovenia is a natural wellspring for explorers of the totalitarian labyrinth. Like the fictional Shelby, Laibach recognizes the limitations of the left-right axis political model.
Laibach are often accused of being fascists for their use of uniforms, militaristic icons and imagery, and the martial sounds, and lyrics, in their music. Despite being accused of having fascist sympathies, they actually have communist roots. They play with the imagery of totalitarianism to point out that authoritarian communism and fascism share as much as they differ. They are trolling both "sides".
Laibach incorporates the aesthetics of social realism, Nazism and Italian Futurism, demonstrating where extremes meet, much as the fictional Thomas Shelby with a water ring on a bar table. Wikipedia speaks of Futurism emphasizing "dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city." Hence Salazar's criticism of Facism's "exaltation of youth."
We are fascists as much as Hitler was a painter." So say the group, rather cryptically. In the words of musician/journalist Richard Wolfson
Laibach's method is extremely simple, effective and horribly open to
misinterpretation. First of all, they absorb the mannerisms of the
enemy, adopting all the seductive trappings and symbols of state
power, and then they exaggerate everything to the edge of parody...
Next they turn their focus to highly charged issues — the West's fear of
immigrants from Eastern Europe, the power games of the EU, the analogies between Western democracy and totalitarianism.
Laibach are not fascists. Like Pink Floyd and David Bowie, they are partly satirizing the fascistic elements of the rock concert as something akin to a fascist rally. Interestingly, this rock star as fascist is also accompanied by a mental breakdown; in The Wall, Pink is falling apart. And Bowie? A lad, insane. But I think Laibach are as much concerned with the dangers of capitalism with anything else. Toying with totalitarian aesthetics, they remind us to take a hard look at authoritarian aesthetics; the rallies of modern North Korea and those of Nazi Germany: there isn't much difference except the colors and symbols.
While this was a brief aside when I mentioned McDuffy's remarks about sport, I include the video above for Laibach's song The Whistleblowers. An homage to Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, it's pictured as a kind of fascist training program for youth. The imagery is fascist, but the message is decidedly in favor of those with the courage to break the silence beneath which governments commit all manner of crimes. Some may think their tactics are in poor taste; I think they're trying to make people really examine their own "democracy." They are saying that in many ways a capitalist, western democracy is just as capable of committing atrocities as the fascist regimes. We think of Nuremberg rallies and Communist parades and shudder. But aren't our cultures also reveling in spectacles we actually pay for? Spectacles where mindless masses cheer and scream for "heroes" that earn more in a single match or concert than most will earn in a year? Is a fascist rally any worse than a rock concert or the Super Bowl? Our "culture" is an increasingly expensive series of "spectacles...." Hats off to Guy Debord and The Society of the Spectacle. Written in 1967, it's truer today than ever. Culture behind a paywall. Marinetti predicted his future, our past; Debord predicted his future, our present.
While Hitler has become synonymous with human evil, and wearing a swastika in public unthinkable, one can wear a hammer and sickle with impunity. But in terms of human destruction, Stalin matches Hitler, perhaps exceeds him. By some estimates Stalin is responsible for 6 million deaths due to mass murder and forced labor. Others put that at 9. If famine is included, the figure could be as high as 60 million people. And Pol Pot, ostensibly a Communist, was unimaginably barbaric, killing up to 2 million Cambodians.
Comparing death tolls like baseball stats is grotesque, but illustrative. This brief foray into fascism has taught me that left and right are not straight lines, but curved lines that often meet, like circumnavigating a globe. Like Shelby tracing a circle on a table top. The lines become something like a fence encircling everyone in the middle hoping just to get by.
The fascist impulse seems to be something which hasn't gone away, merely changed forms. Before embarking on this series of posts, I only associated fascism with Germany, Italy, and Spain. We speak of international communism, but not much about international fascism. But we should. It may seem counter-intuitive to think of nationalists embracing international coordination, but as the Financial Times reports
Since being ousted from his position as White House chief strategist in 2017, he [Steve Bannon] has shifted his attention to Europe, helping launch the Brussels-based The Movement, a rightwing think-tank to support nationalist, anti-establishment groups.
Bannon has opened a center in Italy in order to cultivate links between far-right groups and politicians from Italy, Greece, and Hungary, and from across Europe. Said Bannon in 2019
“Come back here in a few years and you’ll find 100 students; 20 to 25 faculty [staff]. You’ve already had a couple of classes graduate [by then] and people are back in media, back in political campaigns, serving as junior ministers in government and starting to build a network . . . I think this academy will start to build a cadre.”
Something to keep an eye on, despite the skepticism of many European rightwing leaders. Today's fascists may not wear easily-recognizable uniforms other than black and yellow polo shirts, but their aims are not much different from their early-20th century counterparts. The digital revolution is as transformative as the technological revolution of years past, and the reactionaries of today are as committed as those of that period. January 6th may well be a prelude of what is yet to come.
"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal
vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the
consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
John Philpot Curran (1750-1817)
I know this post is a bit of a jumble, and I'm sure some new color of shirt will pop up soon, but for now, da- da- das ist alles, Völker!
So Luis, what do you think? Have I got anything dreadfully wrong? I feel a little out of my depth with this one, so I'd be happy to hear your point of view. Obrigado antecipadamente e obrigado pelo seu apoio.
