Thursday, Nov. 27, 1952: In what is now called the Slansky Trial, 14 defendants – all of them communists – are found guilty of treason in a show trial in Prague. Eleven of them, including the former secretary general of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Rudolf Slansky, are convicted to death and six days later, they are hanged in the Pankrac prison.
In a show trial, Slansky and the thirteen other men had been portrayed as Stalin’s typical bogeymen, as «Trotskyists», «Titoists», «Western imperialists» and «rootless cosmopolitans».
All of them had confessed to their alleged crimes, under mental and probably physical pressure to do so. The trial is often viewed in the light of Stalin’s wish to prevent other countries in the Soviet sphere of influence from following Yugoslavia’s example and leave the Soviet bloc.
But there is another side to the trial in Prague, a side that makes the grim story look perhaps even grimmer. Amongst the fourteen men convicted in the Stalinist show trial of 1952 were eleven Jews, survivors of the Holocaust. To the crimes mentioned above, another one had been added. The men were accused of being «Zionists». It had only been a few years, and the ugly face of anti-Semitism was once again killing people in Eastern Europe.
In December 1951, in a short comment given the stinging title «In Hitler’s Steps», TIME Magazine wrote:
Ousted Czech Vice Premier Rudolf Slansky is still awaiting trial in Prague for crimes vaguely described as “activities against the state.” Last week a clearer picture of the crimes, and of a growing Communist crusade, emerged from a speech made by Communist Premier Antonin Zapotocky. The speech, an appeal to national pride which might have stemmed from Adolf Hitler, was a bitter attack on “Jewish capitalism” and “interference from Jerusalem.” Slansky, like several of the victims of Czechoslovakia’s current party purge, is a Jew. Therefore, he is, in the favorite word the Commies use to denounce Jews, a “cosmopolite.”
In Israel, as the trial was going on, «tens of thousand of people, with their radios tuned to Prague listened in horror».
But not all in the West were appalled. One American, the shadowy fascist intellectual Francis Parker Yockey, had even travelled to Prague and followed the show trial from the visitors gallery.
As he soon was to point out in an article, he saw «the
treason trials in Bohemia [as] an unmistakable turning point»:
Henceforth, all must perforce reorient their policy in view of the undeniable reshaping of the world-situation. The ostrich-policy is suicide. The talk of “defense against Bolshevism” belongs now to yesterday, as does the nonsense of talking of “the defense of Europe” at a period when every inch of European soil is dominated by the deadly enemies of Europe, those who seek its political-cultural-historical extinction at all costs.
The question of innocence and guilt is, according to Yockey, «historically meaningless», just like in «the stinking horror of Nuremberg».
Kevin Coogans book on Francis Parker Yockey: "Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International" (Source: Book cover)
The article in question, named «What is behind the hanging of the eleven Jews in Prague» is in some ways an archtypical anti-Semitic text. The Jews are indirectly blamed for the Second World War, and a claim is made saying that the «Jewish Culture-State-Nation-People-Race» is scheming for a Third.
Yockey is best known as the author of a book that has sometimes been described as the Mein Kampf of the neo-Nazis, «Imperium».
He wrote the book under a pseudonym, Ulick Varange, which itself hints at his ideas of a united Europe and its reach, Ulick is Irish and means «reward of the wind», Varange refers to the Væringjar, a Norse tribe which travelled eastwards and southwards, engaging in trade, piracy and mercenary activities, and eventually giving their name to the famous Varangian Guard, the lifeguard of the Byzantine Emperor.
In the introduction of the book, Yockey writes:
The present chaos — 1948 — is directly traceable to the attempt to prevent the integration of Europe. As a result, Europe is in a swamp, and extra-European forces dispose of former European nations as their colonies.
[...]
I condemn here at the outself the miserable plans of retarded souls to “unite” Europe as an economic area for purposes of exploitation by and defense of the Imperialism of extra-European forces. The integration of Europe is not a subject for plans, but for expression.
It needs but to be recognized, and the perpetuation of nineteenth century economic thinking is entirely incapable here. Not trade and banking, not importing and exporting, but Heroism alone can liberate that integrated soul of Europe which lies under the financial trickery of retarders, the petty-stateism of party-politicians, and the occupying armies of extra-European forces.
[...]
[And thus] this book is a renewal of a war-declaration. It asks the traitors to Europe, the miserable party-politicians whose tenure of office is dependent upon their continued serviceability to extra-European forces, «Did you think it was over?».
Francis Parker Yockey's "Imperium", in many ways the post-WWII equivalent of Mein Kampf (Source: Book cover)
For Yockey, it was not over, eventhough what he referred to as «the European revolution»* had been defeated. In a book spanning over six hundred pages, much of it heavily influenced by Spangler’s «Decline of the West», he argues for «a complete cleansing of the Western soul from every form of Materialism, from Rationalism, Equality, social chaos, Communism, Bolshevism, liberalism, Leftism of every variety, Money-worship, democracy, finance-capitalism, the domination of Trade, nationalism, parliamentarism, feminism, race-sterility, weak ideals of ‘happiness’ and the like». To replace these ideals he puts «the strong and manly Idea of the age of Absolute Politics: Authority, Discipline, Faith, Responsibility, Duty, Ethical Socialism, Fertility, Order, State, Hierarchy – the creation of the Empire of the West».
Recognising fascism in Yockey’s writings is not difficult. But there are also some remarkable similarities to modern-day European writings, such as Oriana Fallaci’s anti-Islamic books «The Rage and The Pride» and «The Force of Reason».
While Yockey says that «extra-European forces dispose of former European nations as their colonies», Fallaci says that Europe is «Eurabia, a colony of Islam». While Yockey speaks of «cultural parasitism», in the forms of Jews – of course – but also in the forms of «the Chinese in California», «the Negro population in both America and South Africa», the «Parsee in India», and so on, Fallaci speaks of Muslims «breeding like rats» and of Islam as a quagmire.
While Yockey condemns «the miserable plans of retarded souls to ‘unite’ Europe as an economic area for purposes of exploitation by [...] the Imperialism of extra-European forces», Fallaci thinks the Islamic colonisation of Europe is a result of «the bankers who have created the farce called the European Union, the popes who have invented the fable of ecumenism, the spineless individuals who have created the lie of pacifism, the hypocrites who have planned the fraud called humanitary help. It is Europe with its leaders with no honour and no wits, with its intellectuals without dignity and without bravery. It is the sick Europe that has sold itself as a whore to the sultans, to the caliphs, to the vizirs…».
These are similarities in rhetorics, and if that was the only connection between Yockey and the Eurofascists, the American could easily be disregarded as a marginal figure not worth spending much time on.
However, there’s more to it.
Footnotes:
* By «the European revolution» Yockey refers to the Nazi takeover in Germany, which – as he writes on page 617 – culminated in «the glorious days of 1941 and 1942 [which] show what the West can do against the Barbarian, however superior his numbers».