eurofascism.info

After the punch in the nose from Oswald Mosley, Yockey left the Union Movement. Soon, he was to lead a group of British extremists who regarded him as nothing less than a fascist guru. Their first goal was to spread Imperium to a wider audience, and in 1948 the book was published by Westropa Press in London. The next year Yockey and a handful of others decided to found the European Liberation Front. That same year Yockey published «The Proclamation of London», «a brief summary of the most crucial ideas which had already been presented in his 600-page volume»**.

The opening words of the proclamation were:

Throughout all Europe there is stirring today a great superpersonal Idea, the Idea of the Imperium of Europe, the permanent and perfect union of the peoples and nations of Europe. This Idea embodies in itself the entire content of the future, for unless this Idea is fulfilled, there will be no European future.

Those who regard this Idea, which is expressed at this moment in the Liberation Front, as a danger to them, wish to destroy it at all costs. Its enemies are, first, the anti-European forces without the Western Civilization who, at this moment of history, dominate the entire world, and second, their subservient lackeys within the Western Civilization, the reactionary party-politicians, together, with the self-interested forces they represent. Both are united in their blind hatred of this young and vital Idea, which is irresistibly releasing forces which threaten to engulf these old powers of reaction, finance-capitalism, class-war, and Bolshevism.

By gigantic war, by terror, and by manifold persecution, the party-politicians and their extra-European masters have sought and seek to stifle this mighty Idea. They have sought in vain to deprive it of voice, and of all means of self-expression, through the written word or the spoken[...].

Next to the party politicians the manifesto makes it clear that a number one enemy is the Jew, a «Culture-alien» whose entrance into Western affairs present a form of «culture-parasitism», a disease-condition generating «spiritual, political, economic and social phenomena of a kind which could never arise from domestic elements». But the Jews were not only parasites in the eyes of Yockey and his allies, they were also distorters, because the «Culture-alien intervenes in the public, and spiritual affairs of the host, [...] warping and frustrating its proper tendencies to make them serviceable to his alien needs».

Yockey’s manifesto states that there is an «inner enemy», which has destroyed the World-Empire of Europe by «his vassalage to the Bolshevism of Washington, Moscow and the Culture-State-Nation-Race-People of the Jews». This inner enemy is to blame for the destruction of «every European State» and has turned over the soil of Europe to outer enemies.

As touched upon earlier, these ideas are not very different from the Eurofascist mythos, inspired by thinkers such as Oriana Fallaci and Bat Ye’or. Here in the words of Paul Belien, the editor of the Brussels Journal and the husband of a Vlaams Belang-parliamentarian:

If faith collapses, civilization goes with it”, says Bethell. That is the real cause of the closing of civilization in Europe. Islamization is simply the consequence. The very word Islam means submission and the secularists have submitted already. Many Europeans have already become Muslims, though they do not realize it or do not want to admit it.

Elsewhere Belien writes: «I do not consider myself a pessimist, merely a realist. It is quite clear who is going to lose – and whose fault that will be».

While Belien blames «the post-Marxist Left» and the «hedonists», Yockey blames «materialism» and «the creation of Liberal-Communist democracy». But Yockey goes a step further than many modern-day Eurofascist thinkers. While they give a diagnosis, and do not speak much of solutions, he also prescribes the medicine: a cleansing of Europe, getting rid of everything he considers alien, from liberal-democracy and parliamentarism to feminism, capitalism and «the ethical syphilis of Hollywood». Indeed, the manifesto holds forth, the «Culture-disease of extra-Europeans and traitors» should be replaced with the ethical values of Europe, authority, faith, discipline, duty, order, hierarchy, fertility and will-to-power.

It is quite a mouthful, and you would expect Yockey to have had some difficulties in selling these ideas in the years shortly after WWII. But of course, he did find an audience, and that audience was found amongst the very people who had prescribed much of the same medicine before him. A condensed version of Imperium was published in German under the name «Der Feind Europas».

Otto Ernst Remer, the former Wehrmacht officer who had played a crucial role in stopping the 1944 coup attempt against Hitler and who now led the renewed Nazis of the Socialist Reich Party, thought highly of the book. So did Maurice Bardèche, a leading French fascist, although he later was to indirectly refer to Yockey as a «complete lunatic». The painter-philosopher Julius Evola, a central voice in post-WWII fascism, also liked it, although he disagreed with Yockey’s opinion that Soviet Communism constituted a lesser evil than Western capitalism.

In October 1950, Yockey travelled to Italy to attend a conference hosted by the Movimento Sociale Italiano.

Founded by veterans of Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic this was the first of Europe’s post-WWII fascist parties and the Italians placed considerable emphasis on cross-border networking. Hoping to forge a united international front with other neofascists, they invited representatives from numerous countries to a four-day conference in Naples. Yockey participated in several strategy sessions.

The MSI, the Italian Social Movement, carried an obvious reference to the Nazi puppet-state of the Italian Social Republic in its name. From its outset the party advocated a «third way» in between liberal capitalism and social-communism, rejecting the party system, appealing for a strong executive branch and supporting aggressive government intervention in the social sphere.

Its honorary president from the early 1950s was Admiral Junio Valerio Borghese. Known as the «Black Prince», thanks to his aristocratic family background, Borghese had developed a fearsome reputation during the WWII as the commander of Italy’s well-known frogman unit, a unit pulling of a series of daring raids against Allied ships and harbours. He was a die-hard fascist officer, who had waged a bloody battle against anti-fascist resistance in Northern Italy. Captured by Communist partisans in the final phases of the war he was saved from execution only by the last-minute intervention of the OSS station chief in Rome, James Jesus Angleton. Borghese was to play a significant role in Italy’s postwar fascist movement.

Borghese once stated that «the state is so rotten it will not even be necessary to give it a small push»

His name was, however, to be connected to an attempt at precisely «pushing», specifically an unsuccessful coup attempt taking place in December 1970. The night of 7-8. December that year, nearly a thousand of his followers assembled near the Interior Ministry, nerve centre of Italy’s police and government communications network. They never received their go-ahead. Instead, Borghese was tipped off that his Fronte Nazionale – a splinter-group from the MSI – had long been infiltrated and that the plot was known.

Reluctantly, Borghese agreed to cancel the coup. By way of consolation, he treated his commanders to a late spaghetti supper.

Fleeing problems and an arrest warrant for seeking «to provoke an armed insurrection», Borghese went to Spain. He travelled together with Stefano delle Chiaie, another former MSI-member.

In Spain they met up with Otto Skorzeny, Léon Degrelle and others. Skorzeny was a former German officer who played a central role in the neo-Nazi scene of Europe, while Degrelle was the Walloon Nazi known for founding the Rexist movement**.  They also met with Juan Perón (x) and with General Franco himself.

In April 1974, delle Chiaie and Borghese continued on to Santiago, Chile, for a meeting with none other than general Augusto Pinochet. During the next few years, delle Chiaie was involved in Operation Condor as well as in the Argentine juntas Dirty War, a campaign of illegal arrests, torture, killings and forced disapperances of thousands of Argentinians. With Klaus Barbie ***,  he also took part in the ‘Cocaine Coup’ of Luis García Meza Tejada in 1980. The regime of Meza Tejada was known not only for its involvement in drug trafficking, but also for its extreme brutality. U.S. Bolivian Affairs Expert James Malloy wrote that Bolivia had become a «rapacious, uniformed kleptocracy». Delle Chiaie worked for the regime, training its soldiers.

Another early member of the MSI was Pino Rauti. Like admiral Borghese, he became disillusioned with the party and founded his own thinktank in 1956, the Ordine Nuovo. Not surprisingly, the think-tank revived anti-Semitic and racist subjects and slogans from the fascist era, but soon it was to become more than that. In the seventies, the Ordine Nuovo was involved in a number of terrorist attacks.

By then Rauti had rejoined the MSI, and although the authorities suspected his involvement in terrorism, he was acquitted in a 1972 court case. He was to remain central in the fraction of the party most heavily inspired by the philosophy of Julius Evola. Evola had, amongst other things, written an introduction to a 1938 Italian edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, where he said that the Jews «destroy every surviving trace of true order and superior civilization». Evola also believed that a race of Nordic people, originally semi-immaterial and «soft-boned», had played a crucial founding role in Atlantis and in the high cultures of both the East and the West. According to him, this Nordic-Aryan race had practiced a Solar spirituality ennobled by a warrior ethos.

As Giorgio Almirante, a former Salò Republic chief of cabinet and the founder of the MSI withdrew from politics in 1987, Rauti was one of the candidates to take over the leadership. But Rauti, representing the hardliners, lost against Gianfranco Fini. After poor election results in 1990, the two battled again, and this time Rauti won. After the victory was clear, Il Manifesto wrote (quoted in Gerhard Feldbauer’s “Von Mussolini bis Fini“) «the battle insignia were shown, the Celtic crosses and the standards of the Salò Republic, the hands raised in the Roman salute, [...] the old parole «Death to the traitors!» yelled and the champagne bottles opened». But it was a Pyrrhic victory for Rauti and the hardliners. Another poor election followed, and Rauti was ousted.

As Fini turned the MSI into the more moderate, «post-fascist» Alleanza Nazionale in 1995, Rauti left and became the leader of Fiamma Tricolore (Tricolour Flame, a name referring to the symbol of the MSI, a flame in the colours of the Italian flag). Today, he leads the Movimento Idea Sociale, the result of yet another split. This new party is quite easily recognisable as fascist, but has of course picked up some more recent ideas alongst the way. When Oriana Fallaci passed away in 2006, the website of the MIS posted an eulogy, praising Fallaci for «coining the neologism Eurabia, thus denouncing the danger of the Muslim invasion and this endemic plague of uncontrolled and uncontrollable immigration» (no longer found online).

However, it was Gianfranco Fini who was going to leave a more lasting impression on Italian politics. In his younger years Fini had been a member of the youth organisation of the MSI, Fronte della Gioventù. In 1983 he got elected into parliament, and in 1987 he was for the first time elected national secretary of the party. In a political athmosphere heavily influenced by widespread government corruption, he saw a new possibility for the old fascists, and swore to the double strategy of keeping to the fascist traditions and at the same time rebuilding the MSI into a broader-base right-wing party. In 1992, the 70th anniversary of Mussolini’s march on Rome was celebrated. Around ten thousand neo-fascists marched through the streets of the city, some rising their arms in the Roman salute, some wearing t-shirts depicting Il Duce, some yelling «viva il fascismo». In the evening 1200 party members and veterans gathered for a banquet. Amongst them was Margherita Mingarella, who took part in the original fascist march on Rome.

There was a gigantic picture of Mussolini and the slogan: «70 Years of History, Fight and Dreams. Long live 28. October. Long live the fascist revolution». Fini spoke: «We are looking forward, but we also keep true to our roots». Even the enormous birthday cake was shaped as a flame, and the guests sang «All’armi! All’armi! All’armi o Fascisti», «To arms, to arms, o fascists». (See Feldhaber, 1996)

In 1993, Fini ran for mayor in Rome and came very near a victory, with 47 per cent in a runoff vote. The next year, several public-opinion polls showed that Fini had become the most popular politician in Italy, but in an interview with the Turin daily La Stampa he created controverse when he praised Mussolini as «the greatest statesman of the century».

In January 1995, the MSI gathered for their final convention. Declaring that it was time to turn a page in history, Fini told his audience that it was time to pull the plug on the party. Henceforth, they would be known as the National Alliance, incorporating parts of the former Christian Democratic party Democrazia Cristiana, as well as some members of Partito Liberale Italiano.

However, the old logo of the MSI remained a part of the new party’s logo, partly to prevent others from legally using it – not a new phenomenon in Italian politics. Importantly, National Alliance claimed to be committed to the democratic process, centrist in orientation and opposed in its constitution to antisemitism, xenophobia and racism. Of course, things were not quite as simple. Fini himself increasingly turned away from fascism. Not everyone followed his example. Few things could have illustrated that in a better way than when Fini, eight years after his infamous interview in La Stampa, gave an interview stating that he would no longer define Mussolini as the greatest statesman of the century. Much had changed since 1994, he pointed out and when choosing again, he went for safe bets: Luigi Einaudi, Alcide De Gasperi and Giovanni Giolitti. All three politicians had opposed Mussolini, two of them came from the Italian Liberal Party, De Gasperi was the Christian Democrat who also was to become known as one of the founding fathers of the European Union. And, of course, none of them were even close to being as well-known as his original choice.

Mirko Tremaglia, the minister for Italians abroad and a veteran of both the MSI and the Salò Republic was not too happy. He made clear that he was proud of his entire personal history, including when he risked his life to «save Italy from catastrophe». Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the wartime dictator, former actress and Playboy model and parliamentarian for the party, was furious. She accused Fini for steering the party into ever more moderate waters in order to buy respectability to further his own political career. «A mega shake up is now needed», she said. «The prevailing party logic is one of cynical, political opportunism, where there is no chance of any internal dialogue or debate [...] To put an end to the present leader’s phoney concern for people’s welfare, which does not correspond to the wishes of the party rank and file, I have decided to put myself up as a candidate (for party secretary)».

Her announcement came only hours after Italy’s cabinet voted for Fini, the deputy prime minister, to represent Rome on the European Convention. In 2004, the self-declared «post-fascist», who had by then described fascism as part of an era of «absolute evil» during a visit in Israel, became the foreign minister.

Searchlight Magazine wrote:

On his next visit to London Fini will expect to shake hands with Foreign Minister Jack Straw and Prime Minister Tony Blair, both of whom are already very good friends of Berlusconi. If he does it will be the first time that a nazi fascist symbol enters the Foreign Office or Downing Street. The leader of the neo-fascist National Alliance Party wears a badge on his lapel. It represents the eternal flame that burns on Mussolini’s tomb and shows pride in the values of fascism.

Footnotes:

* From «Manifesto of the European Liberation Front 1999», written by Troy Southgate, a ‘national anarchist’ formerly active in National Front, International Third Position and the English Nationalist Movement. Southgate is currently working in Cercle de la rose noire (Circle of the Black Rose), a group combining anarchist and fascist thinking and referring not only to Julius Evola, Otto Strasser and Jean-Francois Thiriart as sources of inspiration, but also for instance the horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.

** The Christus Rex Party was founded by Degrelle in 1930. The name was derived from the Roman Catholic social teachings concerning Christus Rex, and was also the title of a conservative Catholic journal. The ideology of the Rexists called for a moral renewal of Belgian society in conformity with the teachings of the Church, by forming a corporatist society, and abolishing democracy. The Rexist movement attracted support mostly amongst the Walloons. Rexism also incorporated anti-Semitic ideas.

*** Klaus Barbie was a German war criminal and former Hauptstormführer of the SS and the Gestapo. The time as a head of the Gestapo of Lyon earned him the name «The Butcher of Lyon». He personally tortured prisoners and has been blamed for death of 4000 people. He is also known for ordering the deportation to Auschwitz of a group of 44 Jewish children from an orphanage at Izieu. In 1947, Barbie became an agent for the US Army Counter Intelligence Corps, and with American help he fled to Bolivia in 1951. Further reading at archives.gov and in Studs Terkel “The Good War“.

x Further reading on Juan Peron’s Nazi ties: Peron’s Nazi Ties, Time Magazine, Nov 8, 1998