Fascism is not a doctrine. It is a time-honoured will, obscure and very ancient – and it is written into our soul. If it is different for each nation, that is because each nation possesses its way of saving itself. Such knowledge can be found only at the heart of things. So the fascist idea can’t be grafted on, or transplated. You cannot spray it on to any plant. But those who are fascists truly feel it before they believe in it – they experience the idea more deeply than others.
(Qu’est-ce que le fascisme, Maurice Bardèche, 1962)
David Irving (Photo from fpp.co.uk, released into PD)
In February 2006, David Irving was convicted to three years of jail in Austria. The backdrop was two 1989 speeches where he termed the Auschwitz gas chambers as a «fairytale» and insisted Adolf Hitler had protected the Jews of Europe. He referred to surviving death camp witnesses as «psychriatic cases», and asserted that there were no extermination camps in the Third Reich.
Irving is one of the most well-known Holocaust denialists. He has been associated with the Institute for Historical Review and has given lectures to groups such as the German Deutsche Volksunion, Gerhard Frey’s party. According to Deborah Lipstadt, Irving is «an ultranationalist who believes that Britain has been on a steady path of decline accelerated by its misguided decision to launch a war against Nazi Germany». David Irving sued Lipstadt and her publisher for libel following her book «Denying the Holocaust», but, eventhough UK libel law puts the burden of proof on the defendant rather than the plaintiff, Lipstadt and Penguin won the case. The Judge, Charles Gray, ruled that Lipstadt’s claims were «substantially true» and commented:
Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist, and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.
Not only writing on Nazi-Germany, Irving has also written a book on the Hungarian uprising in 1956, which he viewed as «primarily an anti-Jewish uprising». In a speech delivered at the IHR conference in 1983 he spoke of «This Jewish camarilla, this four-headed monster which descended on the Hungarian people [...]. Its primary executive arm was the secret police, initially called the Allahvedelmi Osztaly, the State Security Office, and subsequently the AVH. Now it is necessary to know that the officer corps of that secret police was almost entirely Jewish and from the Russian point of view you can understand this. They needed people on whom they couldrely».
Equally notorious is a ditty Irving composed for his young daughter to sing «when halfbreed children are wheeled past»:
I am a Baby Aryan
Not Jewish or Sectarian
I have no plans to marry an
Ape or Rastafarian
Although fighting Holocaust denial through the courts are hardly efficient or even defendable from a freedom-of-speech point-of-view, it was no surprise that Irving was convicted in Austria.
What few people expected was his reply as the judge asked him whether he still subscribed to the views articulated in his 1980 speeches: – I made a mistake saying there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz.
Of course, Irving still claimed that the Holocaust figure of six million murdered Jews was ‘a symbolic number’ and said his figures totalled 2.7 million. He also still believed that Hitler protected the Jews and tried to put off the Final Solution, at least until after WWII. For some of Irving’s fans, that was just not good enough. They believed his new opinions were «very doubtful», «something he has been forced to say», «lies» (the examples are from a debate on the neo-Nazi web site stormfront.org).
More interesting is the debate the court case led to. Roger Boyes of the Times, who was at the Vienna court, noted: «it’s becoming like a free speech seminar. You’ve got al-Jazeera here, you’ve got Jyllandsposten, all the people affected by the cartoon war. Everyone is asking why it’s taboo to attack the Holocaust but not to attack the Prophet Muhammad».
Many made the same point. Christian Fleck, sociologist at the University of Graz, said that Austria, «if it wants to prove itself a modern democracy» should use «argument, and not the law against Holocaust deniers». But there were also those arguing differently, such as the German historian Hajo Funke: – In Germany and Austria, there’s a moral obligation to fight the kind of propaganda peddled by Irving, he stated, – we can’t afford the luxury of the Anglo-Saxon freedom of speech in this regard.
The story of David Irving, and the heated discussions surrounding the Austrian verdict, is still nothing like the story of Robert Brasillach. His story brings the questions of the Irving case one step further: Does the words of a writer merit legal vengeance?
Brasillach, «the James Dean of French fascism», was a gifted man of letters – novelist, poet and playwright. Since 1934 he quite openly supported fascism and after the German occupation of France he became the editor-in-chief of the fascist, pro-German newspaper Je Suis Partout. There he launched attacks on Republicans, Communists, Jews and foreigners. In November 1942 he supported the German takeover of the unoccupied zone under the Vichy government, because it «reunited France». He called for the death of left-wing politicians and in the summer of 1944 signed the call for the summary execution of all members of the French Resistance.
After the liberation of Paris, Brasillach hid in at attic, but when he heard that his mother had been arrested he gave himself up. He went on trial in Paris on January 19, 1945, and was sentenced to death, convicted of «intelligence with the enemy». In fact, one could say that Brasillach was convicted to death for hate speech.
The sentence caused uproar in French literary circles. Fellow author François Mauriac, a member of the Resistance himself, circulated a petition to Charles de Gaulle to commute the sentence. But Brasillach was shot. De Gaulle later declared that whereas he had pardoned from execution all those who had not actively colluded with German authorities, he had to make an exception for Brasillach. – Talent, he stated, – is a responsibility.
Spanish edition of "Nuremberg or the promised land"
Maurice Bardèche, the brother-in-law of Brasillach, initially came to prominence as an associate of the latter. He wrote for Je suis partout from 1938 on, mostly on art.
It was after the war Bardèche was to raise to prominence in the fascist movement. In 1947 he wrote Lettre a Francois Mauriac, in which he attacked what he saw as the harsh treatment of supporters of Philippe Petain after the end of Nazi rule in France.
The next year came an attack on the Nuremberg trials, Nuremberg ou la terre promise, often considered to be a classic of Holocaust denial. In the book he claims that that at least part of the evidence regarding the concentration camps have been falsified, and that the deaths that occured there were caused by war-related privations, including starvation and illness. According to Bardèche, the final solution of the Nazis was really referring to a transfer of the Jews to «what they called a Jewish reservate, a kind of European ghetto, a Jewish fatherland reestablished in the east».
Still, Bardèche admitted that there was a «will to exterminate the Jews» and that there were «deportations of Jews» and of «certain Frenchmen who had accepted or seemed to have accepted the Jewish cause». The whole question, Bardèche claims, is why the Germans made this distinction. He answers himself:
The Jews were originally strangers, who were first allowed into this country with prudence – and then in always increasing numbers as some of them gained influence. In spite of this hospitality that was given them, they did not refrain themselves from taking part in the political discussions of our country. Regarding whether we should transform the invasion of Czechoslovakia or the war in Poland into a European war, they did not hesitate to fight against any spirit of reconciliation, i.e. to involve our country in a unfortunate, but desirable war, because it was directed against an enemy of their race. We ceased to be a great nation. In reality, we maybe even ceased to be an independent people, because their wealth and their influence made their viewpoint prevail over that of those French who where concerned with protecting their ground and keeping peace.
In other words, Bardèche found that the Jews were themselves to blame for their deportation and for their deaths:
They say today that they are true to this land which their parents did not know, and that they understand better than us the wisdom and mission of this country, of which some of them can hardly speak the language.
They divided us, they claimed the blood of the best and purest, and they were delighted and still are delighted with our deaths. They gave us the right to say that this war they wanted was their war, and not ours. They paid the price that is paid in all wars. We have the right not to count their deaths with our deaths.
Bardèche was a self-declared fascist, and soon he was to join up with other fascists around Europe, including Oswald Mosley in England and Per Engdahl in Sweden. In 1951, Engdahl hosted an international meeting of key European fascists leaders in the southern Swedish city of Malmö, leading to the foundation of the European Social Movement, perhaps better known simply as the Malmö Movement.
When Bardèche died in 1998, Jean-Marie Le Pen of the French Front National described him as «a prophet of the European renaissance for which he had long hoped». Somewhat paradoxically, Bardèche also served as an inspiration to the notably anti-French (or rather anti-Walloon) extreme nationalists of Flanders. In the early 1950s his book was translated to Dutch as Neurenberg, het beloofde land. The translator was Karel Dillen, the founder of Vlaams Nationale Partij, a party which was soon to change its name to Vlaams Blok and which today is known as Vlaams Belang. Dillen was a member of the European parliament from 1994 to 2004.
In 1980, Roeland Raes, another prominent Vlaams Blok-member, wrote a series of articles in the magazine Dietsland-Europa titled «A great European: Maurice Bardèche». «To us, Bardèche is one of the most gifted writers of the nationalist camp», he noted, «an unusually brave man and a great European intellectual». He also pointed out that Flemish nationalists owe Bardèche thanks for contributing to «a large part» of their political thinking.
In 1994, Raes reveals that he still regularly reads Bardèches 1961 classic of neo-fascism Qu’est-ce que le fascisme?. In the book, beginning with the words «I am a fascist writer», the Frenchman draws lessons from the Italian, German and Spanish variants of fascism, and explores the opportunities of some post-war neo-fascist movements. According to Raes, Bardèches’ work puts down the basic demands for «real national-revolutionary attitude and action».
In 2001 Raes lands in trouble as he follows his mentor in expressing doubt of the Holocaust. That was nothing new to Raes, of course, but this time he did not do it in one of the obscure publications of Flemish nationalists, but in an interview with the Dutch TV channel NCRV. He was forced to withdraw as vice president and senator for the party. However, he remains a central member, working as an archivarian at the party headquarters.
Following the verdict in the Irving-case, Horst Mahler stated:
The Irving trial is a heavy blow against Jewish supremacy. Imagine! A world-famous historian, having held almost twenty years ago a lecture on his findings, earns for that a three-years-sentence. That is the revival of inquisition in Europe. The Europeans of today will not accept inquisition. Inquisition is a crime. The «judges» of Vienna are perpetrators of a capital crime and will be punished for that. Europe is at the dawn of a revolution to
free itself from the Jewish yoke. The Holocaust is the biggest lie in history.
If you think you recognise Mahler’s name, it’s probably because you do. Mahler cofounded the German left-wing terrorist group Rote Arme Fraktion. The group, sometimes referred to as the Baader Meinhof Group after two other prominent members, was involved involved in a number of terrorist attacks, as well as in bank robberies, kidnappings and murders. In 1972, Mahler was arrested after police discovered one of the RAF hideouts in West-Berlin. He was charged with «conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery in connection with the establishment and participation in the same» and sentenced to fourteen years in prison.
Soon, Mahler began to shed his revolutionary international marxist beliefs and a new manifesto he composed for the RAF was renounced by the rest of the group. He was subsequently more or less kicked out of the gang. In the early 1980s, Mahler was released from prison, allowed to practice law again. At the same time, he continued to review and change his political stance.
Today, he’s an active member of Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands. When the federal government tried to have the party banned for being anti-constitutional in 2003, he defended them. He also takes part in a thinktank named Deutsches Kolleg, a group that calls for a fourth German Reich. The 12th of September 2001 he published a text that got quite some attention, «Independence Day – Live»:
The air attacks of 11 September 2001 upon New York and Washington mark the end of the American Century, the end of Global Capitalism, and thus the end of the secular Yahweh cult, of Mammonism. [...] It is the Yahweh-cult, setting devout Jews [on the path] to the attainment of world power through money-lending, which has given to the present-day capitalist system its lethal dynamics.
In the 2004 state elections of Saxony, NPD won 9.2% of the votes. On the website of their group in the Sachsen Landtag, the regional parliament, they focus on a «demographical crisis» that needs to be stopped; refer to gays and lesbians as «decadent and lebensfeindlich» (i.e. hostile to life) and refer to the media and other political parties of Germany as anti-German.
One of their representatives, Klaus-Jürgen Menzel, illustratingly enough once stated: «I still regard the Führer as a great statesman, perhaps one of the greatest we have ever had».
There is obviously quite some distance between the fringe lunatic Horst Mahler and for instance Filip Dewinter, one of the front figures of Vlaams Belang. Dewinter does not talk of Mammonism or the «secular Yahweh cult», he does not spout anti-Semitism and he most definitely did not express any joy over the 11th of September. And yet, when Adi Schwartz of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz interviewed Dewinter, who has been appealing for Jewish voters in Antwerp to support his anti-Muslim policies, he found a large poster from the 1960s hanging in the office of the Flemish politician.
The poster read «Europe, free yourself», and was signed by a number of nationalist parties across Europe, including the NPD and the Italian Social Movement. What do these parties have in common? Their roots.