The Traditional Left Failed by Welf Herfurth

As we all know, the anti-globalisation movement, including the Black Bloc, the assorted strands of communists, anarchists and trade unionists, have failed to stop globalisation. If one reads the postings on left-wing (anarchist and communist) message boards on the Internet, the fragmentation of the Left, and the dissatisfaction with the way things are going in the anti-globalist struggle, is apparent.

On top of that, Marx's theory - that the capitalist states are inevitably heading towards Marxist socialism, that the capitalist historical epoch is on the way out and that we stand on the threshold of a new communist era - has been disproved by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the slide of communist states like China and Vietnam towards a free-market capitalism (or at least, social democracy). According to Marx's historical prediction, the collapse of Soviet and Eastern Bloc communism should not have happened, and the decline of communism in Vietnam and China, should not be happening. I know, from my own experience, that the tentacles of globalisation have reached even into Vietnam and Laos - one can see Coca-Cola billboards everywhere. Western foreign investment in Indochina may be 'good for the economy' (whatever that phrase means) but, at the same time, its appearance is a depressing reflection of a replacement of a unique Indochinese culture and way of life with a faceless (and raceless) Western, global 'Starbucks' one.

So what went wrong? Here, in this essay, I will be explaining that communism, even before Marx, was flawed from the outset on the basis of its principles. I will also argue that socialism is something distinct from communism, and that socialism, and a socialist revolution (not a communist one) in the West is still possible. I will here be quoting extensively from a classic work by a German socialist historian, The history of the social movement in France, 1789-1850, by Lorenz von Stein, originally published in 1850. Stein was a Hegelian and a proto-Marxist of sorts, and a big influence on Marx. I will be using him as a touchstone because his understanding of communism and socialism predates Marx, and is in much the same language as Marx's, while at the same containing none of Marx's errors. For that reason, he gives a valuable insight into capitalist society, the class relations which exist under capitalism, and the socialist alternative which exists to it.

2. Babeufism

What is communism? The reader will say: 'Obviously, what's contained in the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and the rest'. Not quite: communism, as a concept, precedes Marx. The first communist theorists and activists appeared in France around the time of the French revolution. The first communist, in modern times at least, was a man called François-Noël Babeuf, who was executed by the French government in 1797. It is in connection with Babeuf's movement that the word communism first appears.

So what is it? Firstly, it is the belief that all men are equal - egalitarianism. Secondly, the belief is that the main source of those inequalities is the possession of capital, which economists define as wealth being available for the production of goods and services. Ownership of this wealth, or rather, wealth tied up in means of producing goods and services (means such as land, or factories, or shops, for example) is property. Some - a minority - possess property, others do not. Bill Gates, James Packer, Warren Buffet, Rupert Murdoch and other capitalists possess large amounts of property; others possess only a little (the small businessman, or farmer); while most people possess none at all. The social gulf between the property owners and the non-possessing class is vast: so, in order to bring about true equality, we need to abolish property. The land will be owned (and Babeuf's ideas were intended mainly for agrarian societies) by the people who work on it - all the people.

This is the first stipulation for a communist order. The second is: the equal distribution of goods. Suppose that someone works for x collective farm, and earns an enormous amount of money through his labours? (Or, if it is a barter economy, an enormous amount of goods?). Or, suppose that he does not consume as much as his fellow workers, and thereby accumulates a large amount of money. After that individual has paid his taxes, and paid for his living expenses, he may still have an enormous amount of savings - after-tax income, capital, wealth. That would make him richer than other people in his commune; and it would no longer be an equal society. Therefore, his wealth has to be distributed, equally, to all other members of the commune; he should only be allowed to keep enough to feed himself, and meet his other expenses, and no more.

Likewise, suppose that a farm, in our communist model, experiences a very large demand for its products in comparison to the other communal farms. That farm would require more labourers than the others; perhaps the labourers on that farm would gain higher status compared to other labourers on other farms. Therefore, in order to enforce equality, labourers have to be discouraged from working on that farm; or consumption of that farm's products has to be discouraged; or both.

The reader will now see the main problem of communism. In order to ensure that everyone gets the same amount of goods for differing amounts of work, a higher authority will have to intervene to enforce equality; likewise, a higher authority will need to intervene in order to allocate resources, like labour, to each farm, to ensure that some farms or individuals do not become 'more equal' than others. So, in order to enforce extreme equality, we wind up with extreme inequality. And this is the fallacy of communism, which has made itself felt in every communist society, without exception. Early critics of Babeuf and communism saw this straight away - even before the revolution in Russia in 1917.

The early communist program was quite explicit about the levels of control needed to maintain it. In the communist doctrine, individual economic interactions are be strictly regulated and directed:

Three basic rules for any communistic society are necessary to give public authority the monopoly of the distribution of goods: all private exchange among members of the communistic community has to be abolished;... all products have to be delivered to a public warehouse in order to separate the individual from his labor; and each individual's share of the goods produced must be obtained exclusively from these warehouses by public authorisation. These are the necessary prerequisites of a communistic economic order. The fourth rule, the compulsion to work in order to increase the amount of goods to be distributed, is a consequence of the demand for affluence. It may be emphasised or omitted, depending on what type of communism is desired, one of wealth or one of poverty... [Lorenz von Stein, History of the social movement in France, 1789-1850, p.167].

All the elements of a Leninist or Stalinist economic system were in place (as I shall explain later) in Babeuf's ideas. Indeed, Babeuf seems to anticipate Pol Pot, who made everyone in communist Cambodia dress the same, took children from their parents and raised them in communal creches, executed any Cambodian who showed signs of any higher learning, and developed an agrarian militia. Stein writes:

Although the citizens shall be well off, they shall live and dress simply and uniformly. Why have different colours of clothes or different furniture? Why have a well tailored dress for one and a shabby one for another? 'It is essential for the happiness of all individuals that the citizen never experiences the slightest degree of even apparent superiority'. Here communism is already lost in the particulars of clothing regulations...

Even with this complete process of levelling all differences there was one serious danger for absolute equality, namely, the difference in mental ability which manifests itself in the arts and sciences. Here also radical measures were proposed... Lest the unalterable nature of things would reassert the dreaded inequality in the children, education, of course was under no condition to be left in private hands. Only the state was to have the right to educate the children. 'The more domestic education there was the greater would paternal power become'. All children will be placed in a huge institution, and here, without regard to intellectual qualifications, all will receive a simple and absolutely equal education... The whole press was to be kept within the narrow limits of republican principles: any violation was to be severely punished... The economy of early communism was concerned with war and agriculture. Babeuf's doctrine is one of Spartan virtues... [Stein, op. cit., pp. 165-167, p. 169].

It is no wonder, then, that Proudhon wrote: 'Communism is oppression and slavery' (in What is property?).

Oddly enough, however, many anarchists today are Babeufists, that is to say, communist, by the definition above. The anarchist wants the abolition of property, and power to be given to 'the workers' - or at least, to the employees of private enterprise (including private enterprise on the land). The State, which exists only to uphold the unequal power relations of capitalism, will be abolished, and a mass of decentralised communes, libertarian, sovereign and without property, will take its place. But the question is: how far will each of these anarchistic communes go to enforce equality? One of the enterprises in the anarchist-run towns and villages may be more profitable than another enterprise; one worker may earn more, or consume less, than the others and so accumulate more wealth. The really successful, worker-controlled enterprise may turn into a new Microsoft or General Motors; the really successful worker, a new Warren Buffet. At some point, then, the community will have to intervene and enforce equality. The same goes for achievements in the arts and sciences and the rest - with the really successful scientist or artist earning more prizes and honours, and more money, than the others...

And all of this has nothing to do with The State. That is, the negative side-effects of communism can occur without a State, even though, in anarchist mythology, the bad, 'Statist' communists Lenin and Trotsky perverted the cause of true communism and socialism when they crushed the Soviets, which were, in anarchist hagiography, proto-anarchist communes worthy of emulation. Even without the State, the communist idea entails that people must be crushed to fit the communist ideal of equality, thus bringing about an order which is even more repressive and coercive than capitalism.

2. Marxist communism

The traits of Babeuf's communism carry over into Marx's, as we can see. But, in Marxist theory, the Soviet Union, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba and all the other communist countries were not truly communist. As anyone who is acquainted with Marx's theories knows, history, in the Marxist view, progresses in historical phases. At the time of Marx's writing, mankind was standing on the threshold of the end of the capitalist phase; the next phase was to be followed by a period of 'socialism', which would then be followed by a period of perfect communism, where all men would be equal, everything would be owned by everyone, etc.

Certainly, the Soviet Union and other communist countries were not perfectly communist in that sense; but they were more communist, and more Babeufist, than anything else. Take Stalinism as an example. Some concessions, under Stalinism, were made to individual acquisitiveness - in other words, the individual's desire to accumulate large amounts of money for himself and not to share it with others. As the Australian economist Ian Ward writes:

In Stalinism, material rewards were designed to induce individuals to act in accordance with goals and targets determined by higher authority. Among the distinct characteristics of the reward system was: a heavy reliance on piece rather than time rates [in other words, payments per good produced, rather than payments by hour worked]; extremely wide differentials which reflected not only one's status but the industry or sector in which one worked; the payment of bonuses for overfulfilment of one's target; the payment of high rewards, together with special privileges, such as restricted shops, to members of the party; and an emphasis on the individual member rather than the group as a whole in determining the rewards. By contrast, a more collective form of material incentive was practised in the group form. Failure to perform was often associated with a negative form of incentive. [Ian Ward, The Soviet struggle for socialism, VCTA Publishing, 1992, p. 25].

Having said that, equality, and collective ownership, reigned in Stalin's Russia. For instance: all State-owned enterprises were forbidden to sell goods to one another (a tire factory could only exchange tires with a machine parts factory, for instance). The enterprises used profit as an accounting measure - that is, the enterprises did make profits - but all of these were redistributed back to the State. The collective farms were not owned by the State, but run by the workers on them, who were in turn monitored and directed by State officials. The farms, after producing their agricultural goods for the State, were allowed to keep the leftovers, which were then distributed among their workers (but there was often little left to distribute).

In a previous quotation from Lorenz von Stein, it was mentioned that, under Babeufist communism, four conditions had to be met for a communist society to exist: 1), all private exchange has to be abolished; 2) all products have to be delivered to a communal warehouse; 3) all goods in these warehouses can only be obtained through public authorisation; 4) all are compelled to work in order to produce a greater amount of goods, which are then to be distributed to everybody. Every communist State - whether it be Stalin's, or Mao's, or Pol Pot's, or Castro's - works according to these principles. For instance, take 4): the mobilisation of the masses to produce more for the community was one of the distinguishing traits of Stalinism:

[Under Stalinism] a whole range of symbols of social approval and disapproval, as well as mobilisation and emulation techniques, were employed. For example, individuals and groups were made model workers or awarded badges, and banners as external symbols of good performance. In addition, all citizens were mobilised either directly through the bringing together of large numbers of people to achieve some specific target or indirectly through massive advertising in the form of slogans on buildings, pictures of successes in public parks or through a media campaign.; 'Catch up with the West' and 'Forward to Communism' were commonly-used slogans. More specifically, emulation campaigns were used to encourage workers to learn by the example of others and work harder. [Ian Ward, op. cit., p. 25.]

Both Marxist communism, and Babeuvist communism, are the one and same thing in practice: communism. And that communism can be reproduced at the decentralised level of the anarcho-communist: we can have a mini-Maoism, or mini-Juchism (Juche being the official North Korean ideology), which is what anarchist-communism and its offshoots are. The anarcho-communists may deny it, but, by necessity, they will be led down the same path, and be forced to abandon anarchism in favour of communism.

From my comments here, it may seem that I believe that communism is entirely a bad thing. But it is not, at least, from the nationalist perspective. After all, recall Stein's phrase: 'The economy of early communism was concerned with war and agriculture. Babeuf's doctrine is one of Spartan virtues'. Such a description reminds me, at least, of certain elements of the German National Socialist, or Italian Fascist ideology, or Evola's Traditionalism. And I must confess that I as a nationalist look at a country like North Korea, or Cuba, with some degree of envy: there, the respective populaces are disciplined, and led, by a political leadership which is anti-US and which, despite all its faults, acts in the national interest as represented by the State - above all classes, all special interests, which exist in our own liberal democratic societies. There are no business lobbies there calling for policies which are harmful to the general well-being as there are here, for instance, and no trade unions doing the same. There is no degenerate phenomena along the lines of 'Chavism' in Britain, and one can be sure that social pathologies are dealt with firmly by the law. At the same time, no-one doubts that Cuba and North Korea are dead and repressive countries, and that their standard of living is far below that of the Western States. The challenge for any theorist of Western nationalism is to isolate the good from the bad.

3. Socialism

So, what is socialism? Stein defines it this way:

All those systems, and all those ideas, which aim at establishing labor's control over capital... and making labor the guiding principle of society, may be called socialist. Socialism is the second blueprint for a social system based on the social idea of equality. Socialism in all its variations is infinitely superior to communism. Its basis is labor, and thereby, individuality, this fountainhead of all true wealth and of all diversification. Socialism does not desire to realise the abstract of equality of men, any more than it desires to eliminate a person's individuality... Socialism does not desire, as communism does, to abolish differentiations among individuals and therewith society and the order of the whole; it aims to build society on the principle of labor independent of property. [Stein, op. cit., p. 85.]

Stein, elsewhere, goes on to outline what he means by social reform, and how it can be achieved:

The major concern of a social movement is not the problem of poverty. The social problem which social reform tries to solve is the result of the laws which determine the relationship between capital and labor and thus also govern society, the constitution and the development of each individual personality... We have shown that the contradiction in the situation of the proletarian consists in his dependence on the property-owner because he owns only labor and no capital... As long as the inherent nature of capital and labor remains unchanged... differentiation and dependence are inevitable. It would be a complete misinterpretation of the nature of social life to consider the abolition of differentiation as the aim of social reform... The abolition of this differentiation is not at all the aim of the proletariat... The proletariat wants to acquire capital. Here is the core of the problem. [Stein, op. cit., p. 92.]

So the solution is, says Stein:

Personal independence in this [acquisitive] society rests on the ability of even the meanest worker to acquire capital. This provides an opportunity for everybody to break through the traditional pattern of social classes and of the ensuing dependence.... As long as this opportunity exists in the form of a rule also extending to the worker, no contradiction is apparent, and the social order is stable, no matter how great are the dependence and the differences between the two classes. The essence of the social question and of social reform in our present society is therefore clearly indicated. The problem is whether it is at all possible, in this acquisitive society, to provide labor with the necessary opportunities and corresponding institutions for the acquisition of property commensurate with the accomplishments and standards of labor. The social reform movement consists of the work, the activities, the suggestions, the attempts, the laws, and the institutions which aim to create these opportunities for the working class. [Ibid.]

4. Socialism and its applications to Nationalism

I think, after the exposition above, that the reader can understand what socialism is and how social democracy, and the social democratic parties (like the German SPD, the British Labour Party, and the Australian Labor Party) are socialist or at least contain socialist elements and aim at social reform. But there is one important change which has occurred since the socialist doctrine was first propounded in the early 18th century. That is what I call the 'blue-collarisation' of socialism. 'The workers' in socialist doctrine are, theoretically, anyone without property, i.e., anyone who has to work for a living as opposed to living off rents and dividends. A call centre worker in a phone company like Telstra is a worker, perhaps even a proletarian; the investor who lives off Telstra dividends, or capital gains on sold Telstra shares, is a capitalist. (And, in theory, the CEO whose job it is to manage Telstra on behalf of the shareholders is a very rich worker). But somewhere along the line of the history of socialism, the worker or the proletarian became 'working-class' as we know it today: i.e., a blue-collar. The CEO, or even the white-collar worker, are not 'workers'.

The difference, I think, between white collars and blue collars is as follows. In economist's jargon, the blue-collar menial labourer possesses a great deal of 'physical capital'. That is capital - the wealth available for the production of goods and services - is the blue-collar's muscle power, which is used to produce goods and services in the sectors of industry he works in. Whereas the white-collar worker relies on 'intellectual capital', i.e., skills which stem less from muscle-power and more from some skill which comes from higher education and training.

It has been stated at the New Right blog, and indeed, in many other places, that German National Socialism, Italian Fascism and their variants in other countries (Mosley's Fascism, for instance), were socialist, all right - but socialism for the workers with more 'intellectual' than 'physical' capital (students and academics fit into that category). Which is not to say that blue-collar workers did not support fascism - they did - but that the white-collars were overepresented and were its primary support base.

As well as that, small business - the petit bourgeoisie - formed another pillar of the fascist support base. The petit bourgeoisie work for a living; but they own a little more capital than the average salaryman or salarywoman, but much less than a big capitalist.

So the NSDAP was a party of the German worker, all right, but of the worker who had more intellectual than physical capital, or who had possession of comparatively small amounts of capital. (On top of that, the NSDAP appealed to small farmers, in particular, the peasantry). There is plenty of evidence for this in the literature. Martin Broszat, for instance, recounts that the NSDAP appealed to youth, and to the German mittelstand (middle classes):

The share of young voters who found the NSDAP most appealing was particularly high. What attracted them was the Nazi image as a party of youth. There was also the pressure of youth unemployment with its demoralising impact. In this way young people became politicised at an early age and in turn began markedly to shape the public style of the NSDAP and the SA.... It was in particular young people of traditional liberal-bourgeois or conservative family background who dissociated themselves from their parents' political and joined the NSDAP.

The main social basis of the Nazi mass movement was therefore the broad spectrum of the Protestant middle class in town and country. As early as 1930, the sociologist Theodor Geiger explained the political landslide of the September elections in terms of a 'panic among the Mittelstand'. He argued that fear of proletarianisation was an even stronger motive among large parts of the old and the new Mittelstand than their actual degree of material deprivation. Although objectively, these groups were becoming proletarianised, their anti-proletarian and anti-socialist consciousness which had been moulded by their education and social background held them back from voting for the left-wing parties. Instead they began to search for a third way between socialism and capitalism, and it was the Nazis who promised it with their emotionally very effective propaganda extolling the Volksgemeinschaft. Only a few people in the socialist movement recognised at the time that the massive successes of the NSDAP among peasant and the impoverished lower middle classes were partly a consequence of a dogmatic Marxism; for all this type of Marxism was able to offer the panic-stricken 'petty bourgeoisie' and peasants was a 'proletarian class consciousness' against which they had developed a psychological block. [Martin Broszat, Hitler and the collapse of Weimar Germany, 1984, pp. 86-87.]

The above quotation should be made compulsory for every nationalist in the West - not to mention every Marxist. The fascist movements in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, whether they be in the Netherlands, Germany, Britain, Rumania, Italy, gathered their mass support simply because they paid attention to the social classes which were in need of help but had been neglected by Marxism. Nationalists can likewise fill the gap in the West today - especially now, considering that Marxism and communism are spent forces. If we are to advocate socialism, it will be much more appealing than communism, for, as Stein says, socialism, unlike communism, does not aim at a society where no-one earns more, and has more, than anyone else and where everyone is perfectly equal.

5. Objections

The first objection anyone could make is that, at present, in Australia, at least, we are experiencing great economic success, and that, in good economic conditions, the propertyless classes are much less prepared to abandon the 'acquisitive society' and capitalist order. While economic conditions in the West in the 1930s were uniformly terrible, they are not so today. One only has to look at Australian unemployment, for instance, which was 4.3 % in the June quarter - the lowest in over thirty years.

It has been stated here before that the unemployment figures, in Australia, and elsewhere in the West, are kept artificially low using statistical trickery. The opinion columnist Ross Gittins estimates that, once the underemployed and 'discouraged jobseekers' are factored in, the current Australian unemployment rate stands at 9 or 10 percent - hardly the best in Australian economic history. (Ross Gittins, 'Credit where it's due on unemployment', Sydney Morning Herald, February 14 2007). Elsewhere in the West - France and Germany, for example - unemployment is much worse: the official unemployment rates, which underestimate the true extent of unemployment, are much higher than Australia's.

Secondly, there are pockets of deprivation in Australia, even among the workers who possess 'intellectual' capital - for instance, the students. The article 'Extent of student poverty highlighted' (August 8 2007, here) makes the claim that many Australian undergraduate and postgraduate students are struggling on less than $A10,000 a year, and are studying with a very high level of personal debt.

As well as that, inflation, as manifested in the rising prices of commodities like oil, is very high at the time of writing; and central banks in the Eurozone, America, the United Kingdom and Australia have hiked interest rates to high levels - in Australia interest rates are the highest in ten years. The results have not been catastrophic, but have caused some economic hardship, especially to the heavily indebted petit bourgeoisie. It is, then, a time for the electorate to turn leftward, not rightward.

The other objection is, 'What's to stop, then, Australian voters, for example, from going over to the mainstream, social-democratic Labor Party? Why should they go over to your brand of socialism?'.

Again, I will point to precedents in 20th century history. In Weimar Germany, for instance, the socialist vote was split three ways - between the NSDAP, the German Communist Party, and the social democratic SPD. The NSDAP, in terms of bringing about social reform for its constituency, proved to be a much better party than the SPD, which had been running Germany federally, and at the state level, for years. Likewise, social democratic parties regularly come into office on the Continent and accomplish little. I do not think, either, that the Australian Labor Party will accomplish much in alleviating unemployment after it wins the federal elections this year (if it does win) - although it is conceivable that interest rates and inflation may come down over time.

6. Conclusion

One of the reasons why communists do so well in recruiting students is that hardly any other political group (and that includes nationalists) pays attention to student needs. A recent communist poster around Australian university campuses, for instance, reads 'Abolish student poverty/Abolish HECs [student] debt/No more fee increases'. In the view of the average student, these policies are good policies. The student, on the basis of that, will be more inclined to support the group whether it be communist or not. For the most part, other mainstream parties hardly seem to give a damn.

As Stein would say, all political parties have a class basis. A political idea only makes the transition from theory to practice when it appeals to the needs of a certain economic and social class. And that is the difference between a socialist group and a nationalist one (or at least, nationalism as it exists in Australia). A racist slogan like 'Pakis go home' is not the expression of a social movement; it is an expression of animus, of resentment. But, on the other hand, propaganda which explains why Subcontinental immigration is bad because, among other reasons, it affects the economic well-being of a certain economic class - it is social theory.

Fascism, in the 1920s and 1930s, had a huge mass base in Europe. After the war, neofascism did not. This cannot be explained wholly by persecution at the hands of Allied-imposed State sanctions against neofascism. The reason why neofascism failed to make headway was that economic conditions were too good in Europe in 1960 or even in 1970. Secondly, the theorists of neofascism (men like Yockey and Evola) failed to ground their politics in a class base, unlike the canny fascist demagogues Hitler and Mussolini. They could not find a socioeconomic group to align themselves to, or at least, had no wish to align themselves to any such group.

Admittedly, economic conditions today in the West are not at the catastrophic level of the 1930s. It is far better, materially, to be one of the propertyless-classes - even one of the lumpenproletariat - in the West than it is in, for instance, Africa or India (which is why so many Africans and Indians are emigrating here). But we should not allow white guilt over our privileges stand in the way of socialism. In the 1930s, Germany, Italy and Japan portrayed themselves as 'proletarian nations' - that is, countries which, even though they had a very high level of industrialisation and wealth, were in an inferior position compared to France, Britain and the United States, and were deserving of better treatment in the sphere of international affairs. Nationalists in the West need to adopt the same mentality. We may be members of wealthy nations, and members of the white race, the most privileged in the world; but, at the same time, we deserve social reform, and the system which can deliver it, socialism. And that means reclaiming the word socialism from the Left.

For other articles and interviews by Welf Herfurth, please click here.

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The Strategy of Tension by Welf Herfurth

Introduction

This article has been written with a view to outlining an overall strategy for nationalist groups to follow – a course of action. In the weeks since the APEC demo, it has become clear to more than a few observers that our communist and militant anti-racist (Antifa) opponents are incapable of debating with us intellectually, and indeed are incapable of intellectual expression. A long, intellectual article posted at the New Right blog will have, in the comments section, abuse and threats of violence from our communist opponents – and never a discussion of the ideas and personages involved (e.g., Babeuf, Stalinist economics, Lorenz von Stein, de Benoist…). And, again and again, we at New Right (as do many other nationalists in Australia, whether they be German or not) get tagged with the ‘Neo-Nazi’ label – this is despite the fact that we here, at this site, have made our opinions clear on German National Socialism and the phenomenon known as Neo-Nazism (or Nutzism, as we disparagingly call it).

Having said that, the reaction from our communist opponents is, I think, beneficial. It can only benefit our cause, as I shall explain below, and part of our strategy ought to be to continue to provoke similar reactions in the future.

1. What is a Neo-Nazi?

Neo-Nazism is an attempt to revive German National Socialism in the modern era. As we know, German National Socialism was a form of fascism. There are a number of definitions of what fascism actually is, or was. Fascism can be defined as a radical form of socialism for the petit bourgeoisie (Hayek’s definition, and the definition of many other free-market conservatives who locate German National Socialism on the Left of the political spectrum, not the Right); or as an attempt to introduce a Traditional order in the modern world (which is how Evola understood it)… What distinguishes German National Socialism from other forms of fascism (Quisling’s, Mosley’s, Mussolini’s) is its adherence to the Führer principle. Simply put, National Socialism needed a Führer figure to hold it all together, and was nothing without him. As the German historian and liberal anti-Nazi Martin Broszat writes:

National Socialism was not primarily an ideological and programmatic, but a charismatic movement, whose ideology was incorporated in the Führer, Hitler, and which would have lost all its power to integrate without him. Hitler was never merely the spokesman for an idea that would have had an equivalent importance and existence without him. On the contrary, the abstract, utopian and vague National Socialist ideology only achieved what reality and certainty it had through the medium of Hitler. Thus there could be no effective opposition against Hitler in the name of the National Socialist ideology. Where this was none the less attempted, as for example by Otto Strasser and his mainly intellectual following, the features of the National Socialist ideology, which were composed of emotions, resentments and dreams, were exchanged for an ideology directed towards concrete material action (which was consistent in that respect and naturally permitted no omnipotent Führer) and failed to appreciate the charismatic foundation of the National Socialist movement. It had been far more typical of the general attitude of Party functionaries from the various ancillary organisations of the NSDAP before and after 1933 that however much they thrashed out bitter quarrels amongst themselves they did not as a rule turn against Hitler, but tried to win him over to their respective interpretations of the National Socialist ideology and programme. That is they basically recognised him as the interpreter of the correct ‘idea’ and did not question his supreme authority to rule on ideological matters too. (Martin Broszat, ‘The Hitler State: the foundation and development of the internal structure of the Third Reich’, 1969, p.29).

So, in order for there to be a Neo-Nazism movement, there has to be a neo-Führer, who takes Hitler’s place symbolically as the integrating, charismatic head of the revived Nazi movement. The communist and militant anti-racist opponents of Western nationalism understand this instinctively: which is why, whenever they are on the look out for a ‘Nazi’ revival, are always hunting for the ‘new Führer’, whether he be Dr James Saleam, the ‘Reverend’ Patrick Sullivan, David Palmer, Jack van Tongeren.

On the other hand, it could be argued that there can be a ‘Führer’-less form of ‘Neo-Nazism’. The NPD is accused, by the German and international media, of being ‘Neo-Nazi’ all the time, even though it has no charismatic ‘Führer’ figure. In all fairness, the NPD does have a few things in common with the old German National Socialist and fascist movements. For starters, both are mass-movements, which emphasise extra-parliamentary organisation; both form women’s and children’s groups, and other groups which embrace people from all walks of life, all professions, with the intention of being more than political parties; both are on the Left, politically speaking, in many of their social and economic policies; both are radical and uncompromising; both have suffered persecution at the hands of liberal democratic States; both tend to make a mystique of street action and confrontations with communist opponents; both of course, are German and nationalist. One could, on that basis, apply the description ‘Neo-Nazi’ to the NPD. But, again, there is no Führer, and my argument (and Broszat’s) can be no German National Socialism, old or new, without a Führer-figure.

One of the problems of identifying the likes of the NPD with ‘Neo-Nazism’ is that so many other ideological groupings have appropriated parts of the National Socialist doctrine. Do we castigate the Greens, for instance, for being environmentalist, when one of the first environmentalist politicians was Adolf Hitler? A few scholars acknowledge the influence Hitler’s National Socialism had on Swedish social democracy – the welfare-statist brand of socialism which, in turn, influenced the British Labour Party (in the 1960s) and the Australian Labor Party (in the 1970s). In fact, one of the definitions of German National Socialism could be: welfare-statist social democracy plus dictatorship.

Incidentally, one can see how the Führer-as-integrator principle works for other political ideologies. Chavezism, for instance, is inconceivable with Chavez: in that respect, Chavezism is more ‘Neo-Nazi’ than the ideology of the NPD.

Oddly enough, the communists adhere more to the Führerprinzip, or ‘leader principle’, more than we nationalists do. Communism, even today, is nothing but a gallery of ‘great leaders’: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Che, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Jong-Il, Kim Il-Sung, Tito, lesser lights like Salvador Allende… Their word is law: none of the members of the communist parties are allowed to question the rulings, on any conceivable subject, by these men. Communism is the most authoritarian movement in the history of the world; it is also the most bound up with personality cults, ‘Great Leaders’ (or ‘Dear Leaders’). Hitler and Mussolini, of course, imitated this (and many other parts) of communist doctrine, and German National Socialism could be described as being little more than German Stalinism.

The advantage of the communist application of the Führer principle is that it discourages questioning, thinking and debate. Were the followers of communism allowed, for once, to question where socialism is going, what they, through their activism, are doing to achieve it, what a communist Australia would actually look like, communism would collapse. Or rather, belief in communism would collapse. Socialists would ask, for instance, how it is that mass immigration of Africans, Muslims and Indians helps the Australian working-classes – when these immigrants (especially the more disadvantaged ones, like the Sudanese) would compete with Australians for welfare benefits. And what on earth do gay rights have to do with socialism? Surely capitalism cannot be to blame for discrimination against gays? And why support socialism in Cuba when Cuba uses fierce state repression against gays? There are no answers to these questions: which is why the communist Führer principle is needed. It keeps communists from thinking.

2. What is wrong with Neo-Nazism?

To me, ‘Neo-Nazism’, particularly in its Nutzi, uniform fetishist form is a bizarre, antiquated and ultimately self-defeating ideology. Enough of it has been said here elsewhere at the New Right site. (See the article, ‘Freaks in the movement’, archived here).

But, obviously, what I and many other nationalists dislike about ‘Neo-Nazism’ is not what our opponents on the mainstream Left dislike about it. To them, the objection to ‘Neo-Nazism’ is simple. During the Second World War (itself started by Germany, when it invaded Poland in 1939), Germany gassed eight million people, using weapons of mass destruction, and threw the corpses into giant ovens. Some were turned into soap; others into lampshades. The horrible, shrivelled corpses at Dachau and Bergen-Belsen are testimony to the evil of the ideology of German National Socialism, which committed the most terrible crimes of the twentieth century.

Now, according to the communists and the Antifa, the ‘Neo-Nazis’ want to bring back that order, and start gassing, not only Jews, Poles, homosexuals and gypsies, but anyone who is not a white European or of European descent. Alan Moore’s classic 1988 graphic novel, V for vendetta, offers a good summary of the communist and Antifa view of Western nationalism – and the consequences of a ‘fascist’ return to power. The graphic novel depicts a dystopian Britain in the late 1990s, where 1930s-style fascists have taken over the world and have killed a good many Jews, homosexuals, Pakistani and Caribbean immigrants in death camps, and like Dr Mengele, carried out sadistic medical experiments on the inmates. The mainstream Left sincerely believes that propaganda like V for vendetta depicts nationalist goals accurately: they believe that we nationalists are all working together towards the same goal – of eliminating, through death camps, the ‘racially impure’ (whatever that means) members of Western society.

The Antifa demonise their opponents, making them out to be satanic. Militant anti-racism plays on nothing but fear: it is pure emotion. And it is purely negative, as well: ask them what their political policies are on inflation and interest rates, for instance, or conscription or abortion or the death penalty, are – and they have no answer. Because of the lack of foundations, the lack of arguments, they can only appeal to fear. They are more a belief-system than a political ideology, and with their appeals to fear and irrationalism, plus the almost religious attribution of satanic qualities to their opponents, they resemble a cult, like the Raelians or the Scientologists.

In the Antifa and mainstream ideology, the New Right and the National-Anarchists are part of the same ‘Neo-Nazi’ conspiracy. A few individuals of the mainstream Left have expressed their trepidation that naïve youths (who have been insufficiently indoctrinated, i.e., not converted to Marxist-Leninism) may go over to the National-Anarchist side, not understanding that the National-Anarchists are ‘Neo-Nazi’ fakes. In the communist scenario, the naïve youths, after becoming members of a National-Anarchist group, will eventually led down the path to ‘Neo-Nazism’. Possibly, the new National-Anarchist recruit will be brought to a secret cavern by the other members, where he will find framed portraits of the Führer and George Lincoln Rockwell, and swastika flags, on the walls. The secret ‘Führer’ of the movement shall doff his anarchist garb to reveal a homemade brownshirt uniform. He will then unveil a fantastic plan to take over Australia and build death camps, run by blonde, Nordic women in ‘Ilse the She-Wolf of the SS’ uniforms, and fiendish doctor-sadists like Mengele.

Regardless of whether or not one believes in a National Socialist gassing of eight million people, the interesting thing is that the communists have a long backlog of atrocities of their own to atone for – and they do not apologise for them. While many nationalists push a revisionist line, the communists do not. Confront a communist with the nine million Russians killed by Lenin and Trotsky – during the Red Terror, and the mass famine deliberately triggered by the Bolsheviks to pacify the Russian population – and he will shrug and regurgitate the old Leninist cliché that ‘One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs’. Then there is Mao, whose Great Leap Forward killed 18 to 34 million people (depending on whose figures you believe); Pol Pot; and lesser-known figures like the Ethiopian communist Mengistu Haile Mariam. Even Castro, who is fondly regarded by Australian communist groups, killed thousands after his takeover of Cuba.

My point is that, given communism’s track record, people ought to hold communism’s past atrocities against Australian communist groups like Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative and others. How do we know that these groups do not have a secret plan to collectivise Australian agriculture, and starve millions of Australians to death? Will Australian soldiers be rounded up, Khmer-Rouge style, bound with nylon ropes and have their necks broken with blows from pick handles? (Or perhaps they will be given the softer, North Vietnamese communist version: internment in a ‘re-education’ camp until they get their thinking straightened out?). And what of the capitalist class? Will the Packer family be liquidated on the spot, or will they be forced to work with their hands (for the first time in their lives) in the fields of our newly-collectivised farms, while communist overseers, wearing black pyjamas and carrying Kalashnikovs, jeer at them and curse them? (‘No rice for you today, Mr Packer! Work harder!’).

3. The reality

I am, of course, being facetious here. The Australian communists do not have the demonic drive of a Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Pol Pot, Mengistu: they do not have what it takes to bring about a revolution.

Even more important is the fact that no communist revolution has come about by the revolt of the working classes against the capitalists. All the communists in history have won power as a result of war. Lenin won power only after Russia’s catastrophic defeat, at the hands of Germany, in WWI; the Bolsheviks emerged from the ashes of the Russian Civil War as the most powerful and unified force, and took advantage of the subsequent chaos to impose a dictatorship. Likewise, every subsequent revolutionary owes their successes, not to mobilising the working classes, but from defeating their opponents on the battlefield. (One exception is Mengistu: but Mengistu came to power through a military coup, and was able to used soldiers to liquidate any bourgeois-liberal, monarchist or rival communist opponents).

The truth is that the old-school communist revolutionaries had a unique genius, lacking in today’s Western communist parties, for exploiting the political opportunities that arose as a result of chaos. That chaos is not present today, and it is unlikely that today’s communists would know how to harness it to their advantage.

And so today’s Australian communists, who are schooled in the theory, but not practice, of communism, naively believe that power will be theirs for the taking, once the inevitable downfall of capitalism gets going. Marxist theory proves, scientifically, that the capitalist mode of production will go the way of feudalism – into the dustbin of history. All the communists have to do is agitate at the universities and TAFEs (by selling the Green Left Weekly and trying to encourage students to attend pro-Chavez rallies), march at trade union anti-Work Choices rallies, and run in elections. Then revolution will come about. Australia will turn into Cuba, except it will be a Cuba where people of all sexual orientations will be free to do their thing…

In truth, the only communists to hold true to historical communist practice are a few isolated groups around the world who have taken up the path of armed struggle. The Maoists in Nepal, who adhere to a Pol-Potist ideology and are engaged in an off-again, on-again war against the Nepalese State, are classic, old school communists. Given the disarray of the Nepalese politics, it is not inconceivable that the Maoist revolution could succeed, and a handful of revolutionaries could end up imposing their will on a reluctant, and hostile Nepalese population. Naturally, however, such conditions are not likely to replicate themselves in Australia.

4. What to do

Unfortunately, much confusion exists among nationalists as to who our enemies are. Nationalists tend to speak of ‘the Left’, and lump together all the disparate factions of the Left into a single group: ‘lefties’, ‘crusties’ and the like. But the fact of the matter is that the communists, and the anarchists, for instance, are unaware that we nationalists exist – at present. The only faction of the Left who are aware of us, and consider us to be a serious threat, are the Antifa, the militant anti-racists – who strive selflessly to avert a second Holocaust by posting photographs, names, addresses, telephone numbers, etc., of nationalist activists on the Internet.

It should be mentioned that it is doubtful that the Antifa are really ‘Left’ at all. Although they adopt a Trotskyist rhetoric (‘smashing fascism’ is a Trotskyist phrase), they do not seem to support communism or anarchism – nor even the watered-down social democracy of the Labor Party. No, they believe in racial harmony and the brotherhood of man – and the use of violence to enforce it. They believe in the same pan-racialist, multi-racialist ideology as the Labor Party, or the Democrats, or the Greens – but, in their case, they make that ideology political. Schmitt defines the ‘political’ as any conflict that is raised to the level of war between two or more parties: and certainly, the Antifa are political by Schmitt’s definition. But they are not Left, and, in Australia, they are not do not possess the numbers, the discipline and the organisation of the European Antifa. (According to postings on Stormfront, European nationalist activists are disappointed by the calibre of the Australian Antifa. Indeed, the Antifa in the Netherlands, for instance, is so powerful that it controls neighbourhoods, and hides illegal immigrants who are being sought by the police there). Here, their warfare is psychological. They could not summon up the numbers needed to ‘smash fascists’ at an APEC or anti-Work Choices rally; the communists, however, can.

The point is, though, the communists are not aware of us. They do not acknowledge we exist, and to them, we are an irrelevancy. After all, history is inevitably progressing towards communism: does not the hostility of the Australian electorate towards Work Choices show this? We nationalists do not fit into the grand scheme of things. To the communists, nationalists are ‘Nazis’, and ‘Nazism’ was a tool of the German capitalist classes, who sought to lure the German working-classes away from communism. The capitalist class of Australia, however, is not, at the moment using ‘Nazism’ and ‘Fascism’ to trick the Australian working-classes; it is using the Australian Labor Party. Fortunately for communism, the Australian proletariat will eventually wake up to the Labor Party. The upshot is that communists and other like-minded progressives need not pay any heed, for the time being, to the ‘Neo-Nazis’ of New Right and other nationalist groups.

Were they to notice us, however, their reaction would be along the lines of: the ‘Neo-Nazis’ of New Right, National-Anarchism and other nationalist groups are in the pay of the Australian capitalist class and possibly the federal government itself. These ‘Neo-Nazis’ are trying to lure the Australian working-classes away from their salvation, communism. Really, all capitalism is ‘fascist, racist, imperialist’ – ‘Neo-Nazism’ is capitalism with the mask torn off. The solution? ‘Smash fascism’, use violence, use any means necessary…

The communists can be expected to say many things along these lines, and no doubt they will end up alienating potential members (e.g., left-leaning university students) with their hyperbole and bellicose rhetoric in attacking us; they will also, inadvertently, generate more publicity for us than we could manage to achieve ourselves. It is also possible that, by doing so, they will succeed in making us more attractive to the politically uneducated (that is, not indoctrinated with Trotskyism) university student.

I will, at this point, digress, and bring up the subject of Hugo Chavez, and in particular, one of the techniques he uses to get attention for his ideas. Recently, Chavez announced that he plans to bring his ‘Bolivarist revolution’ to Venezuelan high schools, and alter the content of high school text books along ‘Bolivarist’ lines, filling them up with the crapulous mumbo-jumbo of communist and other progressive ideologues (including the Colombian guerrilla groups). The reaction to Chavez’ announcement was entirely typical. Liberal democrats, in Venezuela and the United States, reacted with outrage, and demanded that Chavez adhere to the norms of free speech and liberal democracy. Chavez’ supporters (and he has many) reacted with enthusiasm.

Nowhere did anyone declare that Chavez’ policy was well-intentioned, but needed to be examined more closely, etc., etc., in the way that the Labor Party, for instance, reacts to any of John Howard’s policy announcements. No: Chavez polarises people, he splits them down the middle. You either love him or hate him. But this is precisely what Chavez wants. He wants the liberal democrats, the Bushophiles inside and outside Venezuela, to hate him; and he has, over many years, become awfully good at it. He instinctively knows what to do in order to get his opponents frothing at the mouth, hurling invective and hyperbole, making themselves look foolish, and piquing the interest of the otherwise apathetic masses. And he has done this, not once, but many times; he is, to a certain extent, a one-trick pony, pulling off the same stunt again and again. His opponents have such little regard for him that they do not see how they are being manipulated by the master. The solution to Chavezism? Incorporate him into the system, and treat him with respect: hold press conferences with him and George Bush, where the latter defers to him as respectfully as he would to Ehmud Olmert or Ariel Sharon.

One can see the parallels with Australian nationalism: all the communists at APEC had to do, for instance, was to invite the National-Anarchists up on stage and ask them to speak; the audience would have listened respectfully, and applauded – just as they did with the indigenous Australian woman at the start, and the North American conscientious objector – and National-Anarchism would have been neutered.

This will never happen. The communists can be expected to react with hostility and hyperbole, every time; and the same reaction can be provoked every time. In that sense, they are as predictable as machines.. The communist policy is always the same: no platform for fascists! No free speech for Nazi scum!

So how do we provoke them? How do we get their attention? Well, we only need to repeat APEC a thousand times over – APEC with more and more permutations. But it is essential to keep up the ‘Left’ talk, the ‘Left’ symbolism, the ‘Left’ imagery, the ‘Left’ sloganeering’, and the ‘Left’ methods of mass organisation, mass activism, extra-parliamentarism, and anarchistic, non-hierarchical, decentralised organisation. Such an approach will ensure that the communists will work themselves up into a state of hysteria: we are using their symbols, their ideas, to lure the naïve young away from progressive, multiracial, tolerant communism and towards ‘Neo-Nazism’ and capitalism. They will be unable to help themselves, and unable to see that the best means of ‘smashing’ us would be to give us equal rights and equal time at their rallies, and possibly in their publications as well.

The Australian communist groups appear to recruit using what I call ‘chaff-cutter’ methods. They attract literally hundreds of young Australians, mainly students. But many of the prospective new members are naïve about the communism of a Socialist Alliance or Socialist Alternative: they believe that these organisations are liberal, like the mainstream political parties – that they encourage free thought and free debate. But the prospective member learns, very quickly, that Lenin and Trotsky had, in advance, worked out the answer to every political problem in existence – and that he had better recognise this or ship out. Subtle, and then not so subtle, peer pressure is used to bring a recalcitrant into line. Eventually, the prospective member gets fed up and ceases his association. He is a liberal and an individualist – both traits fostered by our liberal democratic society – and, at the same time, like many idealistic young people, wants to do something good and progressive. But the inflexibility which lies at the heart of any Marxist-Leninist party, and which is communism’s greatest strength (and greatest weakness) repels him.

The scenario is not all bad, however, for the communist group: a small minority of the prospective recruits will stay on and the communist group is left with a small hard-core. Communism is, above all, a ruthless ideology, which often turns on its own (there is no need to cite the many examples from history). But their recruiting and indoctrination policies – more reminiscent of a cult than anything else – get results. The wheat is separated from the chaff.

Here, though, we nationalists can step in – and pick up the chaff. And, it has to be said, we are not going to expand as a movement by recruiting the same old faces from Stormfront Down Under – the same old white nationalists and Australian bush patriots who have been hanging around the nationalist scene for years and years. No, we are only going to expand by recruiting people who have a fresh perspective which comes from being on the outside of the existing nationalistic scene.

In this connection, it is advisable that nationalists go out and attend as many political meetings as possible: lectures on Lenin, Trotsky, Chavez, etc., delivered by Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative, Resistance. But not only political meetings of the left; nationalists should attend also meetings of the mainstream parties like, here in Australia, the Liberal party, the Greens, ect.

The best course of action is to go there, as normal, intelligent people, and ask questions about their beliefs, and try and engage them in the debate they are so averse to. This is a New Right Australia strategy.

5. Mistakes made

Recently, a nationalist friend of mine – a man with a long and distinguished career in Australian nationalist activism – showed me a nationalist publication which he had helped edit and publish. It was a handsome production. But, while looking through it, I found a caricature of an African immigrant – a giant African immigrant, stalking the streets of some Australian city, with a knife in his hand, and, needless to say, up to no good. I chided my friend for inserting such a crude caricature with overtones of old-fashioned racism: it could have come straight off Tom Metzger’s website. My friend joked, half-heartedly, that at least the cartoonist didn’t draw blood dripping from the African’s mouth. I rested my case.

On the back of the publication there was a reproduction of a beautiful painting, done two hundred years ago, of the inauguration of Australia’s first Governor-General. Looking at the picture, I found myself confused as to who the intended target audience of the magazine was: monarchists? Old Australian types who voted for Menzies in 1949? Often this Australian nationalism is an emotional nationalism, with no intellectual foundations, no ideology. Ask them to define what is ‘Australian’, and they will have no answer.

Even if one is not a republican, one will find such imagery incongruous. Granted, governor-generals are part of Australia’s past: but the emphasis is on the word past. Any young person (and the only people who could revel in such patriotic Australian imagery must be very old indeed – at death’s door if they voted for Menzies, anyhow) would find such a nationalist publication off-putting – as dull as a school trip to a museum of Australian history.

As for the cartoon of the African – and there were similar crude caricatures throughout the magazine – there are other, more tasteful ways to address the question of immigration. Link immigration to globalism, for one; or point out how immigration drains Australia’s resources (e.g., water resources) and is bad for the environment… No need to use pictures of blonde, nordic women cuddling blonde, nordic babies, either.

Oddly enough, I agreed with around 90% of the publication’s content: the difference between their approach, and New Right’s, was one of emphasis, and of imagery. Thinking it over, I saw that the whole problem could be summed up in the form of a parable.

Suppose that Henry Lawson, or Jack Lang, or some other Australian ‘bush’ socialist could be transported in time to 2007. We nationalists would explain to him that the old Australian Labor Party, which championed white working man’s racialist socialism, has ceased to exist; in its place is a party of namby-pamby multi-cultism. The union movement, too, is no longer interested in fighting immigration: all it wants is the abolition of Work Choices and federal and state Labor government. Indeed, the union movement has lost the political power it once had – only 17% of the Australian workforce is unionised. The way forward for socialism – for a system where labour dominates capital, and not the other way around – is to restructure the entire political and economic system. That means changing liberal democracy. But that goal, in turn, can only be achieved by building up a mass movement on the streets, which will bring about radical change through mass pressure. To build a mass movement, we need to bypass the unions and the political parties, and start taking our message – of racialism and socialism – directly to the masses. What’s more, we need to talk the language of today – not the language of 100 years ago.

Unfortunately, our way is, for the moment, blocked – by communists, who, like parasites, attach themselves to every progressive cause, whether it be anti-globalisation or the trade union struggle for better wages and conditions. They are unpopular, in the minority, and they adhere to a theory which has been falsified by history. But they are convinced that their cause is the only moral one, and every political ideology contradictory to their own (including ours) is evil and immoral, and should be destroyed, by violence if necessary. Their bark is worse than their bite, but they are still numerous enough, and hostile enough, to prevent nationalists from reaching the masses and becoming a true, mass political force. And so one of the prime necessities of our movement is to unblock the communist blockage…

And that is what I would tell Henry Lawson.

In relation to this, it should be asked: why, if the communists have been going at it for so long, are they so unsuccessful? The communists enjoy all kinds of advantages that we nationalists do not: the media coverage they receive is generally favourable (e.g., see the media coverage of the APEC demonstrators); they can display their names and faces without impunity (at least, they will not be treated as harshly as a so-called ‘Neo-Nazi’ nationalist); they have numbers, nice newspapers, propaganda fliers, badges, flags, banners… And they can attend any demonstration for any cause whatsoever – anti-globalisation, anti-WorkChoices, anti-war – without being set upon by the other demonstrators. And, furthermore, most of Australia seems to support their positions on, for instance, the war in Iraq, or WorkChoices (or perhaps it is the case that the communists attach themselves to popular causes). And yet, they have made little to no headway in all the years they have been here: the communist revolution is further away than ever, and they cannot get one MP elected to state or federal parliament…

The answer, or the beginning of an answer, came to me when I was leafing through old issues of the Australasian Spartacist newspaper from the 1970s. This is a long-running Trotskyist-communist newspaper, which began in 1973 and which is still running today. More or less, it makes a cult, a fetishistic cult (like the Nutzi-cult of Hitler), out of Trotsky and Lenin: every political event – from the war in Iraq, to a trade union dispute in Sydney, to a scuffle between two rival communist groups holding stalls at a university – is interpreted from the perspective of Trotskyist Marxist-Leninism. The frightening thing is that there is no difference between the writing style, and ideas, of the 1970s issues written thirty years ago, and the issues written today. Which raises the possibility that the same person has been writing all the articles for that newspaper all along – and getting nowhere. This obsessiveness, and the refusal to countenance anything other than orthodox Leninist and Trotskyist view of socialism and politics, makes me speculate that the authors of Australasian Spartacist, and other communist publications (like the Green Left Weekly) are literally insane.

And this is why the communists have been failing in Australia for so many decades: they cannot ditch Lenin and Trotsky. It is not that Australians do not want radical socialism; it is that they cannot understand what two dead Russians – who died a long time ago – have to do with a political struggle in Australia today. (The same could be asked of many nationalists today: why is Hitler, for instance, so important?).

6. Conclusion: The strategy of tension

Something else that leapt out of those old issues of Australasian Spartacist was an account of the famous ‘Battle of Lewisham’ in Britain in 1977, which was an epic confrontation between the British National Front and hundreds of communist protestors in South-East London. The clash was violent, leading to hospitalisations, and the police use of tear gas, riot shields, etc., against the protestors. Reading the venomous account of events from the communist perspective, I was reminded of the (far smaller, by comparison) Battle of APEC. Economic, and to a great extent, social, circumstances in Britain in 1977 differed from those of Australia in 2007: but otherwise, nothing has changed. The National Front in the 1970s was a mass-movement with a popular base, and left-leaning; it won a certain amount of support from the British working-classes, effectively challenging the communists and socialists in what the latter two regarded as their own domain. The communist response was to ‘crush fascism’. Hence, the ensuing confrontation at Lewisham.

Perhaps (depending on whose account you believe) some members or supporters of the National Front, who were still bourgeois in outlook, and still held to liberal democratic ideas, found the idea of a political confrontation with communists off-putting; that is, they did not want to suffer verbal abuse from communists, and have bricks thrown at them, and be assaulted. Which is a natural enough reaction. But they did not realise, and many nationalists in Australia today do not realise, the political value of these confrontations. Suppose that 500 or a 1000 nationalists from all around Australia joined up to march through Sydney or Melbourne. The police would be out in force, as would the media; and so would the communists. The spectacle would ensure more media coverage for nationalism than we could generate by ourselves (through pamphleteering, etc., or through websites); and, at the same time, events would radicalise our membership and draw them closer to one another. And the communists would do all of this for us for free. If we are to look at it in economic terms, the return from a demonstration pays even more than the investment in pamphlets and websites.

And all of this can be done tomorrow. Some liberal media commentators will argue that events like the Battle of Lewisham came about because of the high inflation and high unemployment in Britain in the seventies; which is untrue. All one needs is a large body of nationalists who are prepared to go out and demonstrate: then the communists will show up, and behave like they have behaved for the past ninety years. Like monkeys in a zoo cage, they will jump up and down, shriek and spit. And the average Australian will wonder what all the fuss is about, and some of them may even become interested in nationalism as a result.

The essential thing is this: all demonstrations have to be well-organised, for a worthy cause, and above all, disciplined!

We at New Right do not endorse violence. One can, however, use the metaphor of war: that is, any confrontation with communists is a battle in a political war. A good many nationalists in Australia and elsewhere are in political fairy-land; they think they can form a nice little bourgeois liberal democratic party, and be treated with the same respect, and enjoy the same rights, as all the other liberal democratic parties. But, once their parties get up and going, they due for a shock. The communists will use non-liberal democratic means to deny them their rights. And, possibly, a more effective Antifa will spring up and oppose them with the same means.

Christian Blocher’s Swiss People’s Party (SVP) recently held a rally which was set upon by the Black Bloc of Left-wing Chaotics (an Antifa Black Bloc), who caused an enormous amount of property damage and disruption. The group was arrested, and the rally went ahead. Christian Blocher’s party posted a triumphant account of events here. But Australian nationalists cannot expect to get off as lightly. Which is why we must take the war (again speaking metaphorically) to the enemy.

And, while I am not a militarist, I must state my belief that this kind of confrontation is good: it cleanses, it purifies, it bonds the ‘soldiers’ – who are made up of disparate social groups who may have otherwise never have come into contact with one another – together. And, psychologically, to go on the attack is much better than going on the defence: which is the posture many nationalists take now, confining their ‘activism’ to the Internet and not trying to get their ideas out to the Australian community. Which is why we at New Right Australia/New Zealand endorse a strategy of tension. And we endorse direct political confrontation, with the goal of smashing political dogmas, and forming a real social alternative.

For other articles and interviews by Welf Herfurth, please click here.

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