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FASCISM TODAY
Although it is difficult to gauge the strength or popularity of fascism today, it is clear that fascism is not altogether dead and gone-not even in the two countries in which it seemed so thoroughly defeated. The Fascist Party is outlawed in Italy, as is the Nazi Party in Germany, but neofascists and neo-Nazis manage to ron for office, and occasionally stir up trouble, under different names. In Italy in 1992, for example, Allesandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Il Duce, won election to a seat in the Italian Parliament as a member of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (later renamed the National Alliance). In Germany neo-Nazi organizations have claimed responsibility for firebombing attacks and other assaults that have killed Vietnamese, Turkish -guest workers-' families, and others. These attacks and the revival of fascism in general seem to be the result of a renewed nationalism that has been brought to the fore by resentment of foreign workers, refugees, and immigrants. In France, for instance, the neofascist National Front, led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, has [210 Fascism] won control of some municipal governments with campaigns that blame immigrants for high rates of unemployment, crime, and welfare expenses.
Nor has fascism revived only in Europe. In the Middle Eastern country of Iraq, Saddam Hussein's regime seeks to build a society based on nationalism, militarism, and totalitarian control. The militaristic and totalitarian elements of the regime became well known during the Gulf War of 1990-1991, which followed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The nationalistic element, however, has received less attention in the West.
Saddam Hussein's connection with nationalism has come through a political party, the Ba'ath Party, which has been active in several middle eastern countries. Since its founding in the 1950s, the Ba'ath Party has preached panarabism-the belief that all Arabs belong to a single nation, or people, destined to live in a single united state. In this way the Ba'ath Party has hoped to restore the strength and identity of an Arab people that finds itself divided into several different states and religions; in fact, ba'ath means resurrection. The Ba'ath Party claims that this resurrection will benefit all Arabs, whether they are Muslim, Christian, or some other religion, for it gives them "a special mission in the world and a right to independence and unity."13
Arab nationalist sentiment is not enough by itself to produce fascism. But nationalism is a key ingredient in fascism, and when it is complemented by militarism and the attempt to establish totalitarian control, as in Iraq in recent years, then fascism follows.l.
In the United States, too, the Nazi Party and other groups with fascist leanings-the Ku Klux Klan, the AI)'an Nation, and assorted "skinheads"sometimes make their presence felt. Some, though certainly not all, of the "militia" movements in the United States have neo-Nazi leanings. Their members claim that the country has been taken over by Jews and the United Nations, which is the ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government) in Washington, D.C. This illegitimate government is bent on disarming white citizens, leaving them defenseless against blacks, Hispanics, and other nonwhites, and it is therefore the duty of patriotic whites to overthrow the ZOG. This is the thinking that has animated a number of milita-led bombings of federal facilities-most famouslyand dest~ctively, the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. One of the convicted bombers, Timothy McVeigh, kept and often quoted from The Turner Diaries-a book whose contents provide a startling insight into the thinking of members of Various radical-right, neo-Nazi, militia groups.15
The Turner Diaries is a work of fiction. It purports to be the diaries of Earl Turner, a militant member of a neo-Nazi group called the Organization that, in the -Great Revolution" of the late twentieth century, overthrew the Jewish-led -System.-the U.S. government-and in the twenty-first century inaugurated an all-white,'racially pure New Era. During the Old Era, according to the Diaries, the System discriminated against patriotic white Americans by confiscating their guns, promoting policies of affirmative action, encouraging nonwhite foreign immigration and interracial marriage, and putting Jews, African-AmeIicans, and other minorities in positions of author- [Fascism Today 211] ity in schools and universities, the mass media, and the FBI and other government agencies. This revolution pitted "patriotic" white Americans against an antiwhite government bent on disarming and "mongrelizing" the white race by allowing interracial marriage and other fonDS of "race-mixing,. such as integrated schools and churches. Opposing this antiwhite System is the Organization-a group of right-wing, antiliberal, white men and women who have not been "brainwashed" by the "liberal media." One of the characters in the Diaries, a white woman named Katherine, rejects her liberal leanings after being given some books on race and history and some Organization publications to read, For the first time in her life she began thinking seriously about the important racial, social and political issues at the root of the day's problems. She learned the truth about the System's "equality" hoax. She gained an understanding of the unique historical role of the Jews as the ferment of decomposition of races and civilizations. Most important, she began acquiring a sense of racial identity, overcoming a lifetime of brain washing aimed at reducing her to an isolated human atom in a cosmopolitan chaos.16
Here, in a nutshell, is the essence of Nazi, and now neo-Nazi, ideology: racial differences are innate and indelible; they lie at the root of all social and political problems; people of different races cannot live together in peace or harmony; the Jews, however, promote social and political chaos by preaching-and forcing people to practice-racial "equality"; white people who are brainwashed by Jewish propaganda have no sense of "white" identity, seeing themselves as the atomized individuals depicted by classical liberal and Enlightenment thought. The key to the whole problem," Turner writes, is .the corruption of our people by the Jewish-liberal-democratic-equalitarian plague, . . ..17 This plague is first and foremost ideological, caused by white people accepting "Jewish and liberal ideas", and it can be cured only by rejecting these ideas and replacing them with "correct ideas about white identity and racial pride."
Putting her newfound ideology into practice, Katherine joins Turner and the other Organization members in fighting the System. They raise money to buy weapons by robbing Jewish-owned businesses and killing, with obvious enjoyment, the owners and employees. They make a fertilizer bomb and blow up the FBIs national headquarters, killing scores of agents and civilians alike. They also bomb the offices of the Washington Post and other "liberal" newspapers and television stations. They mount a mortar attack on the U.S. Capitol: "We saw beautiful blossoms of flame and steel sprouting everywhere, . . . erupting now inside and now outside the Capitol, wreaking their bloody toll in the ranks of tyranny and treason."18 On the same day, "the Organization used a bazooka to shoot down an airliner which had just taken off for Tel Aviv with a load of vacationing dignitaries, mostly Jews. There were,. Turner adds with evident satisfaction, "no survivors."19 Later, during the "Day of the Rope," the Organization publicly hangs hundreds of thousands of black and white race traitors" from trees, lampposts, and overpasses as a warning to [212 Fascism] those who might be tempted to "betray" the white race by defending, dating, or marrying members of other races.
Throughout The Turner Diaries the emphasis is on difference-not only between races, religions, and nations, but between the sexes as well. Liberalism and feminism are reviled for denying the importance of innate and deep-seated differences:
Liberalism is an essentially feminine, submissive world view. . . . "Women's lib" was a form of mass psychosis which broke out during the last three decades of the Old Era. Women affected by it denied their femininity and insisted that they were "people," not "women." This aberration was promoted and encouraged by the System as a means of dividing our [white] race against itself.20
And what of democracy? The Diaries condemns constitutional democracy: "the American people voted themselves into the mess they're in now," and the Jews have taken over the country fair and square, according to the Constitution." The Constitution does not and cannot protect the integrity and identity of the "white race" and should therefore be scrapped. Elections aren't the answer: "Where [do you] think new elections can possibly lead now, with this generation TV-conditioned voters, except right back into the same Jewish pigsty"2l In place of liberal democracy, The Turner Diaries advocates autocratic role by a racially pure elite. This was finally achieved with the Organization's victory in the Great Revolution "in the year 1999, according to the chronology of the Old Era-just 110 years after the birth of the Great One." The unnamed Great One who was born in 1889 is, of course, Adolf Hitler .
Although Hitler died in his Berlin bunker in 1945, his ideas live on in the dreams and schemes and plans-and practices-of neo-Nazi groups in North America and Europe. These groups are especially eager to attract young recruits. Their methods range from "white power" rallies to the racist religion of the Christian Identity Church, from rock music concerts and compact discs by Rahowa (Racial Holy War) and other neo-Nazi bands to Web sites on the Internet. They are active in the American military, in prisons, and increasingly in high schools and youth groups. Their numbers are small but apparently growing among alienated and disaffected white Americans.
It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that all of the so-called militia groups in the United States take their inspiration from Hitler and the Nazis. According to one estimate, there are more than 850 militia groups in the United States today.!t The members of these groups share a suspicion of the United States' government and a fondness for firearms, but many of them are neither racist nor nationalist. Nor are they bent on establishing a totalitarian government. As the word "militia" suggests, the members of these groups often believe that they must remain vigilant, on guard against government attempts to seize more and more power. They typically insist that political power should be concentrated at the local level, not at the national, so that citizens acting in townships and counties can control their own affairs and [Conclusion 213] live free from the meddling control of "big government." When power is concentrated in the hands of judges, representatives, and bureaucrats who are distant from the ordinary people, they argue, individual liberty is likely to be smothered. Comparing themselves to the "Minutemen" and "Sons of Liberty" who took up arms in the American Revolution to defend the liberty of the American people against the oppressive designs of the British government, members of many militia groups claim to be fighting against a government that is too large, too remote, and too powerful for the good of the people.
In that respect, certainly, these militia groups are very different from Mussolini's Fascists and Hitler's Nazis. Fascists celebrate power and seek to concentrate it in the state, in a single party, even in a single leader. For the true fascist, there must be nothing outside the state, nothing against the state, and everything for the state. That is a view that many militia members cannot accept. But others can and do.
CONCLUSION
Fascism as an Ideology
One feature of fascism is clear. No matter what the form, fascists have always tried to win mass support by appealing to people in the simplest, most emotional terms. This becomes evident as we look at how fascism and Nazism perform the four functions of a political ideology.
Explanation. Why are social conditions the way they are? Fascists typically answer this question with some account of heroes and villains. Usually they concentrate on the scoundrels or traitors who conspire to keep the nation or Volk weak in order to serve their own personal interests. They look for scapegoats, in other words, and blame all problems on them. This is what the Nazis did to the Jews, for instance, and what neo-Nazis or "white supremacists" do to blacks, or Hispanics, or other "inferior" and "foreign" groups.
Evaluation. Whether a situation is good or bad, according to fascists, will usually depend on some evaluation of a nation's or Volk's unity and strength. If the people are fragmented, at odds with one another, then it is time to hunt down the villains who are tearing the Volk or nation apart. If the people are united behind their party and their leader, on the other hand, then all is well.
Orientation. What is one's place in the world, one's primary source of belonging or identification? According to the Italian fascists, it is the nation; to the Nazis, the nation defined in racial terms. In either case, the individual should recognize that he or she is of no significance as an individual, but only as a member of the organic whole--the nation-state or the race-that gives meaning and purpose to his or her life.
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