A German Haider

A German Haider?

Philo-Israel II

As America heads into an all but certain war with the ferocious Taliban regime in Afghanistan events in Europe are also moving rapidly. The continent is preparing within just a few months to replace its francs, marks, and lira with a single European currency, the euro. This will no doubt, in the short term, disrupt the European economies, but once the euro is in place, it will be hard to get rid of it. Europe will have a common currency for the first time since the silver denarius of the Roman Empire.

The euro is very unpopular. Its adoption may lead to a great deal of social unrest. Now, on top of this are environmental concerns raised by President Bush's rejection of the Kyoto Treaty on greenhouse gas emissions. Then, there is the prospect of terrorism. Bin Ladin will likely direct most of this against America, but Europe may not escape. Europe, remember, is vulnerable to the oil weapon.

Europeans have many reasons to be nervous, and there are political parties waiting in the wings ready to capitalize on this nervousness. The old fascist and neo-Nazi parties are long gone. Many of their leaders are dead or dying, or very old. In the 1980's, however, they helped launch a new generation of far right parties. These parties are, like the old fascists, ultranationalist and generally racist. They are quite different from traditional fascists in several ways:

Fascism, as invented by Benito Mussolini, was quite socialist in some ways. Mussolini started as a radical socialist, but his love of violence for its own sake set him apart from Italy's Marxists. During World War I he saw that nationalism was far more appealing than internationalism. By the end of the war, Mussolini was courting the middle class. He mixed nationalism with socialism in the form of a corporate state where a dictator would bring management and labor together as partners. Fascism was totalitarian. The individual had no meaning except as a soldier or a breeder of soldiers. Nations were to fight one another like warring species. The Italian model was imitated in other countries each of which invented its own brand. Spanish fascism was inspired by the Catholic crusaders of the Middle Ages; Romanian fascism was violently antisemitic and inspired by the Roman legions. The Belgian fascism of Leon Degrelle was inspired by Medieval Burgundy. France had several quarreling fascist parties. The biggest, led by Colonel Francois de la Rocque was not truly fascist but Catholic conservative. The Francistes glamorized Charlemagne, and the movement of Jacques Doriot, a renegade Communist, praised the common Nordic heritage of northern French and Germans. Marcel Deat was a renegade socialist who embraced Hitler as a true socialist and European. The Militia of Joseph Darnand was Latin and Catholic.

In the Germanic countries, fascism was even more racist and socialist. Hitler tolerated private enterprise but many industries were state controlled. The Austrian Nazis were even more ferocious than the German. The Dutch, Flemish, Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes all had their own versions of Nazism. In Scandinavia, the Nazi parties were an absolute joke, with no popular following. Germanic Nazism, as opposed to Latin fascism, was based upon the supremacy of the tribe or race instead of the nation. Hitler wanted to absorb all peoples of Germanic race into a single Reich or empire.

Fascism, including Nazism, began as a nationalist idea. By the end of World War II it had become a 'European' idea. Mussolini spoke of a Universal Fascism in which Italy would set the example and the other nations of Europe would have their own fascist revolutions. Fascist Europe might be economically united, but the fascist states of Europe would form a nationalist and Catholic alliance against both American capitalism and Russian Communism. Hitler saw a Greater German Empire that would absorb all people of Germanic race and reduce the other nations of Europe to protectorates. Late in the war, the SS, preaching environmentalism, nature worship, and a racist socialism, propagandized its own version of the European idea. Except for the Jews and Romani {Gypsies], all Europeans were descended from a single Indo-Germanic race that was born in Scandinavia. Nazism could thus be a European as well as a German philosophy. The SS formed divisions of French [the Division Charlemagne], Belgians, Dutch, Scandinavians, and even Italians, Hungarians, Romanians, Latvians, Bosnians, and Russians. In their propaganda they envisioned a Europe of 100 Flags ruled from Vienna in which each Aryan tribe would be ruled by their own SS knights.

The new parties, unlike the old Nazis, claim to be democratic. They believe in free-market economics instead of socialism. They tend to soft-pedal antisemitism, although there are many antisemites in these parties, especially in Eastern Europe. Austria's Freedom Party even boasts a Jewish deputy. In order to describe these parties, that are neither conservative nor traditionally fascist, political scientists have had to develop a new vocabulary. These parties are now called National Populist. Their main appeals are based upon hostility to immigration, opposition to a federal European union, protection of the environment and traditional family values.

The National Populist parties began to burst upon the scene in the mid -1980's. The National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen scored well in a local election in Dreux in 1983and in European elections in 1984. Soon, Joerg Haider's Freedom Party and Umberto Bossi's Northern League began winning large numbers of votes on law and order and anti immigration platforms.

While these parties oppose the Euro and the European Union, they have, like the fascists of old, their own versions of Europeanism, ultimately derived from those old visions. Jean-Marie Le Pen's party would give France an updated version of the Vichy regime: Catholic traditionalist, antisemitic, and presided over by an aging warrior. Le Pen's vision of Europe, published in a book in 1988, is not unlike that of Vichy's Marshal Philippe Petain or even of General De Gaulle, one of whose sons represents Le Pen's party in the European parliament. Le Pen wants France to be sovereign but directing Europe as a strong partner with Germany. His rival, Bruno Megret, who set up a splinter party in 1999, wants a Europe that is neo-pagan. Italy's Bossi wants a Europe of the 100 Flags where northern Italy, which he calls Padania, would not be ruled by southern Italy.Meanwhile, the National Alliance of Gianfranco Fini, a direct descendant of the old Fascist party, has again entered into a governing coalition with conservative tycoon Silvio Berlusconi. In 1922, the Italian Fascists first entered power in a coalition. Fini now claims his once-Fascist party is merely a conservative movement. Does anyone believe him? One of his deputies is none other than Mussolini's granddaughter Alessandra.

The fortunes of the National Populist parties have risen and fallen with the public mood but they are here to stay. The Austrian Freedom Party and Italian National Alliance are already sharing power. The Belgian Vlaamsblok is very powerful, but The National Front in France is currently in decline, though it still has a strong appeal in the south of France. The Hungarian Justice and Life Party of Istvan Czurka and the Greater Romania party of Corneliu Vadim Tudor are on the rise. These parties are patterned after the Le Pen model. Tudor is openly antisemitic and an admirer of Dracula and Nicolae Ceaucescu. Thirty per cent of Romanians voted for him in a recent election.

To get some idea what these parties might be like in power, look at Serbia. Slobodan Milosevic was democratically elected, but committed unspeakable atrocities. We are seeing a regime of a new, or not so new type. Rome was in theory a democracy. It had elections, senators, consuls [chancellors] and tribunes. In practice, it was despotic, the iron of tyranny mixed with the miry clay of popular elections.

It is likely in the near future that these parties will come into power in a crisis-torn Europe and ten of them will form an alliance described in Revelation 17.Monarchies, particularly the Habsburg, may be restored along with them. This is already happening in Spain and Bulgaria.

What about Germany? The most powerful nation of all in Europe, and the one destined to be at the core of any new Roman Empire has, until now, lacked a single, powerful National Populist party. The radical right in Germany has been divided into three major parties:

The National Democratic Party, the oldest, most militant, and Nazi-like of the parties.

The German Volks Union of ultranationalist publisher Gerhard Frey

The Republikaner, or Republicans, the largest and most respectable, led by Rolf Schlierer.

If the voters of these parties and all those with radical right sympathies were to unite, they could pose a real threat to German democracy with around twenty percent of the vote. Before 1930 the far right and disaffected voters in Germany were similarly divided, until the charisma of Adolf Hitler brought them together. In 1928, the Nazis got three percent of the vote, in 1930 it was sixteen per cent. By 1932 it was over thirty percent.

Germany until now has lacked a Haider. "One of the reasons" says the London Daily Telegraph, " the far Right in Germany has not been a serious force in recent years is that its vote has been spread between several badly organised parties. The movement has lacked a charismatic leader capable of uniting the disparate movement." [September 24, 2001].

One may now be emerging, in the most liberal city in Germany. Hamburg is known as the crime capital of Germany. It is a bastion of the German left. A few days ago. however, a new political party, called the Law and Order Party won 18% of the vote and has formed a coalition with the conservative CDU. The leader of this party is a judge, Ronald Barnabas Schill. Schill is likely to become Hamburg's Interior Minister.

At age 42, Schill is 6' 4" , handsome, and very charismatic. He has no Nazi past and no neo-Nazi connections. He is nicknamed 'Judge Merciless' for the severity of his sentences. He advocates zero tolerance for crime, castration of rapists and immediate deportation of dubious refugees. He is far closer to New York's tremendously popular mayor Rudolf Giuliani or to Austria's Joerg Haider than to Hitler:

"Like Mr Haider in Austria, he cuts a dashing, sporting figure, listing high-speed surfing and diving among his main interests. He is tall and smooth-talking, and his far-Right agenda is modern and original, rejecting anything to do with neo-Nazism." [Telegraph, September 8, 2001].

He is a right-wing law and order ultraconservative, not a fascist: "But more significant, writes the Telegraph, "is the arrival on the scene of a coherent politician of the far Right who many now believe will now use his success as the springboard for forming [a]national party similar to Jorg Haider's Freedom Party in Austria." [September 24, 2001] Many though, suggest that he could turn his party into a national force, possibly in alliance with the ultraconservative Bavarian CSU and become Germany's National Populist leader.

Germany may now, like other European countries, have a powerful and united radical right for the first time since the war.

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