A Frightful Fiend

Look at this picture. Can you guess who or what it is? No? Well I’ll tell you – it’s the new face of Greek democracy! His name is George Germenis, a black metal rocker, although he uses the stage name ‘Kaiadas’, after the chasm where Spartans threw deformed babies.

Germenis or Kaiadas – whose next album, incidentally, is called Long Live Death – was thrown into another chasm - the Greek parliament. He is there along with another twenty members of Golden Dawn, an extreme nationalist movement entering the assembly for the first time ever. It won seven percent of the poll in the election held a week last Sunday, that’s well over 400,000 votes. It’s a remarkable achievement considering that Golden Dawn was long in the murky twilight of Greek politics, securing less than one percent of the vote the last time round.

Kaiadas and Golden Dawn is a sign of the times, said the mayor of Salonika. They certainly are; a sign of the European times, a sign of Greek anger at the austerity programme imposed at the diktat of the European Union, a sign of the madness that has arisen from monetary union. It’s a consequence of the arrogance of the politicians and bureaucrats who govern the destiny of Europe, who believed that national electorates could be ignored and sidestepped with impunity.

Greece, sinking ever deeper into recession, wanted to make a gesture, and it has. In making the gesture, in retreating from the mainstream into the fringe, people were clear what they were voting against; it’s just that they seemed to have no clear idea what they were voting for. Since the election many have said that they were shocked over what they subsequently learned about Golden Dawn.

What have they learned? Why, that it’s racist, violently so, and reactionary, rejecting, in the words of its own manifesto, “the so-called Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.” It is also irredentist, rejecting Greece’s present borders. We are, in short, dealing with a Nazi-style party which has a Nazi-style logo, though it rejects the label, saying that they are inspired by the regime of Ioannis Metaxas. He was dictator of Greece on the threshold of the Second World War, himself inspired by – can you guess? – the Nazis. They had their Third Reich; he had his Third Hellenic Civilization. In time to come – who knows? -there may be a Fourth Hellenic Civilization.

Golden Dawn is led Nikolaos Michaloliakos, once jailed for the possession of explosives. In the best non-fascist style the party’s charter places him in total control. In the best non-fascist style the charter also authorises the straight armed Roman salute, or is that Greek salute? The leader, though, has eschewed such gestures when his people march into parliament. His people, incidentally, include one who was facing trial for allegedly allowing his car to be used for an assault on a left-wing university lecturer. I say ‘was’ because he will be facing trial no longer; he now enjoys parliamentary immunity.

The ascent of Golden Dawn should not be seen in isolation. The door was already held open, ironically, by the socialist Pasok party and New Democracy, the respectable face of Greek politics. In forcing through the austerity package insisted on by the European Central Bank and the IMF, they formed a less than respectable coalition with the Popular Orthodox Rally, another movement on the extremist fringe, closely allied with Golden Dawn. In other words, Greece’s political class, dancing to a tune played from Brussels, effectively made right-wing extremism a respectable choice.

"May God help us. I dread to think that they got in," said Maria Savelona, a 51-year-old widow, who claims not to have voted for the Golden boys. "People voted in anger, without thinking. When they realize what they did, they'll be afraid." They should be. It isn’t just Germenis, his heavy metal makeup, his knives and his fake blood. No; since the election people have been shown images of his party comrades smiling next to an Auschwitz crematorium.

Michaloliakos, in his first public appearance after the election, said that getting into parliament would not turn his "brave boys in black" into moderates. He warned those who "betrayed the motherland" to run scared, banging his clenched fist on the podium, a bodyguard on each side: "We are coming!" They certainly are.

Like one who, on a lonely road, Doth walk in fear and dread, And, having once turned round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

Heil Big Brother!

I originally wrote this for Retarius and Anastasia, a site which I share with an Australian friend of mine. My discussion with Yun Yi on my previous blog reminded me of some of the issues raised, so I’m publishing it here also.

There they are, all wearing black shirts, all raising their right arms in stiff salute, all shouting ‘Sieg Heil’, all praising Adolf Hitler and his commitment to ethnic purity. Where are we exactly – in the back streets of Munich or Berlin, or any other place in the west where unregenerate extremism continues to exercise its baleful fascination? No, as a matter of fact this is Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia.

Yes, indeed, there is a Nazi movement in Mongolia, including a group which goes by the name of Tsagaan Khass – White Swastika -, led by a man who calls himself, wait for it, Big Brother. Please stop laughing; it’s all true! Big Brother has a rather confused view when it comes to Hitler, which involves some bizarre cherry-picking;

We don’t agree with his extremism and starting the Second World War. We are against all those killings, but we support his ideology. We support nationalism rather than fascism.

What Big Brother fails to mention is that in Hitler’s racial pyramid the Mongolians came close to the bottom. It’s such a bizarre irony that Nazism is now embraced by at least some among the ‘degenerate horde’ as a positive ideology.

There is really no great surprise in this. Racist nationalism is often adopted by people with a deep sense of personal grievance or inferiority, people who excuse their own failings by scapegoating some minority or other. In Germany it was the Jews. I confess I don’t know an awful lot about Mongolia but I’m guessing that Jewish people are something of a rarity. No, it’s not the Jews that Big Brother and his kind are getting upset about – it’s the Chinese, or the Chinks, their term, not mine.

China is imperialistic and evil, the message goes out; the Chinese are a danger to the ‘pure blood’ of Mongolia. Just how is this danger manifested, you may wonder? Well, you see, the Chinese have a lot of money, allowing them to come and ‘take’ Mongolian women.

This fear of deracination is not simply the fantasy of a fringe; it feeds on wider prejudices among the nation. One of the most popular urban myths in Ulan Bator is that the Chinese government has a secret policy of encouraging its male citizens to come and have sex with Mongolian women. A popular hip-hop track regularly played the capital’s bars and clubs is called Don’t Go Too Far, You Chinks, with a chorus of “shoot, shoot them all.”

There have been attacks on some foreigners, something that the US State Department has warned potential visitors about, though those in most immediate risk from this xenophobia seem to be Mongolian women themselves, threatened with head shaving if they sleep with foreigners. Tsgaaan Khass takes an altogether moderate approach here, insisting that its role is simply one of “law enforcement.” Their policy is to carry out targeted checks, going to hotels and restaurants to make sure that Mongolian girls are not involved in prostitution and foreigners are not breaking the law.

We don’t go through and beat the shit out of everyone. We check our information and make sure its right.

Now that’s a reassurance, I feel sure you will agree.

Turning Front

The French political right is possibly the most fractured in Europe, a condition of its history. To the right of the Gaullists, to the right of the right, are those who stand against the tradition of 1789. They are the people, if you like, of the Vichy tradition, those who were never fully reconciled to the loss of Algeria. It’s a tradition represented by the National Front, headed until recently by Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Like him or not, Le Pen is one of the giants of post-war French politics, occasionally spoiling the feast of the more traditional parties, a little like the ghost of Banquo. In the presidential election of 2002 he beat the Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, into second place, forcing the left and centre-right into an unholy alliance behind Jacques Chirac in the second round to ward off the monster. His catchphrase “If anybody doesn’t like France, they should leave” was even echoed by Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of the 2007 election, a sign of how far the Front’s message has percolated into the mainstream.

I’m not keen on Le Pen, I must say; he’s too much of a bruiser, too lacking in subtlety, not quite the gentleman. Still, I agree with those sentiments; I would like to see them applied to my own country, I would like to hear leading politicians say that if you do not like Britain then leave, go, go in peace, but go. People who talk down this country, people who do not value its traditions of tolerance and freedom can get lost, the quicker the better. Please do not misunderstand me: so far as I am concerned this has nothing to do with race, or colour, or ethnicity, or religion. It has, rather, everything to do with attitude.

I’m digressing. Let’s get back to Le Pen and the French far right. Le Pen is dead; long live Le Pen. No, the old chap is not really dead; he’s just taken a back seat, giving way to Marine Le Pen, his daughter, who came top of a leadership poll last month. A lawyer by profession and a mother of three, she is far more personable, far more chic, as the French would say, in every way, carrying little of her father’s ideological baggage. She’s got class, unlike Nick Griffin, the glass-eyed fright who heads the British National Party. She appears on television without looking shifty and evasive, in the way that Griffin looks shifty and evasive.

Her biggest asset is that she carries nothing of the Vichy-Algiers tradition, looking to give the right a new direction, away from past neo-Nazi fixations which kept it penned (Le Pened?) in an electoral ghetto, going so far but no further. She has taken a stand on the tradition of French secularism, making it harder for more established politicians to attack her ‘extremism.’ Her main advantage, besides being the new attractive face of the right, is that people are fed-up with the political mainstream, fed up with both Gaullism in the Sarkozy form, and fed up with the Socialist alternative. Marine’s approval ratings have now reached an impressive 33%, higher than her father every achieved in his heyday.

The ruling UMP party is worried. The fear is that the 2012 presidential election could turn into 2002 in reverse, with Le Pen beating Sarkozy into a second round contest. It does not seem likely, but with Little Nic reshapping the debate on the future of France in terms defined by Marine she has already scored a kind of victory for the new respectable front.

The Right Advances Across Europe

As expected the far-right Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom (Movement for a Better Hungary), known simply as Jobbik, took an important stride forward in the parliamentary election held in Hungary at the weekend. With almost seventeen per cent of the vote it will send twenty six deputies to parliament, only two behind the socialists, formerly the party of government.

Although their showing is not quite as strong as some had anticipated – less than two points up from their vote in last summer’s European elections –it’s still remarkable progress for a fringe movement, a measure of both the anger at the mismanagement of the socialists and disquiet over Hungary’s declining economic fortunes. This is a country, moreover, with a deeply ingrained sense of historical grievance and a well-developed tendency to look for scapegoats, and Jobbik is all to ready to supply them, in the shape of Jews or, more particularly, Roma.

The advance of the chauvinist right is not something that should not be viewed in isolation; it’s happening across Europe, as local movements feed on mounting grievances. I would go so far as to suggest that beyond specific national grievances we are seeing a wider reaction against the anti-democratic European Union, a bureaucratic monster that only exists by sublimating and ignoring problems among a hugely diverse range of countries. Europe is merely a name for the Continent; there is no European identity, just as there is no Asian or African identity. There will never be a European identity.

If Jobbik is an expression of the national grievances of Hungary, then the National Front, once again on the advance, is an expression of those of the French. In Italy the electoral success of Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition in the recent regional elections was largely built on the continuing advance of the Northern League. In Austria Barbara Rosenkranz, the far-right mother of ten, whose husband publishes a neo-Nazi newsletter, will contest the presidency with the support of the Kronen Zeitung, the country’s best selling tabloid. In Belgium Vlaams Belang, the extreme-right wing separatist party, enjoys ever increasing support among the Flemings.

In Britain the phenomenon is much more sociologically and politically specific. Here the British National Party, which gained almost a million votes in last summer’s European elections, sending two representatives to Strasbourg, is largely a movement of the traditional working-class, disillusioned by the neglect of the Labour Party, a party whose leader makes canting speeches about defending British jobs while signing up to agreements that ensure those jobs are anything but British.

The temptation is to see all of this as a protest vote, as something that will wax and wane in accordance with the fortunes of more established parties; that it’s a kind of thermometer of discontent, if you will. The pattern is different now; for the far-right has become a permanent feature of the politics of the new Europe. I for one expect to see the resurgence of the extreme right accelerate as the process towards European integration accelerates. This is a project in which ordinary people, the voters of Europe were never involved, or if they were involved it was one that they rejected only to be ignored. If the new fascism is Caliban the European Union is its mother; the European Union is Sycorax.

What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?

Stopping Hitler

Those on the political left, particularly those whose views have Marxist overtones, usually tend to be keen on reading the teacup of history, drawing lessons from the leaves. Yes, they read history…and they almost invariably draw the wrong conclusions.

The classic example here, the one I am thinking of, is the rise of Hitler. Talking, so the argument goes, was not enough to prevent this; only direct action would suffice, only violence and more violence; only getting Nazis off the streets.

Oh, but there was violence in the last years of the Weimar Republic, intense violence directed against the Nazis by their opponents, particularly the KPD, the German Communist Party. In the early 1930s Germany was in a state of political civil war. I suspect that the peace time murder rate for 1932 has never been exceeded. Yes, there was violence and the Nazis grew strong and stronger; the more their opponents hit out, the more they benefited, nowhere more so that in ‘Red Berlin’, where Joseph Gobbles, Gauleiter since 1928, increased membership dramatically.

So, yesterday, Nick Griffin was forced to abandon a press conference by an egg throwing mob, shouting “Off our streets, Nazi scum”, a mob that was clearly mindful of the ‘lessons of history.’ Weyman Bennet, the organiser of the attack, and the national secretary of an organisation that goes by the name of Unite against Fascism, said that it was important to ‘stand up to the BNP’. Standing up to the BNP is apparently to allow the nation to see a chanting and vicious mob throwing missiles, in the belief that political victory for them lies in silencing those they do not want to hear; those they do not want anyone else to hear.

For smart-suited Griffin the propaganda value of these scenes probably carried far greater weight than what he would have said, if he had been allowed to say it.

Violence will not stop the BNP, oh no it will not; only words will. And the words I have in mind are their own. Yes, I would allow a platform for Fascists for the simple reason that once people at large know just how simplistic their words are it will collapse from under them. That is the intelligent deduction, not the ‘lesson of history.’

All Votes Are Equal, but Some Are More Equal Than Others

OK, let’s begin with my fallback position and my lifeline: I don’t like the British National Party; I do not like its brand of politics; I do not like its racism and I do not like its ideology. I say this to avoid any misunderstanding arising from what I’m about to write, for I know how easy it is for misunderstandings to emerge. I would also suggest that this particular piece be read in tandem with The Resistible Rise of the BNP, which I wrote last week.

Anyway, I find it particularly amusing how certain political developments are received; for that reception usually tells me more about recipient than the object of their concern. Democracy is democracy, and all votes are important, all votes are meaningful in one way or another. But, oh no, they are not. Look at the pious statements, the expressions of shock and outrage, following in the wake of the BNP’s minor triumph in the European elections, allowing them to send two representatives to Europe. David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, a man whom I personally happen to admire, says that, “It sickens me and it should sicken everybody…it brings shame on us that these fascists, racist thugs should have been elected to the European Parliament.” Corporal Clegg of the Liberal Democrats says that the BNP, “…don’t provide any hope and any answers.” Paul Kenny, the General Secretary of the GMB union, said, “On D-Day, Britain sent an army to Europe to stop Nazis getting to Britain [Not exactly, Mr Kenny, but never mind!]….Britain is now sending Nazis to Europe.”

We have seen it all before, have we not, that democracy is a ‘good thing’ when it produces the results that we want. We, in the west, hold up democracy, with all of our cultural conceit and arrogance, as the panacea for the ills of the world, the ills, for example, of the Muslim world. For democracy, as Graham Greene’s Alden Pyle would have preached, is the ‘Third Force’, the new beginning, is it not? But give Muslims the vote then what do you get? Why, Hamas among the Palestinians, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad among the Iranians. The latter just happens to have much popular legitimacy as Barack Obama and a hell of a lot more than Joker Brown.

So, now Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons are off to Strasbourg, and the other politicians walk off the stage to demonstrate their self-righteous disapproval. Not many are prepared to face the simple fact that the corruption of our whole complacent political system is to blame; and by corruption I mean so much more than the expenses scandal.

Our prized national democracy is little better than an elected dictatorship, where a government is chosen often not just on a minority of the popular vote but on the basis of contests in key ‘swing constituencies’, where a fraction of the vote determines the eventual outcome. There are whole areas of the country that can safely be ignored, because we all know the vote there is, so to say, predetermined.

The worst parts, the most neglected parts, are those huge fiefdoms of the Labour Party, particularly strong in the north of the country, ruled over by the modern version of the Robber Baron. I would go so far as to say that people in places like Humberside have effectively been ‘disenfranchised’, whether they vote or not, if that makes sense, in our Westminster elections. Oh, we would not have these Fascists in Europe if the elections were on the basis of good-old ‘first past the post’, say the jeremiads. No, we would not; but we would still have close on a million people with no effective voice.

The fact remains, as I said in my previous piece, that people are turning to the BNP precisely because their concerns over immigration, over their own position in society, over housing and over jobs, are simply being ignored. For God sake, forget the shock horror over the success of the BNP; look at its manifesto. What will you see? Why, it’s pure ‘Old Labour’, with a strong emphasis on nationalisation, high taxation, subsidy and protectionism. Yes, every vote for the BNP is an expression of disquiet over immigration policy. More than that, it’s the call of the marginalised and the dispossessed; it’s a call for the old left-wing certainties and shibboleths of the past. Now, there is a paradox upon which to take my leave!

The Resistible Rise of the BNP

I’m referring, of course, to the British National Party, or Fascists in Suits, as I prefer to call them! I suppose I have to admit to a certain grudging admiration for Nick Griffin, the Party Chairman and public face, for his tenacity, his skill and his political savvy. Under his guidance the far right has made greater advances than it ever did under the charismatic Oswald Mosley, who was so ignorant of the tastes and prejudices of the English people that he remained blind to the simple fact that they were always going to perceive his brand of uniformed Fascism as foreign and ideological. And as we all know, as George Orwell certainly knew, the English don’t do ideology!

Griffin, in contrast, has little of the tub-thumping rabble-rouser about him, and he is not much of an ideologue. His greatest virtue is his patience, his ability to promote his brand of small-scale politics among the marginal and the dispossessed. And when I use these terms I am not referring to the ‘outcasts’ and the misfits, to those that Marx referred to dismissively as the ‘lumpenproletariat’, the natural fodder for Fascism. Oh no; for the ‘outcasts’, for want of a better term, are the traditional working class, once the backbone of Labour and the Labour movement. These are the people who have continually been taken for granted by the corrupt political oligarchy that controls England at the present; the New Labour establishment, created by the Tony Blair, and perpetuated by Gordon Brown; an establishment that concocted ‘marshmallow politics’ out of spin, sound bites, media manipulation and outright lies.

It’s so sad, is it not, when politicians fail to take account of the warnings passed before, warnings handed down by history? Lincoln was right, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. We have in Gordon Brown, probably the most ludicrously incompetent person ever to occupy the office of Prime Minister, promising ‘British jobs for British workers’, knowing full-well that he was signing up to agreements with Europe that made these words a stupid lie, one which leaped up and struck him in the face.

Ordinary people, people long treated by Brown and his ilk as voting fodder, do not have a limitless capacity for stupidity. So they turn, slowly, perhaps, but they turn. This brings me back to Mr Griffin. Yes, I have said that he possesses certain political skills, but he is not likely to have travelled very far but for the indirect assistance of the old political establishment; Labour for their condescension and contempt for the working class, and the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats for accepting a hidden consensus, that there are political issues, unfashionable issues, that dare not speak their name! The present scandal over expenses has seasoned the mix with wormwood.

People by and large now have the deepest contempt for the whole political class, for the cesspit that Westminster has become. The BNP has travelled far, but it did not do so unaided. That is the most worrying thing of all.

Waving the Flag for Hungary

It’s inevitable that right wing nationalism will wax strong in the current climate, fostered not just be economic problems but a general resentment against the bureaucratic absurdities of that monstrous monolith, the European Union, as well as more local resentments.

Anyway, I like to keep my eyes open for any new developments. I read a report at the weekend on Dr Krisztina Morvai, who is standing in the forthcoming European elections for the far-right Jobbik movement in Hungary. I’d never heard of Jobbik prior to this, but it seems to me to carry strong overtones of the Arrow Cross, the Fascist movement that controlled Hungary in the dying stages of the Second World War. Jobbik even has its own paramilitary wing, the Hungarian Guard. Oh, sorry, they are not paramilitaries at all; they are merely a collection of guys and girls in traditional Hungarian costume, at least they are according to Balzco Zoltan, the vice-president of Jobbik. Would you like to see the Hungarian national costume? Well, here it is. :-))