Electoral comeback for Austrian anti-immigration party
The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) became the largest single party at Austria’s parliamentary election on Sunday, bouncing back from the scandal that destroyed its former leader Heinz-Christian Strache five years ago.
The FPÖ polled 1.4 million votes (28.9%) and won 57 seats, just ahead of the conservative ruling party ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party) on 26.3%, and the social democratic SPÖ on 21.1%.
As has sometimes been the case in German regional parliaments, the ÖVP had been in coalition with the Greens, and the latter suffered the frequent fate of junior partners in coalitions: their vote collapsed from 13.9% to 8.2%.
FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl, who was interior minister in an earlier coalition government from 2017-19, will now enter negotiations with other parties, but it seems very unlikely that even after this success his party will be able to form a government. Their only realistic path to office would be in coalition with the ÖVP, and the latter has other options (though none of these seem likely to be stable).
To some extent the FPÖ’s success is to be welcomed because it is yet another reflection of Europe’s turn against mass immigration. FPÖ are longterm allies of the French nationalist leader Marine Le Pen – and regular readers will realise that this has both positive and negative connotations!
Like Le Pen, the FPÖ has succeeded in bringing anti-immigration politics into the mainstream. But this has also meant compromises that for some of us go well beyond “sensible nationalism” and cross the line into abandoning basic principles.
We shouldn’t forget that FPÖ has already been in coalition with the Austrian conservatives, from 2017 to 2019, when its then leader Strache was Vice-Chancellor (i.e. deputy prime minister). The party’s present leader Kickl was interior minister in that government. So when the FPÖ talk about immigration we should remember that their leader has already served as the equivalent of a UK Home Secretary for 16 months during 2017-19.
That coalition ended with the so-called “Ibiza Affair”, when Strache was taped apparently offering political favours (in exchange for cash) to someone he believed to be the niece of a Russian oligarch. The tapes also revealed Strache speaking of his other dealings with Putinists as well as ‘right-wing’ Israelis.
After his disgrace, Strache resigned from the party he had once led and formed a tiny new party that has made little impact.
FPÖ has evidently now succeeded in escaping the shadow of the Strache scandal, no doubt helped by the fact that their conservative rivals (and ex-partners) have also been discredited: former Chancellor and ex-leader of the ÖVP, Sebastian Kurz, resigned after a corruption inquiry three years ago, and he received a suspended prison sentence earlier this year.
The electoral swing to FPÖ partly reflects former conservative voters abandoning the ÖVP, whether on the immigration issue, over corruption, or over its handling of Covid.
It’s interesting to note that in Austria, two issues that are at best electorally irrelevant or at worst electorally toxic in the UK – namely Covid dissidence/crankism and Putinism – don’t seem to have dented the FPÖ’s support and in some cases might even have helped them.
H&D readers will have very differing views on the FPÖ’s friendly approaches to both Russia and Israel.
One basic historical fact to bear in mind is that while in some ways FPÖ is a dissident force, in other ways it’s part of Austria’s political fabric dating back to the revolutionary mood of Europe in 1848.
At that time, central and eastern Europe contained a patchwork of kingdoms, duchies, and principalities, plus three great empires: Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian. One dominant force was not ‘Austria’ as it now exists, but the Habsburg Empire, aka ‘Austria-Hungary’.
When German nationalists such as the young composer Richard Wagner formed revolutionary movements in the 1840s seeking to create a German state, ‘Austrians’ were divided.
There was no ‘Austrian’ state: some were loyal to their Catholic roots above their essentially Germanic race/nationality/culture – and they retained those loyalties even after a German state was created a generation later in 1871. The simple way to see this is that these people and their ideological descendants became what’s now the conservative ÖVP.
Meanwhile those who saw themselves as Germans rather than Habsburg loyalists became known as national liberals. This is because the formation of Germany was intrinsically ‘liberal’ economically – in that it involved breaking down customs barriers between what had been separate principalities and kingdoms to create a unified German state.
That’s why we now see the paradox of the most ‘right-wing’ party in Austria having the name ‘Freedom Party’ and being in some ways ideologically ‘liberal’.
And of course the third force in Austrian politics was socialism – at one time including communists as well as various socialist / social democratic factions.
Post-1945 these traditions settled down into three broad strands. The ÖVP representing conservatism; SPÖ representing social democracy / socialism; and FPÖ representing ‘liberalism’ but with a strong residual tendency towards pan-Germanism, and therefore attracting the support of those who had been strongest supporters of union or Anschluss with Germany (briefly attained from 1938-45).
It’s this latter factor that will always make the left (and most Jews) hysterical about the FPÖ. However much FPÖ leaders kowtow to Israel and however close (financially and politically) they are to Vladimir Putin and his imperialist Russia (founded on ‘anti-nazi’ mythology), they will always be accused of being ‘nazis’ in disguise.
This is because today’s fake European ‘leaders’ fear any real Europe that is based on ties of blood rather than political contrivances and paper nationalities.
AfD surge in German regional elections
The anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has created further panic within the German political establishment after historic regional election results in two eastern German states.
In Thuringia, AfD became the largest party with 32.8% and 32 seats (up from 23.4% and 22 seats five years ago). In Saxony, they finished only just behind the conservative CDU after advancing from 27.5% to 30.6% and from 38 to 40 seats.
Politics in eastern Germany is even more fragmented than previously, with many voters alienated from the Federal Republic’s mainstream parties. For many years, large numbers of Saxon and Thuringian voters backed the modern version of the old Communist Party, rebranded as the Left Party (Die Linke), and until about a decade ago the old German nationalist party NPD also polled well.
The NPD won seats in Saxony’s regional parliament in the 2004 and 2009 elections, but its decline was accelerated by the emergence of AfD. Last year the NPD renamed itself Heimat (Homeland) but has yet to revive, and had no candidates in either Saxony or Thuringia this year.
As we have previously reported, many radical nationalists abandoned NPD for the new party III. Weg (Third Way), which did not contest Saxony or Thuringia yesterday but after several years of growth will be contesting the Brandenburg regional elections later this month.
AfD began as a right-wing conservative party with quasi-Thatcherite policies, but began to take a stronger line against immigration after former Chancellor Angela Merkel shocked her countrymen by admitting a mass influx of refugees in 2015.
Paradoxically, Thuringia (which saw the greatest AfD success yesterday) hasn’t seen much immigration. Its population has declined markedly since German reunification, from 2.7 million to 2.1 million, and outside major cities its population is noticeably ageing.
This feeling of being abandoned and exploited by the federal political elite is a major factor in the success of both AfD and a new leftwing party founded by Sahra Wagenknecht, the half-Iranian former leader of the pro-Moscow faction who broke away from Die Linke to form her own party BSW.
In Thuringia BSW polled 15.8% and took 15 seats, while in Saxony they were similarly in third place with 11.8% and 15 seats.
In theory AfD and BSW combined would now have a majority in the Thuringian Parliament, but although they agree on some foreign and defence policies, the state government has no power in these areas, and in most domestic policy areas the two parties are enemies: no such coalition is on the cards.
From a racial nationalist perspective, yesterday’s results are in some ways welcome news. But we should have few illusions about AfD, which is essentially another civic nationalist system party, and some of whose leaders have corrupt links to Moscow.
The most positive aspect of all this is that Germany (like France) is moving towards irreconcilable political divisions. AfD are not the answer: but they are posing questions that can cripple Germany’s ‘democratic’ constitution, and lay the foundations for better movements in the future.
In the short term, the challenge for the establishment parties is to find some way of patching together minority governments that exclude both AfD and BSW, though it’s possible that the CDU will demonstrate their lack of principle by seeking some sort of arrangement with Wagenknecht.
(Germany’s federal constitution divides power between the central government in Berlin and various states or Länder, in a somewhat similar manner to the USA. Thuringia has a population of 2.1 million, similar to the US state of New Mexico, or slightly smaller than West Yorkshire. Saxony’s population is just over 4 million, similar to Oklahoma, or slightly less than half the size of Greater London. The Saxon capital is Dresden, the historic city devastated by Allied terror bombing in February 1945.)
Censorship and the ‘greatest treason’
[This article is also available in Spanish / al español, and in German / auf deutsch.]
“The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.“
When T.S. Eliot wrote these lines in Murder in the Cathedral, he was thinking of the temptations of intellectual vanity and self-aggrandisement that potentially soil the motivation even of a religious martyr.
Eliot’s reflections on Archbishop Thomas Becket are worth thinking about, for anyone aspiring to political leadership – especially in a dissident cause such as racial nationalism – but today those lines came into my mind for other reasons, grounded in the grim state of 21st century European politics rather than 20th century poetry or mediaeval history.
Last week the German magazine Compact was banned by the Federal Republic’s interior minister, who cited alleged incitement of racial hatred (and all the usual ‘anti-woke crimes’) by the journal and its editor Jürgen Elsässer.
Yet, as has been pointed out by our friends at Dritte Weg (which is one of the very few genuine German nationalist organisations and remains untainted by the cowardice and treachery that pervades the ‘patriotic’ scene), this latest ban is more complicated than it seems.
To be clear: Compact and Jürgen Elsässer (unlike Dritte Weg) are not real nationalists or even real patriots. The magazine has built a large readership on the basis of American-style conspiracy theory and shallow posturing on quasi-nationalist themes. Until recently – unlike most of the nationalist scene in Germany – Compact had been unmolested by the authorities, lavishly funded, and widely distributed.
The most striking feature of Compact was/is its slavish devotion to Vladimir Putin. Under the guise of calls for ‘peace’, it has persistently peddled Kremlin propaganda. Of course in every nation there have always been genuine pacifists, whose stance must in some ways be respected even if one disagrees with them. But that isn’t where Elsässer and Compact are coming from. Nor are they rooted in any form of nationalist tradition.
Elsässer began his political life as a dedicated follower of communism and a proponent of the Moscow line, as it was during the 1970s and 1980s: anti-nazi, anti-racist, etc. During the 1990s he was among the founders of what (believe it or not) was proudly termed the ‘anti-German’ movement. This particular leftist faction argued that Germany had an inherent historical tendency towards ‘nazi’-style crimes, and therefore that Germany should never again be allowed to have a viable military or play any serious role in international affairs.
Elsässer’s ‘anti-German’ movement became notorious for turning up at commemorations of the 1945 Dresden terror bombing and chanting: “Bomber Harris, do it again!” For them, Germany couldn’t be punished severely enough, and however weak Germany became, it deserved to be degraded still further.
But – very significantly – this ‘anti-German’ tendency also took the form of opposing German participation in military operations in the former Yugoslavia. In retrospect (whatever else we might think about the Yugoslav civil war of that era) we can see the continuity: the likes of Elsässer consistently took the Kremlin line, whether during the dying decades of the Soviet Union, the corrupt Yeltsin era, or the neo-Stalinist Putin era.
It didn’t matter whether this line was ‘anti-nazi’, pro-Serb, or anti-Ukrainian: if it was the Kremlin line, it was faithfully followed by Elsässer’s gang.
During the 2000s, recognising the damage that had been inflicted on the credibility of the West (even internally) by the Iraq War, Putin’s intelligence service began to capitalise on ill-focused dissidence and conspiracy theorising among an audience of credulous online readers that was replacing traditional categories of ‘left’ and ‘right’.
Between 2009-2011, this Moscow line infiltrated the ‘right wing’ scene in Germany via (for example) two expensively produced magazines. Zuerst! had roots in genuine nationalist movements, but from 2011 it was edited by a Kremlin agent, Manuel Ochsenreiter. With financial backing from his Moscow masters (including the oligarch Konstantin Malofeev), Ochsenreiter travelled widely (especially in the Middle East) and networked with other nationalists – he was well-known for example to H&D‘s assistant editor and to our late comrade Richard Edmonds, and he worked in the European parliamentary office of an AfD politician.
Long suspected of being a Russian agent, Ochsenreiter’s career ended in 2019 when two Polish ‘far right’ activists whom he had commissioned to carry out a terrorist attack in the Ukrainian border city of Uzhhorod, were caught red-handed and confessed.
Though his lawyer issued the usual feeble denials, Ochsenreiter knew the game was up. Facing terrorist charges, he fled to Moscow and sought his masters’ protection. Now an embarrassment to Putin, Ochsenreiter died from a convenient heart attack in a Moscow hospital, aged 45. (The fact that the mainstream media, including the BBC, has occasionally reported the truth about Ochsenreiter and his fellow Russian agents doesn’t make it any less true! Shamefully, the mainstream media has told more truth about Putin than has most of the ‘alternative’ media: a sad symptom of our movement’s sickness.)
Zuerst! continues to peddle Moscow’s lies, but Compact (launched around the same time and with a less umbilical connection to the nationalist scene) became a far more influential Putinist mouthpiece. Until February this year, when certain outlets began refusing to stock it, Compact was widely available at mainstream news kiosks on the streets and railway stations of German towns and cities.
Naturally enough, Elsässer’s magazine latched onto every fashionable theme linked to the broadly defined dissident right, from anti-Islam movements such as PEGIDA to anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown demos, though without promoting anything that could be described as a coherent nationalist ideology (which is unsurprising given Elsässer’s own roots on the communist left).
Yet, as our friends at Dritte Weg have pointed out, the federal republic’s interior ministry does not seem to have relied on the treacherous Putinism of Elsässer and Compact as a basis for their banning.
Instead, the minister Nancy Faeser prattled on about ‘racism’ and ‘anti-semitism’ – all the usual ‘crimes’ against wokeness. She specifically stated that the authorities “would not allow ethnic definitions to be used to define who belongs to Germany and who does not.”
The message is clear – ethno-nationalism itself is to be criminalised, in fact made unconstitutional. (The irony being that Compact is not in any serious sense ethno-nationalist!)
In this respect, the action against Compact is an action against all of us, although the federal republic has a record of attempting such bans but then failing in the courts, and the same might happen this time.
Does this mean we should all be rallying around, despite clear and obvious political differences, and defending Compact against censorship?
No: there are two good reasons why we should oppose censorship, but also distance ourselves from Compact.
Firstly, there is no point making all the sacrifices and taking all the risks involved in nationalist political life if we are prepared to sacrifice our principles and ignore clear ideological dividing lines. Our enemy’s enemy is not necessarily our friend – which is why European racial nationalists didn’t march in support of ‘anti-Zionist’ Al-Qaeda or IS sympathisers when they were carted off to Guantanamo. The same applies to Putinists now, as applied to IS then: they are our enemy, whether or not they are also to any genuine extent our enemy’s enemy.
Secondly, as the case of Manuel Ochsenreiter demonstrates, if we allow our cause to be tainted by blatant treason, we are handing our rulers a stick to beat us with. Perhaps, as the collapse of the multiracial experiment becomes ever more obvious, the state will find some excuse to intern us.
But let’s not make it easy for them by associating our cause with the indefensible. Let’s not allow our cause to be dragged into the Putinist gutter.
European nationalists should stand against censorship; we should stand in support of our comrades’ right to free expression; but we should not endorse the anti-nationalist, anti-European traitors Jürgen Elsässer and Compact magazine.
Zensur und der „größte Verrat“
[Dieser Artikel ist auch im englischen Original und in einer spanischen Übersetzung verfügbar.]
“Die letzte Versuchung ist der größte Verrat, aus falschem Grund zu tun die rechte Tat.”
Als T.S. Eliot diese Zeilen in Mord im Dom schrieb, dachte er an die Versuchungen intellektueller Eitelkeit und Selbstverherrlichung, die selbst die Motivation eines religiösen Märtyrers beschmutzen können.
Eliots Betrachtungen über Erzbischof Thomas Becket sind für jeden, der eine politische Führungsrolle anstrebt – insbesondere in einem oppositionellen Bereich wie dem Rassennationalismus –, eine Überlegung wert. Heute jedoch kamen mir diese Zeilen aus anderen Gründen in den Sinn, die eher im düsteren Zustand der europäischen Politik des 21. Jahrhunderts wurzeln als in der Poesie des 20. Jahrhunderts oder der mittelalterlichen Geschichte.
Letzte Woche wurde das deutsche Magazin Compact vom Bundesinnenminister verboten, der der Zeitschrift und ihrem Herausgeber Jürgen Elsässer angebliche Anstiftung zum Rassenhass (und alle üblichen „Anti-Woke-Verbrechen“) vorwarf.
Aber wie unsere Freunde vom Dritten Weg (eine der ganz wenigen echten deutschen nationalistischen Organisationen, die von der Feigheit und dem Verrat, die die „patriotische“ Szene durchdringen, verschont geblieben sind) bereits betont haben, ist dieses jüngste Verbot komplizierter, als es scheint.
Um es klar zu sagen: Compact und Jürgen Elsässer (anders als der Dritte Weg) sind keine echten Nationalisten oder gar echte Patrioten. Das Magazin hat sich auf der Grundlage amerikanischer Verschwörungstheorien und oberflächlicher Haltung zu quasi-nationalistischen Themen eine große Leserschaft aufgebaut. Bis vor kurzem wurde Compact – anders als der Großteil der nationalistischen Szene in Deutschland – von den Behörden unbehelligt gelassen, großzügig finanziert und weit verbreitet.
Das auffälligste Merkmal von Compact war/ist seine sklavische Hingabe an Wladimir Putin. Unter dem Deckmantel von „Friedens“-Aufrufen hat es ständig Kreml-Propaganda verbreitet. Natürlich hat es in jedem Land immer echte Pazifisten gegeben, deren Haltung bis zu einem gewissen Grad respektiert werden muss, auch wenn man nicht mit ihnen übereinstimmt. Doch Elsässer und Compact verfolgen keinen solchen Ansatz und stehen auch nicht in einer nationalistischen Tradition.
Elsässer begann sein politisches Leben als überzeugter Anhänger des Kommunismus und Befürworter der Moskauer Linie, wie sie in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren war: anti-nazistisch, antirassistisch usw. In den 1990er Jahren gehörte er zu den Gründern dessen, was (ob Sie es glauben oder nicht) stolz als „antideutsche“ Bewegung bezeichnet wurde. Diese spezielle linke Fraktion argumentierte, dass Deutschland eine inhärente historische Tendenz zu Verbrechen im „Nazi“-Stil habe und dass Deutschland deshalb nie wieder ein funktionsfähiges Militär haben oder eine ernsthafte Rolle in internationalen Angelegenheiten spielen dürfe.
Elsässers „antideutsche“ Bewegung wurde berüchtigt, weil sie bei Gedenkfeiern zum Terrorbombenanschlag von Dresden 1945 auftauchte und skandierte: „Bomber Harris, do it again!” („Bomber Harris, mach es nochmal!“). Für sie konnte Deutschland nicht hart genug bestraft werden, und so schwach Deutschland auch wurde, es verdiente eine weitere Erniedrigung.
Aber – und das ist sehr bezeichnend – diese „antideutsche“ Tendenz äußerte sich auch in der Ablehnung der deutschen Beteiligung an Militäroperationen im ehemaligen Jugoslawien. Rückblickend (was auch immer wir sonst über den jugoslawischen Bürgerkrieg dieser Zeit denken mögen) können wir die Kontinuität erkennen: Leute wie Elsässer vertraten konsequent die Linie des Kremls, ob in den letzten Jahrzehnten der Sowjetunion, der korrupten Jelzin-Ära oder der neostalinistischen Putin-Ära.
Es spielte keine Rolle, ob diese Linie „anti-nazistisch“, pro-serbisch oder anti-ukrainisch war: Wenn es die Linie des Kremls war, wurde sie von Elsässers Bande treu befolgt.
In den 2000er Jahren erkannte Putins Geheimdienst, wie sehr der Irakkrieg der Glaubwürdigkeit des Westens (sogar im Inland) geschadet hatte, und begann, aus der unkonzentrierten Dissidenz und den Verschwörungstheorien eines Publikums leichtgläubiger Online-Leser Kapital zu schlagen, das die traditionellen Kategorien „links“ und „rechts“ ersetzte.
Zwischen 2009 und 2011 infiltrierte diese Moskauer Linie die „rechte“ Szene in Deutschland beispielsweise über zwei aufwändig produzierte Zeitschriften. Zuerst! hatte seine Wurzeln in echten nationalistischen Bewegungen, wurde aber ab 2011 von einem Kreml-Agenten, Manuel Ochsenreiter, herausgegeben. Mit finanzieller Unterstützung seiner Moskauer Herren (darunter der Oligarch Konstantin Malofejew) unternahm Ochsenreiter weite Reisen (vor allem in den Nahen Osten) und knüpfte Kontakte zu anderen Nationalisten – er war beispielsweise dem stellvertretenden Herausgeber von H&D und unserem verstorbenen Kameraden Richard Edmonds wohlbekannt und arbeitete im Europaparlamentsbüro eines AfD-Politikers.
Ochsenreiter stand lange unter Verdacht, ein russischer Agent zu sein, und seine Karriere endete 2019, als zwei polnische „rechtsextreme“ Aktivisten, die er beauftragt hatte, einen Terroranschlag in der ukrainischen Grenzstadt Uschhorod zu verüben, auf frischer Tat ertappt wurden und gestanden.
Obwohl sein Anwalt die üblichen schwachen Dementis von sich gab, wusste Ochsenreiter, dass das Spiel vorbei war. Angesichts der Terrorismusvorwürfe floh er nach Moskau und suchte den Schutz seiner Herren. Ochsenreiter, der nun eine Peinlichkeit für Putin darstellte, starb im Alter von 45 Jahren in einem Moskauer Krankenhaus an einem Herzinfarkt. (Die Tatsache, dass die Mainstream-Medien, einschließlich der BBC, gelegentlich die Wahrheit über Ochsenreiter und seine russischen Agentenkollegen berichtet haben, macht sie nicht weniger wahr! Beschämenderweise haben die Mainstream-Medien mehr Wahrheit über Putin erzählt als die meisten „alternativen“ Medien: ein trauriges Symptom der Krankheit unserer Bewegung.)
Zuerst! verbreitet weiterhin Moskaus Lügen, aber Compact (das etwa zur gleichen Zeit auf den Markt kam und weniger eng mit der nationalistischen Szene verbunden war) wurde zu einem weitaus einflussreicheren Sprachrohr Putins. Bis Februar dieses Jahres, als bestimmte Verkaufsstellen begannen, es nicht mehr in ihr Sortiment aufzunehmen, war Compact an den wichtigsten Zeitungskiosken auf den Straßen und Bahnhöfen deutscher Städte weithin erhältlich.
Natürlich griff Elsässers Magazin jedes modische Thema auf, das mit der weit gefassten dissidenten Rechten in Verbindung gebracht wurde, von antiislamischen Bewegungen wie PEGIDA bis hin zu Anti-Impf- und Anti-Lockdown-Demos, allerdings ohne etwas zu fördern, das man als kohärente nationalistische Ideologie bezeichnen könnte (was angesichts von Elsässers eigenen Wurzeln in der kommunistischen Linken nicht überraschend ist).
Doch wie unsere Freunde von Dritte Weg betont haben, scheint sich das Innenministerium der Bundesrepublik nicht auf den verräterischen Putinismus von Elsässer und Compact als Grundlage für ihr Verbot gestützt zu haben.
Stattdessen plapperte Ministerin Nancy Faeser über „Rassismus“ und „Antisemitismus“ – die üblichen „Verbrechen“ gegen die Wokeness. Sie erklärte ausdrücklich, dass die Behörden „nicht zulassen würden, dass ethnische Definitionen verwendet werden, um zu definieren, wer zu Deutschland gehört und wer nicht.“
Die Botschaft ist klar – Ethnonationalismus selbst soll kriminalisiert und sogar verfassungswidrig gemacht werden. (Die Ironie dabei ist, dass Compact in keiner ernsthaften Weise ethnonationalistisch ist!)
Insofern ist die Klage gegen Compact eine Klage gegen uns alle, auch wenn die Bundesrepublik in der Vergangenheit schon öfter solche Verbote versucht hat, dann aber vor Gericht gescheitert ist, und das könnte auch diesmal wieder passieren.
Bedeutet das, dass wir uns alle trotz klarer und offensichtlicher politischer Differenzen zusammenschließen und Compact gegen Zensur verteidigen sollten?
Nein: Es gibt zwei gute Gründe, warum wir uns gegen Zensur stellen, uns aber auch von Compact distanzieren sollten.
Erstens: Es hat keinen Sinn, alle Opfer zu bringen und alle Risiken eines nationalistischen politischen Lebens auf uns zu nehmen, wenn wir bereit sind, unsere Prinzipien zu opfern und klare ideologische Trennlinien zu ignorieren. Der Feind unseres Feindes ist nicht unbedingt unser Freund – deshalb marschierten europäische Rassennationalisten nicht zur Unterstützung der „antizionistischen“ Al-Qaida- oder IS-Sympathisanten, als diese nach Guantanamo verschleppt wurden. Dasselbe gilt heute für die Putinisten, was damals für den IS galt: Sie sind unser Feind, ob sie nun auch in einem echten Ausmaß der Feind unseres Feindes sind oder nicht.
Zweitens, wie der Fall Manuel Ochsenreiter zeigt, geben wir unseren Herrschern einen Stock, mit dem sie uns schlagen können, wenn wir zulassen, dass unsere Sache durch offensichtlichen Verrat beschmutzt wird. Vielleicht wird der Staat, wenn der Zusammenbruch des multirassischen Experiments immer offensichtlicher wird, irgendeinen Vorwand finden, uns einzusperren.
Aber machen wir es ihnen nicht leicht, indem wir unsere Sache mit dem Unhaltbaren in Verbindung bringen. Lassen wir nicht zu, dass unsere Sache in die Putinsche Gosse gezogen wird.
Europäische Nationalisten sollten sich gegen Zensur stellen; wir sollten das Recht unserer Kameraden auf freie Meinungsäußerung unterstützen; aber wir sollten die antinationalistischen, antieuropäischen Verräter Jürgen Elsässer und das Compact-Magazin nicht unterstützen.
La censura y la ‘mayor traición’
[Este artículo también está disponible en inglés y alemán.]
“La última tentación es la mayor traición: Hacer la acción correcta por la razón equivocada.”
Cuando T.S. Eliot escribió estas líneas en Asesinato en la catedral, pensaba en las tentaciones de la vanidad intelectual y el autoengrandecimiento que potencialmente manchan la motivación incluso de un mártir religioso.
Vale la pena que cualquiera que aspire a un liderazgo político piense en las reflexiones de Eliot sobre el arzobispo Thomas Becket, especialmente en una causa disidente como el nacionalismo racial, pero hoy esas líneas me vinieron a la mente por otras razones, basadas en el sombrío estado de la política europea del siglo XXI, en lugar de poesía del siglo XX o historia medieval.
La semana pasada, la revista alemana Compact fue prohibida por el Ministro del Interior de la República Federal, quien citó una supuesta incitación al odio racial (y todos los habituales “crímenes contra el despertar”) por parte de la revista y su editor Jürgen Elsässer.
Sin embargo, como han señalado nuestros amigos de Dritte Weg (que es una de las pocas organizaciones nacionalistas alemanas genuinas y no está contaminada por la cobardía y la traición que impregna la escena “patriótica”), esta última prohibición es más complicada de lo que parece.
Para ser claros: Compact y Jürgen Elsässer (a diferencia de Dritte Weg) no son verdaderos nacionalistas ni siquiera verdaderos patriotas. La revista ha conseguido un gran número de lectores sobre la base de teorías de conspiración al estilo estadounidense y posturas superficiales sobre temas cuasi nacionalistas. Hasta hace poco –a diferencia de la mayor parte de la escena nacionalista en Alemania– Compact no había sido molestado por las autoridades, estaba generosamente financiado y se había distribuido ampliamente.
La característica más llamativa del Compact fue/es su servil devoción a Vladimir Putin. Bajo la apariencia de llamados a la “paz”, ha difundido persistentemente propaganda del Kremlin. Por supuesto, en todas las naciones siempre ha habido pacifistas genuinos, cuya postura debe, en cierto modo, respetarse incluso si uno no está de acuerdo con ellos. Pero Elsässer y Compact no vienen de ahí. Tampoco tienen sus raíces en ninguna forma de tradición nacionalista.
Elsässer comenzó su vida política como un devoto seguidor del comunismo y defensor de la línea de Moscú, como lo fue durante los años 1970 y 1980: antinazi, antirracista, etc. Durante los años 1990 estuvo entre los fundadores de lo que (¡increíblemente!) fue denominado con orgullo el movimiento “antialemán”. Esta facción izquierdista en particular argumentó que Alemania tenía una tendencia histórica inherente hacia crímenes de estilo “nazi” y, por lo tanto, que nunca más se le debería permitir a Alemania tener un ejército viable o desempeñar un papel serio en los asuntos internacionales.
El movimiento “antialemán” de Elsässer se hizo famoso por aparecer en las conmemoraciones del atentado terrorista de Dresde de 1945 y corear: “¡Bombardero Harris, hazlo de nuevo!” Para ellos, Alemania no podía ser castigada con la suficiente severidad y, por muy débil que se volviera, merecía ser degradada aún más.
Pero –muy significativamente– esta tendencia “antialemana” también tomó la forma de oponerse a la participación alemana en operaciones militares en la ex Yugoslavia. En retrospectiva (cualquier otra cosa que podamos pensar sobre la guerra civil yugoslava de esa época) podemos ver la continuidad: personas como Elsässer adoptaron consistentemente la línea del Kremlin, ya sea durante las últimas décadas de la Unión Soviética, la era corrupta de Yeltsin o la Era neoestalinista de Putin.
No importaba si esta línea era “antinazi”, proserbia o antiucraniana: si era la línea del Kremlin, era fielmente seguida por la banda de Elsässer.
Durante la década de 2000, reconociendo el daño que la guerra de Irak había causado a la credibilidad de Occidente (incluso internamente), el servicio de inteligencia de Putin comenzó a capitalizar la disidencia mal enfocada y las teorías de conspiración entre una audiencia de lectores crédulos en línea que estaba reemplazando categorías tradicionales de “izquierda” y “derecha”.
Entre 2009 y 2011, esta línea de Moscú se infiltró en la escena de la “derecha” en Alemania a través (por ejemplo) de dos revistas de costosa producción. ¡Zuerst! tenía raíces en genuinos movimientos nacionalistas, pero desde 2011 fue editado por un agente del Kremlin, Manuel Ochsenreiter. Con el respaldo financiero de sus maestros de Moscú (incluido el oligarca Konstantin Malofeev), Ochsenreiter viajó mucho (especialmente en el Medio Oriente) y estableció contactos con otros nacionalistas; era muy conocido, por ejemplo, por el editor asistente de H&D y por nuestro difunto camarada Richard Edmonds, y trabajó en la oficina parlamentaria europea de un político de AfD.
Sospechoso durante mucho tiempo de ser un agente ruso, la carrera de Ochsenreiter terminó en 2019 cuando dos activistas polacos de “extrema derecha” a quienes había encargado llevar a cabo un ataque terrorista en la ciudad fronteriza ucraniana de Uzhhorod fueron capturados con las manos en la masa y confesaron.
Aunque su abogado emitió las débiles negativas habituales, Ochsenreiter sabía que el juego había terminado. Ante acusaciones de terrorismo, huyó a Moscú y buscó la protección de sus amos. Ahora una vergüenza para Putin, Ochsenreiter murió de un conveniente ataque cardíaco en un hospital de Moscú, a la edad de 45 años. (El hecho de que los principales medios de comunicación, incluida la BBC, hayan informado ocasionalmente la verdad sobre Ochsenreiter y sus compañeros agentes rusos no significa que sea es menos cierto. Vergonzosamente, los principales medios de comunicación han dicho más verdades sobre Putin que la mayoría de los medios “alternativos”: un triste síntoma de la enfermedad de nuestro movimiento).
¡Zuerst! continúa vendiendo las mentiras de Moscú, pero Compact (lanzado casi al mismo tiempo y con una conexión menos umbilical con la escena nacionalista) se convirtió en un portavoz putinista mucho más influyente. Hasta febrero de este año, cuando algunos medios comenzaron a negarse a venderlo, Compact estaba ampliamente disponible en los principales quioscos de noticias en las calles y estaciones de ferrocarril de pueblos y ciudades alemanas.
Naturalmente, la revista de Elsässer se aferró a todos los temas de moda relacionados con la derecha disidente ampliamente definida, desde movimientos antiislámicos como PEGIDA hasta manifestaciones antivacunas y anticonfinamientos, aunque sin promover nada que pudiera describirse como una ideología nacionalista coherente ( lo cual no es sorprendente dadas las raíces del propio Elsässer en la izquierda comunista).
Sin embargo, como han señalado nuestros amigos de Dritte Weg, el Ministerio del Interior de la república federal no parece haber confiado en el traicionero putinismo de Elsässer y Compact como base para su prohibición.
En cambio, la ministra Nancy Faeser parloteó sobre el “racismo” y el “antisemitismo”, todos los “crímenes” habituales contra el despertar. Declaró específicamente que las autoridades “no permitirían que se utilizaran definiciones étnicas para definir quién pertenece a Alemania y quién no”.
El mensaje es claro: el etnonacionalismo en sí debe ser criminalizado y, de hecho, declarado inconstitucional. (¡La ironía es que Compact no es etnonacionalista en ningún sentido serio!)
En este sentido, la acción contra Compact es una acción contra todos nosotros, aunque la república federal tiene un historial de intentar tales prohibiciones pero luego fracasar en los tribunales, y lo mismo podría suceder esta vez.
¿Significa esto que todos deberíamos unirnos, a pesar de las diferencias políticas claras y obvias, y defender Compact contra la censura?
No: hay dos buenas razones por las que deberíamos oponernos a la censura, pero también distanciarnos del Compact.
En primer lugar, no tiene sentido hacer todos los sacrificios y correr todos los riesgos que implica la vida política nacionalista si estamos dispuestos a sacrificar nuestros principios e ignorar líneas divisorias ideológicas claras. El enemigo de nuestro enemigo no es necesariamente nuestro amigo, razón por la cual los nacionalistas raciales europeos no marcharon en apoyo de los simpatizantes “antisionistas” de Al Qaeda o del EI cuando fueron llevados a Guantánamo. Lo mismo se aplica a los putinistas ahora, como se aplicaba entonces al EI: son nuestro enemigo, sean o no, en cierta medida, enemigos genuinos de nuestro enemigo.
En segundo lugar, como lo demuestra el caso de Manuel Ochsenreiter, si permitimos que nuestra causa se vea manchada por una traición flagrante, le estamos dando a nuestros gobernantes un palo con el que golpearnos. Quizás, a medida que el colapso del experimento multirracial se haga cada vez más evidente, el Estado encontrará alguna excusa para internarnos.
Pero no se lo pongamos fácil asociando nuestra causa a lo indefendible. No permitamos que nuestra causa sea arrastrada a la cloaca putinista.
Los nacionalistas europeos deberían oponerse a la censura; debemos apoyar el derecho de nuestros camaradas a la libre expresión; pero no debemos respaldar a los traidores antinacionalistas y antieuropeos Jürgen Elsässer y la revista Compact.
Solsticial greetings from H&D!
The editor and staff of Heritage and Destiny wish all readers a very happy Summer Solstice today.
Europeans have celebrated this day since Neolithic times, marking the turning point of the year and its longest day.
Whatever your religion (or lack of religion), the Solstice is a time when we are in touch with our ancestors, and when we renew our commitment to preserve European identity.
At this time we also pay tribute to the astonishing ingenuity of our ancestors in creating monuments associated with the Solstice, notably Stonehenge in Wiltshire, whose construction began more than 5,000 years ago.
This year the Solstice happens to coincide with the European football championships, though how European some of the ‘national’ teams are is very questionable!
It also coincides with a UK General Election campaign, on which H&D will be reporting further in the next few days.
For electoral and other reasons, as Europe faces military assault from the Kremlin and cultural assault from within, it would be easy to despair.
But the Solstice reminds us that our culture has survived many threats. Europeans have a great future as well as a great past. All we need is the will to assert our identity: pride in the achievements and continuing potential of our race.
Is Le Pen on verge of power?
It’s difficult to keep up with rapid developments in French politics this week.
After predictable success in last weekend’s Euro-election for Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration party National Rally (RN), France’s ‘centrist’ president Emmanuel Macron called a snap parliamentary election.
British readers need to understand that the French constitution is halfway between ours and the American system. As in the USA, the President is elected separately from the Assembly, and it’s not uncommon for a President to have to ‘cohabit’ with a Prime Minister and a majority group in the Assembly who belong to a rival party or parties.
However, unlike a US President who has no choice but to cope with whatever Congress gets elected (aside from his right to veto legislation), a French President can (like a UK Prime Minister, though the latter theoretically requires the King’s permission) dissolve the Assembly and call fresh elections. Whatever happens, the President rather than the Prime Minister retains ultimate control over certain policy areas, such as defence and foreign policy, including control of nuclear weapons.
Macron was landed in 2022 with an Assembly that is unmanageable, due to large blocs from the ultra-left NUPES alliance as well as Le Pen’s RN.
His decision to dissolve the Assembly despite Le Pen’s recent successes and opinion poll leads, isn’t as crazy as it seems.
For one thing, Macron has little to lose. He couldn’t govern effectively via the old Assembly, so he might as well ‘go for broke’ and risk an Assembly dominated by the ‘far right’.
A further consideration is that the far left might now be fragmenting. For several years the pre-eminent leftist leader has been Jean-Luc Mélenchon, but a combination of the old socialist’s authoritarian leadership style and his Putinist foreign policy is leading rival leftists and greens to rebel against him.
Due to the two-round electoral system and the consequent pressure for horse-trading between factions, it’s not at all certain what type of left-wing slates will be agreed. However it’s already fairly obvious that there will be a shift on the left away from Mélenchon’s irreconcilable stance, towards people and policies that might conceivably favour coalition with pro-Macron forces.
Meanwhile the mainstream right has fallen apart. Éric Ciotti, leader of the ‘centre-right’ Republicans, has split from other leading figures in his own party by advocating a deal with Le Pen. As Macron was quick to point out, any such deal seems impractical where economic policy is concerned. The Republicans’ attitude to tax and government spending ought to be far closer to Macron than to Le Pen, because the RN has moved sharply to the ‘left’ in such areas and defends the old-fashioned French ‘big state’, whereas the Republicans in recent years have shifted away from the Gaullist legacy and become more like Anglo-American fiscal conservatives.
The question as ever is – how far will French middle-class voters be prepared to accept a hit to their bank balances (including the necessity to pay higher wages to French workers as well as funding the welfare state) in return for a sincere anti-immigration policy and a tougher stance on law and order?
Which brings us to Le Pen herself, and rival forces on the ‘far right’.
Many H&D readers will have been appalled by Le Pen’s multiracial approach. Yes, she favours much stricter immigration controls – but she is far from being a racial nationalist. We must recognise that the traditions of the French right are very different from ours. Even under the RN’s previous incarnation – the Front National led by Marine’s father Jean-Marie Le Pen – the party accepted non-White members, and in recent years the RN has gone down this route with added enthusiasm.
A further factor has been Marine Le Pen’s obsessive genuflection to Israel, which is shared by most of today’s mainstream European ‘far right’.
Nevertheless, we have to recognise that a government headed by Le Pen’s young ally Jordan Bardella (the RN’s nominee for Prime Minister) would in some ways be a giant step forward, bringing anti-immigration politics not only into the mainstream but into government.
It would raise expectations among French voters and among their fellow Europeans, and (if radical movements organise themselves seriously) can be a first step towards a more genuinely racial nationalist approach: a Europe for Europeans.
Moreover, Le Pen has in recent weeks taken one very important step to clean up European nationalism. She has taken a firm stand against the Putinist corruption that infests nationalist circles throughout the West. By expelling her German counterparts AfD from the Identity and Democracy group that her party dominates in the European Parliament, she has drawn a clear line indicating that Putinism is intrinsically anti-European and unacceptable.
Within days of the Assembly election being called, the Putinist wing of French nationalism – the Reconquête party led by Jewish journalist Éric Zemmour – collapsed. Zemmour’s effective deputy Marion Maréchal (who happens to be Marine Le Pen’s niece but has long been at odds with her aunt) was open to the idea of an electoral pact between the RN and Reconquête to maximise the right’s chances of entering government.
Zemmour was horrified. He swiftly expelled Ms Maréchal from his party, calling her a traitor. This extreme reaction perhaps owed something to Zemmour’s partner Sarah Knafo (also Jewish), who like Ms Maréchal is a newly elected MEP and who undoubtedly exerts great influence over the party leader.
With the election campaign only a few days old we have seen two parties collapse: Reconquête and the centre-right Republicans. For equal and opposite reasons both Macron and Marine Le Pen will be satisfied with the way things have gone so far.
It promises to be one of the most interesting elections in European history, and perhaps a turning point for our movement (broadly defined).
European right advances, but what does the ‘right’ now stand for?
Several anti-immigration parties increased their votes substantially in the European Parliamentary elections, where votes were counted overnight on Sunday and Monday. Results in Ireland are still awaited, but as we explain elsewhere on this site, it’s already clear that the radical wing of the Irish anti-immigration movement has failed to fulfil expectations.
As explained in the forthcoming issue of our magazine, the most important aspect of these European elections is not so much the result for individual parties in particular countries, but whether it will be possible to build a cross-party alliance in the European Parliament that is able to exert meaningful pressure on immigration policy and related matters.
Key problems here include bitter divisions among European nationalists (partly though not exclusively related to different attitudes to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine), as well as the underlying reality that the European Parliament has limited powers even over European Union institutions.
That’s why we have described last night’s results as a matter of protest, rather than power.
Nevertheless, these votes are a heartening indication of the tide of opinion among Europeans, especially among younger voters.
Tomorrow belongs to us!
Anti-immigration parties advance in European elections: but this is protest, not power
Broadly as predicted, anti-immigration parties from what the media term the ‘far right’ have made big advances at the European Parliamentary elections – though the biggest winners overall were conservative parties; the ‘far right’ itself doesn’t exist as a coherent force; and the European Parliament has very limited powers.
[Please note that some of the statistics below might be altered very slightly as final checks are made to election counts. Ireland’s results are not yet available but we shall report on them later today.]
First the good news. In France, Marine Le Pen’s RN (successor to the National Front) was easily the largest party overnight with 31.4%, ahead of President Macron’s ‘centrist’ party on 14.6%, and the slowly recovering Socialists on 13.8%. The far-left party France Insoumise is now obviously in decline after several years as the leading force on the French left: they polled 9.9%. And France still has the weakest mainstream conservative party in Europe – the Republicans, who took just 7.2%.
France is one of the few European countries that has not just one but two electorally credible ‘far right’ parties. In fact until Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it had seemed likely that the new Reconquête party led by the Jewish journalist Éric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen’s niece Marion Maréchal, would overtake Le Pen’s party. However, while Le Pen swiftly condemned Putin, Zemmour found it much more difficult to escape the electoral consequences of his earlier Putinism, and his party swiftly declined.
Reconquête are both harder line than RN against immigration (especially against Islam) and more traditionally conservative (in an Anglo-American, quasi-Thatcherite sense) on economic matters, while Le Pen has taken her party onto quasi-socialist turf and has become the natural leader of French workers.
This week Zemmour and Maréchal were (just about) able to celebrate. Together with the Greens, they just scraped over the 5% threshold and will have five MEPs, including both Maréchal and Zemmour’s partner Sarah Knafo.
Within hours of polls closing, President Macron called a snap general election. This will of course be a parliamentary not presidential election, since under the French system Macron will remain in office as President (and ultimately in control of foreign policy etc.) regardless of who becomes Prime Minister. But there is now a very real (though outside) possibility that Marine Le Pen will be Prime Minister of France within a few weeks.
While France continues to demonstrate the electoral toxicity of Putinism, it’s a very different story in Germany, where two blatantly pro-Moscow parties polled very well. AfD (Alternative for Germany) was originally a Thatcherite conservative party, but quickly became an anti-immigration party in opposition to the treachery of former Chancellor Angela Merkel.
This week, despite various scandals that have beset the party leadership with (for once) justified media exposés of their shady connections to both China and Russia, AfD polled 15.9% and overtook Chancellor Olof Scholz’s party SPD who fell to 13.9%. The mainstream conservative alliance CDU-CSU were easily the largest force with 30%, while the Greens (Scholz’s coalition partners) fell to 11.9%.
Very predictably the Homeland Party (which is the renamed NPD, Germany’s oldest surviving nationalist party) collapsed even further to a record low of 0.1% (27th of the 35 party lists, down among the joke and ego-trip parties). The good news is that the old NPD / Homeland is disappearing. The radical challenge to the corrupt AfD in future will come from the new party Dritte Weg, a party which stands for traditional nationalism, rejects Putinism, and is attracting growing numbers of young activists, though of course it didn’t contest the European election and is just at the stage of beginning to fight local and regional campaigns.
Another interesting development was the collapse of the Left Party (Die Linke, which was formed soon after the semi-reunification of Germany in the 1990s as an alliance of old communists and hardline socialists) to only 2.7%. Luckily for them Germany, unlike France, has no electoral threshold – so they will retain three MEPs, at least until 2029 when a new threshold system will be introduced.
Most of the old Left Party vote went to a new party created by one of their former leaders, the half-Iranian Sahra Wagenknecht, who is a long-term Russian asset and unsurprisingly shares AfD’s Putinism, while taking a Stalinist line in other policy areas.
Wagenknecht’s party polled 6.2% nationwide and was especially strong in parts of the former East Germany. In Thuringia, for example, AfD was the largest party with 30.7%, while Wagenknecht’s BSW polled 15%.
One consequence of AfD’s pro-Moscow stance is that it will have few friends in the new Parliament, having been shunned by most other anti-immigration / nationalist parties.
H&D will report further in the coming weeks and months on the reshaping of the European right.
In the Netherlands, Marine Le Pen’s allies in the PVV (Freedom Party), led by Geert Wilders, finished second with 17.7%, a huge advance on its disappointing European election performance five years ago, though slightly down on their 23.5% in last year’s Dutch general election.
The rival Dutch nationalist party FvD (Forum for Democracy) whose leader Thierry Baudet once seemed a credible successor to Wilders as an anti-immigration leader but rapidly declined into fringe conspiracy theories and Putinism, collapsed from 11% to 2.5% and will no longer have any MEPs.
In Belgium, the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Belang (another important Le Pen ally) might have emerged the largest single party in one of Europe’s most politically fragmented countries, though final results are not yet clear. VB polled 13.9% but there were also big gains for the more ‘moderate’ Flemish nationalist/conservative party N-VA (New Flemish Alliance) who are only a fraction behind VB and in final results might yet overtake them.
Austria saw a historic success for another Le Pen ally, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), who in a close three-way split have emerged as the largest party with 25.7%. Despite this victory, if they wish to be influential in the new Parliament they will have to watch their step on foreign policy, as Le Pen and her allies have indicated they will be utterly ruthless in expelling any party that discredits the anti-immigration cause by getting too close to Moscow.
In Italy, Giorgia Meloni – the effective leader of the mainstream European right (i.e. of the block that stands to the right of conservatism and is at least nominally anti-immigration, while avoiding ‘racist’ or ‘fascist’ overtones) – had another election success. Her party ‘Brothers of Italy’ (Fratelli d’Italia) took 28.8%, ahead of the centre-left PD on 24%. A long-way behind these two were the once-successful but now declining anti-system protest party Five Star Movement on 10.0%, and then Meloni’s coalition partners Lega and Forza Italia, on 9.0% and 9.6% respectively.
Forza Italia is the remnant of the late Silvio Berlusconi’s reactionary conservative party, while Lega‘s leader Matteo Salvini was once the highest profile anti-immigration politician in Italy, but has long since been overshadowed by Meloni. Almost as much as Zemmour in France, Salvini has had to live down his former Putinism.
Meloni’s main political allies in the outgoing Parliament were the conservative-populist former governing party in Poland, Law and Justice. They lost power in last October’s Polish general election, and remained in second place yesterday with 35.7%, just behind the liberal/centrist slate ‘Civic Coalition’.
A rival Polish populist movement known as Confederation bounced back from several years of internal party conflict, polling 11.8% and gaining six MEPs. It’s not clear with whom they will ally in the new Parliament, as their political positions are anti-immigration, economically libertarian, and anti-Putin.
The strength of the anti-immigration right in the European Parliament will now depend to a large extent on whether Le Pen and Meloni can work together, or whether Europe’s conservative establishment manage to co-opt Meloni and some other quasi-nationalist parties.
Among the latter, one of the most widely publicised is in Spain whose reactionary conservative party Vox is a typical example of the trend towards pro-Israel, pro-capitalist stances among quasi-nationalist parties. Vox advanced from 6.2% (four MEPs) in 2019 to 9.6% (six MEPs) yesterday, barely justifying the hype it has been given in the media, but the big winners in Spain were the mainstream conservative PP, whose vote shot up from 20.2% to 34.2%.
Crank conspiracy theories embraced by some in our own movement were represented on Spanish ballot papers by a new party SALF (‘The Party is Over’), founded by an ideologically shallow social media celebrity, Alvise Pérez. A decade ago Peréz was a student in England at Leeds University, where he was active in the Liberal Democrats, and he later joined the Lib Dems’s short-lived Spanish equivalent Ciudadanos (Citizens).
His more recent success in building a political movement on the back of online conspiracy theorising and stunts, merely demonstrates the political idiocy of a large section of the ‘dissident’ movement, including the so-called ‘alt right’. Pérez’s party polled 4.6%, enough to gain three MEPs.
As usual the fringe right in Spain – a party that claims to represent the Falangist tradition – polled a tiny vote, amounting to just 0.05%.
In Portugal Vox’s imitator CHEGA (which translates as “Enough”, as in “We’ve had enough!”) polled 9.8%, up from 1.5% in 2019 when the party had only just been formed and was part of a hastily patched up joint ‘right-wing’ slate.
Croatia is one of several European countries where the broad right has reorganised itself in recent years. The largest party that represents traditional Croatian nationalist views is the Homeland Movement, who polled 8.8%, enough to elect one MEP.
Greece has seen some of the most blatant interference with ‘democratic’ politics. At the 2014 election, the national socialist party Golden Dawn polled 9.4% and elected three MEPs. This was one of several strong election results for Golden Dawn during the 2010s, but the party was subjected both to violent attack from left-wing terrorists, and to legalistic attack by the Greek state. As a result its leaders found themselves in jail and the party was effectively banned.
At yesterday’s election the main anti-immigration party was Greek Solution, though it’s a reactionary rather than national socialist party, and has expressed Putinist foreign policy positions. They polled 9.5% yesterday.
Cyprus has an anti-immigration party once seen as allied to Golden Dawn. This is the National Popular Front (ELAM): they polled 11.2% yesterday, up from 8.3% in 2019.
In Malta a national-socialist party allied to Golden Dawn – Imperium Europa, led by Norman Lowell – polled 3.2% in 2019. This year that fell slightly to 2.6%.
Among advances for anti-immigration parties, in Finland the Finns Party lost one of their seats, with their vote declining to 7.6% as voters rallied behind the government’s strongly anti-Moscow stance. To be fair, the Finns Party are also strongly anti-Putin, but in a country on the frontline at a time of crisis, there is a tendency to rally behind the government. In this respect Germany is the exception, because decades of brainwashing have taught Germans that they aren’t allowed to take a strong military stance against their enemies. Finnish patriots haven’t been emasculated.
In Sweden the main anti-immigration party Sweden Democrats polled 13.2%, very slightly down on their historic success in 2019.
Similarly in Denmark the Danish People’s Party fell slightly from 10.8% to 6.4%.
While some ‘mainstream’ anti-immigration parties can seem discreditable and cowardly, one of the most honourable and courageous of these parties is in Estonia, where the Conservative People’s Party (EKRE) advanced to 14.9%, from 12.7% in 2019.
In neighbouring Latvia the anti-immigration party National Alliance similarly advanced to 22.1%, from 16.5% five years ago.
For complicated geopolitical and historical reasons, the position in the third Baltic republic, Lithuania, is more nuanced. There, the largest of several ‘right-wing’ parties also represents the interests of ethnic Poles. (It should be remembered that during the 16th-17th centuries, during what we in the UK think of as the Elizabethean and Jacobean eras, the confederation Poland-Lithuania was one of the greatest powers in Europe.)
This Polish-Lithuanian party LLRA-KSS polled 5.8% this year, a fraction up from 2014. The rest of the Lithuanian ‘right’ is fragmented, with the National Alliance (a relatively new party founded in 2016), for example, polling 3.8%.
With most of the electorally credible ‘right’ (outside Germany) having moved against Putin, Hungary‘s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is in a delicate position. His party Fidesz remained easily the largest force at yesterday’s election, polling 44.3%, while the once-effective but now marginal nationalist party Jobbik managed only 1%. But it’s not yet clear with whom Fidesz‘s MEPs will ally in the new Parliament.
One of the few openly Putinist parties in the new Parliament is from Bulgaria, where the ‘Revival’ party polled 15.4%, a huge increase on their 1% in 2019 and reflecting the traditional instability of Bulgarian politics where wild swings of this kind are not uncommon. These Bulgarian Putinists are unlikely to find many allies in the new Parliament, unless AfD choose to go into the wilderness with them.
Romania‘s new populist ‘right-wing’ party AUR has adopted a softer form of Putinism, seeking to undermine Europe’s support for Ukraine without being blatantly pro-Moscow. As in much of South-Eastern Europe, the position is complicated by petty nationalism / chauvinism, with AUR for example promoting anti-Hungarian themes. (A lot of this is rooted in disputes going back to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the redrawing of Europe’s map following the First World War.)
AUR polled 15% but unlike the Bulgarian ‘Revival’ party it’s likely to moderate its stance on foreign policy, so as to remain part of one of the mainstream pan-nationalist or conservative groups in the new Parliament.
Slovakia‘s politics hit the headlines last month with the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose party Smer is difficult to place on the ideological map, being both left-wing and populist/’nationalist’. Smer was the second-largest party yesterday, polling 24.8%. As with the Romanian AUR, it might moderate its stance on the war in Ukraine so as to be admitted into one of the cross-party groups in the new Parliament, but since it was until recently in the same group as the UK Labour Party, it’s far from clear where it would naturally belong!
The more hardline nationalist party SNS (Slovak National Party), who back in 2014 were strong enough to elect an MEP), polled only 1.9% yesterday. Another Slovakian party, Freedom & Solidarity, represents a very different type of ‘right-wing'” socially libertarian, Eurosceptic, and ‘right-wing’ on economics in a US-style, pro-capitalist sense. They polled 4.9% yesterday.
Politics in the Czech Republic is another area that can mystify racial nationalist observers in other countries. The main anti-immigration party Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD – allied to Marine Le Pen’s RN, Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party, and other such forces in the European Parliament) is led by the quarter-Japanese, quarter-Korean, half-Czech, Tomio Okamura.
Last year one of their two MEPs, retired general Hynek Blaško, broke away to form a blatantly Putinist party but obtained a humiliating 0.5% yesterday. Meanwhile his former party fell to 5.7%, but will retain one MEP.
In Slovenia there is very little that could be termed a ‘nationalist’ party. The tiny Slovenian National Party split again a few years ago, and one of its activists founded a libertarian and anti-lockdown party ‘Resni.ca‘. They polled 4% yesterday, not enough to gain an MEP.
Luxembourg has no significant anti-immigration party, and its largest ‘right-wing’ force is a party that mainly represents the interests of pensioners, the mildly populist ADR, which polled 11.8% yesterday, enough to elect one MEP who will probably ally with Meloni’s ‘moderate’ nationalist group if it remains in its present form.
H&D will continue to monitor developments in Europe during the coming weeks, and will report on the reshaping of the electorally-focused side of European nationalism both here and in future editions of the magazine.
May Day greetings from H&D – “Sumer is icumen in!”
In England as in many other European countries, May Day has been a traditional celebration for centuries. Appropriated by the political left in the late 19th century, the day in fact has no connection to Marxist socialism. The documented history of the festival goes back to the Roman holiday of Floralia, honouring the goddess of flowers, fertility and spring, and its pagan roots go back even further.
At 6 am this morning in Oxford, for example, the Choir of Magdalen College greeted the new season atop the college tower, while thousands of revellers assembled in the streets below. This tradition dates back to 1509, and ‘Sumer is icumen in’, sung by the choir in the video above, dates from the mid-13th century.
Meanwhile many Europeans today celebrated the traditional pagan festival of Beltane, linked to the Celtic god of fire.
In the UK and several other countries the festival is associated with the Maypole and traditional dancing. The famous dances involving intricate patterns of ribbons originated in Wales in the mid-14th century.
H&D sends May Day (or for our Welsh readers Calan Haf) greetings to all our comrades worldwide.
