Amos's River of Justice

Tag: fascism

  • European and American Fascism Are Connected

    Where did Christian nationalism come from? What’s so special about Carthage? Both of these concepts have echoes in the European Right. In other words, European and American Fascism are Connected.

    The Christian Nationalist Party

    Francis Parker Yockey and two associates launched the European Liberation Front (ELF) sometime in late 1948 or early spring 1949. His associates were John Anthony Gannon and Guy Chesham. ELF’s manifesto was The Proclamation of London. ‘Even at its height, the ELF only had about 150 supporters. Its main task seems to have been the production of anti-American neutralist propaganda.’1 (p. 175)

    In either late 1949 or early 1950 Yockey returned to America hoping to find poitical and financial supprt for the ELF from the Christian Nationalist Crusade (CNC), the largest American far-right group in the immediate postwar period. The group’s founder, the Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith, was a flamboyant demogogue and fanatical anti-Semite who began his career as an advisor to Louisiana Govrnor Huey Long, After Long’s assassintation, Smith helped co-found the Union Party with Father Coughlin and Doctor Francis Townsend. Smith lived in Detroit during World War II and enjoyed the patronage of Henry Ford. In 1947 he created the Christian Nationalist Crusade/Christian Nationalist Party as the postwar continuation of his America First Party.

    Kevin Coogan p. 220

    The St. Louis Police Department gave the FBI a memorandum about this meeting. Yockey gave a speech under his pen name of Ulick Varange. The subject was the underground working of the party in France, Germany, England, and Belgium.

    All remarks at meeting were directed against the Communitst, Jews, Negroes, and Republican and Democratic Parties…VARANGE stated that he attended the trials at Nuremberg and other places and spoke of the unfairness of the trials and the importance of the testimony of the Jews. He also stated that we will have a Nuremberg trial in this country some day…

    St Louis Police Department memorandum, as reported by Coogan, p. 221

    Beyond Right and Left

    In the last article, Marco Tarchi said Tolkien, the fantastic, the saga, had made a ‘group-mind’ possible. This quote is from his programmatic Beyond Right and Left. (By beyond, he means the conventional definitions of these two positions.)

    There is a recent American book arguing the same thing. It’s author, Verlan Lewis is currently making the rounds in the United States. Several YouTube channels have interviewed him. In this one, the hosts seem a little uncomfortable with Verlan’s arguments. They may not have been aware of its echo in the European Ultra Right.

    Richard Mellon Scaife and The League to Save Carthage

    In the foyer of Richard Mellon Scaife’s Pittsburg mansion stood a brass elephant on a mahogany stand. Visitors might have thought it was the mascot of the Republican Party. This would have made sense because Mellon’s forbearers had been a financial mainstay of the Republican Party for a century. They were founders of Mellon banking, Alcoa Aluminum and the Gulf Oil Empire. But this elephant was actually paying homage to Hannibal, the fabled military strategist. Hannibal had scaled the Alps on elephant back to launch a surprise attack on the Roman Empire. This homage to Hannibal served as inspiration for a private organization that Scaife founded in 1964.

    In his 2009 unpublished memoire, Scaife claimed to describe a ‘richly conservative life’. He likened his secret organization of wealthy men to the Romans who failed to prevent the fall of Carthage. He called them the League to Save Carthage. They waged a strategic war of ideas aimed at sacking American politics. According to Jane Mayer, Scaife’s memoire serves as a secret tell-all about the building of the modern conservative movement.2

    In his memoire, Scaife estimated that in a period of fifty years he had spent a billion dollars on philanthropy. Over $600 million of that had gone into influencing American public affairs.

    Bachofen Claimed Rome’s Destruction of Dido’s Carthage was a Spiritual Struggle

    Chapter 32 of Coogan’s book covers Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World. In this chapter, Evola describes a strong emphasis on the masculine, as opposed to the feminine. Coogan cites Evola’s use of Johann Jakob Bachofen’s justification for this view in The Myth of Tanaquil (Die Sage von Tanaquil).

    Rome’s central idea…the idea underlying its historical state and its law, is wholly independent of matter, it is an eminently ethical achievement, the most spiritual of antiquity’s bequests to the ensuing age. And here again it is clear that our Western life truly begins with Rome. Rome is the idea through which European mankind prepared to set its own imprint on the entire globe, namely the idea that no material law but only the free activity of the spirit determines the destinies of peoples.

    Campbell, introduction to Myth, Religion and Mother Right p. 1, (as quoted by Coogan p. 307)

    Bachofen has had a covert influence on both the Left and the Right. He was a great influence on Julius Evola. Thanks to Bachofen, Carthage has become a central idea for the Ultra Right.

    ‘Marx and Engels praised Bachofen’s concept of primitive communism in early societies. Evola, however, emphasized the Bachofen who believed that the transition of human society from matriarchy to patriarchy was the crucial moment in the evolution of human freedom.’3

    ‘Bachofen believed that Rome’s destruction of Dido’s Carthage was a spiritual struggle. It was a clash primarily of Grundanschauungen, spiritual ideals, and not of merely economic and political interests’ (Coogan p. 308). Integral to this argument was Bachofen’s claim about Christianity and other Oriental cults of late Imperial Rome. He claimed they were not merely foreign incursions:

    ‘On the contrary, [they] marked the re-emergence of an attitude to nature, history, and the state that had always been there but that Rome had tried to suppress’– namely its underlying matriarchy.

    Grossman, Basle and Bachofen, p. 175 (As quoted by Coogan, p. 308)

    Along the same lines, Evola argued that Heracles was the West’s first great mythic hero. Heracles dominated the Tree/Female life force principle by obtaining ‘Hebe, everlasting youth. By contrast, Dionysus stood for a ‘Chthonic-Poseidon from of manhood (Coogan, p. 306).

    Ultra Right Influence All Over the World

    In 1951, Francis Parker Yockey attended the MIF’s Naples meeting. (MIF, was the MSI’s women’s division, the Movimento Italiano Femminile. MSI was the largest and best-organized fascist movement in postwar Europe.) Yockey joined the MSI hardliners. This faction was opposed to turning the group into a purely parliamentary organization. This was part of the war between the ‘left’ and ‘right’ wings of Italian fascism.

    During this time, an anti-Semitic group published a weekly called Asso di Bastoni (The Ace of Spades) (Coogan p.211). According to Coogan, Asso Di Bastoni was an excellent example of Italian ‘universal fascism’. On June 1, 1951 it boasted of Ultra Right Influence all over the world:

    ‘There is no place in the world where a fascist movement has not developed..From the ices of the island of Olafur Thors, head of the ‘National Front’, to the Tierra del Fuego, where Peron commanded, to the islands of the Persian Gulf where a section of the MSI exists…to the rice plantations of nationalist Thailand of the ex-collaborationist Luang Pibul Songgram, from the land of the Pharaohs and of the Pyramids where the dictator Nasser is developing his doctrine of the nationalist and authoritarian corporatism to the state of Azerbaijan where the memory of the deeds of Fatalibayli Dudanginsky are still remembered, to the Balkans with the Ustaches and the Iron Guards, and to the Mountains of the Phalange, from the English castles of Sir Oswald Mosley to the Russian steppes of Vlassov and to the Black Forest of the steel Helmets’ and of the Werewolves, from Budapest on the Danube with the ‘Croci Frecciate’  to the islands of Indonesia of the ex-collaborationist Sockharno, from the slopes of Fujiama, the sacred mountain of the Japanese, where the nationalist sect of the Black Dragon of Ichiro Midori is working, to the Indies where the faithful followers of Chandra Bose meet, from the Ireland of the Blue Shirts to Tunis of ex-collaborationists Habib Burghiba, from the Parisian Montmartre with the young cohorts of Doriot and the journalists of Rivarol to the fertile plains of Wang-Ching-Wei’s China, from the deserts of the Middle East of Daoud Monchi Zadegh and of the grand Mufti to the quiet and limpid waters of the Swiss lakes of Amaudruz, from the Norwegian fjords of Hamsun and Per Enghdal and Sven Hedin’s Stockholm to the Lisbon of the ‘Portuguese Legion’ the Slovakia of Tiso and Cernak and the Bolivia of Paz Estenssoro, from Mannerheim’s Finland to the islands of the West Indies where nationalist and phalangist movements are active in black shirts to Israel and the extreme rightist party ‘Herut’, everywhere, in every place and country of the world, the fascist approach has found and finds fanatic supporters.

    Coogan p. 217
    1. Kevin Coogan, Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, Autonomedia, Brooklyn, NY 1999 ↩︎
    2. Jane Mayer. Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Narrated by Laurel Lefkow, Audible, Chapter 2. ↩︎
    3. Coogan. p 307) ↩︎

  • Thoughts on the Eve of the Election

    There are three main concerns that might affect the way people vote in the coming election. My thoughts on the eve of the election include: fascism versus mafia rule; The Supreme Court’s abortion ban; and the question of how people who disagree with each other can live peacefully together.

    Fascism, Mafia Rule, or Liberalism

    In the 1924 general election in Italy, Mussolini won nationally, but the Popular and Liberal Parties won in Sicily, with the help of the mafia. So Mussolini launched an anti-mafia campaign to defeat them. He started with abolishing parliamentary elections–a main source of mafia currency. The end result was a 28 percent decrease in agricultural wages. “The fascists merely replaced the mafia as enforcers of the landowning class.”1

    The Abortion Ban

    On the Supreme Court’s new project of saving fetuses from their mothers, I think it’s amusing how young conservative men, as well as old men on the Supreme Court, assume that banning abortion will result in more babies. I think it’s more likely that single women and married couples will change their sexual habits. It’s not just the fact that they won’t be able to end an unwanted pregnancy. That will probably be a very small part of it. But thanks to the Supreme Court, the possibility of maternal death has become much greater.

    A change of sexual habits will be much harder on men than on women. You might enjoy chapter three of Stefan Zweig’s book, The World of Yesterday. 2 The social expectations of his time were nothing like today. The middle class youth of that day were expected to be celibate until marriage.Zweig tries to empathize with the women of his time, but the trials of middle-class men as he describes them were much worse.

    French Catholics and Rene Guenon

    According to Peter Brooke, Guenon believed in a “great world tradition of which Christianity is simply a part. Guenon himself, in Cairo, became a Muslim, but he argued that the only two valid expressions of the tradition in Western Europe (for ‘Frenchmen and occidentals’) were Roman Catholicism (not any form of Protestantism) and Freemasonry. For other peoples other religions constitute the ‘religious reality and sole traditional spirituality’. But perhaps more obviously dangerous from an ordinary Catholic point of view is the idea that at a particular point in history, and a long time ago at that, Christianity ceased to radiate spirituality.” 3 (p. 221)

    …[Albert] Gleizes had definite ideas about Thomas Aquinas. He saw him as the intellectual personification of a period, the thirteenth century, in which the primacy of spirit is giving way to the primacy of the senses…

    Gleizes lost some valuable friendships over his adherence to these convictions, and much of the blame falls on his loyalty to Guenon.  In his last letter to Gleizes, Pere Jerome apologizes for his part in the breakup of their friendship. But then he says,

    On the other hand, you can’t be surprised that I react when I hear you say, for example, that ‘the whole of theology needs to be taken up again’, or certain ideas on the subject of the Person and of the reality of Christ which the Church does not and never will allow…

    I read Peter Brooke’s biography of Albert Gleizes as history, but not as a historian. I was sympathetic to Gleizes’s discoveries in art but more so to his Catholic friends who disagreed with him and at the same time, commissioned work and gave him opportunities to teach. But I didn’t see it as a current debate. When I first mentioned Guenon I thought he was part of an old conversation that had been settled, but apparently not. I recently read that King Charles III has taken up Guenon’s ideas.

    When you vote tomorrow, vote for a world where we have the time and the will to talk about such things.

     

    1. James Cockayne, Hidden Power: The Strategic Logic of Organized Crime. Oxford University Press; 1st edition, October 1, 2016. ↩︎
    2. Cassell and Company LTD. London, Toronto, Melbourne and Sydney. ↩︎
    3. Peter Brooke, Albert Gleizes For and Against the Twentieth Century. Hong Kong and Italy, 2001, p. 221. ↩︎

  • Expunge Plato and Aristotle from History

    I’m forcing myself to read The Republic. It’s painful. It is disturbing that apologists have been accepting Plato’s lies without hesitation for 2500 years and they would like to continue for another 2500 years.  In my opinion, we should expunge Plato and his student Aristotle from history.

    The Republic

    In this article I’ll talk about Melissa Lane’s 2007 introduction for the Penguin Classics edition. She begins with Karl Popper’s conviction that Plato is to blame for Western society’s totalitarian ideas of fascism and communism. That’s a good start to my way of thinking. But sometimes I think she gives Plato more of a positive spin than he deserves. Fortunately, she still leaves room for dissent. As it turns out the introduction is full of ammunition for critics of Plato.

    Thirty years before Plato wrote The Republic, his city-state, Athens, had been conquered by Sparta, a militaristic oligarchy. The coup occurred in 404 BC. In 399 BC the restored democracy executed Plato’s teacher, Socrates.

    It seems to me the Athenians knew what they were doing.  However Lane states that this series of events taught Plato something else entirely. They taught him that neither democracy nor oligarchy nor any other existing order, could achieve happiness or political stability for its citizens. All of them were founded on the inherently corrupting desire for power.

    Plato the Gaslighter

    It is difficult to see how Plato arrived at this conclusion from the execution of his teacher. Socrates was executed for treason. As his student, Plato would have known that Socrates favored Sparta and that he was teaching the youth of Athens to do the same. How does Socrates’ death condemn Athenian democracy?

    After the defeat by Sparta the democracy of Athens was restored and it flourished for seventy years more. During this period, Plato wrote The Republic. Athenian democracy finally ended with the conquests of Alexander the Great. Alexander was taught by Plato’s student, Aristotle.

    It seems that from the time of Socrates this cadre of men never wavered in its enmity toward Athens.  This puts The Republic in its proper perspective.

    Plato’s Politics

    In his treatise, Plato argued that a system where every citizen had the right to speak brought tension between the few rich and the many poor. His sympathies were obviously with the rich. He was one of them. He claimed that since the common people were numerically and ideologically dominant it generated ‘tension with the elite’. In addition, he blamed Athenian democracy for the establishment of an empire abroad.

    Plato’s uncle, Critias, and his cousin, Charmides, were would-be oligarchs who thought oligarchy was the solution. In fact, it was Critias who connived with the Spartans in 404 BC to install himself and his cronies as a junta called ‘the Thirty’. While in power they used their power to murder and expropriate. This effort excluded the vast majority of Athenians from citizenship.

    Plato: The Kinder, Gentler Oligarch

    Naturally, the ever philosophical Plato begged to differ with them, at least on paper. Oh, he also thought Athens should be an oligarchy, but he invented a form of it that no one had ever seen up until that time. And no one has seen it since. He invented an oligarchy governed by philosopher kings! And surprise of surprises—he pictured it very much like Sparta.

    “In Sparta, however, where oligarchical rule was longer-lasting and ingrained in the customs and way of life, Plato did find one clue to political health. This was the unity of the Spartan ruling class, maintained through strict discipline, including common meals, demanding military training and what we have come to call a ‘spartan’ (materially austere) lifestyle. But the Spartan elite used the power of their unity to oppress and terrorize the ‘helots’ – the serfs who did all their manual labour – and they were notoriously hostile to culture and philosophy. Nevertheless, the Republic adapts a version of the Spartan idea of a ruling class unified through austerity and collective living. By choosing only philosophers as rulers, it seeks to ensure that the power of the ruling elite will be used not to oppress (as in Sparta) but to benefit the common people, so establishing the regime of expertise, unity and happiness that Plato found wanting in the polities of his own day.”

    One would assume Plato didn’t advertise this plan in the market square. He would most certainly have shared the fate of Socrates.

    Plato’s Psychobabble Phase

    And now begins Plato’s foray into psychobabble—a perpetual wheedling away at the sensibilities of the common people. For example, there is his claim that only psychic justice is self-sustaining. Psychic justice is, of course, beyond the capabilities of most people because even when they perform just actions they do it for the wrong reasons. So they are not really ‘just’ at all! Wisdom is a matter of expertise.

    Restructuring Education and Culture

    Plato was directly contradicting Athenian democratic principles when he taught that people need to be ruled. Only through surrogates could the common people have access to reason. This naturally led to the necessity for a radical surgery on existing methods and content of Greek education and culture.

    Reinventing Human Psychology

    In addition he challenged existing understandings of human psychology. The Athenians exalted indignation and anger as key to the demand for legitimate equality of respect.  But the Republic is all about restraining indignation and anger.

    A New Radical Account of the Soul

    Plato was also developing a new, radical account of the soul, made possible by articulating a parallel account of the city. Among other things, this allowed him to posit that souls have parts, like cities. Or rather, like Plato’s definition of cities.

    Division of Labor

    In Plato’s time it was controversial as to which elements a city should have. There were rich and poor but the rich had financial obligations to the poor and there was no separate ruling elite or military caste. All male citizens could occupy the major positions of power, speak in Assembly, and speak and vote in the law court. And they all fought in the city’s battles. Socrates, however, proposed a division of political labor.

    At first the division depends merely on a specialization of roles. He began by saying that there should be a class of guards to protect luxury. But then he slipped in a crucial move: he subdivided the guards into two parts: the younger guards would be military supporters or auxiliaries; the older guards would be ruling ‘guardians’ who would later be Identified as philosophers. And again, he claimed this division had a parallel with the soul: The guardians represent reason; the auxiliaries represent indignation and anger; and the workers, merchants and doctors represent bodily appetites.

    What Will Deter the Abuses of the Rulers?

    You are probably wondering what there is to deter the abuses of the rulers. According to Plato, Socrates envisioned an institutional deterrent, like the one found among Sparta’s elite.  But Athens’ would have an additional deterrent. Athens’ rulers would be natural philosophers who had no material desires.  Other than that, the ideal city had all the Spartan high points: girls exercising naked with boys; qualified women as warriors and guardians; deprivation of property, for guardians that is, meaning that the common people would have to support them; families and children held in common; and selective breeding.

    No Social Mobility

    Socrates/Plato felt that education is important but it will never make a philosopher out of a common man. Philosophers are born, not made.

    Not only is this a direct contradiction of Athenian democracy, it is a direct contradiction of religion—especially the Christian religion. Strange isn’t it, how some versions of Christianity have virtually enshrined the Greek philosophers as founding fathers of the religion?

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