“The new alliance has
come. The eleventh of September has brought together [the two sides] because
the new right has reacted positively They say, and I agree with them 100
percent, what happened on the eleventh of September, if it is the Muslims who
did it, it is not an act of terrorism but an act of counterterrorism.” Ahmed
Huber (As quoted in Peter Finn, "Unlikely Allies Bound by a Common
Hatred," Washington Post, April 29, 2002, page A13.)
We already discussed
how Saddam Hussein's uncle and future father-in law, Khairallah
Tulfah, along with General Rashid Ali al-Gilani and
the so-called colonels of the Golden Square, participated in a coup against the
pro-British government of Iraq, and recognized as Iraq’s new Governement by Germany-- declared independence from Great
Britain on May 12, 1941. This pro-Nazi regime as we have seen was then ejected
by a British military intervention soon thereafter, but not before the regime
instigated an anti-Jewish pogrom in which 200 people were killed. (See also
David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to
Win the war on Terror, 2003, p. 49.)
Tulfah
had a strong influence on his son-in-law, regaling him with his vision of a
pan-Islamic Nazi alliance. Not unlike Hitler, Saddam Hussein sought to
implement a new order based on the principles of nationalism and socialism
under the dictatorial control of the Fuhrerprinzip.
(Charles A. Morse, "The Nazi Background of Saddam Hussein," February
21, 2003, http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/2/20/145726.shtml.)
His Ba'ath
(Renaissance) Party like the regimes in Iran, Syria, and soon also Egypt, had
the characteristics of a European fascist party of the interwar years, seeking
to mold the masses into a single organic collectivity through a program of
corporatism and national regeneration. Saddam Hussein's defiant position toward
the United States and Israel throughout the 1990s bolstered his image in some
quarters. As a result, several representatives of the extreme right have
reached out to him on numerous occasions.
In the weeks leading
up to the Gulf War, some European right-wing extremists sought to provide
token assistance and moral support. For example, the late German neo-Nazi
leader Michael Kuhnen reportedly negotiated with
Iraqi diplomats in an effort to build an "Anti-Zionist Legion" to
fight for Saddam Hussein and repel the U.S.-led coalition. Another German
neo-Nazi leader, Heinz Reisz, appeared on Hussian
state television on January 25, 1991, and proclaimed "Long live the fight
for Saddam Hussein; long live his people; long live their leader; God save the
Arab people." A French neo-Nazi, Michel Faci,
traveled to Baghdad where he and twenty or so assorted activists and historical
revisionists were guests of Saddam Hussein at a government-sponsored event titled
"Friendship, Solidarity and Peace with Iraq."
The ‘New Right’ in Support of Saddam.
In 1986 famous
Paganist and at the time intellectual leader of the so called, French Nouvelle
Droite, Alain de Benoist released a publication, Europe, Tiers monde, meme
combat (Europe, the Third World, the Same Fight), in which he called for an
alliance between Europe and the Arab Middle East, to weaken both the U.S. and
Soviet blocs and their hold on Europe. This rightist variant of "Third Worldism" was not informed by the more
liberal-oriented admiration of the "noble savage" or white racial
guilt, but rather by geopolitical hostility to the bloc system and its hold
over Europe. In January 1991, Alain de Benoist, joined with a coalition that
included various leftists, trade unionists, and anti-American rightists to
protest the U.S.-led aggression against Iraq. (Michael O'Meara, New Culture,
New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe, 2004, pp. 167, 172.)
More recently Alain
de Benoist has also been mentioned in a booklet with the misleading title “New
Religions and The Nazis” 2006, by Karla Poewe. Poorly
argued and under-researched, rather than having anything to do with the “Nazis”
(as the that time Governement of Germany), Karla Poewe’s booklet rather is a micro history of Jakob
Wilhelm Hauer’s religious ideas. (1)
Saddam found support
by Jean Marie Le Pen's Front National. Christian fundamentalists in the party
favored Saddam because Iraq had been a major arms supplier to the Falange in
its battle against Muslims in Lebanon during the civil war. Anti-Americanism
and anti-British sentiment played a role as well. In October 1990, Le Pen
traveled to Baghdad as part of a delegation of right-wing parties from Europe
to meet with Saddam Hussein. They returned with fifty-three European hostages
that were held by Iraq in the months prior to the war. For his part, supporting
Iraq was a clever way in which Le Pen could defuse criticism that he was
anti-Arab and anti-Muslim. (Harvey G. Simmons, The French National Front: The
Extremist Challenge to Democracy, 1996, pp. 101-102.)
Reportedly, some
elements of Jorg Haider's Austrian Freedom Party
(FPO) have also sympathized with Saddam Hussein's regime. For example, there is
the case of Abdul Moneim Jebra,
a sixty-year-old Iraqi arms dealer, who has reportedly sought to strengthen
ties between the radical right and militant Islam. Jebra
now lives in Austria, where members of Jorg Haider's
FPO established an Iraqi-Austrian Association to promote ties with Baghdad. In
1998 a plot to smuggle helicopters to Iraq that involved Jebra
was uncovered during a Swiss bribery case.
Plus of course there
is Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Russian ultranationalist Liberal
Democratic Party, who accused the Kremlin of "betraying" its
long-term Arab partners and clients. The Soviet Union had strong diplomatic
ties with many countries in the Middle East, and until its collapse, Moscow
played a key role in the region, supporting Arab leaders such as Muammar
Qaddafi in Libya, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, Syrian president Hafez al-Assad,
and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. However, Mikhail Gorbachev's government
consented to the U.5.-led military action in the Gulf War, an operation that it
could have vetoed in the Security Council. Furthermore, by that time, and even
more so during Boris Yeltsin's tenure, relations with the United States became
the top Russian priority. Zhirinovsky has sought to reestablish an alliance with
Iraq. Toward this end, he reportedly developed a warm relationship with Saddam
Hussein. The Iraqi ambassador to Russia appreciated Zhirinovsky's gestures of
support and has frequently been in attendance at Zhirinovsky's birthday
parties. (Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova,
Zhirinovsky: Russian Fascism and the Making of a Dictator, 1995, pp. 122-123.)
Zhirinovsky visited
Baghdad on numerous occasions during the 1990s and was a guest of Saddam
Hussein. In one instance, he lectured the Iraq leader for four hours on the
need to unite against the "American-Israeli plot" to dominate the
world. (Ibid., p. 124.) In 1993, Zhirinvosky even
went so far as to send a contingent of his paramilitary "falcons" to
Iraq to fight against "American imperialism." Hussein is rumored to
have contributed considerable financial support to Zhirinovsky. After his trip
to Baghdad, Zhirinovsky increased the frequency and the stridency of his
anti-American rhetoric. (Ibid., pp. 127-129.)
Other Russian
right-wing extremists have also reached out to Muslims, so for example, Heidar Jamal has sojourned in several extremist organizations.
He worked briefly for the ultranationalist Pamyat
(Memory) organization in 1989 and the late Ahmed Khomeini, the son of
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1990. In 1993, he joined the Russian branch of
the Islamic Committee. He ran unsuccessfully for the Duma in 1995. Finally, in
1999, his Islamic Committee joined forces with hard-line
communists Victor Ilyukhin and Albert Marashov. One constant theme that links all his projects is
a virulent disdain for the West. (Nabi Abdullaev,
"Fundamentalism in Russia: An Interview with Islam Committee's Heidar Jamal," in Parfrey,
Extreme Islam, pp. 281-284.)
With Heidar Jamal and his friend Alexander Dugin
who translated both Rene Guenon and Julius Evola in
Russian, we are back to the larger circle of intellectuals that include also
Alain de Benoit, and what Mark Sedgwick for lack of a better word called
‘Traditionalism.’ (For a review of Sedgwick's book see.)
It was during
Perestroika that Russian Traditionalists first took active steps. In 1987 Dugin and Jamal together joined Pamyat'
(Memory), later described by Dugin as "the most
reactionary organization available." They hoped to influence it toward
Traditionalism, rather as Eliade had hoped to use the Legion of the Archangel
Michael in Romania, and Evola had hoped to use the
Fascists, the Herrenclub, and the SS. (Sedgwick,
2004, p.224.)
Pamyat'
was the focus of popular opposition to Perestroika. But Dugin's
and Jamal's attempts at infiltration of Pamyat' were
no more successful than had been Eliade's or Evola's
similar efforts earlier. Seminars they gave attracted respectable audiences (up
to 100 people), and Dugin was appointed to Pamyat’s Central Council in late 1988, but in 1989 they
gave up and left. Pamyat'; Dugin
later described its members as "hysterics and KGB collaborators." Its
importance for Russian opposition politics in fact was like that of Theosophy
for Western esotericism: it was the forum that facilitated the emergence of
figures who would later be important elsewhere.
After they left Pamyat, where Jamal continued in the line of Islamist
Traditionalism, Dugin in a parallel course of action
became involved with Eurasianism. In 1999 was
appointed special advisor to Gennady Nikolayevich Seleznev, the CPRF speaker of
the Duma. (Ivan Kurilla, Geopolitika
i kommunizm, “Geopolitics
and Communism”, Russki Zhurnal 23, February 1999)
After the collapse of
the Soviet Union, Dugin helped found the not entirely
serious National Bolshevik Party and became increasingly associated with two
major figures in Russian political life. One was Gennady Zyuganov, the leader
of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF). The other, closer
associate was Alexander Andreyevich Prokhanov, leader of a group known as the Pochvenniki (Patriots).
In the end however Dugin would found his own Eurasian Party, characterized by
Democratic intellectual Igor Vinogradov:
They are undertaking
a noisy galvanization of a reactionary utopia that failed long ago, an attempt
to revive it through the injection of a new vaccine-a combination of
"Orthodoxy" and "Islam" in the name of combating insidious
"Zionism," putrid Western "Catholicism" and any kind of
Jew- Masonry whatever ... For all their [intellectual] ineptitude, they are
very dangerous. After all, the temptation of religious fundamentalism in our
century of unbelief and general spiritual corruption is attractive to many
desperate people who have lost their way in this chaos. (Vinogradov,
in Yelena Yakovich, "Kontinent
in Moscow: Voice of Russian Culture," interview with Igor Vinogradov, Literaturnaya Gazeta,
July 22, 1992, p. 5.)
The credit for this
revivification of a "failed" ideology must go to Dugin
and Traditionalism, clearly the source of the "new vaccine" referred
to. Dugin continue to maintain his friendly relations
first established with Dugin's visits to the West in
1989, and continued with visits to Russia by de Benoist and his Belgian ally
Robert Steuckers (the first of which took place in
March 1992). And with the publication of two collections of Dugin's
articles in Italian by Claudio Mutti (see below), in
1991 and 1992.
Where Mark Sedgwick’s
book is specifically about the ‘traditionalism’ of Rene Guenon and Julius Evola, what this has in common with other forms of
traditionalism ore preservatist*, is that they
construct a revisionist view of history that fits their own agenda. If we take
as an example political traditionalists or new right groups in the USA, we will
see that the patriot movement looks to the American Revolution for inspiration,
whereas the neo-Confederates look to the Civil War. The Odinists idealize the
Viking era, whereas the National Socialists and many of the historical
revisionists admire Hitler's Third Reich. The World Church of the Creator
idealizes not only the Third Reich but also the Roman Empire and the American
Western frontier of the nineteenth century. And the Christian Identity
followers identify with the lost tribes of Israel. For a preservatist/traditionalist
political group in India we would look at (the recently covered on this
website) RSS/Hindutva, and so on.
Another expression
used ist heritage (in German called 'Voelkish') for example leader of the Ku Klux Klan
David Duke explains it as, “people understand very well that I'm not a
white supremacist and that I am a European American who wants to preserve my
heritage like all people in the world want to, but the real danger to all
heritages is Jewish supremacism, which seeks to destroy every heritage but the
Jewish heritage.” (G. Michael, The Enemy of My Enemy, 2006, p.162.)
Thus terms like the
‘new right’ or/and ‘extreme right’ today therefore, are not without
contradictions, another good case example is the right/left mélange that
came in the aftermath of a pamphlet written in 1950 by Julius Evola titled Orientamenti
(Orientations). Ultra-conservative, paganist/occultist, Julius Evola at the time when he wrote this, was a supporter of
Junio Valerio Borghese-- an aristocrat, a Fascist, and Second World War
military hero. (For details see Gianfranco De Turris,
Elogio e diftsa di Julius Evola: Il Barone e i terroristi, 1997, pp. 50, 52, 59, 61.
When in 1951 the
Italian police arrested some thirty members of the ‘Fasces Revolutionary
Action’ (FAR), Evola-- because his articles appeared
in their publication was accused of also supporting the latter--however he was
acquitted.( De Turris,1997, pp. 51-52.) It was the publicity surrounding
this trial, that helped launch Evola on his postwar
career, and he expanded Orientamenti into a book
published in 1961, Cavalcare la Tigre: Orientamenti esistenziali per un'epoca della dissoluzione (Riding the Tiger: Existential Orientations
for a Period of Dissolution). Here, Evola introduced
the concept of what in Islam is titled hijra (emigration), fundamental to the
more extreme varieties of late twentieth-century political Islam. Cavalcare la Tigre became one of the central texts for the
Italian new right.
Earlier the Ordine Nuovo (New Order), established by Pino Rauti a dedicated follower of Evola
was publicly committed to the defense of "all that of the traditional that
has been saved and has found a pole.” It launched a joumal,
Ordine Nuovo, and offered courses and seminars based
around Evola's (and sometimes Rene Guenon's) works,
including Evola's Orientamenti.
One small group from within Ordine Nuovo even
followed Evola's earliest interest, ceremonial magic
and Roman neo-Paganism, establishing I Dioscuri (Greek Dioskouroi,
sons of Zeus) in Rome in the late 1960’s.(Franco Ferraresi,
Minacce alia democrazia: La
Destra radicale e la strategia de’la tensione in Italia ne’ dopoguerra,
1995, pp. 112-13.)
Little is known of
the activities of this latter group, except that it ran into difficulties of
some sort that led to the suicide of many of its members. Most of the
activities of Ordine Nuovo, however, were
intellectual and political. When the Ordine Nuovo
became involved with terrorism a court order called for it’s
forced dissolution in 1974.
But also for many
leftists by then, the old division between left and right was no longer of much
importance and had been replaced by a divide identified by Asor Rosa as a
division between In and Out. Bourgeois industrialists were In, as were
unionized workers and the PCI; the unemployed, women, students, and other
marginal groups were Out.
Next Franco Freda,
another student of Julius Evola sentenced to 16 years
in prison in 1972, founded the Fronte Nazionali (National Front). Its supporters were
predominantly skin-heads, and their crusading issue was immigration, not as
crude racism but as an attack on multiculturalism in the name of preserving the
purity of distinct traditions.
Exactly what Evola did mean by apoliteia in
practical terms-in the realm of action-has since been much disputed. But just
like is the case with various interpretations of what the exact meaning is of
certain statements in the Koran, what is more important than what Evola meant, is what he was taken to mean. Evola's apoliteia thus was
developed by Freda into a call for action against the bourgeois state
irrespective of effect, a sort of Traditionalist existentialism-and the word
"existentialism" is used in the subtitle of Cavalcare
la Tigre. Freda's development of Evolian Traditionalism was not entirely nihilistic-he
also argued for the destruction of the bourgeois state as a necessary
preliminary to further developments, which implies belief in the possibility of
"rectifying action" -but his call was in effect a call to what
Gianfranco de Turris calls "rightist
anarchism." (Ferraresi, Minacce alla democrazia, pp.
101, 296, and De Turris, Elogio e di- fesa, p. 99.)
Mark Sedgwick
maintains that Evola, “seems to have approved of what
was being done in his name on condition that it was done with proper spiritual
preparation.” (Sedgwick, 2004, p.185.)
Just as Evola shifted (or was thought to have shifted) the emphasis
from the objectives of action to the interior state that gives rise to action,
so Freda shifted the emphasis from the objective-which implied some central
planning and organization-to the individual. Freda was one of the earliest and
most important proponents of the "archipelago solution," the new
organizational pattern of Italian ‘new right ‘terrorism that emerged a
solution, by implication, to the problems raised by the dismantling of Ordine Nuovo. This meant the replacement of earlier,
relatively large and hierarchical structures by small and fluid groupings,
usually forming for a particular operation and then dissolving, and normally
acting independently of each other and of any central command. (Ferraresi, Minacce alla democrazia, p. 302.)
The archipelago
solution presents certain obvious operational advantages. As an extension of
the Leninist cell system, it is the ultimate guard against police infiltration:
no more than a single operation can ever be compromised. It is, however, more
than a defense, since the abandonment of any control over operational groups
makes sense only as a corollary to the abandonment of overall strategy. The archipelago
solution, then, is the companion of apoliteia, at
least as Freda understood apoliteia. The two together
make up spontaneismo armato
(armed spontaneity), Freda's most destructive discovery, later popularized in
his journal, Quex. Again, Mark Sedgwick suggests,
“there were echoes of Freda in both the organizational method and the apparent
objectives of the terrorists who carried out the attacks on the USA September
11, 2001.” (Sedgwick, 2004, p.320.)
Finally Freda and
some fifty of his followers were, convicted in 1999 of "incitement to
racial discrimination," and in 2000 the Fronte Nazionali was dissolved by decree of the minister of the
interior and its assets were confiscated. (Ruotolo
Guido, "Il PM di Verona Papalia: 'C'e' un vero pericolo" interview
with Procurator Guido Papalia, La Stampa, December 3°,2000, p. 7.)
There were rumors,
however, that Fronte Nazionali
activists, in alliance with members of the Alleanza
Nazionale, this time financed by Osama bin-Laden, had helped ferment the
violence that shocked Italy during anti-globalization protests at the 2001 G8
summit in Genoa. (On the basis of reports in Il Secolo
XIX “July 25, 2001”, ascribed to sources in the Italian security services.)
According to a report
in the Milan-based newspaper Corriere della Serra,
also German intelligence services claimed that Osama bin Laden had financed
extreme right organizations in Europe in the hope that they would assist him in
carrying out terrorist attacks during a G-8 summit meeting held in Genoa in the
summer of 2001.189
Though the
Traditionalist terror in Italy ended in 1983, that was not the end of the
Traditionalists who had been involved in it. Some, like Claudio Mutti after having spent some years in jail where he
converted to Islam, continued nonviolently. (Ferraresi,
Minacce alla democrazia, p. 195.)
Two factors
influenced his conversion: the writings of Guenon, to which he had been led by
the writings of Evola, and Colonel Qaddafi. Guenon
had convinced him of the need for a "path of realization," something
Evola had not accomplished. Qaddafi is a more unusual
source. Freda had had an interest in Qaddafi and Islam; he wrote in Quex about Evola's requirement
for a spiritual basis for action in terms of the relationship between the
"lesser jihad" (armed conflict) and the "greater jihad"
(the struggle to subdue the lower self), and he published a translation of
some of Qaddafi's speeches. (Mutti,
"Pourquoi j'ai choisi l'Islam," Elements: Revue de la Nouvelle Droite
53; Spring 1985, 37-39)
Mutti's Islam is militant and political. Like we have seen
above he has published Italian translations of Jamal's work, but also of the
Ayatollah Khomeini a preference he seems to have in common with Ahmed Huber
cited at the beginning of this article. That Islam is installed on top of his
early Evolianism is symbolized by the decor of his
office, which is predominantly Islamic but includes a Nazi standard propped
behind the filing cabinet, reported by Sedgwick who visited Mutti.
(Sedgwick,2004, 260.)
But also Heidar Jamal during the time he was the ideologist for
the Party of the Islamic Renaissance and editor of its organ Tavhid [Unity].In the first issue Jamal analyzed the state
of Islam in Traditionalist terms, adding a historical angle rarely found
elsewhere, derived in this case from Islamist writings. Islam, he pointed out,
existed in time and was subject to decline just as everything else was.
Further, there had been no real Islamic government since the death of the
Prophet, and certainly not since the Mongols. Matters had grown much worse
since then, since the "post-colonial elites" in the Islamic world
were either nationalists (and hence enemies of universal Islam) or
"atheist cosmopolitan[s]," equally enemies of true Islam.
An in an article from
I99I inTavhid, translated in Italian, Jamal, after
comparing the existential significance of death in Evolian Traditionalism to
the metaphysical significance of death (the final return to God) in
Islam, argues that "authentic Islam and the authentic right are non-conformist;
their vital character consists of opposition, disagreement,
non-identification." ("Islam and the Right," Giperbort
a Vilnius, 1991, in Jamal, Tawhid, pp. 31-36.)
For a Christian,
"God is almost synonymous with hyper-conformism," whereas Islam is a
"protest ... against the reduction of God to 'consensus.''' The political
right and Islam both fight the snares of the world, including self-deification
and "profane elitarianism." (Ro'i, Muslim Eurasia, p. 44.)
The PIR split in I992
over the issue of relations with Yeltsin and his project of Russian democracy,
with the Jamall faction aligning with radical
Islamists and Wahhabis in the Middle East and with the domestic opposition to
Yeltsin, in the form of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF)
under Gennady Zyuganov and the rightist "Patriots" under Alexander Prokhanov. (Leonid Berres,
"The Wahhabis are Ready to Make an Alliance with Makashov
and Ilyukhin," Kommersant,
July 24, 1999, pp. I ff.)
Both men were associates
of Jamal from his time in Pamyat', and both also
associated with the other major Traditionalist in Russia, Dugin.
And Jamal's relations in the Middle East were with men such as Hasan al Turabi,
the leader of the Sudanese Islamic Front and according to Michael Asher in his
book about the Sudanes Mahdi, at least one of the eminence
grise behind Osama bin Laden. (Asher, Khartoum, 2005, pp.406-407.)
The PIR as Jamal's
institutional framework was replaced by the Islamic Committee of Russia-a
network of such Islamic Committees was established under al Turabi's guidance
at a conference in Khartoum in I993 in order to unite the leaders of various
radical Islamist movements such as Turabi's own National Islamic Front, Hamas
in Palestine, and the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Jamal became leader of the Moscow
branch of this Islamic Committee. In a 1999 interview he spoke of contacts with
the Hezbollah, Hamas, the Wolves of Islam (a Chechen group), and the Afghan
Taliban. (Berres, "The Wahhabis.")
According to Walid Pharis it was during the above meeting in Khartoum that the
decision was made from now on al-Qaeda would be the “mother ship” of global
Jihad. Or as Pharis notes: The central force of
jihad, after the Khartoum gathering, targeted the United States head-on, both
overseas and at home. By this point al Qaeda was in charge of the world conflict
with America. The "princes" (or emirs) were assigned the various
battlefields, but the "Lord" assumed the task of destroying the
"greater Satan," America. The first wave started in 1993 on two axes:
One was in Somalia, where jihadists met U.S. Marines in Mogadishu in bloodshed.
The United States withdrew. The same year, the blind sheikh Ahdul Rahman and Ramzi Yusuf conspired to blow up the Twin
Towers in New York. (Phares, Future Jihad, 2005, p.157.)
Finally of course a
common ground between the extreme right and the Muslim world is the historical
revisionism of Holocaust denial. For example the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, suggested that the Holocaust had been greatly exaggerated in part to
undermine Islam:
There is evidence
which shows that Zionists had close relations with German Nazis and exaggerated
statistics on Jewish killings. There is evidence on hand that a large number of
non-Jewish hooligans and thugs of Eastern Europe were forced to migrate to
Palestine as Jews. The purpose was to install in the heart of the Islamic world
an anti-Islamic state under the guise of supporting the victims of racism and
to create a rift between the East and the West of the Islamic world. (A.Foxman, Never Again?, 2003, 220.)
And the recent
President of Iran, Rafsanjani exclaimed that he was convinced that
"Hitler had only killed twenty thousand Jews and not six million."
(Foxman, 223.)
Rafsanjani even went
so far as to raise the prospect of national suicide as part of an effort to
destroy Israel, musing that the nuclear annihilation of Iran as a result of a
retaliatory attack by Israel would be an acceptable price to pay to destroy
half of the world's Jewish population. In such a conflagration, only a small
portion of the world's Muslims would perish. (Michael A. Ledeen, The War
against the Terror Masters, New York: St. Martin's, 2003, p. 282.)
Abraham Foxman,
believes that many Arabs are embracing Holocaust revisionism to delegitimate
the state of Israel. According to the reasoning of Holocaust revisionism, the
tragedy was deliberately exaggerated in order to generate global sympathy for
Jews and support for the creation of the Jewish state. Furthermore, it has been
used to "extort" billions of dollars from the West and demoralize
Aryans and the West "so that Jews could more easily control the
world." (Foxman, Never Again?,219-220.)
David Duke, mentioned
above, has been in the forefront of efforts to reach out to the Islamic world.
In the fall of 2002, when he presented two lectures in Bahrain titled "The
Global Struggle against Zionism" and "Israeli Involvement in
September 11." And in an article published in the Arab News, a Saudi
Arabian English daily newspaper, Duke repeated his assertion that Israel had
assisted the terrorists in the 9/11 attack..
Duke’s take on
religion by the way, include things like “the Anti-Christ”, and
“Satanic-Christianity”:
The truth is there is no such thing as Judeo-Christianity. That would be saying
Satanic-Christianity. The religion now called Judaism did not even come
formally into existence until six hundred years after Jesus Christ. It began
with the codification of the Babylon Talmud. Interestingly enough, Islam is
much closer to Christianity than Judaism. For instance, Judaism condemns the
Virgin Mary as a prostitute and viciously condemns Jesus as an evil sorcerer
and a bastard. In stark contrast, although Islam certainly does not share all
the Christian views of Jesus Christ, it views Christ as the true prophet of
God, virgin-born, and that God resurrected Jesus from the dead. Ironically, the
chief religious book of Islam, the Qur'an, actually defends Jesus Christ from
the obscene slanders made against Him in the Jewish Talmud. ("Evangelicals
Who Serve the Anti-Christ!" January 25, 2003, http://www davidduke.com/
radio.)
More recently, in
September 2005, Duke received a doctorate in history from the Interregional
Academy of Personnel Management-a major private university system in the Ukraine.
And in November 2005, he traveled to Syria, where he held a news conference.
Duke is not the only
right-winger to draw parallels between Christianity and Islam. For example,
Bill Baker, former chairman of the Populist Party, gave a lecture titled
"Reviving the Islamic Spirit." (Gil Francisco White,
"Islamist-Nazi Alliance Reborn on Campus?" The Daily Pennsylvanian,
November 5, 2003, http://vryvw.daily pen nslyvania.com/vnews/display.v?ART/3fa8a3666637e.)
From the above we
have also seen that just as Islamists and the (extreme) new right are beginning
to find common ground, the gap between the far left and the far right have been
narrowing as well. Both movements often decry globalization. Increasingly, they
both share a criticism of Israeli policy toward Palestinians. A case in point
is the case of Rachel Corrie, an attractive twenty-three-year-o1d American
student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and a member of the
International Soldarity Movement, who took a
semester off to work as a peace activist in Gaza. While there, she took part in
a protest in which an Israel driver using a bulldozer was preparing to knock
down a Palestinian's house. Corrie stood between the bulldozer and the house
and refused to move. However, the Israel driver ran over her, and she sustained
injuries from which she ultimately died. Despite Corrie's presumably
left-leaning political orientation, various right-wing publications and
websites eulogized her as an Aryan martyr. What is more, the antig10ba1ization
rhetoric of the contemporary extreme right could conceivably make its agenda
more palatable to the far left, which also champions a similar platform,
including radical environmentalism and animal rights. In fact, in 2002, the
National Alliance created a front group, the Anti-Globalism Action Network
(AGAN), to capitalize on the left's opposition to globa1ist organizations such
as the World Bank, G8, and the International Monetary Fund and sent it to
Kananaskis, Canada, to protest a G8 meeting. AGAN added an antiSemitic
twist to the traditional left-wing conspiracy narrative. (Center for New
Community. -CNC Uncovers Neo-Nazis Masquerading as AntiGlobalization
Acrivists," June 21, 2002, http://newcom.org.)
And extreme right
stalwarts, such as Louis Beam, the chief proponent of (Evola
student Franco Freda’s see above) 1eaderless resistance approach in the United
States, expressed solidarity with anti-World Trade Organization protestors in
Seattle. Similar to Freda’s example also left-wing radicals now extol
revolutionary strategies that sound very similar to the 1eader1ess resistance
approach advocated by extreme right revolutionaries. Although there have been
no significant displays of overt antiSemitism on the
part of so-called eco-extremists, some elements have become increasingly
strident in their opposition to the war on terror, especially once it expanded
to encompass Iraq. A former spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, Craig
Rosebraugh, exhorted antiwar activists to escalate their opposition to the war.
Among his suggestions to foment revolution were attacking the financial
centers of the country; provoking large-scale urban rioting; attacking the
media centers of power; spreading the battle to the individuals responsible for
the war (the heads of government and U.S. corporations); publicly announcing
that the antiwar movement does not support U.S. troops; targeting U.S. military
establishments within the United States; and when engaging in the
aforementioned activities, striking hard and fast and retreating in anonymity.
(Rosebraugh's strategy is described in Michelle Malkin, "Eco-terrorists
Declare War," Washington Times, March 24, 2003,
http://-,vw-,v.washingtontimes.com)
Thus if anything, the
far left is in a state of flux, while some of its activists question
traditional tenets of their platform, such as unrestricted immigration. (See
Neil Clark, "Why the Left and Right Must Unite and Fight: The View from
the Left," Anti-Wancom, April 1, 2003.)
The Post 9/11 Resistance Movement.
At first, 9/11 and
its immediate aftermath appeared to galvanize the National Alliance, overtly
praising the 9/11 hijackers. Its chairman, Dr. William L. Pierce, became even
more strident in his rhetoric in his American Dissident Voices radio
broadcasts, and interest in his American Dissident Voices program increased
significantly after the 9/11 attacks.
Then there is the
Aryan Nations’ Islamic outreach with its own ‘Liaison’ website with as one of
the frequent writers David Wulstan Myatt. Reputed to
have been a member of the underground paramilitary groups Column 88 and Combat
18 in the UK, he was twice imprisoned for violent political activism. (Nick Ryan,Into a World of Hate: A Journey among the Extreme
Right, 2004, p.17.)
After several years
of radical politics, Myatt became disillusioned and during his travels joined
Islam. Myatt is also the chief proponent of the “leaderless resistance” (see
Franco Freda above) in England and joined the small Reichsfolk
organization, which had the twofold aim of propagating the philosophy of National
Socialism and forming rural communities where the like-minded could live in
accord with the “ethos of their Aryan culture.” (David Myatt, “Towards the
Galactic Empire: Autobiographical Notes Part Two.)
Myatt was much
impressed with the power of religion so evident in the ranks of Muslim
militants.
I came to understand
that what motivated the fighters I and others had discussed previously was an
intense faith: a real belief in an after-life; a belief that it was their duty
to act in such a way, and that by doing their duty in the way they did, they
would be assured of entering Paradise. And this faith was not a political
belief they had acquired or accepted in adult life: it was part of their very culture.
Indeed, it was their culture, their tradition, and their way of life, from
birth through death. It was this type of faith, this immersion in one’s own
culture, which our own people so sadly lacked. We were trying to motivate
people in a political way, whereas Muslim fighters did what they did because it
was accepted as their duty, as their own people understood this duty and gladly
accepted their martyrdom. (David Myatt, “A Covert Life, http://www.geocities.com/davidmyatt/covertlife.html
)
Myatt had little difficulty reconciling his newfound
faith with National Socialism:
How could a National
Socialist-an admirer of Adolf Hitler and his SS come to sit happily in the
homes of a Pakistani, an Arab, an African from Chad, share a meal, talk affably
about God, our dreams for the future, the need for a spiritual renaissance, and
of course, the common enemy? Because the truth about National Socialism has
been obscured for over fifty years, thanks to the intensive, hateful,
worldwide, well-financed and unending propaganda campaign directed against it.
There is some common ground, since both ways-when correctly understood-produce
civilized, honorable individuals who use reason as a Islam shared common
enemies, the capitalist-consumer West and international finance. (Myatt,
"Towards the Galactic Empire.")
There is some common
ground, since both ways-when correctly understood-produce civilized, honorable
individuals who use reason as a guide. The differences are, first, that Islam
concentrates on the next life, on Jannah, and there is therefore what I have
called an individualistic and Earth-based ethic: individuals do what they do in
anticipation of the reward of Jannah; and, second, that the individual is
understood in relation to such things as taqwa [the conscious
awareness that God is watching you] and imaan [faith
or belief], for these define them. For Islam, the folk-and the diversity and
difference of human culture-is basically irrelevant. For National Socialism,
this diversity and difference should be treasured and developed in an
honorable, rational way. In addition, National Socialism concentrates on our
connection to our folk and thus to Nature and the Cosmos, with Nature and the
Cosmos being understood as living beings. That is, we, as part of our folk, are
Nature made manifest, and that our purpose is to aid Nature, and thus the
Cosmos, through our folk: to evolve ourselves, our folk, our culture, and thus
our human species. Hence, the perspective of National Socialism and the basis
for its ethics-is a cosmic, evolutionary one, of ourselves as a nexus, a
connection between our human past and our human future. National Socialism
believes we can and should evolve further: that this is our unique human
destiny. In National Socialism (and folk culture, I should add) the individual
is defined by honor, loyalty, and duty, just as a National-Socialist society
is. So, in one sense Islam was part of my lifelong quest to discover the
meaning, the purpose, of our lives. As a result, I do believe I understand Islam,
which is why I know an alliance between Muslims and National Socialists is
possible, and indeed necessary. (Michael,145-146.)
According to Myatt,
the great potential for cooperation between the extreme right and militant
Islam stems from both movement's shared opposition to the so-called new world
order, which he defines as a collection of Western capitalist nations whose way
of life is dominated by materialism. According to Myatt, the plan of the new
world order is to subjugate the planet through an oppressive world police
force so that no dissidents can escape its reach-in short, a one-world
government, with its own police force, courts, and army that have jurisdiction
anywhere in the world. In that sense, the new world order regime amounts to
"bully-made law." By contrast, Myatt sees Islamic sharia as far
superior in that it was putatively derived from God, thus making it superior to
fallible human-derived laws. Myatt has publicly expressed admiration for the
Taliban movement in Afghanistan because it sought to establish "a true
Islamic society" and defended Mullah Muhammad Omar's decision to continue
to grant Osama bin Laden sanctuary in the wake of 9/11. ("Islamic
Sanctuary,” http://www.aalhagq.jeeraii.com/ sanctuary.html )
In Myatt's analysis,
the only real significant opposition to the new world order comes from militant
Islam. On previous occasions, he has expressed open admiration for Osama bin
Laden and views him as an exemplary warrior who has forsaken a life of luxury
to pursue his Islamic duty. (Myatt, "Why I Support Sheikh Usama bin Laden,
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alghurabah/support/usama.html.)
Like David Myatt,
also Ahmed Huber (quoted at the outset of this article above) found no
contradiction in terms of his Islamic faith and his admiration for German
National Socialism, as he explained:
I judge as a Muslim,
I judge Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich and his movement in a different way
than the Zionists, or the Marxists, or the Anglo-Americans do because I know
very, very much. I have been studying the sources of what was the Third Reich.
And I met a lot of people who knew Hitler personally. I have met his secretary,
Frau Gertrud Junge, who recently died, and Christa
Schroeder. I have met Arlton Axman, the last Hitler
Youth leader, who brought the corpses of Hitler and Eva Braun to the Reich
Chancellery and burnt them. I met a lot of Waffen-SS generals from the Leibstandarte, who personally knew Hitler.
We Muslims were
fascinated by the Third Reich in the 1930s because Hitler had some ideas at the
political level and the economic level, and the cultural field, which were very
close to the political, economic, and cultural sharia. For instance, the
economic concept of an interest-free noncapitalist
economy is very close to the Islamic concept of the economy. His [Hitler's]
idea that art should represent God and not be degenerate and make a cult of
ugliness, oflies, and of evil, this corresponds to
the cultural sharia, and so on.
So this man and his
movement were fascinating to many Muslim intellectuals all during the 1930s.
And since 1945, Muslims have been studying all of these things. And we judge
him in a different way. Even if now, of course, when the Muslims protest
against America, they say Bush equals Hitler, or Shawn equals Hitler, they say
that not for themselves, but [because] they know that it has an impact on
Western public opinion.
Hitler himself
said several times, "The only religion I respect is Islam. The only
prophet I admire is the Prophet Muhammad." He said several times in his
table talks that ''After the final war the swastika will rule over Europe and
will represent a new Europe. We will help the Muslims in North Africa and the
Middle East to reestablish the Caliphate." That means there would be an
Islamic civilization. (See also Coogan, "The Mysterious Ahhmed Huber: Friend to Hitler, Allah and Ibn Laden?"
http://coraclesyndicate.org/pub e/k.coo e/publ 05-02-1.htm, September 2002.
As for the ‘new
right’ mentioned in the initial quote from Huber at the beginning of this
article, Huber explained:
You see, in the past
ten years I have been in Switzerland, Austria, France, and Germany. I have been
around with groups of young people, both Muslims and non-Muslims, and
especially what we call the new right. Sometimes we hold meetings together,
Muslims and people from the new right, to speak about these things and to show
what we have in common. I also spoke about this at the University of Tehran. I
spoke at a seminar and workshops about these problems. Explaining what was the
Third Reich, what it was all about. (Michael,146.)
On March 20, 2002, a U.S. Treasury task force raided
businesses connected to individuals which they thought financed al-Qaeda. For
example Jamal Barzinji’s northern Virginia-based
World Assembly of Muslim Youth was alleged to have been deeply involved in
providing cover for Wahhabi terrorism. (Stephen Schwarz, "Wahhabis in the
Old Dominion: What the Federal Raids in Northern Virginia Uncovered,"
Weekly Standard 7, no. 29, April 8, 2002, http://www.weeklystandard. com.) Here
a connection was found to Alessandro Ghe, an Italian,
who has been questioned by Italian authorities for possible ties to bin Laden.
And again, Ghe belonged to the Ordine
Nuovo (New Order) organization, which began to reach out to Muslim radicals in
the 1970’s as seen above.
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