Nation Revisited # 143 September 2018

The Enemy.

In September 2009 'The Times' reported an old story that had just been released by the Russians. Margaret Thatcher wore a jumper bearing the flags of Europe during the 1975 referendum campaign, and she cheered when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, but she secretly pleaded with Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, to keep Germany and Europe divided:

"We do not want a united Germany. This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security."

While Maggie watched with horror as the wall came down, Stephen Spender, the poet and writer, was jubilant. He wrote in 'Granta' magazine:

"Perhaps because I am eighty what is happening in the Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria has the effect of making me feel that I am witnessing apocalyptic events out of the Book of Revelations. I do not apologise for beginning on this personal note. For the collapse of the totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is something that I had given up hope of witnessing in my lifetime. I was sure that it would happen eventually but that it would be perpetually postponed to the next century, after the millennium. I now have the almost Biblical sense of being privileged to witness a miracle."

The Berlin Wall symbolising a divided and occupied Europe was hated by everyone except the right wing of the Tory Party and their allies. They say that they are anti-EU and not anti-Europe, but Boris Johnson refers to EU officials as 'the enemy', and Gerard Batten, the current leader of Ukip, made the following speech to the European Parliament: 

"The Germans lost the shooting war but they did not lose their ambitions. Back in, I think it was 1942 when the Germans thought they were going to win the war, they wrote a plan for how they were going to govern their new empire. It was called the European economic community. They were going to have interest rates linked to the Reichsmark, they were going to have a common agricultural policy, a common industrial policy, a common policy for everything. That plan resurfaced in 1957 as the European Economic Community." 

But it's not only the Germans who they hate, Richard Kemp, another Ukipper, tweeted: "This vendetta against hundreds of former British soldiers is a continuation of Irish Republican terrorism by other means, with collusion by a British government bent on appeasement & betrayal."

Even the Belgians are insulted by Ukip. Nigel Farage said of the EU President Herman van Rompuy: "He has the charisma of a 'damp rag' and the looks of a low grade' bank clerk'." And he said: "Belgium is not a nation. It is an artificial creation."

Hardline nationalists see our fellow Europeans as 'the enemy' but some of them are having doubts. Dave Yorkshire of the 'Mjolnir' website has posted an article entitled 'Against Brexit: An Alternative Perspective'. He hasn't embraced European federalism but he has challenged the dogma of the far-right. We can only hope that this is a significant development.  https://mjolnirmagazine.blogspot.com 

Music, Youth and International Links in Post-War British Fascism - Ryan Shaffer

This fascinating book is the result of years of research by an objective American historian. He starts by acknowledging the people who helped him with interviews and publications. When he was conducting his interviews some people refused to co-operate because they feared another journalistic hatchet job, but they were wrong. His book is refreshingly honest and his conclusions are fair.

He briefly covers the pre-war fascist movements but he concentrates on the National Front and the British National Party which operated in the Eighties and the Nineties. He describes how AK Chesterton introduced most of the fascist leaders to the Jewish Conspiracy Theory. Chesterton had been a leader of the British Union of Fascists who split with Oswald Mosley before the war and went on to found the League of Empire Loyalists in 1954 and the National Front in 1967.

He chronicles the incessant faction fights that tore the movement apart and he examines the men who set out to save the nation. Characters like John Bean who is still writing at the age of 91, Colin Jordan, a Coventry schoolteacher who tried to revive National Socialism, and John Tyndall who devoted his entire life to street corner politics and died of a heart attack just before his trial for inciting racial hatred. And he lists the international connections accidentally made by the nationalist movements:

"After the Second World War British fascism changed drastically, becoming transnational as it spread from London around the world. Under the National Front (NF) and the British National Party (BNP), fascism never came close to any national breakthrough in Great Britain. Yet the radicals successfully spread their racism and anti-democratic politics to an international audience. The extremists found that they had more in common with radicals in other countries than with mainstream society in their own nation. As a result, British fascism became increasingly transnational with an outlook beyond the nation, even as the radicals spoke about nationalism and patriotism."

As the title suggests this book covers the musical side of nationalist politics; Ian Stuart, 'Blood and Honour' and the skinhead scene, but that's only a small part.

'Music, Youth and International Links to Post-War British Fascism' is published by Palgrave Macmillan and is available from Amazon.

Sensitive Minorities

The government has made it clear that they will not tolerate 'racial hatred'. People have been sent to prison for publishing literature, posting videos, making speeches, drawing cartoons, or singing songs, that have upset minorities.

Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, was forced out of the Labour Party for pointing out that the Zionists and the Nazis shared a common ambition to get the Jews out of Europe. The fact that this is true is apparently no defence.

It's also forbidden to suggest that the Israelis are behaving like Nazis. They recently made 20% of their population second-class citizens by declaring Israel to be the National Home of the Jews. Any criticism of Israel is construed as anti-Semitism. Jeremy Corbyn was branded a 'fucking anti-Semite' by Margaret Hodge because the Labour Party has not signed up to a new definition of anti-Semitism issued by the 'International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance'.

The Zionists are ready to prosecute any transgressor, but our bookshops and libraries are full of allegedly anti-Semitic works from every country and period. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote an unflattering account of the Jews in 'The Histories of Ancient Rome', and Martin Luther, Karl Marx, Shakespeare, Dickens and Conan Doyle are also guilty.

Now, Donald Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, has been charged with a $20 million fraud. Is this a genuine prosecution or another example of anti-Semitism?

The Jews have certainly had their critics over the years but they cannot claim to be an oppressed minority. They suffered under the Nazis over seventy years ago but they now enjoy the same rights and freedoms as everyone else and they should learn to be less sensitive.

And so should those who were outraged when the aspiring Tory leader Boris Johnson compared Muslim women wearing traditional costumes to bank robbers or letterboxes. Boris Johnson is an unprincipled populist who will say anything to gain attention but he is entitled to his opinions.

It's a pity that those of us who believe in Britain for the British cannot be registered as an oppressed minority. Then we could scream when people call us names, and claim financial compensation for our hurt feelings. 

Free speech is under attack but nothing lasts forever. The communist system collapsed in the Soviet Union and turned into state capitalism in China. The global banking system is broken and the 'experts' don't know how to fix it. We are in the grip of the liberal consensus - what Alexander Dugin calls the 'Third Totalitarianism'. We must read, write, network, and organise, but be careful to stay within the law; nothing can be achieved from a prison cell. 

Pen Names

Many writers use pen names to hide their identity or make themselves sound more interesting. Geoffrey Vernon of 'Lodestar' was Jeffry Hamm, Captain Truth of 'Bulldog' was Joe Pearce, Beachcomber in the 'Daily Express' was DB Wyndham Lewis, Cassandra in the 'Daily Mirror' was William Connor, Peter Simple in the 'Daily Telegraph' was Michael Wharton, and Anne Rand, the darling of the Alt-Right, was Alisa Rosenbaum.

In 1994 Roger Pearson, the distinguished editor of 'The Northlander' and 'The Mankind Quarterly', gave a sworn deposition to the Sixth Judicial Circuit, Illinois. He admitted to using the pen names; R Peterson, JW Jamieson, Allan McGregor, and Edward Langford. He stated:

"It's not uncustomary for an editor of a journal to refrain from publishing too frequently under his own name in his own journal. There are good precedents for that, and rather than appear to be publishing one's own views, I can cite, not offhand now but the names of distinguished scholars who were editors of well-known publications and who used pen names when writing in those publications they edited."

All writers have distinguishing features which betray them. This is particularly true of 'letters to the editor', especially when they are written by him. This deception is fairly harmless but when he quotes one invented character in defence of another it gets confusing.

Those who have to earn a living are entitled to use pen names because so-called 'anti-fascists' try to get people fired from their jobs if they don't agree with them. The self-chosen defenders of democracy can be very cruel. But as a general rule, we should use our own names, or at least, stick to one byline. Security is necessary but it's annoying to read an article that is unsigned, or attributed to 'The Editor' when you don't know who he is. On the other hand, it's good to read an article by an old friend with a familiar name.

Churchill on Europe

Two films about Britain's wartime leader, Winston Churchill, have been released in the past year, 'Churchill' and 'Darkest Hour'. Half a century after his death people are still interested in him.

Winston Churchill was born in 1874 and died in 1965. From the time that he graduated from Sandhurst military academy in 1894 until he stood down as an MP at the 1964 general election, he made thousands of political statements - many of them contradictory. To his admirers, he was the greatest statesman that ever lived but to his critics, he was an egotistical warmonger. He is remembered as the inspirational prime minister who led Britain during the Second World War, and as the man responsible for the disastrous Gallipoli campaign in the First World War.

Winston Churchill photo credit Imperial War Museum

He was an imperialist but like all educated Englishmen of his generation he considered himself to be a European. In June 1940, with the full backing of the Cabinet, he announced the 'Declaration of Union' between Great Britain and France. He stated:

"The two governments declare that France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations but one Franco-British Union...Every citizen of France will enjoy immediately citizenship of Great Britain; every British subject will become a citizen of France." 

After the Normandy landings he said:

"We hope to see a Europe where men of every country will think of being a European as of belonging to their native land, and...wherever they go in this wide domain...will truly feel, here I am at home"

In his famous Zurich speech in 1946 he said:

"We must build a kind of United States of Europe... The structure of the United States of Europe, if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important... If at first, all the states of Europe are not willing or able to join the Union, we must nevertheless proceed to assemble and combine those who will and those who can."

On the other hand, he once said:

"If Britain must choose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea."

Churchill sometimes changed his mind:

"In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet."

But Ted Heath had no doubt about Churchill's intentions:

"I readily accept that at that time Churchill did not envisage Britain being a full member of this united Europe, but in gleefully seizing upon this point, Euro-sceptics have misunderstood or misrepresented the nature of Churchill's attitude to full British participation in Europe. This reluctance was based on circumstance; it was not opposition based on principle. And the circumstances have changed in such a way that I am sure Churchill would now favour a policy that enabled Britain to be at the heart of the European Union."

Harold Covington RIP

Harold Covington (1953-2018) the American fiction writer and broadcaster died of natural causes at his apartment in Bremerton, WA in July. He wrote many books but he was best known for his 'Quartet', four books on the creation of the North West Republic which he dreamed of establishing as a White homeland in the Pacific North West. They are; 'A Distant Thunder', 'A Mighty Fortress', 'The Brigade', and 'The Hill of Ravens'. All available from Amazon.

He was involved with right-wing politics in Europe, Africa and America all his life but he eventually settled for the utopian dream of the Northwest Imperative - a separate state for Whites. Apart from the obvious difficulty of taking on the armed forces of the United States his ideas were well thought out and surprisingly moderate. He always encouraged his followers to stay within the law and keep out of prison.

He was of Irish descent and always began his podcasts with a rousing ballad commemorating the disastrous Wolfe Tone uprising of 1798: "The Pikes Must be Together by the Rising of the Moon."

Harold Covington was not your average right-wing Messiah. We are used to pompous 'fuhrers' who strike dramatic poses and think in slogans but he had a wonderfully creative mind and a wicked sense of humour. Unfortunately, he habitually used racially offensive language that is still permitted in the United States.

He did not invent the idea of a separate state for Whites, That honour goes to Pastor Richard Butler (1918-2004) of the Aryan Nations movement. Similar 'homelands' have been planned in South Africa and Wales. None of them can be taken seriously but in the age of 'fake news' one more fantasy makes no difference.

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All articles are by Bill Baillie unless otherwise stated. The opinions of guest writers are entirely their own. This blog is protected by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: "We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share ideas with other people.