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.

Nation Revisited # 142 August 2018

Enoch Powell

Fifty years after Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech, immigrants are still coming to the UK. The latest ONS figures show that last year there were 101,000 migrants from the EU and 227,000 from outside the EU. 

Enoch Powell was opposed to the EU and immigration but he was not anti-European and he refused an invitation to stand for the National Front in 1974. At a speech which he delivered in French in Lyon in 1971 he stated:

"From boyhood, I have been devoted to the study of that Greek and Roman inheritance, which in varying measure is common to all that is Europe, and not only ‘Europe’ of the six or eight or ten but Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals – and beyond. I also claim that reverent enthusiasm for the history of my own country which commands an equal reverence for the past that has formed everything else which is European. The truest European, in my opinion, is the man who is most humbly conscious of the vast demands which comprehension of, even a little part of this Europe imposes upon those who seek it; for the deeper we penetrate, the more the marvellous differentiation of human society within this single continent evokes our wonder. The very use of the word ‘Europe’ in expressions like ‘European unity’, ‘going into Europe’, ‘Europe’s role in the world’ is a solecism which grates upon the ear of all true Europeans: only Americans can be excused for using it." 

The parties of the far-right are wrong to claim Enoch Powell as one of their own. They want to spend more on defence and the National Health Service but he resigned from Harold Macmillan's government in 1958 over plans to increase public spending. They are nostalgic about the British Empire but he was in favour of Indian independence and critical of our mistreatment of Kenyan detainees during the Mau Mau Emergency. They despise foreigners but he was a classical scholar who spoke several languages.

The working men who marched in support of Enoch Powell lost interest when 'The Sun' and 'The Daily Mail' turned against him. But the influx of refugees from Africa and the Middle East is finally challenging the liberal consensus. Populist parties are now in government in Italy, Austria and Hungary, and powerful in France, Germany, Sweden and Poland.

At present, there is no solidarity on the issue. There's no point in Germany sending Africans back to Italy or Greece because they landed there, or sharing them out amongst the nations of Europe. We need a common European migration and asylum policy and a combined Naval force to patrol the Mediterranean. Not long ago such a policy would have been unthinkable but since Angela Merkel took in a million refugees attitudes have hardened and deportation is firmly on the agenda.

The supporters of multi-culturalism got away with their mischief because global capitalism made most of us richer. We were too busy earning a living to worry about immigration, but its social consequences have had a profound effect on public opinion. Rising crime and terrorism are forcing Europe to get its act together; just as the UK is preparing to leave.

Plutocracy

Our system of government dates back to the days of stage coaches, three-cornered hats, and universal ignorance. Only the upper classes had the vote and bribery was the norm. Today, everybody can vote and they have all got smartphones in their pockets to inform them on any topic. It shouldn't be so easy for charlatans to get elected but they still manage it.

We now have the technology to consult the electorate without calling a general election. Online referendums could be used to inform the government. This would make Parliament obsolete together with 650 MPs and over 800 members of The House of Lords. Those parliamentarians over retiring age could be pensioned off and the younger ones redeployed as traffic wardens. 

Of course, no such reforms will be introduced. We will keep our ancient institutions with their obsolete rituals and carry on wasting millions of pounds. Our MPs will continue to shuffle into lobbies to be counted like sheep and our noble Lords will still frustrate their knavish tricks.

The big businessmen who really run this country are not impressed by public opinion and they see no reason to interfere with tradition. Somebody said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But that's exactly what we do at every general election when we chose a government from the same assortment of nonentities as before. 

The alternative to this madness is not a dictatorship but representative government. We should replace Parliament with a secure computerised system that couldn't be got at by plutocrats.

The top ten British companies are amongst the most powerful in the world. They are; Royal Dutch Shell, HSBC Holdings, British American Tobacco, BP, Glaxo Smith Kline, Diageo, Astra Zeneca, Vodaphone, Unilever, and Glencoe. British businesses paid £43 billion in corporation tax in 2014-15 and contributed an unknown amount in 'donations' to political parties. We are not governed by elected MPs but by the appointed executives of major corporations who put profits before people.

It's the duty of big business to make money for their shareholders but it's the duty of government to protect workers' rights and provide decent health care and social security. There are some excellent firms that look after their workers but most of them are only interested in making money. Karl Marx predicted that global capitalism would eventually turn into socialism but we haven't got there yet.  


Fashions in Thinking

Without even realising it we all follow fashion to some extent. Short hair is currently in fashion for men but not so long ago long hair was the norm. We may not keep up with the latest styles but we find ourselves slowly adapting to them. Have a look at some old photographs of your friends and family and you will notice collar-length hairstyles, flared trousers, and floral shirts that you would not wear today.

Conformity starts in the playground and continues into old age. Women of a certain age try to be fashionable by wearing short skirts that would look better on a teenager. And it's the same with social attitudes. Years ago black dogs and cats were often called 'Nigger', and black people usually appeared in films as servants. The original housekeeper in the Tom & Jerry cartoons was a black mammy but she eventually became Irish.

When John Tyndall launched 'Spearhead' magazine n 1964 he used his front page to described Africans as 'sub-human', but a year later the Race Relations Act was passed and AK Chesterton warned:

"The man who thinks that this war can be won by mouthing slogans about 'dirty Jews and filthy niggers' is a maniac whose place should not be in the National Front but in a mental hospital." 

Whatever our thoughts were in the Sixties, it's likely that we have changed our minds. Not many people want to go back to the days when the glamorous model Ruth Ellis (pictured) was hanged for shooting dead her brutal lover, or when the brilliant codebreaker Alan Turing was hounded to his death by the authorities. Times have changed and most of us have changed with them. 

This is often blamed on the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist scholars who set out to change public attitudes. But most of these reforms can be traced to the French Revolution, or even further back to the Sermon on The Mount. The Marxists did not invent social justice they just adopted it as a strategy.

Of course, people are influenced by propaganda. Smoking and drinking and driving are two positive examples of 'social engineering'. The latest campaign pairs black and white couples in almost every TV commercial. This is not a government initiative but the latest fashion in thinking. Keen young account executives are persuading their clients that diversity sells products. The message to women seems to be, if you want a comfortable bed or a new kitchen, marry a black man.     

Great German Thinkers

On the bicentenary of Karl Marx's birth, we examine his thoughts and those of his fellow countryman and near contemporary Arthur Schopenhauer. In the age of the Internet, we think that we know all the answers but the great thinkers of the 19th century knew a thing or two.  

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was best known for his works on psychology, morality, ethics, phenomenology, metaphysics, and aesthetics. Those weighty subjects are best left to his students but his views on history are interesting to the layman.

"The highest civilisation and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmans, the Incas, and the rulers of the South Sea Islands. All this due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by climate. This they had to do in order to make up for the parsimony of nature and out of it came their high civilisation."

Arthur Schopenhauer died just before his country embarked on a series of wars that almost destroyed Europe; the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the First World War 1914-18, and the Second World War 1939-45. His 'white races' tried to destroy each other with shells, bombs, bayonets and poison gas, but in doing so they advanced science and technology to the age of jet propulsion and atomic weapons.

Perhaps those wars were part of the epic struggle against adversity that he described? A cycle of violence and destruction that was broken by the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951. The Schuman Plan outlawed war between France and Germany by controlling coal and steel production, and it laid the foundations of the European Union.

The old philosophers generally painted a gloomy picture, but just as gamblers study a racehorse's form to asses its chances, so historians study the past to predict the future. Schopenhauer studied mankind and left us the following advice:

"If you want Utopian plans I would say: the only solution to the problem is the despotism of the wise and noble members of a genuine aristocracy, a genuine nobility, achieved by mating the most magnanimous men with the cleverest and most gifted women. This proposal constitutes my Utopia and my Platonic Republic".  

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was an educated middle class German who probably never did a violent thing in his life, but he inspired a revolutionary movement that slaughtered millions. He was widely praised by 'the great and the good' for his economic analysis but veteran blogger Frank Walsh (pictured) took a different view.

The failure of Marxism is firstly due to his wrong thinking, maybe due to Hegel's logic, that has its illogics, (e.g. Hegel says "War is indispensable to progress." As progress is a relative concept of our senses saying, life is better than before, how the hell can we feel better if we atomise ourselves out of existence in war?) As he thought the producer majority could win social power by directly owning the means of production, like a parasite minority, having humanly forgot that a majority is quantitatively and thereby qualitatively the opposite of a minority, so the producer must win social power in the opposite way to a parasitical minority, i.e. by directly owning the fruits of their work  to indirectly own the materials and tools of production thru their, unbled by parasites, purchasing power being always equal to their Free Folk Market's chosen and priced wares; thus giving the producers full employment and so continuity of their purchasing power to make the regenerative capital that commands the factory, farm, mine, shop etc. tools and materials etc. of production and distribution, to make and have available the producers Free Folk  Market's desired products to consume. For without economic power, a folk can never have the political, military, cultural power to secure a real democracy and so shall always be enslaved in parasitocracies, believing in a heavenly life after death or futilely trying to get a heaven on earth by begging to the parasites to be humane and free them, instead of accepting the healthy life-laws of nature, that only the human species having the guts and strength to support and free themselves by being rid of parasites and other predators can have democracy; for life decrees that only they who dare to fight and destroy dictators can be free. Maybe K Marx saw his mistake, of assuming a majority could get economic-social power in the same way as a minority, for in his later years he said: "I am not a Communist." 

The Will of the People

The referendum result was hailed as 'The Will of the People'. They voted 52% to 48% to quit the EU, but the trouble is that people do such strange things. They elected Margaret Thatcher three times in a row and then did the same for Tony Blair. Not once, or twice, but three times!

Voters are not required to know what they are voting for. Few people could name the 28 states of the EU and even fewer know anything about the single market or the customs union. They get their views from the mass media and they vote according to tribal loyalties.

Nobody has come up with a perfect system of government. Autocracy is fine if you have a benevolent dictator but they have a tendency to go mad, like Margaret Thatcher. Democracy is alright in theory but people often make the wrong decisions. Remember that the mob shouted for Barabbas instead of Jesus.

We are better off today because of advances in science, not because of politics. The Industrial Revolution created the need for a literate and numerate workforce, and main drainage and clean water were infinitely more beneficial that universal franchise. Politicians make laws but human progress is driven by technology.

Theresa May is trying to reconcile two opposing wings of her party. The Labour Party is just as divided, and the Liberal Democrats are too few in numbers to make a difference. Brexit has divided the UK but it has united the rest of Europe. A year ago the populists parties were all for leaving the EU but they have all changed their minds. Simon Kuper wrote in the Financial Times:

And Brexit's failure fits a continuum. In 2015, Greece's Syriza government tried to renegotiate its relationship with the EU, or maybe leave, and failed too. Today, Syriza is a docile pro-EU government. Italy's new government has already dropped talking about leaving the EU or the euro, frightened by spikes in Italian bond yields this spring. In France, Le Pen now says: "We can improve the daily life of French people without leaving the EU."  

In the past two thousand years, we have been a collection of Celtic tribes, a province of the Roman Empire, a Saxon kingdom, a Danish possession, a Norman kingdom, an English Commonwealth, a global empire, an American dependency, and a half-hearted member of the European Union. Our future, like our past, will be determined by destiny and our proximity to the mainland, not by the so-called 'Will of the People'.

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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."