This is a guest post by Hugo Schmidt
Following the Breivik atrocity, the ‘counterjihad’ blogosphere had a certain amount of shuffled feet and shifty glances. One common refrain is that there is a fire of condemnation heard about the grisly acts from groups who were in the process of excusing it when it appeared to be a Jihad atrocity. That’s true, but it’s a truth that cuts both ways. Another line is that Breivik can’t be inspired by a given person because he also cites a large list of other figures including Churchill, Ghandi etc. Well, I know bad faith and casuistry when I see it. One cannot insist that various jihadist should be taken at face value when they say their religion is their inspiration and then demand that Brevik be taken at something other than his face value.
That said, there is also a bad faith attempt to use this gross crime to silence any criticism of both Islam and the Islamic far right. The wretched Stalinist technique of the amalgam, and the related tactic of assuming that the worst motive for anything is always the right one. And then there’s the combination of hyperbole with banality. In particular the term fascism has become diluted to the point of meaninglessness, applied by a certain section of the left to everything from budget cuts to Srebrenica, from David Cameron to Nick Griffin. A word that can mean so many things ends up meaning nothing. This is particularly bad in the barrooms of the web, where ill-thought positions must be defended to the death. The same thing can be seen on the right, where “radical Marxist” or Stalinist thrown around with the same lack of continence.
What makes Øyvind Strømmen such a treasure is that, when he starts discussing fascism, he tells us exactly what he means. He gives us the definition of Roger Griffin, Professor at Oxford Brooks University: ”Fascism is best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism, one that sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the ‘people’ into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with heroic values. The core myth that inspires this project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence.” And he adheres to it severely, insisting that, whatever one thinks of them, restrictions on immigration, or even xenophobia, are not fascism.
It’s for this reason that he is worth taking seriously when he warns about a resurgent European fascism. Central to his analysis is the work of the blogger Fjordman (Peder Jensen). Reading through Defeating Eurabia (an achievement in itself), Strømmen shows that Jensen’s views agree entirely with the classical model of fascism. The EU is predicted to collapse, civil war result and only a strong, revolutionary caste of nationalists can be the answer to both the current decadent ruling class and the Muslim minority.
The precision of this analysis is worth noting. Mark Steyn, Bruce Bawer, and Sam Harris have all posited the rise of the European far right in response to the Islamic, but none of them can be called fascist, as they write in various degrees of warning. Jensen, by contrast, actively advocates for such revolutionary overthrow. Moreover, Strømmen is one of the few writers (your humble servant amongst them) who noticed the connection of Breivik with the nouvelle droite, the European fascist international. His book, Eurofascism, is now available online, and is probably the best work on the subject around.
Strømmen’s restraint makes him all the more devastating. It would be neither true nor useful to indict the whole or even the majority of the counterjihad scene as fascists. However, in the same way that one can argue that in many cases there is no firewall between conservative Islamic religiosity and Jihadism, one can argue that in other cases there is no firewall between the crypto-fascists and the counterjihadists. The blog BrusselsJournal, for example, routinely praises the writers of the nouvelle droit, whose website Arktos features such items as posters of Codreanu, the founder of the Romanian Iron Guard.
There really isn’t an excuse for tolerating this sort of thing. As the old AIDS slogan goes, “Silence = Acceptance”. Peter Hitchens, a proud and open reactionary, believes in the Christian religion as the moral basis of Britishs society, is opposed to homosexuality, supports a strong law and order system, and sharp controls on immigration. Yet no one could seriously call him a fascist because he makes it quite clear that he despises the BNP and any other neo-fascist who tries to get chummy or ingratiate himself. Serious conservatives should pay heed.
The method of getting at the truth is the dialectical and adversarial. But name-calling is not dialectic, nor are taboos or tantrums. Dialectic requires sound arguments based on facts. For this reason, Strømmen’s work on the rise of Eurofascism is invaluable, and should be read by anyone with a serious interest in the various far-right factions, be they Islamic, home grown, or otherwise, on the loose today.
9 Comments
Øyvind Strømmen? Oh dear.
One common refrain is that there is a fire of condemnation heard about the grisly acts from groups who were in the process of excusing it when it appeared to be a Jihad atrocity.
Please explain why “counter-jihadists” would excuse a jihad atrocity?
You probably meant to say that some of them were all too quick to call it a jihad atrocity, and then tried to find excuses for jumping to conclusions.
Oh dear – please actually read my article, would you? I wrote that it is certainly true that “fascism” is a term that is used sloppily; therefore, it is very valuable to have someone who knows how to use it strictly and precisely.
please actually read my article, would you?
I did. (I’ve read enough of Strømmen too, which is actually more relevant.)
Griffin’s “definition” is rubbish, so applying it “strictly and precisely” – granting for the sake of argument that this is what Strømmen has managed to do – is strictly and precisely a case of GIGO.
Roger Griffin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Griffin
versus
Some anonymous internet nut’s blank assertion.
The end.
How is Griffin’s definition rubbish? The new consensus he represents (Eatwell, Mosse, Payne, Ioanid et al) has been a huge boon to the study of generic fascism, the continuities and changes within post-war fascism and the culture of fascist movements. “Modernism and Fascism” is a bonafide classic. Personally, I think the anti-Jihadis aren’t nationalist enough…they don’t seem to care much for their idealised communities. Rather their mythic core is the idea of world changing manichean struggle, as an arena to act out their own sense of being a vanguard, of being at the forefront of history and global ressurection.
How is Griffin’s definition rubbish?
Because ten-dollar words and phrases like “palingenetic ultranationalism” and “mythic core” don’t survive their unpacking. (That is, you’re supposed to use them as is, like they were self-evident truths, resonant with Lord knows how many sorts of profundities.) Griffin’s own unpacking puts one to sleep: he can never say something in ten words where a thousand would do. He is a relentless self-promoter too: the so-called “consensus” is more his own insistence than anything else.
Actually, the point of his voluminous output is to bury some simple and shop-worn ideas under an avalanche of words: that fascism is basically “right-wing” and “counter-revolutionary” in a “conservative” sense, but of course only Marxists say things like that so baldly and heavens knows no one wants to be so obviously Marxist these days. Not that Griffin is, but he hasn’t freed himself of the confusions Marxists have bequeathed the study of fascism. (Coming around to issues of more current interest, reading, e.g., A.J. Gregor’s The Search For Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science may better place one to appreciate how superficial it is to babble about “mythic cores” and “palingenesis”.)
But to give credit where it’s due, such non-ideas do add ammunition to the vocabularies of EUnionists, Greens, multicultis and other stripes of budding commissars in abundance among the left.
Ah, so yours is the Goldberg-ian idiot theory of generic fascism, as in, unless it can made to blame some composite imagined left, it is nefarious. That’s odd, because the “culturalist” school is constantly attacked by Marxists for ignoring the supposed social “base” of fascism.
Indeed, Griffin precisely says that fascism is revolutionary, certainly according to its adherents, in contradiction to Marxists and earlier liberal schools of historiography like Lipset. When the ideologues of the NSDAP, the PNF, the Legion of the Archangel St. Micheal, The Ustasa, the Falange say they are revolutionary, Griffin takes them at their word, rather than rely on false consciousness and empty rhetoric. He merely applies the same standards of enquiry to the ideology of fascism as that regularly used on Communism or Liberalism, that these ideas are held seriously by their proponants and that they represent a particular worldview worthy of catagorisation.
Rather than seeking to expand the boundaries of what is fascism, the new consensus has been extremely reductionist, excluding Salazzar or Franco for example. Griffin’s article on clerical fascism sets out to narrow the term back into meaning by making it particular to movements where the label means something more than just a bit religious and a bit unpleasant. This narrowing is in sharp contrast to much Marxist work, be it tanky, trot or euro, where fascism is a social condition or manifestation of economic power rather than an ideology.
Griffin’s work doesn’t really rely on a left-right spectrum, certainly in comparison to Stanley Payne, no friend of the left it must be said. Rather, he, along with Emilio Gentile and Baumen, sees the rebirth narratives and attempts to produce a new form of humanity in fascism as one aspect of a spectrum wide phenomena, arising from modernity. So his framework has been used for interpretations of Bolshevik and Vanguard totalitarianism, Islamism, Anarchist propaganda of the deed and non-western nationalisms such as Tamil ideology. Zeev Sternhal, target of assasination attempts for his peace advocacy, explicitly denies that fascism can be placed on the post 1789 spectrum yet still agrees with Griffin on the importance of rebirth nationalism to fascism. So your prissy hissing fit claims of vast left wing conspiracy is some what fucking nuts, yeah.
Noticable too, that you declaim a lack of explanation of terminology in Griffin’s work and then blame him for expanding on his ideal type too much. Could it be you just a dumb fuck?….Palingenetic means rebirth (Schpolin calls it parousia – second coming)…..Nationalism….you know what that means, right?….ultra?…myth?…core?
It should be noted that all of the new consensus Historians uses these terms reflexively, rather than as meta-narrative and these ideas have spread outside the school inself into the work of Paxton, Burleigh, Mann, Laqueur (now the Grand old man of Eurabia-ist cultural pessimism) and even Gregor. Consider his papers on the Interventionist campaign in Italy, 1915, swamped with rhetoric of rebirth nationalism. Even the harshest academic critics of the new consensus, in contra-distinction to Goldberg-ian fuck nuts on the interwebs, recognise the centrality of rebirth and national mythology to fascism.
So every proposition you made was jet black hairy bullshit. Over to you.
sr, let’s be generous. Goldberg’s book is both good and original, it’s just that – I’ll let you finish the quotation.
Man, that thing irritated me.