Thinking Seriously About Fascism

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The much bemoaned rise of the extreme right in Europe is actually very easy to explain. The mass-influx of Muslims, most of them unwilling to integrate into Western cultures, has provoked a completely natural reaction. People want control over their borders again. It’s as simple as that.

With that said, some people are – as the media claims – using the present crisis to promote darker or more radical visions for the future. I’m talking here specifically of fascists.

By using this word I do not refer to those mainstream conservative figures unjustly defamed as ‘fascists’ by the liberal press. I’m not talking about Bill O’Reilly or Nigel Farage. I mean real, honest, self-declared fascists; people who see virtue and worth in the fascist movements of the past.

We are compelled, even commanded, to oppose fascism outright. Fascism is evil, destructive, genocidal even. It seems a simple enough thing to argue against, right? In this article I want to argue that, contrary to popular assumption, it isn’t easy to condemn fascism in an honest or consistent way. It’s very difficult in fact. Put another way, I want to argue here that fascism is rising in Europe in part because some of its tenets are inherently appealing, not horrifying.

One of the better known of the European neo-fascists is Anders Behring Breivik, the narcissistic butcher of Utoeya and noted lover of moisturising cream. From his jail cell in Norway, the killer has recently expressed a desire to create a completely new nation; one he would grandly call ‘The Nordic State’.

This new country, Breivik says, will be distinguished from the Nordic States currently in existence in two important ways. Firstly, only 100% pure-blooded Nordic people will be allowed to live there. Secondly, the government of the new nation will be dedicated to the replenishment of the Nordic species, sponsoring a rise in controlled reproduction, as well as overseeing eugenic processes aimed at raising the standard of the Nordic race to new peaks of human excellence.

It is my duty, and yours too, to both dismiss and condemn this racist proposal out of hand. And I do so now, reader, conclusively. I do not want the Nordic State to come into existence. I find the concept bizarre, untenable, politically naive and contrary to the realities of the modern world.

Anders Behring Breivik

Many people would leave the matter there. But I don’t think that would be fully honest. While condemning the concept in theory, I cannot honestly say that The Nordic State would not be remarkable in practice.

I am not an egalitarian. I do not believe the populations of the world are exactly equal in character, intelligence, creativity and behaviour. I believe that palpable differences, rooted in biology, explain almost all of the mysteries pondered by conventional sociological analysis.

Through this politically incorrect lens, I must recognise that the Nordic State would surely become, in time, the envy of the world.

A 100% Nordic society would have one of the lowest crime rates on Earth. It would have one of the lowest infidelity and teenage pregnancy rates on Earth. It would be among the cleanest, safest and greenest countries in history. The average IQ of the Nordic State would be the highest in Europe, leaving other Nordic states languishing in inferiority. And if, as Anders Breivik proposes, eugenic breeding were authorised by the Nordic State’s government, then the state would over time become the source of the world’s most impressive technological and medical advances. It would also be militarily supreme, since the technological edge allowed by superior intelligence will make for the world’s most efficient and sophisticated army. And so on…

Saab Aero X – A Swedish-manufactured car

My point is – knowing all this, how can we sensibly and rationally object to Breivik’s fascism? Seeing as the programme he suggests would have such dazzling results, what counter-argument might we manufacture to dissuade rational people from endorsing it? This is a vital question; one we must try with everything we have to come up with an answer for.

One tried-and-tested objection we might make concerns the moral costs of bringing such a project to fruition. Despite the touted benefits of a Nordic State, the fact remains that every Nordic country (with the possible exception of Iceland) is solidly multiracial. A fifth of Swedes are of mixed-foreign or foreign descent. What would become of these people in Breivik’s utopia.

At his first trial in 2012, Breivik claimed to be a ‘cultural nationalist’. He denied being a racist or a fascist and sought to prove this by saying pleasant things about Israelis, Slavs and other non-Nordic populations. This is no longer the charade. At his most recent trial (deciding a lawsuit the killer brought against the Norwegian state), Breivik’s courtroom salute, formerly closed-fisted, was explicitly and undeniably Roman. Breivik now states that he self-identifies as a ‘National Socialist’, a ‘fascist’ and a Nordicist.

Benito Mussolini

From this we might reasonably infer that Breivik (and his supporters) would deal with non-Nordic people in Nordic countries in the same way the original National Socialists dealt with non-Germans; that is to say, starve then, expel them or kill them en masse. This is obviously unacceptable to any orthodox moral philosophy. None of the benefits brought by a Nordic State would be worth the murder of millions, with all the political and moral degeneration such an action would bring.

But what if a Nordic State could be achieved without violence? What if – as Breivik suggested in a more moderate mood – a section of scarcely populated Northern Scandinavia was sectioned off for Nordic People, and the rest of Scandinavia left as it is? What would our objection be to that?

I’m really not sure.

A fundamental question that must be answered is ‘Does a race have the right to be left to itself?’ And if not, why not? If the creation of a 100% Nordic society brings infinite benefits for those deemed appropriate enough to live in it, why is there any moral objection whatsoever?

Why is segregation a bad thing? Whose rights are infringed by it? The answer, perceived by the majority to be clean-cut, is actually very difficult to express. As a commenter on a Neo-Nazi website put it:

“Why are Whites (and only Whites) expected to share everything with other races? Why are Africans allowed to have Africa, but Whites are allowed to have nothing? There is no obligation for me to associate with people I don’t like. It’s my life and I’ll live it how I want. How is this racist?”

Though I dislike the general tone of this comment, I find it difficult to rebut his arguments conclusively. This blogger recognises the infeasibility of Muslim settlement in Europe. But then Muslims are not the only immigrants. What intrinsic right do Japanese people have to settle in Europe? What right do French people have to settle in Norway?

An ethnic Scandinavian

I have little doubt that ethnically ‘pure’ nations would be less prone to civil conflict than multiracial ones. For solidly scientific reasons, a person is considerably less likely to want to harm or victimise someone if he/she feels a kinship with them. We naturally sympathise with those in whose design we see elements of our own.

Ethnically pure nations would also have a more harmonious social structure than multiracial ones. Since the social classes would be bound together with biological and sentimental links, class warfare would be made considerably less appealing.

And even fascist government is difficult to condemn clearly. Contrary to popular belief, fascism is not necessarily synonymous with Hitlerism. In its purest and most original form, fascism was merely a radical form of corporatism; a simply, mutually beneficial union of government and industry.

So what can we do? Perhaps the best argument against fascism – and against political simplification of all kinds – is not a moral argument at all, but a practical one. Breivik’s fascist utopia might be a cleaner, greener and more productive society than those prevailing in Scandinavia today, but it wouldn’t be a pleasant society. It would be boring, colourless, drab and orderly beyond desirability.

There are already numerous parts of the developed world in which only one ethnic type reside. Most of Wales is Welsh, for example. Most of Ireland is Irish. Most of the Faroe Islands are Faroese. If these are perfect societies then they will stand scrutiny to that effect. But they don’t.

Have you ever seen the movie ‘Demolition Man’ starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes? If you have, you will be aware of its strangely ingenious and philosophically stimulating plot. A cop of the present day is frozen cryogenically as a novel punishment for committing occupational manslaughter. When, after his term is served, he is released from the ‘cryo-penitentiary’ in 2032, he discovers that America has since achieved a perverse kind of techno-social perfection. In this future utopia, there is no littering, no crime, no swearing and no sexuality. It is a completely innocent society, where men and women of all ages are reduced emotionally to children. Everyone is happy, but only in a very shallow and naïve way. This new society, we  made to understand,  is nightmarish after a while. While it is safe and affluent beyond contemporary possibility, it is also fake, plastic and lacking in adrenaline. I have a feeling that Breivik’s Nordic State would eventually resemble this dystopia in many essential ways.

Imperfection is a natural and necessary part of human life and character. Without it we become machines – shiny and impressive, sure, but also soulless.

D, LDN

Decorating Chains

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Pierre Berge, influential fashion pioneer and co-founder of the Yves Saint Lauren designer firm, (I’d never heard of him either), caused an outcry last week when he boldly condemned the fashion industry’s growing embrace of Sharia-compliant clothing. Addressing the concept of the ‘burkini’ – a piece of swimwear designed to cover the body and head of the wearer, Berge remarked that “Designers are there to make women more beautiful, to give them their freedom, not to collaborate with this dictatorship (Islam) which imposes this abominable thing by which we hide women and make them live a hidden life…These creators who are taking part in the enslavement of women should ask themselves some questions.”

Since the remarks were made, numerous comment pieces have been published, both for and against. In the ever-reliable Guardian newspaper, columnist Remona Ali stated frank disagreement with Berge’s sentiment. “A burkini to cater for wider audiences?” she wrote “How dare they! Stop them! In the name of freedom, don’t let women wear what they want! Seriously, though, it’s time to grow up…I really don’t get the urge to disempower Muslim women over and over again. The only person who should have ownership over a woman’s body is her. If I want to buy a burkini from M&S, I bloody well will. If anyone else wants to buy a bikini, well guess what, that’s available in stores too. Bergé bangs on about freedom, yet taking freedom of choice away is where enslavement begins. But I think the irony is lost on him…”

Voices sympathetic to Berge’s sentiment were largely confined to the secular and international press. Atheists inevitably lined up to agree that burkinis (as well as other cultural compromises with Sharia) are a step too far, that they oppress women and represent a capitulation of modernity to the forces of regression.

Fully body coverings in the Muslim World

You’ll be able to guess my own standpoint. I think the burkini (since it has no relation to the Burkha, it should really be called the ‘Hijabi’) is an insult to the women unfortunate enough to be expected to wear it. We in the West should be encouraging Muslim women to break their chains, not decorating those chains with a veneer of elegance and choice. In the 21st Century West, women should be free to dress in whatever way they please. No-one has the right, nor should anyone have the inclination, to judge a free human being ‘virtuous’ or ‘dishonourable’ by their clothing alone. It is barbarism. It is primitivism. It belongs in the primitive world.

Despite the heat she has subsequently taken for it, the French minister who compared Sharia-compliant women to the ‘negroes who supported slavery in America’ hit the issue wonderfully on the mark. Just as abolitionists rightly ignored the opinions of negro ‘uncle toms’ who were hopelessly devoted to the whims of their ‘Master’, so can we feel comfortable in ignoring the bleatings of women who are so institutionalized by Islam, so broken by it, that they have come to support their own imprisonment. These poor women are warped. They have been brainwashed by time and cruelty.

And how dare we excuse their condition? We, who have all the blessings of freedom and individuality, who think it entirely pedestrian to go for a drink with someone of the opposite sex, who never have to worry about morality police or ‘honour’ killings; how dare we intimate that this is appropriate for other human beings to endure.

I have always been particularly enraged by those airhead liberals who excuse the mistreatment of women under sharia by saying ‘it’s their tradition’, or ‘it’s their culture’. It is not ‘culture’ at all! It is anti-culture – the resistance of pre-civilization to civilization. Culture is exactly what is being denied these poor souls.

The ‘Burkini’

While it’s probably not possible for a man, let alone a man in the free west, to imagine what life is like for a Muslimah in the Muslim world. we can at least ponder the question. How can it feel to walk around in a Niqab? How does it feel to know that if you are raped, you may be raped as a punishment for being raped? How does it feel to read a holy book that describes you as biologically, socially and intellectually ‘inferior’ to half of humankind? It must be a condition of misery. I will accept no other answer.

We should care about this, not just for moral reasons, but because Muslim women are vitally important to any effort to diminish or destroy Political Islam. As the iconoclastic commentator (and devout atheist) Johann Hari noted “One of the central tenets of this ideology (Jihadism) is the inherent inferiority and weakness of women… If you haven’t spoken to (Jihadis), it is hard to explain just how obsessed with sexual apartheid they are. At least two of the London bombers (on 7/7) refused to make eye contact with women outside their families. Image the sheer effort and repression that required…The best way to undermine the confidence and beliefs of jihadists is to trigger a rebellion of Muslim women, their mothers and sisters and daughters.” (Italics added).

Hari is surely correct here. Islamic women are (if you’ll excuse the implied misogyny) the soft underbelly of the Islamic religion. They are ‘soft’, not because they are weak, but because they are more rationally inclined to apostasy when presented with the opportunity that Islamic men are. Muslim women are also more important to Islam’s future prospects than men. Should we succeed in triggering the rebellion Hari suggests, we would halve both the present problem and the problem’s next generation. Muslim women are viewed as little more than talking wombs by their partners. They are weapons factories, producing a constant supply fight-ready believers to replenish the ranks diminished by infidel technology. Remove the women and you disrupt the supply of Jihadis. This is surely the last thing the Islamists want, and the thing they fear the most.

Islamism relies on excessive reproduction

How might we go about triggering this rebellion? Hari suggested two things in his article: a boycott of oil, and a Western programme to lend capital to Muslim women who wish to start their own businesses. I’m afraid I find both of these suggestions quite unsatisfactory. These measures might well improve the lot of individual women, but neither has the potential to topple the patriarchy (and for once this word is merited) ruling Islamic society. This patriarchy itself must be toppled before women can be empowered. They cannot be empowered before that point.

A better strategy would involve reaching out to Muslim women directly and encouraging them to quit Islam. This can be very safely and easily done online – by making videos for YouTube, setting up groups on Facebook, sending personal messages and tweets, and so on. Make it a movement; a large-scale, organised campaign. Muslim women currently resident in the West have very few places to turn if they wish to be liberated from Islam. Existing apostate groups like the well-meaning CEM (Council of Ex-Muslims) do not presently offer the kind of protection necessary to make female apostasy a desirable prospect. To rectify this, organisations – preferably citizen-based – should be set up with the specific purpose of providing safe shelter and funding for those women who wish to leave the religion of peace. Though the number of women using this kind of service would be small at first, this would quickly change as successful escape stories fill up the international and religious press. We have to do something. It would be scandalous to carry on pretending there isn’t a problem to be solved.

The burkini row is not nearly as funny or light-hearted as some commentators seem to have decided. It represents at its base a life-or-death struggle between slavery and freedom for half of the world population. Chains should not be decorated. They should not be beautiful. They should be as ugly as the purpose for which they exist.

D, LDN

Notes on ‘Ride the Tiger’ (by Julius Evola).

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I’ve been reading philosophy since I was 15 years old. Since my teenage years, my favourite writer has been Friedrich Nietzsche, the predominant poet of the German language and (in my view) the greatest thinker of the last 500 years. But for the last decade or so, I’ve tended to neglect philosophy in favour of history and politics. My degree is in Politics and Economics. I am a political blogger and we all live in a uniquely politicised era.

Julius Evola’s ‘Ride the Tiger’ is the first work of philosophy to distract my attention in many years. You may remember that this blog is named as a refutation of Evola – whose work ‘Revolt against the Modern World’ advocated a rebellion against industrial development.

That book, commonly regarded as his masterpiece, is garbage. ‘Ride the Tiger’ on the other hand, continues to fascinate me. At its heart, this book (described by some reviewers as a self-help book for fascists) ponders the right way for a person of intellectual and spiritual depth to survive an age of stupidity, dissolution and over-democratisation.

To try and allow the reader to learn this ‘correct’ way, Evola takes issue confronts Nietzsche directly by reforming the philosopher’s classical dichotomy of ‘Dionysian’ against ‘Apollonian’.

In case you are unfamiliar with that dichotomy, I’ll try to briefly explain it here.

For Nietzsche, to be ‘Dionysian’ is to live in slack obedience to reaction and emotion; that is, to follow the impulses of pure physiology and worldliness; to live, as it were, without rationalisation (Dionysus, incidentally, was the Greek God of intoxication and wine). Nietzsche often suggests more explicitly in his later work that the reader choose ‘life’ over ‘thought’ and his noted thought experiment imagining an ‘Eternal Recurrence of the same” is designed to provoke this way of thinking in the reader. ISIS and al-Qaeda for example, pursue a life of unrestrained impulse and barbarity. In this way, they are far closer to the Nietzschean ideal than many of his Western readers would care to admit.

The Apollonian spirit, by contrast, is an attitude to life and art that rationalises and ‘stands back’ from existence; one that refuses to follow impulse and places greater value on the mind and the realm of intellect. This is undoubtedly closer to the spirit of the modern age than the former concept, given that we are encouraged to sublimate our instincts into the pursuit of rational goals (wealth creation, civility, security etc…).

In Ride the Tiger, Evola suggests a fusion of both concepts – the construction of what he called Dionysian Apollonism. As this name would suggest, Evola advises us to take inspiration from both philosophies. We should live in a way that honours our nature and innate drives, but in a way that allows us to navigate our way through modern society.

Evola rejects the barbaric as infeasible and self-destructive. He suggests instead the pursuit of primeval goals in a disguise of civility. This is what ‘Ride the Tiger’ is chiefly concerned with.

The title of the book is derived from a Hindu parable. There are many variations on it, but the basic gist is as follows: Imagine a tiger is charging at you at great speed… Your first impulse might be to fight or ‘take on’ the beast. But if you do this, you will surely lose, since the beast is more powerful than you are. However, if you manage to leap on the back of the tiger and ride it, you may be able to harness its energy and strength for your own ends.

For Evola, the tiger is modern industrial society, something he hated with a terrible passion but which he conceded was too strong to oppose. Rather than commit suicide by attempting a futile revolution against it, we should instead try to play by its rules, integrate into its system, but all the while stay faithful to higher and more transcendent concepts.

I understand and concede that Evola’s philosophy is esoteric and strange and also that the Italian was a confused anti-Semite and political fascist. But this short, strange and beguiling work has the potential to haunt the thinking of the reader long after he/she has closed it.

D, LDN.