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>From http://www.civnet.org/journal/issue5/revwart.htm
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[civreviews]
january–february 1998 • vol 2. no. 1
Alona Wartofsky on the
resurgence of fascism.
The Beast Reawakens
By Martin A. Lee
Little, Brown $24.95; 560 pages
in the desolate German city of Hoyerswerda, a crowd of angry young Germans
throws rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails at a hostel housing people considered to
be ethnic undesirables. The young hooligans then march along the city's streets,
waving Third Reich flags. Some of the "undesirables" try to escape but are beaten
mercilessly by the mob. Days later, as the victims of the attack are evacuated by
officials, townspeople throw stones at their departing buses. In another German
town, the Baltic seaport Rostock, police stand by and watch as a group of thugs sets
fire to a shelter for unwanted outsiders. As the shelter burns, the crowd sings
"Tannenbaum" and "Deutschland Üuber Alles." Within days, the government orders
all outsiders to leave Rostock.
"The sharp escalation of neofascist activity constitutes one of the most dangerous
trends in international politics," writes Martin A. Lee in The Beast Reawakens
These events did not take place under the auspices of the Third Reich. The
Hoyerswerda pogrom, directed toward Asian and African guest workers, occurred in
the fall of 1991. Rostock's victims, Romanian Gypsies, were attacked during the
summer of the following year. More recently in the news, a grainy homemade video
broadcast on German television revealed that such exercises in Nazi nostalgia are
not limited to fringe groups. The footage recorded German army troops preparing for
deployment to the Balkans in 1994; some of the soldiers raised their arms in Nazi
salutes and made disparaging remarks about Jews.
"The sharp escalation of neofascist activity constitutes one of the most dangerous
trends in international politics," writes Martin A. Lee in The Beast Reawakens, his
instructive survey of the post-World-War-II fascist and neo-fascist landscape. "The
growing clout of far Right political parties in Europe; the emergence of a "Red-Brown'
alliance' in Russia; the rise of the U.S. militia movement; the mounting pattern of
violence against refugees, immigrants, guest workers, asylum seekers, and racial
minorities throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere–all are manifestations of a
widespread neofascist resurgence."
a vibrant democratic culture is not conducive to the growth of fascism
Fascism is generally defined as a political movement embracing rigid one-party
dictatorship, private economic enterprise under government control, and belligerent
nationalism, racism, and militarism. Generally defined, because historians and
academics have failed to agree on its precise definition, in part due to the protean
quality of fascism itself. Mussolini's fascism differed from Hitler's, and as The Beast
Reawakens reminds us, while some contemporary fascists shave their heads, wear
swastikas, and engage in paramilitary and terrorist training, others present
themselves as ordinary politicians, toning down their racist views and recasting
themselves as national populists in order to establish themselves within the political
mainstream. It is, of course, part of the burden of democracy to withstand–to some
degree–odious views as well as benevolent ones. Indeed, Lee quotes Frankfurt
School philosopher Theodor Adorno, who viewed "the continued existence of
fascism WITHIN democracy [as] more threatening than the continued existence of
fascist tendencies AGAINST democracy." Yet as Lee also argues, "A vibrant
democratic culture is not conducive to the growth of fascism."
like their predecessors, today's neo- Nazis resort to jumbled distortions of history to
suit their purposes
The Beast Reawakens documents how, during the Cold War, unrepentant Nazis
campaigned both covertly and openly to stoke the fires of fascism, bequeathing it
and its accordant hatreds and irrationalities to a new generation in countries
throughout the world. In later chapters, Lee notes that recent global
developments–particularly the reunification of Germany and the collapse of Soviet
Bloc Communism– have resulted in the kind of uncertainties that right-wing
extremists have successfully manipulated to their advantage.
Like their predecessors, today's neo- Nazis resort to jumbled distortions of history to
suit their purposes. Various permutations of far-right extremists deny that the
Holocaust ever took place; others believe that it did, and that it was a glorious
event.
In the words of one American neo-Nazi, "When the people can no longer tolerate the
Jews, those people who don't believe in the Holocaust will want one; and those who
do believe in the Holocaust will want another one."
As the violent incidents at Hoyerswerda, Rostock, and in dozens of other cities from
Seattle to Moscow have demonstrated, contemporary far-right extremists hardly limit
their rancor to apocalyptic predictions. Remarkably tenacious and resourceful, many
of them use the Internet to hawk Nazi literature and to network with fellow travelers
across the globe. According to Lee, far-right extremists have effectively nudged the
German government to the right, particularly in regard to its once- generous
immigration policies (established after World War II). Asylum seekers in reunified
Germany are currently required to have their skull sizes measured and the shapes of
their noses coded according to ethnic type, procedures disturbingly reminiscent of
Nazi Germany. And the government of reunified Germany funds militant revanchist
organizations that campaign to expand Germany's borders to include parts of
Poland, the Czech Republic, and Russia.
Lee also explores the influential role that neofascists play in mass-based far right
European political parties, including France's Front National, Belgium's Vlaams Blok,
and Italy's National Alliance. He revisits Croatian president Franjo Tudjman's
penchant for minimizing the Holocaust, a word Tudjman used in quotation marks in
his book Wastelands of Historical Truth. Lee examines the precarious post-
Communist politics of Russia, where far-right extremists openly hawk Nazi
memorabilia and observers have noted alarming resemblances to the Weimar
Republic (high unemployment and inflation, falling birthrates, rampant crime, official
corruption, etc.). He also explores links between the far right in America and the
Republican Party. Too briefly, Lee examines ties between German neo-Nazis and
America's militia movement, including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's
association with a German army veteran who led paramilitary training at a white
supremacist enclave on the Arkansas-Oklahoma border.
a sick ludicrousness frequently characterizes the neo-Nazi demimonde
A journalist who has written for Newsday, Rolling Stone, and The Village Voice, Lee
is an engaging writer; The Beast Reawakens is more of a brisk read than one might
expect. Lee presents vivid portraits of political malefactors whose names are vaguely
familiar–including Liberty Lobby founder William Carto, his inspiration Francis Parker
Yockey, and National Bolshevik Front leader Eduard Limonov. A sick ludicrousness
frequently characterizes the neo-Nazi demimonde, and Lee relates how the leader of
a Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary organization expresses great affection for
"Aloizovich" Hitler. Italian devotees of a movement known as Nazi-Maoism chant
such slogans as "Long live the fascist dictatorship of the proletariat!" And petty
intercine conflicts, inevitable as far-right circles overlap, can be as trivial as
German
neo-Nazis debating whether it is appropriate for a nationalists like themselves to
enjoy Italian pizza or Chinese food.
The Beast Reawakens traces the postwar careers of Otto Ernst Remer and Otto
Skorzeny, two Nazis who met while helping the Fuhrer restore order after an ill-fated
coup attempt on the afternoon of July 20, 1944. A bomb exploded that afternoon at
the Wolf's Lair, the Fuhrer's headquarters in East Prussia, and in the weeks that
followed, punitive military fratricide resulted in the gruesome murders of two
thousand people, including many high-ranking officers. The coup's planners were not
liberators determined to save the world from Nazism–one of them, for example, had
commanded an Einsatzgruppen (a Nazi mobile killing squad) that was responsible
for the brutal genocide of Jews on the eastern front. Nonetheless, in the postwar
years, asserts Lee, West German politicians seized upon the failed coup attempt as
evidence of "the other Germany" that had bravely opposed the Third Reich.
"The myth of the `other Germany' that was fostered by the Twentieth of July provided
a convenient alibi not only for the West German government but also for various
Western espionage agencies that recruited Third Reich veterans en masse during
the early years of the Cold War," writes Lee. The Cold War, he notes, became a
"walking stick" for Nazis who played the superpowers against each other. "Instead of
truly denazifying the German menace, the United States and Soviet Union plunged
into the deep freeze of the Cold War, thereby allowing the fascist beast to acquire a
new lease on life."
democracy is a prophylactic against the fascist virus, but even democracies must
remain vigilant
Following the war, Skorzeny collaborated with the CIA while Remer opted to follow
Bismark's mandate that Germany look to the East. Both men, particularly Remer,
also mentored various neo-Nazis. Remer, notes Lee, served as "a living symbol of
the Hitler era," one that provided "a sense of continuity between past and present."
Remer was one of the leaders of the neo-Nazi Sozialistische Reichs-Partei during
the early '50s. Three decades later, he was a frequent lecturer; his appearances
included a visit to the annual neo-Nazi enclave in Dixmude, Belgium in 1983, and in
the fall of 1987, he spoke at the pseudo-scholarly Institute for Historical Review's
Eighth International Revisionist Conference in Irvine, California. But one of Remer's
best pupils was back home–Bela Ewald Althans, a German whom Lee describes as
a "Yuppie neo-Nazi" who deliberately set himself apart from the sterotypical
swastika-tatooed skinhead neo-Nazi. Althans lived with Remer, who introduced him
to important figures in the international fascist underground. Althans also served as
the youth leader of the Freedom Movement, a group Remer established during the
mid-80s to push for a German alliance with Russia.
While the protean quality of fascism makes it difficult to define, it is also part of
what
makes it so remarkably resilient. Lee quotes British historian Roger Griffin, who has
spent much of his career studying theories of fascism and compares it to a
"supervirus which constantly evolves to accommodate changes in its habitat,
producing a wide variety of new strains resistant to traditional prophylactics." Here,
then, is the crucial lesson of The Beast Reawkens: Democracy is a prophylactic
against the fascist virus, but even democracies must remain vigilant.
Alona Wartofsky is an editor at The Washington Post.
End<{{{
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