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I

Fascism is not a doctrine. It is a time-honoured will, obscure and very ancient – and it is written into our soul. If it is different for each nation, that is because each nation possesses its way of saving itself. Such knowledge can be found only at the heart of things. So the fascist idea can’t be grafted on, or transplated. You cannot spray it on to any plant. But those who are fascists truly feel it before they believe in it – they experience the idea more deeply than others.

(Qu’est-ce que le fascisme, Maurice Bardèche, 1962)

In February, David Irving was convicted to three jairs of jail in Austria. The backdrop was two 1989 speeches where he termed the Auschwitz gas chambers a «fairytale» and insisted Adolf Hitler had protected the Jews of Europe. He referred to surviving death camp witnesses as «psychriatic cases», and asserted that there were no extermination camps in the Third Reich.

The jugde repeatedly asked Irving if he still subscribed to the views articulated in the 1989 speeches.

- I made a mistake saying there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz, he admitted, but claimed that the Holocaust figure of six million murdered Jews was ‘a symbolic number’ and said his figures totalled 2.7 million. And he still believed Hitler protected the Jews and tried to put off the Final Solution, at least until after the second world war. For some of his fans, that’s not good enough. They believe his new opinions are «very doubtful», «something he has been forced to say», «lies».

- In Germany and Austria there’s a moral obligation to fight the kind of propaganda peddled by Irving, German historian Hajo Funke stated, – We can’t afford the luxury of the Anglo-Saxon freedom of speech in this regard. – If Austria wants to prove itself a modern democracy, you use argument not the law against Holocaust deniers, said sociologist Christian Fleck at the University of Graz.

When the Norwegian left-wing newspaper, Klassekampen, argued in a similar matter they were promptly attacked by Hans Rustad of the web journal document.no, who wrote that «this is the kind of tolerance that the well-conditioned can dress themselves in. Does it give them a little kick to defend the right of neo-Nazis to hail Hitler and the genocide?». Little more than a week later, Rustad’s web journal joined the list of Norwegian publications printing the Muhammed cartoons from Jyllandsposten. In some ways it’s a paradox. Still, it’s nothing like the story of Robert Brasillach, a story that brings the questions of the Irving case one step further: Does the words of a writer merit legal vengeance?

II

Brasillach, «the James Dean of French fascism», was a gifted man of letters – novelist, poet, playwright. After the German occupation, he became editor-in-chief of the fascist, pro-German newspaper Je Suis Partout, where he launched attacks on Republicans, Communists, Jews and foreigners. In November 1942 he supported the German takeover of the unoccupied zone under the Vichy government, because it «reunited France». He called for death of left-wing politicians and in the summer of 1944 signed the call for the summary execution of all members of the French Resistance. After the liberation of Paris, he hid in an attic, but gave himself up when on September 14 he heard that his mother had been arrested.

Brasillach went to trial in Paris on January 19, 1945 and was sentenced to death, convicted of «intelligence with the enemy». In fact one could say that Brasillach was convicted to death for hate speech. The sentence caused uproar in French literature circles. Fellow author Francois Mauriac, a member of the Resistance himself, circulated a petition to Charles de Gaulle to commute the sentence. But Brasillach was shot. De Gaulle later declared that whereas he had pardoned from execution all those who had not actively colluded with German authorities, he had to make an exception for Brasillach. – Talent, he stated, – is a responsibility.

Maurice Bardèche, the brother-in-law of Brasillach, initially came to prominence as an associate of the latter. He wrote for Je suis partout from 1938 on, but turned his attention fully to politics only in 1945, following the end of World War II as well as Brasillach’s execution. A few years later he wrote «Nuremberg, ou la terre promise», an early revisionist text.

From the documents of the process it is clear that the solution to the Jewish question that had support from the National Socialist leadership was only a gathering of Jews in a certain area, called a Jewish reservation.

(Nuremberg, ou la terre promise, Maurice Bardeche, 1948)

The book was translated to Dutch in the early fifties – «Neurenberg, het beloofde land». The translator’s name was Karel Dillen. Karel Dillen founded Vlaams Nationale Partij, the party that grew into Vlaams Blok, today one of the most successful parties on the European right under the name Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest). He is still part of the party leadership, having been given an honorary leader-title after stepping down as leader.

III

Following the verdict in the Irving-case, Horst Mahler stated:

The Irving trial is a heavy blow against Jewish supremacy. Imagine! A world-famous historian, having held almost twenty years ago a lecture on his findings, earns for that a three-years-sentence. That is the revival of inquistion in Europe. The Europeans of today will not accept inquisition. Inquisition is a crime. The «judges» of Vienna are perpetrators of a capital crime and will be punished for that. Europe is at the dawn of a revolution to free itself from the Jewish yoke. The Holocaust is the biggest lie in history. [...] Irving did what Galileo Galilei did to save his life.

If you think you recognize Mahler’s name, it’s because you do. Mahler cofounded the German left-wing terrorist group Rote Arme Fraktion. Today, he’s an active member in Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, and he defended them in court when the federal government tried to have the party banned for being anti-constitutional in 2003.

In the 2004 state elections of Saxony, NPD won 9.2% of the votes. On the website of their group in the Sachsen Landtag, the regional parliament, they focus on a «demographical crisis» that needs to be stopped; refer to gays and lesbians as «decadent and lebensfeindlich» (i.e. hostile to life) and refer to the media and political parties of Germany as anti-German. One of their representatives, Klaus-Jürgen Menzel, illustratingly enough once stated: «Odin is my witness, these subsidies were forced upon me by the Jews in Brussels. In that way they want to dissolve the substance of the German people».

NPD-member Mahler has kept busy also outside the NPD, in a thinktank called Deutsches Kolleg, a thinktank that calls for a fourth German Reich. The 12th of September 2001 he published a notorious text called «Independence Day – Live»:

The air attacks of 11 September 2001 upon New York and Washington mark the end of the American Century, the end of Global Capitalism, and thus the end of the secular Yahweh cult, of Mammonism. [...] It is the Yahweh-cult, setting devout Jews [on the path] to the attainment of world power through money-lending, which has given to the present-day capitalist system its lethal dynamics.

IV

Obviously, there’s a long way from fringe lunatic Horst Mahler to Filip Dewinter, one of the front figures of Vlaams Belang and a man who has solidly placed himself in Flemish politics. Dewinter does not talk of Mammonism or the «secular Yahweh cult», he does not spout anti-Semitism, and he definitely did not express any joy over the 11th September. But yet, when Adi Schwartz of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz interviewed Dewinter last year, he found a large poster from the 1960s hanging in the office of the politician. The poster read «Europe, free yourself», and was signed by a number of nationalist parties in Europe, including the NPD and the neo-fascist Italian Socialist Movement. What could these parties possibly have in common?

The answer is that they’re all inflicted by a touch of madness. Sometimes it’s just a light touch, a cold breeze bringing its poisonous ideas with it. Sometimes it’s more. But regardless of how strong it is, it’s a touch of madness that goes right back to the anti-Semitic magazines a young man named Adolf Hitler probably read when he stayed in Vienna. That might sound like a cheap political trick; it isn’t. The roots of the far right are sometimes just to easy to track. Here’s from the 1997 annual report on racism and anti-semitism from the Stephen Roth Institute at Tel Aviv University:

Flemish nationalism of the 1930s, Flemish collaboration with Nazi Germany, and glorification of the Vlaanderen Division of the Waffen SS, are legacies embraced by the party [Vlaams belang]. One of the most fanatical defenders of these values is VB vice-president Roland Raes. Although in 1995 VB voted for the law prohibiting denial or minimization of the Holocaust, members of the VB are known as Holocaust deniers. The party’s theory of nationalism is based on the German volkisch conception. The term race flamande (Flemish race) is frequently used by VB ideologists.

Here’s the 2004 report:

Since its success in the 1991 legislative elections, the Vlaams Blok (VB; now Vlaams Belang ? see below), which has been part of the far right surge in Europe in recent years, along with France’s NF and Austria’s FPÖ, has moderated its tone considerably on matters related to the Jews and the Holocaust; nevertheless, it still retains ties with small neo-fascist and antisemitic groups, such as Voorpost and Were Di.

Voorpost. Were Di. The paramilitary group Vlaamse Militanten Orde. The Francophone Belgian journalist Jean-Claude Defossé exposes them all in his TV documentary ”La face cachée du Vlaams Blok’. Amongst the video footage he has dug up from archives is a scene from the German military graveyard in Lommel, where a group of Flemish nationalists have gathered, wanting to put down flowers on the graves of Flemish SS Soldiers. It’s 1988, and in the gathered group there are members of Voorpost and of the VMO, by then long-outlawed for being a «private militia», as well as Filip Dewinter, and Bert Eriksson, the leader of the VMO from 1971 on. To see the two of them together should not be a surprise, the connections between Eriksson and the Vlaams Blok (now Belang) are many. When Eriksson was convicted to a year of jail sentence because of his involvement with the VMO, Karel Dillen greeted him as «the great Flemish leader, who has been put in a Belgian jail for his Flemish national ideal» at the shortly following Vlaams Blok congress.

But what kind of a great Flemish leader was Eriksson? During WWII he had been a member of the Hitlerjugend Flanders, and it was more than a youthful fling. In an interview in Het Laatste Nieuws on the 18th of May 2001 he expressed his belief «in the good of national socialism», he described Nazism as «clean» and «idealist», and stated – not very surprisingly – «I am a racist». In the seventies and early eighties his organisation, the VMO, became known for violent actions towards immigrants, walloons and leftwingers. In February 1980, for instance, the left-wing book store ‘De Rode Mol’ (The red mole) in Malines was attacked; inventory smashed, two people hurt. The VMO-magazine Alarm wrote:

Flemish friends, as you know the Rode Mol in Mechelen was stormed in the month of February. One can discuss the method being used by the nationalist commando, but one thing all can agree about: red moles do not belong in our Flemish community. This commando did not want to do anything else than what our justice system should have done years ago; to intervene against these red drugs- and porn-spreaders. These reds were not doing anything else than helping our Flemish youth to go to hell! Eight friends were regrettably enough arrested…

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