oyvindstrommen.be traktningar

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Hittil er det slett ikkje miljøet, men heller Framstegspartiet som har tent på avgiftsauken på diesel og bensin. Og det er ikkje så rart. Ein femøring er så liten at han ikkje er i bruk lenger, og ein hundrelapp i året for ein vanleg bilbrukar rekk vel knapt til to Munkholm som utepils. Då er det klart at dette ikkje er noko miljøtiltak: det skal litt kraftigare lut til.

Men samstundes demonstrerer dette at Framstegspartiet har eit stort problem. Deira problem er at noko er i ferd med å skje som Jens Stoltenberg slett ikkje kan klandrast for.
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While decidedly full of all kinds of crap, more crap and thoroughly stupid crap, YouTube has actually developed into a decent source for finding news stories and the like. Below, you will find three videos on the Eurofascist British National Party that are all worth watching.

“They’re all about saving our culture!”, is the sobbing comment made by several people under this video. Funny how a bunch of fascists, some of whom even have ties to terrorism, are going to achieve that.

“We’re not racist“. Or maybe you are?

A Dispatches documentary about Mark Collett, once a rising star in the BNP. This video interrupted his ascension, but don’t worry: Mark is back in the track, he’s currently central in the party’s Publicity Department, creating “The Best publicity material ever produced”, to quote a December article on the BNP web site. The documentary comes in six parts on YouTube, this one is the first one.

It’s an old post over at Guftafs’ blog, but hey: it’s amusing enough to still be more than worth-while checking out.

Admittedly, Tommy Funebo, Guftafs’ source, isn’t the guy I would pay the most attention to in the Swedish debate on Sverigedemokraterna. A former member, he’s involved in constant flamewars with various SD-bloggers. If you understand Swedish, it is amusing (it sure beats most reality TV shows), but not really very informative. Many unfounded claims are thrown in both directions.

In this case, however, Funebo is referring to an interview with Dansk Folkeparti-politician Søren Krarup which was published by the Ritzau press agency, and can also be found – for instance – here. Krarup expresses hope that both parts of Sweden and parts of Germany may, once again, become Danish lands. On German Schleschwig, he says:

- I hope that the Southern Sleschwig population realises where it truly belongs. That it is actually Danish. But that depends on its’ own free decision, says Søren Krarup.

I do wonder what the German “National Democrats” think of this, but I guess they’re too busy trying to figure out how to get Sudetenland back.

The Courrier International offers a translation from the Flemish newspaper De Morgen:

Flemish politicians have been scrambling to react to a United Nations report on the ‘wooncode‘. Much ado about nothing, in fact, for it has to be said that this report is not worthy of the front-page”, considers Yves Desmet.

“Even if it is crazy to have to meet more linguistic conditions to obtain social housing than to get into the royal palace, we can also be surprised by the image Flemish politicians are giving the Flanders region. It must not be forgotten that the Flanders region has the biggest far-right party in Europe [Vlaams Belang] and that its new leader considers the apartheid regime one of the best forms of state in the history of the world.

In all large European towns you can see policemen and women with different coloured skins. Here, it is forbidden to wear a veil behind a cash register. Nowhere else in Europe is there such discrimination against immigrants and their children in employment and education.

The editorial is available in Dutch here. It also notes (my translation):

Yes, how is it possible that this region has deserved to be seen as an egoistic and discriminating little country, throughout Europe?

Yes, Yves Desmet is being sarcastic. Perhaps the example of the “wooncode” is not the most valid in this context, but as a foreigner who has lived (in a neighborhood of many Turks and Moroccans) in Flanders, I can safely say that Desmet still has a point. My studies into European neo-fascism has only proven to me that that point is even more valid.

Indeed, there’s something very worrying at play in Flemish society when a party such as the Vlaams Belang can win as many votes as they do and when groups such as Voorpost (read my debate with its’ press spokesman here) can be something more than a negligible fringe group. Neo-fascism and a form of ethnical nativism quite remarkably similar to the apartheid regime of South Africa actually plays a political role in today’s Belgium, only half an hour’s drive away from the “capital of Europe”, Brussels. It’s not in power, but it’s definitely not toothless.

Foto: Øyvind Strømmen

Bled-sjøen, Slovenia. Foto: Øyvind Strømmen

I can’t believe the news today… well, actually… I sort of can.

There’s nothing new about Vlaams Belang, Front National, the FPÖ and the Bulgarian Ataka joining up. They’ve done it before. Now, they’re doing it again.

But as they do it again, let’s take a look at Volen Siderov, the leader of one of the parties in the new “nationalist alliance” with -to quote Le Pen – “the small differences that might exist”. Here he is, in a January 2002 revisionist conference in Moscow. You’ll find him on the extreme right. Literally.

Actually, here they all are: our guy Volen Siderov, David Duke, Ahmed Rami, Jürgen Graf, etc. What a fun group of people.

UPDATE: According to the web site of Vlaams Belang, they have not joined the new party. MEP Philip Clayes writes:

The president of the Austrian FPÖ, Heinz-Christian Strache, expressed a wish to establish contacts with democratic right parties in all European countries, so they can support each other in the battle against the politically correct establishement in all these countries.

Vlaams Belang also took part in these discussions. The Vlaams Belang is obviously prepared to have close contact and good relations to like-minded parties abroad. At this time we do however not want to commit to any form of European political party grouping. [...]

We prefer to have bilateral contacts with European friends in spirit, rather than taking part in an umbrella party.

This, of course, does not change the fact that they are choosing to meet with Ataka, a party Paul Belien in the Brussels Journal (hardly a notorious Marxist source) has described as “openly anti-Semite”. It also does not change the fact that they were allied in the European parliamentary group ITS until a few months ago, together with Alessandra Mussolini’s Azione Sociale. She has inherited more than her name from her grandfather.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to further announcements from the new European party group; according to Strache they are in talks with several parties across Europe. It’s going to be exciting which party is the next “democratic right party” which comes along.

A comment on Gates of Vienna, probably a notoriously Marxist source, says it all:

Well, that’s what I call a rather bad company. I’m surprised there’s no word from our national-comunists, Romania Mare.

But after all, the Romanians might be difficult to get to join if they’re also trying to get the Italians back on. Thanks to their lovely radical ethnic nativism, the Eurofascists are not too good at building alliances.

“I’m a victim!”, A. Hitler

The Norwegian political grouplet called Norgespatriotene – the Norway Patriots – would normally hardly be worth mentioning. This group, which is operating under the slogan “A free Norway – a white Norway” is so thoroughly parodic that it is very unlikely to gain any political hearing whatsoever. Having a leader with a recent background from the Nazi-Odinist cult of Vigrid – which is quite open about their extreme anti-Semitism and in their reverance of Hitler – will probably not be helpful. That the same leader has been convicted for making a death threat against a high-ranking member of government probably won’t help either.

Consequently, the best thing Norgespatriotene can hope for is media attention, and even that has been sparse.

That’s probably why the group – which, judging by the links on its webpage (if you absolutely want to visit: google it) considers themselves friendly to both the British BNP, the Flemish VB and the Swedish Nationaldemokraterna – has adopted a very crude media strategy: political shock effect.

Recently they’ve attacked the editor of a leftist Norwegian news magazine for being a “traitor”, “worse than Quisling” (Vigrid is quite open in their support of him, too, so the NP leader might have become more “moderate” since he left the Nazi-Odinists), and saying that they look forward to her and other traitors being penalised in an upcoming legal purge.

One of their articles on this editor, Martine Aurdal, is illustrated with a picture of a gun. The implications are rather obvious, and Aurdal has – understandably – reported the grouplet to the police.

Why do I even bother to mention these guys? Well, because the wording in their attack on Aurdal is remarkably similar to the kind of language Charles Johnson of LGF was met with when he supported freedom of speech for a British blogger, but simultaneously distanced himself from the Eurofascist British party BNP. The blogger, calling himself Lionheart, responded with writing:

Little Green Footballs you are a traitor, nothing less than the equivalent of a Second World War Nazi collaborator who would have been shot because of his treason – Iam sure there are many who would have obliged!

(For relevant LGF posts, look here, here, here, here, here and here).

I support the right of Norgespatriotene, Lionheart and for that matter radical Islamist groups to state their opinions (death threats are another thing). In fact, I encourage it. Freedom of speech helps exposing what guys like these are really all about. If Norway was not a country with a considerable freedom of speech, Vigrid would have had to go underground with their Nazi-Odinist views, operating in all secrecy. Norgespatriotene would have had to wrap their words in cotton and no one would have known about the political past of their leader or of any of their other members.

Freedom of speech will alsom limit (but not stop) fascists from playing the “victim game”; a game even Hitler played. If you claim that you have no freedom of speech and everyone still knows what you wrote on your blog yesterday and what you were quoted on in the local newspaper the day before, you’ll look like the fool you are.

The discussion on freedom of speech aside, it is tempting to look at the meaning of the word “traitor” – what does it mean?

According to my etymology dictionary the word comes from Latin through French and means “betrayer”, or literally “one who delivers”.

To be a traitor – as Lionheart now repeatedly has called Johnson – you have to commit treason against something. Many of the readers commenting on Lionheart’s blog make it perfectly clear what they think Johnson has betrayed: “Charles Johnson is no enemy of the jihadists” and he “works for the far Left” (on top of it all – he’s fat and lazy and has “hippy prejudices”).

In other words: Johnson is an enemy of the West, and willingly so. And this makes perfect sense. If you live in the fairytale world of a Total Idea.

Sadly – many do live in precisely such a world; being completely convinced that there is a massive conspiracy going on, with the intention of turning Europe into an Islamic colony, a conspiracy involving a large number of leading European politicians, media workers, academics, leftist activists and even the Vatican. In this world-view, the enemy is very resourceful and backed by considerable parts of the societal, cultural and political elites. And this enemy is plotting to take over power and turn Europe into an Islamic theocracy; a cruel dictatorship. In fact, if you are to believe many of the believers in this theory, this is already happening, the EU is a step in that direction.
In this kind of context, it will make sense to some people to support neo-fascist groups; because – first of all – what their opponents (who are co-conspirators, “Marxists”, etc.) say of them can not possibly be true, and – secondly – because they are “the only alternative”.

Allow me to refer to a well-known conspiracy theory, largely based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an equally well-known literary forgery. What does this document actually outline?

It outlines an enormous conspiracy which will create societies “creating the impression of freedom of press, freedom of speech, human rights and democracy, all which are subsequently undermined and become mer illusions or deceptive smokescreens behind which actual oppression lies”. Have ever heard similar things stated about the EU? Have you ever heard reasonable criticism against EU legislation turn being turned into this kind of propaganda? The enemy spoken of in the Protocols are to achieve this undermining of traditional society with the assistance of Liberalism and Marxism. Have you ever heard similar things said today?

In the Protocols, the Freemasons are of course in on it, too. And the final goal? A world-wide dictatorship.

What this Total Idea led to should be no secret to anyone, although some Holocaust denialists and some fascist activists still try to propagate similar ideas; sometimes even using the same well-known literary forgery.

Today, we have a different situation. First of all, there is a real threat from Islamic radicals who actually do want a world-wide theocratic dictatorship. These guys – who believe in a Total Idea of their own – are dangerous, but they are most certainly not powerful.
When Oriana Fallaci wrote the below she was wrong. There is no conspiracy.

The most … ideological fraud, cultural indecency, moral prostitution, deception, our time has produced. A conspiracy, a plot, made possible by the bankers who invented the farce of the European Union.

There is ignorance. There is foolishness. There is a lacking will to confront reactionary thinking amongst Muslim immigrants in Europe. There are various shades of troublesome political thinking. In some leftist circles there is so much anti-Americanism and so much anti-Israeli thinkiing that people end up supporting groups such as the Hamas, or the Hizb’allah or even the Taliban.

But all of these things are not part of the same jigzaw puzzle, they are not part of a giant conspiracy. They can not and should not be explained with a Total Idea. Many people say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I’d say that the road to hell is paved with Total Ideas.

Of course, groups such as the BNP are concerned with much more than the alleged conspiracy to turn Europe Arabic.  They are fascists and they are racists – like this video so clearly demonstrates. In fact, their leadership is not that concerned with the threat posed by radical Muslim groups at all. Instead, he is trying to take advantage of (oftentimes understandable) anti-Islamic sentiments amongst ordinary people. You don’t believe me? Well, believe free speech. The below quote is taken from a long article written by Nick Griffin in 2006.

Here he criticises “people” for having “one-track concern about ‘the Jews’”, but the most interesting section is the below:

We should be positioning ourselves to take advantage for our own political ends of the growing wave of public hostility to Islam currently being whipped up by the mass media. This is not a matter of dancing to neo-con tunes, but of finding members of the public who are already used to the sound of that kind of music willing to cross over and dance to our tune.

For reasons of natural sentiment and neo-con war propaganda alike, the public will not join in any group dance which appears to include Muslims (in Britain and Europe in particular) or A-rabs (in the USA especially). And the more of our boys who come home in body bags, and the more the irresponsible neo-con project inflames the Islamic world against us, the more strongly this factor will affect the political climate.

In the real world, it doesn’t matter in the slightest whether the Danish cartoons furore or 9/11 were the work of Islamic fundamentalists with huge levels of support among ‘ordinary’ Muslims (for the record, my belief); or of Muslim extremists who no more represent mainstream Islam than the KKK represents white America; or of CIA or Mossad black bag teams seeking to stampede us into World War Three.

[...]

From the point of view of those of us working and organising to save the nations of the West and the great race that built them from irreversible subjection and subsequent extinction, it really doesn’t matter which group Providence has chosen to drop – at the eleventh hour – a giant spanner into the works of the multi-culti tolerance machine, and of the even bigger debt-recycling contraption that passes for the American economy on which it is perched.

Who dropped that spanner, and why they did so, will be a matter of interest to future generations of historians, and even perhaps the next generation of Western politicians. But for our generation, such arguments are – like putting ourselves in a position where the public could be persuaded that we are sympathetic to the enemy in the now unavoidable Clash of Civilisations – a luxury we cannot afford.

All we need to know is that the spanner has been dropped in among the whirring, clanking cogs and wheels, and that pieces of the multi-racial genocide machine are already breaking and flying off as a result. Sooner or later, one of those pieces may well in turn foul up something in the workings of the debt-recycling machine, and then opportunity will knock for those who are already organised and positioned to take full advantage of it.

If you subscribe to a total world-view there’s a risk you’ll start thinking that Nick Griffin and his mates are part of the solution. And there’s a chance that even Irshad Manji would be considered part of the problem if she had happened to live in Europe. After all, she is a Muslim.

If you subscribe to such a total world-view there’s a risk that you will start considering anyone who disagrees with you “a traitor”, even if this opponent happens to run one of the most well-known blogs critical to Islam on the Internet.

I do realize that many people might be offended when I include criticism of Oriana Fallaci above. Charles Johnson might be, too. In one way, this is understandable. I believe many people remember Fallaci for eloquent statements such as these:

I find it shameful that in Italy there should be a procession of individuals dressed as suicide bombers who spew vile abuse at Israel, hold up photographs of Israeli leaders on whose foreheads they have drawn the swastika, incite people to hate the Jews. And who, in order to see Jews once again in the extermination camps, in the gas chambers, in the ovens of Dachau and Mauthausen and Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen et cetera, would sell their own mother to a harem.

I find it shameful that the Catholic Church should permit a bishop, one with lodgings in the Vatican no less, a saintly man who was found in Jerusalem with an arsenal of arms and explosives hidden in the secret compartments of his sacred Mercedes, to participate in that procession and plant himself in front of a microphone to thank in the name of God the suicide bombers who massacre the Jews in pizzerias and supermarkets. To call them “martyrs who go to their deaths as to a party.”

I find it shameful that in France, the France of Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, they burn synagogues, terrorize Jews, profane their cemeteries…

I have no problems agreeing with Fallaci there. I also have no problems seeing her as the excellent writer she doubtlessly was. But that she sometimes was very correct does not make her general analysis correct. That she sometimes was eloquent does not mean that she always spoke the truth. And that she was brave does not mean that she was always insightful.

I have two major problems with Fallaci. The first problem is that she contributed to the mythos of Eurofascism through propagating a Total Idea, as outlined in the quote above. The second problem I have with Fallaci is how she bent the truth to propagate this very Idea. I hope you will allow me to give one of the oddest examples of this.

In her book “The Force of Reason”, Fallaci writes about Switzerland and a paragraph in their Penal Law which she describes as being more or less designed for Muslim immigrants to win “any private, professional or ideological conflict  through pointing at religious racism or race discrimination”.

While I have serious issues with all laws that are meant to limit free speech, I was astonished when I first read this part of Fallaci’s book, and I remain astonished even today. The reason? Fallaci gives three examples of people who have been convicted because of the mentioned paragraph: Erwin Kessler, Gaston Armand Amaudruz and Robert Faurisson. To me, those three names are connected to something entirely different that criticism against Islam. But Fallaci does not mention who these people are. She merely states that Kessler “like Brigitte Bardot, can not stand halal laughter” and that “Today, it is not allowed to go through History and tell about it in any other way than the official version”.

It fits into her ideological jigzaw. It fits into her Total Idea. But as a matter of fact, none of three men Fallaci gives as examples were convicted because of attacking Muslims or criticising Islam. All three are notorious anti-Semites, who were convicted because of Holocaust denialism or more general anti-Semitic statements.

Robert Faurisson, a former professor of literature at the University of Lyons, is one of the most well-known Holocaust deniers in the world, a man who speaks of “the so-called gassings” as a “gigantic politico-financial swindle whose beneficiaries are the state of Israel and international Zionism”, its main victims the Germans and the Palestinians. Notably, Faurisson was inspired by Maurice Bàrdeche, a notable French post-WWII fascist who also served as an ideological inspiration for several Vlaams Blok-politicians. Faurisson interprets the Nazi decree which mandated that
Jews wear a yellow star on pain of death as a measure to ensure the safety of German soldiers, because Jews, he argues, engaged in espionage, terrorism, black market operations and arms trafficking.

Jewish kids, forced to wear the star from the age of six, were – according to Faurisson – also involved in “all sorts of illicit or esistance activities against the Germans”. In the United States, Faurisson is somewhat known, because of the socalled Faurisson Affair. To those interested in learning more about his thinking, I recommend Deborah Lipstadt’s book “Denying the Holocaust – the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory”. Actually, I highly recommend that book in any case.
Gaston Armaud Amaudruz, is also a Holocaust revisionist (and a fascist too). He was convicted, according to the BBC, for an article he wrote, as wel as for distributing 24 Holocaust revisionist books. In the mentioned article Amaudruz stated: “For my part, I maintain my position: I don’t believe in the gas chambers. Let the exterminationists provide the proof and I will believe it. But as I’ve been waiting for this proof for decades, I don’t believe I will see it soon”. He also said it was “impossible” for six million Jews to have been murdered by the Nazis during World War II.

Erwin Kessler (German wikipedia) is less known, but this far right-wing and animal rights activist was sentenced to two months in prison for comparing Jewish ritual slaughter to Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust, saying that there was no difference between Nazi hangmen and the Jews who use the same methods. An Israeli Foreign ministry report states:

Erwin Kessler, a Swiss radical right-wing activist who was sentenced in the summer of 1997 to two months imprisonment for breaking the Swiss law against racism. was found to be once more disseminating anti-Semitic propaganda through distribution of material to mail boxes. In his magazine, Kessler repeats his comparison of Jewish ritual slaughter to the actions of the Nazis in World War II. He also recently attacked the rabbi of the Jewish community in Basel in his magazine.

I find Fallaci’s choice of these three people to be very odd indeed, but I do not think it means Fallaci herself was an anti-Semite or a fascist. What this does prove is a very dishonest argument. And such dishonest arguments are sadly frequent in Fallaci’s latter works, as – I believe – they are necessary to her Total Idea.

Dishonest arguments are also necessary to paint Charles Johnson as guilty of “treason”. But in a world-view solidly rested on a conspiracy theory such dishonesty is the rule, not the exception.