by James Miller

POLITICAL RADICALS OFTEN SHOUT, “Fascist! Fascist!” at anyone who doesn’t agree with their views. The term is especially popular among college students. But do such people actually know what Fascism is? Have they studied it?

Unfortunately, Fascism has an undeserved bad reputation. Regardless of this reputation, Fascism is a very sensible economic and social ideology. There are a few different “flavors” of Fascism, but basically they all come down to the following.

Fascism is an economic system in which a nation’s government plays a central role in monitoring all banking, trade, production, and labor activity which takes place within the nation. Such monitoring is done for the sole purpose of safeguarding and advancing the nation and its people. Under Fascism, the government will not approve of any business activity unless that business has a positive impact on the nation as a whole and the people of the nation — this is the axiom which determines everything under Fascism.

In other words, the government asks, “Is XYZ Enterprises good for our nation and our people?” If yes, it’s approved. If no, it’s not approved. When they ask “Is it good?” they mean, “Is XYZ Enterprises good for the workers? Do they pay a fair wage? Do they produce a product or provide a service which advances our nation and our people technologically, morally, spiritually, and in health, et cetera?” For example, a pornography company would not be allowed because pornography corrupts people generally and exploits and degrades women particularly. Also, “free” trade agreements (such as what the U.S. has with China) would never be allowed because such trade agreements result in companies sending jobs overseas (where labor is dirt cheap). Such an activity, of course, would undermine a nation’s labor class. This is entirely unacceptable and thus not allowed under a Fascist economic model.

Fascism is based on free enterprise — but with constraints (the primary constraint being “Is the particular economic activity in question good for our nation?”). Also, a businessman can become wealthy in a Fascist country, and the government has no objection to this (this is in stark contrast to Communism). Fascism also encourages private ownership of property (again, in stark contrast to Communism where private property is not allowed).

An Italian coin of 1923, fasces on reverse

In a nutshell, Fascism basically tells entrepreneurs, “Go ahead and start a business, earn a lot of money, be successful, but don’t produce any products or services which damage our nation and our nation’s people… and make sure you treat your workers fairly and pay them a living wage. If you don’t do these things, we’ll shut you down.”

Under Fascism, usury is not allowed. The government tightly controls monetary policy and banking. The government issues/prints money and lends it interest free, as needed, to grow the economy and ultimately serve the citizens.

The above is the economic aspect of Fascism. There is also a cultural/social aspect to Fascism as well. Under Fascism, government plays a key role in monitoring film, theatre, art, literature, music, education, etc. in order to maintain a high moral standard, keep things clean and respectable, promote a strong sense of patriotism and honor, and prevent the dissemination of depraved filth which corrupts society.

A US coin of 1945, fasces on reverse

With regard to political legislation introduced by a Fascist government, the same criterion is applied — “Will this proposed law benefit the nation as a whole and the people of our nation?”

Fascism also encourages respect for the environment, as Fascists understand that Nature is the giver of life and thus must be preserved. Contrast this environmental view with that of Capitalism which too often takes the short-term view with regard to natural resources and foolishly believes that pollution is a necessary byproduct of profit. Also, and somewhat related to environmental issues, Fascism holds very progressive views with regard to animal rights.

Also, under Fascism, if a person doesn’t like things, he/she can leave the country.

Contrast this with Communism where if you don’t like things, you better keep your mouth shut — and where, of course, there is no option to leave: You will submit or else be sent to a re-education camp where you’ll be brainwashed to accept the Communist system. And, if you still resist, you’ll probably be killed. Again, there is no leaving. Submit or suffer the consequences.

The goddess Hera holding the fasces

Further, Fascism holds women in very high regard. Women are the carriers of new life. They are expected to be educated, worldly, and well-read. Women are encouraged to pursue their interests and have a career but only if a career won’t interfere with their family’s needs; family comes first, always. Women are encouraged to be strong yet feminine. Consistent with these ideas, Fascist art often portrays women as heroic and even goddess-like.

In short, Fascism is a form of government and social system which authentically serves the interests of the people and nation as a whole. The word “Fascism” comes from the Italian word “fascio” meaning “the group” or more specifically, “in consideration of the group.” Fascism is rooted in the notion that people must stay true to two mental concepts throughout their lives: 1) the individual’s needs (themselves) and, 2) the group’s needs (their nation)… always evaluating how their actions affect the group. Thus Fascism rejects the self-centered “me me me” mentality so common under capitalism. For example, in a Fascist nation each person is expected to maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle. For, if not, they may become seriously ill and thus require expensive health care; this would negatively impact the group (i.e., they’d become a financial burden on the nation).

George Washington holding the fasces

Continuing this line of thought, under Fascism all people of one’s ethnicity are considered the greater family of that person. Hence, a Fascist nation is thought of as one giant family of several million people. Therefore, just as one mustn’t do anything to hurt one’s brother or sister in one’s immediate family, under Fascism one mustn’t do anything which would hurt the nation/group (i.e., the greater family). This is the essence of Fascism — a strong consideration of the group, balanced with individualism.

In Germany, the former NSDAP (i.e., “Nazis”) followed the above-described Fascist system.

A further note on economics: Although the economic aspect of Fascism is free-market based, Fascism is not capitalism. Many on the political left wrongly equate Fascism with capitalism. Again, Fascism is not capitalism. Allow me to briefly explain: The primary goal of capitalism is profit. On the other hand, the primary goal of Fascism is the well-being of a nation’s citizens and well-being of the nation as a whole. In a purist-type capitalist country (i.e., super-capitalism) almost nothing can interfere with maximizing profits — not workers, not the environment, almost nothing. Even when a capitalist country starts out with tight government regulations, it invariably moves towards laissez-faire economics (i.e., super-capitalism) by way of less and less government regulation. Human greed drives this transformation and ultimately the working class suffer via lower wages — or loss of employment altogether if their job is, say, transferred overseas (e.g., to China) where labor is dirt cheap. Capitalists believe that immense wealth at the top will “trickle down” to the masses: that is, that everything will magically work itself out. A certain amount of wealth does “trickle down” but, too often, the worker and environment suffer. As just one example, tens of millions of American manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas during the past two decades (capitalist so-called “free” trade policies have allowed for such outsourcing of jobs). Lastly, just as Fascists reject Communism, they also reject capitalism.

Everybody’s a Fascist Now! by Kevin Alfred Strom

Read the original article

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Le Corbusier (pictured) — a major figure in 20th century architecture — has now become the center of controversy because of his positive statements about Hitler and National Socialism. We may deplore his anti-traditionalist pronouncements and his less-than-creative post-war rectangular blocks, yet acknowledge his more creative works and his concern for architecture’s social value. His affinity for the socialism of Saint-Simon and Fourier places him squarely in the dreamer class, and it is no surprise that such a man saw the revolutionary potential for change inherent in National Socialism.

New research has uncovered these statements from him, among others: “If he is serious in his declarations, Hitler can crown his life with a magnificent work, the remaking of Europe.” He saw Hitler as a “glimmer of good” in Europe, who was about to institute a great “clean-up”: “Money, the Jews, Freemasonry, everything will be subject to the law,” Le Corbusier said, “these shameful fortresses will be dismantled.”

He accepted a position in Vichy France, and aligned himself with the German-centered new order in 1940s Europe, but he was no sycophant and was known to criticize Hitler as well — something that the Jews who are campaigning to have his memory erased in Switzerland conveniently forget. I suppose they cannot forgive that he once referred to such types as “Jewish cretins.”

One of Le Corbusier’s designs

From the Tribune of India:

One of Chandigarh’s founding fathers has been unmasked as a sympathiser of Adolf Hitler.

Charles Edouard Jeanneret, better known globally as Le Corbusier, is accused of anti-semitic leanings and an obsession with eugenics in a book scheduled to be released next month. The author of “Le Corbusier, a French Fascism,” is Xavier de Jarcy. Another biographer and architecture critic Francois Chaslin has separately accused Le Corbusier of being anti-semitic, quoting from a different letter in which Le Corbusier refers to “Jewish cretins”.

Back in the 1950s, Le Corbusier prepared the master plan for Chandigarh in which he developed the metaphor of a human being to design the city. The “head” contain the capital complex, the “heart” the commercial centre and the “arms” have the academic and leisure facilities. The courts, legislative buildings and secretariat are all among the renowned buildings of the City Beautiful which Le Corbusier helped to design.

Jawaharlal Nehru commented back in 1959 about Chandigarh, saying, “I have welcomed greatly one experiment and that is Chandigarh…. It hits you on the head and makes you think.”

Supporters of Le Corbusier have long described him as the father of modern architecture, one of the world’s most innovative designers. France is preparing to mark his 50th death anniversary with an exhibition in Paris that will look back over his work.

The latest revelations include letters written to his mother in 1940 where he wrote, “If he is serious in his declarations, Hitler can crown his life with a magnificent work, the remaking of Europe.” At the height of the war two years later, he described Hitler as “glimmer of good”, welcoming the great “clean- up” that was about to happen. “Money, the Jews, Freemasonry, everything will be subject to the law. These shameful fortresses will be dismantled.”

Questions are now being asked about how Le Corbusier, who was born in Switzerland, was able to continue working following the end of World War-II and why these shaming allegations have taken so long to surface.

Le Corbusier’s rejected design for the Palace of the Soviets — he never communicated with the Communists again

From Fox News:

He’s one of the titans of 20th Century architecture, but Le Corbusier is suddenly feeling the weight of history working against him.

The modernist master’s legacy is coming under pressure after Switzerland’s largest bank dropped an ad campaign featuring the architect and artist last week. Now, Zurich authorities are debating whether to dump plans to name a square after him.

Letters made public in recent years and a 2008 biography suggest that the visionary known for his cool, spare designs and revolutionary urban planning ideas was a Nazi sympathizer whose Fascist tendencies went far beyond what was previously known.

One letter shows Le Corbusier expressing clear enthusiasm for Hitler, even if at other times he calls the German leader a “monster.”

“If he is serious in his declarations, Hitler can crown his life with a magnificent work: the remaking of Europe,” Le Corbusier wrote to his mother in October 1940, at a time when he was shopping his radical ideas about urbanism across the continent. That was also shortly after Hitler’s armies conquered France and much of Western Europe.

It’s been a tough week in Switzerland for the artist born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, who died in 1965 after helping to create an international modern architecture movement along with giants such as American Frank Lloyd Wright and German Bauhaus innovators Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe.

The revelations are not completely surprising, as it has long been known that Le Corbusier aligned himself with the French far-right in the 1930s and accepted a post as a city planner for the Vichy regime that ruled France and collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

What is perhaps most noteworthy is the sudden Swiss rejection of a native son — born in the sleepy town of La Chaux-de-Fonds — whose face appears on the 10-franc bill. His name graces a square in the capital of Bern and a street in Geneva.

“For UBS, the most important thing in our campaign is the message we wish to communicate,” said Jean-Raphael Fontannaz, a spokesman for the Zurich-based banking giant. “We don’t want the message to be lost in a discussion about Le Corbusier. We also don’t wish to hurt the feelings of anyone.”

Fontannaz said UBS AG used Le Corbusier in an advertising drive that began in August. It dropped the artist last week.

UBS’ decision came after protests from Jewish groups and publishers in Switzerland, who accused Le Corbusier of being an anti-Semite. The accusation hit a raw nerve with a bank that suffered a crisis in the 1990s over revelations that it prevented Jewish claimants from accessing Holocaust-era accounts belonging to their ancestors. The row resulted in a $1.25 billion settlement.

“It’s incomprehensible that UBS chose Le Corbusier as an exemplary Swiss personality,” Vreni Mueller-Hemmi, head of the Swiss-Israel Society, told the weekly SonntagsZeitung. The group’s vice president, Lukas Weber, told The Associated Press that he was pleased with UBS’ decision.

Zurich authorities decided three years ago to name a square next to the central train station after Le Corbusier once construction was completed. But authorities now say they are taking another look at the historical record. A decision will be made at a meeting of the city’s street-naming commission next month, said spokeswoman Charlotte de Koch.

Le Corbusier left an enormous body of work, including some 30,000 architectural plans, 7,000 watercolor paintings, 500 oil paintings and 52 books. He was perhaps as famous for his philosophy of architecture as for actual works. Among his most famous structures are the Villa Savoye near Paris, the Punjab government complex at Chandigarh, India, the Unite d’Habitation apartment block in Marseille and Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel in Ronchamp, France.

Despite the recent controversies, Le Corbusier still has Swiss defenders.

“It’s a different issue if you make a publicity campaign,” said Werner Abegg, spokesman for the money-printing national bank. “The bank note highlights essentially the influence of a person. It’s uncontested in the case of Le Corbusier.”

Abegg told the AP that the bank had no plans to change its currency.

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Sources: Tribune of India and Fox News

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by Kerry Bolton

EZRA POUND (pictured) was born in a frontier town in Idaho, 1885, the son of an assistant assayer and the grandson of a Congressman. One could say that both economics and politics were in his blood. He enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in 1901. Pound was an avid reader of Anglo-Saxon, Classical, and Medieval literature. In 1906 he gained his MA and had already started work on his most significant creation, The Cantos. He continued post-graduate work on the Provençal Troubadour poet-musicians, reinforcing his desire to go to Europe.

In 1908 Pound set sail for Venice. There he paid $8.00 for the printing of the first volume of his poetry. A Lume Spento (With Tapers Quenched). Pound then traveled to England to meet W.B. Yeats. He quickly became a literary success in London. The following year he met Yeats and became the dominant figure at Yeats’ Monday evenings.

Pound also came into contact with The English Review, which was publishing works by new talents such as D.H. Lawrence, and the author, painter and critic Wyndham Lewis. In 1911 Pound launched his campaign for innovative writing in The New Age, edited by the monetary reformer A.R. Orage. To Pound the new poetry of the century would be “austere, direct, free from emotional slither.”

Wyndham Lewis’ Vorticist “Before Antwerp,” cover art for Blast No. 2.

The following year Pound founded the Imagist movement in literature. He was by this time already helping to launch the careers of William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, Hemingway, and James Joyce. He had also become the mentor of Yeats, 20 years Pound’s senior and already world famed.

In 1914 Pound started another more enduring movement that was to have a lasting influence on English culture, the Vorticist movement. The impetus came originally from a young avant-garde sculptor, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Together with Wyndham Lewis and others they launched Blast as the journal of the movement. Fatefully, this was also the year of World War I which took its toll on many Vorticists [including Gaudier-Brzeska].

The young Pound

Vorticism was for Pound the first major experience in revolutionary propagandizing and the first cause that placed him beyond the pale of orthodoxy. Pound saw Vorticism as setting “the arts in their rightful place as the acknowledged guide and lamp of civilization.” In this way the arts were welded in a mystical union with politics in the manner already envisaged by Yeats.

It was Pound who coined the name Vorticism, which was meant to connote vital, violent, rather mystical action. In artistic terms, the goals of the movement are difficult to define. Its program was largely conceived by [Wyndham] Lewis, who had painted first in the Cubist manner and then became a convert to Futurism. He renounced what he considered the static quality of works by such Cubists as Picasso and rejected the naturalism and sentimentality he found in Futurist art. Painting, he said, should be clean, hard, and plastic; it should express the spirit of the time in an anti-realistic, rigidly geometrical mode.

Most of the paintings produced under the banner of Vorticism were abstract geometric compositions, with accent on dynamic contrasts and tensions. In spite of the official rejection of Futurism, most of the paintings are essentially Futurist in conception, suggestive of a positive statement on machines and the new technological era.

Abridged from the Encyclopedia of Art (New York: Greystone Press, 1971), s.v. “Vorticism.”

Pound saw commercialism as the force preventing the realization of his artistic-political ideal. In 1918 he met Maj. C.H. Douglas, the founder of Social Credit, whose theory of monetary reform explained that once money became a commodity instead of a measure of productivity and creativity, then a nation and its culture would be sacrificed in the pursuit of commercial interests.

Occultism

Pound embraced the Social Credit theory with enthusiasm. Here was the means by which the Money Power which corrupted culture could be overthrown. During the 1930s and 1940s Pound wrote a series of booklets on economics and politics, including his first, Social Credit: An Impact (1935), A Visiting Card (1942), and in 1944 Gold and Work and America, Roosevelt, and the Causes of the Present War, the latter three being published by Fascist Italy.

Pound came to his political and economic doctrines by the same esoteric path as Yeats. In 1913 Pound had become Yeats’ secretary. Pound had been interested in Eastern religions, yoga, theosophy, and astrology from at least as far back as 1905. When Pound was introduced to Yeats he joined a small group Yeats was involved with, which was of a Gnostic nature. Prior to this Pound had written of his belief in a type of reincarnation of creative souls in terms similar to those expressed in Yeats’ poetry.

Pound considered sex to be a sacrament, an esoteric tradition which had been preserved in the West by the Troubadours. He considered the only true religion to be “the revelation made in the arts.” Rejecting Christianity, he described it as “a bastard faith designed for the purpose of making good Roman citizens slaves, and which is thoroughly different from that preached in Palestine. In this sense Christ is thoroughly dead.” Pound found the Churches objectionable for having gained subsidies which should have gone to artists, philosophers, and scientists.

Pound was inspired by the “love cult” of the Troubadours, which had been suppressed by the Church, and the Classical mystery religions. He considered the teachings of Confucius, which taught a civic religion that assigned everyone a social duty, from emperor to peasant, to be a means of achieving a balanced State. He later saw in Fascist Italy the attainment of such a State.

Like Yeats, Pound’s concepts of esotericism and culture brought him up against liberal and democratic doctrines. Pound saw in Fascism the fulfillment of Social Credit monetary policy which would break the power of plutocracy. He considered artists to form a social elite “born to rule” but not as a part of a democratic mandate. “Artists are the antennae of the race but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists.”

As far back as 1914 Pound had written that the artist “has had sense enough to know that humanity was unbearably stupid. But he has also tried to lead and persuade it, to save it from itself.” He wrote in 1922 that the masses are malleable and that it is the arts which set the moulds to cast them.

Fascism

To Pound Fascism was the culmination of an ancient tradition, continued in the personalities of Mussolini, Hitler, and the British Fascist Sir Oswald Mosley.

Pound had already studied the doctrines of the [German] ethnologist [Leo] Frobenius during the 1920’s and gave a mystical interpretation of race. Cultures were the product of races, and each had its own soul, or “paideuma,” of which the artist was the guardian.

In Mussolini, Pound saw not only a statesman who had overthrown plutocracy, but someone who had made politics an art form. Pound stated, “Mussolini has told his people that poetry is a necessity of State, and in this displayed a higher state of civilization in Rome than in London or Washington.”

Writing in his 1935 book Jefferson and/or Mussolini, Pound explained: “I don’t believe any estimate of Mussolini will be valid unless it starts from his passion for construction. Treat him as ARTIFEX and all the details fall into place … The Fascist revolution was FOR the preservation of certain liberties and FOR the maintenance of a certain level of culture, certain standards of living …”

Pound and his wife Dorothy settled in Italy in 1924. In 1933 he had a meeting with Mussolini, outlining his ideas for monetary reform.

He also became a regular contributor to the periodicals of Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, met Mosley in 1936 and continued to correspond until 1959.

From the late 1930s he began to look increasingly toward the economic policies of Hitler and regarded the Rome-Berlin Axis as “the first serious attack on the usurocracy since the time of Lincoln.”

In 1940, after having returned to Italy from a tour of the USA during which he attempted to oppose the move to war against the Axis, Pound offered his services as a radio broadcaster. The broadcasts called The American Hour, began in January 1941. Pound considered himself to be a patriotic American. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor he attempted to return to the USA, but the American Embassy refused him entry. With no means of livelihood, Pound resumed his broadcasts, attacking the Roosevelt administration and usury in a folksy, American style, with a mix of cultural criticism.

In 1943 Pound was indicted in the USA for treason. Hemingway, concerned at the fate of his old mentor after the war, suggested the possibility of an “insanity” plea and the idea caught on among some of Pound’s and Hemingway’s literary friends who had landed jobs in the US Government. Other interests were pressing for the death penalty for America’s most eminent cultural figure.

Two days after Mussolini’s murder Pound was taken at his home by Italian partisans after he had unsuccessfully attempted to turn himself over to American forces. Putting a book on Confucius in his pocket he went with the partisans expecting to be murdered. Instead he ended up at an American camp at Pisa constructed for the most vicious military prisoners. Pound was confined to a bare, concrete-floored iron cage in the burning heat, lit continuously throughout the night. Pound had a physical breakdown and was transferred to a medical compound, where he got to work on the Pisan Cantos.

In November he was flown to Washington and jailed. He was declared insane and sent to a ward for the criminally insane at St. Elizabeth’s. Here his literary output continued, and he translated 300 traditional Chinese poems, which were published by Harvard in 1954.

Among his many visitors he became mentor to John Kasper, a fiery young intellectual who toured the South agitating on behalf of racial segregation, causing the calling out of the National Guard in Tennessee.

Ezra Pound, back in Italy and still defiant after 13 years of false imprisonment by the US government: “All America is an insane asylum.”

By 1953 Pound had still not been formally diagnosed. Inquiries from the Justice Department solicited an admission that at most Pound had a “personality disorder.” By the mid-1950s various influential figures and magazines were campaigning for Pound’s release. After 13 years confinement, Pound’s treason indictment was dismissed on 18 April 1958.

On 30 June he set sail for Italy, giving the Fascist salute to journalists when he reached Naples, and declaring “all America is an insane asylum.” He continued with his Cantos and stayed in contact with political personalities such as Kasper and Mosley. He remained defiantly opposed to the American system in magazine interviews despite complaints from US diplomats. Because of his politics, Pound did not receive the honours due to him until after his death on 1 November 1972.

Notes

The short account of Vorticism has been added. Also see (off-site) Pound’s free translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer, originally published in The New Age (1911). For a French translation of Kerry Bolton’s essay, click here. A succinct discussion of literary imagism is here. Metapedia has more information on Wyndham Lewis.

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Source: Racial Nationalist Library

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THE FALANGE Española was preceded by several similarly oriented organizations which favored a corporate state, nationalism, and respect for tradition and social justice, while vigorously opposing parliamentarianism, class struggle and the money power. One such group, the Partido Nacionalista Español, was founded in 1930 by a neurologist named José María Albiñana and patterned after the French Camelots du Roi. (ILLUSTRATION: José Antonio Primo de Rivera)

Violently nationalist and authoritarian, it introduced the Roman salute into Spanish politics. In 1932 it was reorganized as the Spanish equivalent of the movements of Hitler and Mussolini, but it supported the monarchy and religion. Repeated arrests of Albiñana kept his party in the small-fry category.

The most important pre-Falange Fascist organization was put together by Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, a young, unkempt, opinionated postal clerk and philosophy student who in the spring of 1931, just before the end of the monarchy, started a political weekly La Conquista del Estado. Although Ramos and his band received help from the monarchist propaganda fund of Admiral Aznar’s government, the journalistic venture lasted only seven months. In this short time, however, the paper established the essential features of Spanish National Syndicalism and exerted a strong influence over a growing number of intellectuals who were dissatisfied, as Stanley G. Payne has written in Falange (1961, p. 12), with “both the atomistic individualism of liberal systems and the fatalistic impersonality of Marxism.”

Ramiro Ledesma Ramos

Meanwhile, another young crusader, Onésimo Redondo Ortega, who came from a family of peasants and priests, was organizing workers in his native Castille. His experience as a lecturer in Mannheim, Germany, had acquainted him with National Socialist thought, which he attempted to reconcile with his own intense Catholicism. Youthful, vigorous, handsome and passionate, Redondo was obsessed with three goals: national unity, the primacy of traditional Spanish values and social justice. In June 1931, he founded the weekly Libertad.

A few months later, Ledesma and Redondo agreed to combine their efforts and launched the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (JONS), the first Spanish National Syndicalist organization. What JONS lacked in coherent ideology, it made up for in enthusiasm and spirit. While the Jonsistas chose the yoked arrows of the Catholic kings to symbolize their goal of a restored Spanish empire, Ledesma coined the slogan Arriba! The group also adapted the red-black-red anarchist banner to signify its radical aims. All of these trademarks of National Syndicalism would later be adopted by the Falange, and even today they are still recognized as official symbols of the Spanish state.

Ledesma and Redondo worked poorly together, so JONS made only limited progress in its first two years of independent existence. The two leaders had little understanding of practical or tactical questions and failed signally to make their ideology attractive to the general public.

The General’s Son

The birth of the Spanish Republic in 1931 brought disarray to the nationalist Right. The middle class wanted neither to accept the new political realities nor to return to the past. The Confederation of Autonomous Rightist Groups (CEDA) was organized around the conservative Catholic Action and led by the uninspiring José María Gil Robles who could not rouse the dissident students, bourgeois and workers to recognize him as an alternative to the lackluster conservatism of the traditionalists and the antinational and antitraditional forces of the Left.

It was at this crucial moment that José Antonio Primo de Rivera made his dramatic entrance into politics as a man of the Right. Born in 1903 in Andalusia of an upper-middle-class family with a long tradition of military service, José Antonio differed sharply from his father, General Miguel Primo de Rivera, who ruled Spain from 1923 to 1930. Whereas the latter had been a sensual, jovial Babbitt, José Antonio was modest, serious and given to intellectual pursuits. Educated in literature, modern languages and the law, he was, among many other things, an amateur poet, especially fond of Kipling.

José Antonio was an excellent student at the University of Madrid, where he dabbled in student politics. Despite his background, he favored the liberal faction, but was careful not to become too involved in too much political activity during his father’s rule. Emotionally, though not politically, attached to the General’s career, he could not help being dismayed when his father’s supporters forced his resignation after he no longer served their interests. As time went on, he found himself agreeing with his father’s scorn of politicians, the liberal intelligentsia, parliamentarianism and middle-class democracy.

In 1928 and 1929 José Antonio developed a serious interest in politics and began studying Spengler, Keyserling, Marx, Lenin, Ortega y Gasset and the Spanish traditionalists. By the early 1930s his rejection of the abstract vapidity of class-ridden liberalism with its accent on internationalism and equalitarianism was as vehement as his reaffirmation of the old European values of nation, culture and personality.

Because of his close bond to his family, José Antonio was incapable of objectively evaluating his father’s seven-year rule. This, and his hatred for liberalism, led him to take an active role in politics as Vice-Secretary General of the newly formed Unión Monárquica. Several months later he announced as a candidate for the Cortes solely to “defend the sacred memory of my father.”

His showing was good in liberal Madrid, but not good enough. After the election he returned to private life, concentrating on his private law practice. He was often discouraged, and thought about emigrating to America. He spent much of his free time thinking about social and political questions, searching for an alternative to traditional conservatism and old-guard liberalism. He was particularly antagonistic to the political bosses and landlords of the provinces, to the privileges of the wealthy and to the Spanish Right, which tolerated these social injustices.

The Fascist

José Antonio first publicly revealed his Fascist leanings in an article for a new weekly El Fascio, which the government confiscated before it appeared. This act of suppression reinforced his new political stance. He would dedicate the few remaining years of his short life to an Hispanicized National Socialism.

Although aware of his talents, José Antonio thought that his intellectualism and his relationship to Primo de Rivera prevented him from becoming the Caudillo of Spanish Fascism. He knew that he was not a “man of the people” and declared that he “had too many intellectual preoccupations to be a leader of masses.” Yet he felt he must do what he could.

Julio Ruiz de Alda

During the spring of 1933 José Antonio began to build contacts with like-minded men, including the famous aviator Julio Ruiz de Alda, an ardent nationalist who distrusted the established parties. They quickly became close comrades. Together they distributed a considerable number of leaflets in Madrid and began to win converts to what José Antonio wanted to call the Movimiento Español Sindical. But Ruiz de Alda printed “FE” on the leaflets, which could stand for either Fascismo Español or Falange Española.

On October 29, 1933, José Antonio launched the Falange Española at a political rally held at the Teatro Comedia in Madrid. Two thousand sympathizers, including Ramiro Ledesma, were present and many more heard the meeting on the radio. Three speeches were given, the high point being José Antonio’s heavily rhetorical and tensely poetic address, in which he denounced the “economic slavery” of the liberal state, the “materialistic” and “class struggle” dogma of socialism, and spoke for the “irrevocable unity of destiny” of the Spanish Patria, for “the deeper liberty of man,” and for “a system of authority, of hierarchy and of order.” Above all, he called for a “poetic movement” of struggle and sacrifice.

Although the founding of the Falange Española was largely ignored by the establishment press, over a thousand members signed up in the first month. The Falange quickly overshadowed JONS as the Spanish movement of National Syndicalism. José Antonio won a seat in the Cortes, where he appeared only rarely. His impressive oratory, personal charm and handsome appearance were vital to winning the financial support and popular respect essential to the success of a political movement.

On February 11, 1934, the leaders of JONS met and agreed to merge with the Falange, although still condemning what was termed “its reactionary features.” From then on, the Falange would be known as the Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva National-Sindicalista — for short, “FE de las JONS.” The JONS’ slogans and emblems were adopted, and a troika of José Antonio, Ramiro Ledesma and Julio Ruiz de Alda took over the direction of the unified movement. Ledesma was gambling that the “social revolutionary” emphasis of JONS would triumph over the “reactionary-monarchist” elements within the Falange. He was more right than wrong. “Falange ideology henceforth took its esthetic tone from José Antonio and much of its practical content from Ramiro Ledesma” (Payne, p. 48).

Enemy Reprisals

To celebrate the new unity, a rally was held on March 14, 1934, in Valladolid. More than three thousand raised their right arms as Falange leaders entered the hall. José Antonio again gave the main speech, stressing the differences that distinguished the Falange from other parties of both the Right and Left. As the meeting ended, a brawl broke out with some pistol-packing assailants outside. Although one Falange student died, the rally was declared a success. Actually, the fight provided a kind of baptism of fire for the newly unified movement.

In late 1933, the Falangist weekly FE (Falange Española) appeared. Socialists put intense pressure on vendors to prevent sales, and fights were frequent, some resulting in death. Despite increasing violence, José Antonio ordered the Falange not to retaliate. Although he had stated that just ends justify violent means, he was against drawing the sword of political terrorism. Eventually, however, growing resentment against the movement’s passivity forced José Antonio to countenance violent reprisals, even though he never personally involved himself in such acts.

Oppression by the Rightist government, and terror on the streets by the Left, dampened the Falange’s initial burst of growth. Party headquarters were regularly invaded by the police, FE vendors were eventually banned from the streets of Madrid, and Falangists were often arrested.

In June 1934, José Antonio was called up for impeachment in the Cortes for unlawfully possessing firearms. Since most political leaders were either armed or had a bodyguard, the impeachment motion was nothing more than an effort by the Center-Right factions to silence him. He was saved by the help of a moderate socialist leader, who personally liked José Antonio and detested the underhanded methods being used to unseat him.

Strategy

In line with its program of “social justice” the Falange set up a workers’ organization, the Confederación de Obreros Nacional-Sindicalistas (CONS), in August 1934. A previous JONS association of Madrid taxi drivers became the first CONS syndicate. These syndicates began with only a few dozen members each, a rather limited membership compared to the massive trade union organizations like the powerful UGT and CNT, which exerted irresistible pressure on the Falangist workers. Unable to effect any significant benefits for its own members, CONS groups failed to have any impact on the tightly organized Spanish working class.

Ridden by factions and under blistering attack from both the Left and the Right, the future of the Falange looked bleak in the summer of 1934. Nonetheless José Antonio’s personal power and popularity within the movement grew. The students idolized him. His physical courage, personal charm, vigor and eloquence made him the Caudillo despite his official position as only one triumvir among equals. Eventually his supporters started pushing for a jefatura unica, which would confirm him as party leader. In October 1934, the National Council of the Falange voted by the narrowest of margins, seventeen to sixteen, to establish an authoritarian structure with José Antonio as Jefe Nacional.

In November the Falange issued a program of twenty-seven points written by Ledesma and modified and polished by José Antonio. This systematized statement of National Syndicalist principles was not really anything new, but the twenty-fifth point, dealing with the Church, kicked up a furor. It declared that while the Falange was faithfully Catholic, it would not allow the Church to interfere in its secular affairs. More than a few Falangists quit and went over to the Monarchist youth organization.

Meanwhile Ledesma tried to persuade José Antonio to make an effort to win Leftist, working class and military support in preparation for an unspecified coup d’état. Knowing that the 5,000-member Falange was much too weak to become committed to such a foolhardy project, José Antonio stuck by his strategy of slow, organized, peaceful growth. Unconvinced, Ledesma sought to gather what support he could within the Falange to rebuild a “revolutionary” National Syndicalist movement. But the other leaders refused to go along and reaffirmed their loyalty to the Jefe. The Falange was now entirely José Antonio’s.

The Falange

Falange membership was divided into two parts: the “first line” active members; the “second line” passive collaborators. The most active component of the “first line” were in the Falangist Militia, a paramilitary group. At the beginning of 1935 the “first line” numbered no more than 5,000 and was concentrated largely in Madrid, Valladolid and Seville. By February 1936, “first line” membership had grown to 10,000, while the total number of Falangists was approximately 25,000, quite a gain over previous years but a mere drop in the bucket considering the size of rival Spanish political groups.

A 1934 law preventing students from belonging to political parties kept large numbers of young men from joining the Falange. Most university students were organized in a Catholic association, with a socialist-liberal group next in size. Although a Falangist college organization never attracted more than a minority of students, they were the hardest-working and most determined of all Falangists. José Antonio’s principal stronghold of support was the University of Madrid, where he often gave speeches.

Falange members were strikingly young, sixty to seventy percent of them under twenty-one. “They were a gay, sportive group, high-spirited, idealistic, little given to study, drunk on José Antonio’s rhetoric, and thirsting for direct action. Their only goal was an everlasting nationalist dynamism” (Payne, p. 83).

The dynamism was supercharged with an impressive array of symbolism. Falangists wore blue shirts and sang the anthem “Cara al Sol.” They greeted each other with the Fascist salute, thundered their slogans at political get-togethers and painted Arriba España and España, Una, Grande y Libre on any wall they could find.

The 1936 Election

As the elections of 1936 approached, the Falange faced a major dilemma: Should the movement cooperate with Rightist parties in a united National Front to oppose the Popular Front of the Left? José Antonio persuaded the National Council to agree to a united effort, but negotiations with Rightist groups showed that the Falange would be hurt more than helped by such cooperation. The Falange decided to go it alone.

Falange candidates ran in nineteen districts, with José Antonio standing for election in Madrid and in six other regions. The party stressed land reform, the promotion of local industry and full employment. The election returns were disastrous. Not a single Falangist candidate won. In Madrid the Falange percentage of the vote was 1.19. In Cadiz, José Antonio received less than 7,000 votes. Nevertheless, in the two months following the election, the membership of the Falange probably doubled.

As partisan violence increased, political, social and economic order in Spain disintegrated. On March 1, 1936, José Antonio ordered all university members to enlist in the Falange Militia. A few weeks later, activists organized an assassination attempt against an eminent socialist professor of law. The liberal government used this incident to outlaw the Falange on March 14. All leaders who could be found in Madrid were arrested, including José Antonio.

“The[se] events of February and March, 1936, brought about the death of José-Antonio’s short-lived party, but they marked the beginning of a new process, bathed in blood and steeped in frustration, which was to make an enlarged, reorganized Falange into Spain’s partido del Estado” (Payne, p. 102).

The success of the Popular Front in the February elections and the subsequent disorder in Spain signaled the organization of a military conspiracy by General Emilio Mola. Secret negotiations with the imprisoned José Antonio were begun in May. The prisoner, managing to reestablish the Falange chain of command through a system of messengers, ordered preparations for a violent move against the government. A new underground Falangist newspaper No Importa hurriedly replaced the banned Arriba. As some areas in Spain verged on social chaos, Spanish Nationalists began a definite swing toward Fascism. A private poll conducted in May by the clerical daily newspaper Ya showed José Antonio the readers’ first choice for president of the Republic.

The government kept José Antonio in jail by inventing new charges against him and resorting to other forms of legal chicanery. On June 5, 1936, he was removed to the provincial jail at Alicante, while further arrests of Falangists made the party’s position desperate. When the chain of command again broke down, three-man cells were established to prevent further disorganization. José Antonio gave orders for the Falange to cooperate with the military in the event of a putsch or, if necessary, to prepare for an independent coup of its own.

Rebellion

The outbreak of the Civil War on July 17 thrust an enormous responsibility on the Falange, since it was virtually the only Nationalist group capable of offering a dynamic alternative to the Monarchists and Traditionalists. “Membership increased enormously and soon passed all manageable proportions. As the first wave of emotion swept the Right, everyone hastened to put on blue shirts” (Payne, p. 121).

The war and the influx of undisciplined members made control within the Falange extremely difficult, despite its reemergence from the underground in territories under the control of Franco. Manuel Hedilla, former provincial chief in Santander, acted as the surrogate for the imprisoned José Antonio.

Pressure from the Left to bring the jailed Falangist leader to trial increased. In November he was hauled before a “people’s court” on charges of helping to foment the revolt against the Republic. He defended himself by pointing to his own anti-Rightist activities. Although the evidence against him was circumstantial and his final statement very moving, the sentence was a foregone conclusion. Shortly after dawn on November 20, 1936, José Antonio faced a firing squad.

The death of its revered young leader was a serious blow to the Falange. The weakness of Manuel Hedilla, his successor, the hostility of the military and the general confusion of the times combined to severely weaken Falange independence and identity.

On April 19, 1937, the Carlist and Falange parties were merged by order of Franco into the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista. The awkward new title reflected the confusion of purpose and principles of what was now to be more “movement” than “doctrine.” The Generalissimo named himself Jefe Nacional.

Francisco Franco

From then on, despite resistance by more principled and more “authentic” Falangists, the combined FET would be the one official political organization of Franco Spain. In using the Falange as an instrument of personal power, Franco betrayed the ideas, the goals and the legacy of José Antonio. Even though it served as a façade for the new Spanish state, falangismo as a living, breathing political force was dead.

As if to make amends for what he had done, Franco established the cult of José Antonio. November 20 was declared a day of national mourning. Plaques commemorating him were set up in all Spanish churches. Schools and military units bore his name and the press and radio continued to refer to El Ausente (The Absent One). At the Civil War’s end a torchlight procession ceremoniously carried José Antonio’s remains three hundred miles to a grand and solemn burial at the resting place of Spain’s kings at El Escorial.

Ideology

Perhaps the clearest expressions of José Antonio’s world view was contained in his speech of October 29, 1933, on the foundation of the Falange:

The Patria is a total unity, in which all individuals and classes are integrated. It cannot be in the hands of the strongest class or of the best organized party. The Patria is a transcendent synthesis, an indivisible synthesis, with its own goals to fulfill — and we want this movement of today, and the state which it creates, to be an efficient, authoritarian instrument at the service of an indisputable unity, of that permanent unity, of that irrevocable unity that is the Patria.

Here is what is required by our total sense of the Patria and the state which is to serve it:

That all the people of Spain, however diverse they may be, feel in harmony with an irrevocable unity of destiny.

That the political parties disappear. No one was ever born a member of a political party. . . . We were all born members of a family; we are all neighbors in a municipality; we all labor in the exercise of a profession.

We want less liberal word-mongering and more respect for the deeper liberty of man. For one only respects the liberty of a man when he is esteemed, as we esteem him, as the bearer of eternal values . . . as the corporal substance of a soul capable of being damned and of being saved. . . .

We want Spain resolutely to recover the universal sense of her own culture and history.

And we want one last thing. If in some cases this can only be achieved by violence, let us not balk at violence.

But our movement will not be understood at all if it is believed to be only a manner of thinking [and not] a manner of being. . . . We must adopt [an] attitude [that] is the spirit of sacrifice and service, the ascetic and military sense of life.

I believe the banner is raised. Now we are going to defend it gaily, poetically.

In his article in the first edition of the newspaper FE (December 1933) José Antonio expanded on his political philosophy:

The Spanish Falange firmly believes in Spain. Spain is not a territory, nor an aggregate of men and women. Spain is an entity, real in itself, which has performed world missions, and will have others still to perform.

Hence Spain exists, first, as something distinct from each of the individuals, classes and groups that compose her. Secondly, as something higher than each of those individuals, classes and groups, or even than all of them put together.

Accordingly Spain, which exists as a distinct and higher reality, is bound to have ends of her own. These ends are: continued existence in unity, resurgence of internal vitality and a preeminent share in the spiritual tasks of the world. . . .

A genuine state, such as the Falange wants, will not be based on the sham of the political parties, nor on the Parliament which they engender. It will be founded on the authentic realities of life: the family, the municipality, and the guild or syndicate.

The ideology of José Antonio was partly rooted in the antiliberal, antidemocratic intellectual tradition that found widespread support in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. He and his party members paid homage to Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, Ángel Ganivet and Pío Baroja as “Precursors.” But despite similarities in style and principles, and even initial support from Unamuno, these Spanish intellectuals withheld their support from José Antonio.

The concept of Spain as “a unit of destiny in the universal” was taken from Ortega. Pío Baroja, Spain’s foremost living novelist, had expressed antidemocratic, nationalist views, and Unamuno received José Antonio at his home. But a large part of the Falange leader’s social philosophy was not taken from Spanish sources at all. Rather, it grew out of the views of Nietzsche, Lenin, Spengler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Hitler.

“In October 1933, [José Antonio] paid Mussolini a visit, and returned to declare that Fascism was ‘a total, universal, interpretation of life’” (Richard A. H. Robinson, The Origin of Franco Spain, p. 98). A year later, however, in response to rumors that he would attend an International Fascist Congress in Switzerland, José Antonio repudiated his ties to Italian and other “imported” ideology by declaring that he had “flatly turned down the invitation in order to make clear the genuinely national character of the movement, which has no intention of giving the appearance of possessing an international leadership. Moreover, the Falange Española de las JONS is not a Fascist movement” (Charles F. Delzell, Mediterranean Fascism, 1970, p. 263).

José Antonio often stressed far-reaching economic reforms. The Falange would nationalize banking and credit, guarantee employment, redistribute land and make higher education free. At the same time, private property was to be respected. By the “corporate state” and “syndicalism” José Antonio meant the organization of “Spanish society corporatively through a system of vertical syndicates for the various fields of production, all working toward national economic unity” (Payne, p. 79). In sum, he wanted broad state economic planning and guidance of national production, but not state ownership of the means of production.

Although Monarchists at one time tried to use the Falange for their own ends, the two never got together. After he became a Falangist José Antonio turned his back on all Monarchist organizations: “April 14 [the end of the Monarchy] is a historical fact that must be accepted. We feel no nostalgia for dead institutions. . . .”

The Falange was not seen by José Antonio as a political party in the ordinary sense. Rejecting the very concept of political parties, he called for revolution and declared his group belonged neither to the Right, Left nor Center. In fact, the widespread use of symbols, emblems, rituals and oaths made the Falange more akin to a religious order than to a political party. Its leader liked to call it a “militia,” a “union of eager fraternal cooperation and love” and a “holy brother hood.”

The outbreak of the Civil War moved José Antonio, nine months before his death, to give a broader significance to the role of the Falange:

We are witnessing a struggle between the Christian, Western, Spanish, individualistic concept of life, with all that it implies in the field of service and self-sacrifice, and an irreligious, materialistic Russian concept. If the latter should triumph in Spain, large tracts of our country — Catalonia, the Basque Provinces, Galicia — would break away and submit to the Soviet. We are now in the inept hands of sick men, who out of pure resentment might be capable of handing us over to dissolution and chaos. The Spanish Falange summons all — students, intellectuals, workmen, army officers — to the happy and dangerous task of recapturing our lost heritage.

The Legacy

The phenomenon of José Antonio and the Falange was not unique to Spain. It was part of the European response to the failure both of traditional and capitalist conservatism and of parliamentary, laissez-faire democratic liberalism.

Salvador Dali with portrait of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera

European Fascism was the successor to the nationalistic concept of la Patrie born in the French Revolution. It also succeeded the liberal eighteenth- and nineteenth-century concepts of social integration. The dynamics of economic development (rise of large corporations and organized labor) and of political development (rise of the modern state) helped force thinking in terms of the community.

World War I was a strong factor in bringing an end in Europe to the “rationalist” concept of irreversible “progress.” The 1920s and 1930s saw the breakdown in the spiritual power of organized religion. At the same time, there grew up a new mythos, either around the Patria, Fatherland and Nation or, in the case of the Marxists, around the Proletariat. Fascism represented the synthesis of the most dynamic movements of recent European history — Nationalism and Socialism.

To put Spanish Falangism in a proper perspective, we must remember that Fascism in the 1920s and 1930s had become the state ideology of Italy, Germany, Hungary, Rumania, Poland, the Baltic states, Austria and Spain. In its early stages World War II spread Fascism even more widely. But then in 1945 came the triumph of Anglo-American Democracy and Soviet Communism. In Spain a watered-down version of Fascism continued into the 1970s, but the realization of José Antonio’s political and social goals was made impossible by the European holocaust.

In post-Civil War Spain it was not the movement which directed the state, as José Antonio had intended, but the state which directed the movement. Franco’s Falange became a sterile appendage to the state bureaucracy.

The memory of José Antonio, however, has not been totally eradicated from the Spanish mind. On one level, it is demonstrated in a state-sponsored cult designed to give poetic, intellectual and ideological attractiveness to an essentially traditionalist and uninspiring regime. On another level, there exists in Spain today tens of thousands of Spaniards, most of them quite young, who honor the great days of the Falange and work for a post-Franco Spain based on Falangist principles. They have formed into two groups: the Fuerza Nueva and the Círculo Español de Amigos de Europa (CEDADE).

The recent chaos in Portugal has strengthened the conviction of Spanish Fascists that the only long-term alternative to a Communist Iberia is a form of National Socialism. But whereas in the 1930s nations like Germany and Italy could give aid to the Falangists, today the successors of José Antonio have only their own strength to rely on — that and the intellectual and spiritual legacy of their Founding Father.

* * *

Source: Instauration magazine, December 1976 (transcribed by Counter-Currents)

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by James Harting

THE NOTION that the National-Socialism of Adolf Hitler is a type or variant of a more generally defined “fascism” is a staple of Marxist propaganda and analysis. Indeed, the Marxists have been so persistent and strident in making this false claim that it has infected the thinking even of some of those who claim to be NS themselves. (ILLUSTRATION: Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in 1941)

Back in 1970, Dr. William L. Pierce addressed this issue in his column “Questions & Answers for National Socialists,” that appeared in WHITE POWER: The Newspaper of White Revolution, which was a mass distribution tabloid of the National Socialist White People’s Party. (Dr. Pierce is listed as the “Associate Editor” for the issue in which this particular column was printed.)

Q: Liberals often refer to National Socialists as “fascists.” Are they correct in this practice?

A: Liberals apply the label “fascist” to anyone whose ideas they find abhorrent or dangerous — even conservatives. They tend to use this term as a smear word, not restricting it to the adherents of any specific ideology. Thus, they probably feel as justified in trying to smear us with the label “fascist” as any other of their opponents.

Q: Well, is it proper for National Socialists to refer to themselves as “fascists?”

A: Certainly not. When we use the term we are virtually always referring to the adherents of the specific social-political doctrine on which Benito Mussolini founded his governmental system in Italy — that is Fascist with a capital “F.” Although it may not seem important to the liberal, there is a profound difference between National Socialism and Fascism.

Q: But I thought that both Fascism and National Socialism were highly centralized, authoritarian and strongly nationalistic forms of government, with only slight differences between the ways they operated.

Q: What are some of these differences?

A: The really fundamental difference lies in the role of the state and the race under each system.

In Mussolini’s word’s:

“The Fascist conception of the state is all-embracing: outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have any real worth. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist state — a synthesis and a unit of all values — interprets, develops and potentiates the whole life of a people…It is not the nation that generates the state…Rather it is the state which creates the nation, conferring volition and, therefore, real life on a people…In the Fascist conception, the state is an absolute before which individuals and groups are relative…”

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In remembrance of another great but half-forgotten Westerner

OUR MODERN MEDIA like to depict military men as trigger-happy simpletons whose throwback minds are still laboriously progressing from the 18th to the 19th century. Unfortunately, at least within the Western democracies, the rewards and the constraints have been such as to drive creative intellects from the military ranks at Mach I speed. Nevertheless, occasional bright intellectual lights have remained in uniform, despite all the obstacles. By far the brightest such light (a veritable supernova) was Major General John Frederick Charles Fuller (pictured). The treatment accorded General Fuller by British politicians and the British high brass rivalled that given to Galileo by the Inquisition.

Early Life

Fuller was born in Chichester, England, in 1878. As a child, he showed few signs of academic brilliance. Ignoring the tedious school curriculum, he preferred reading books of his own choosing and taking long walks through the country. Although his father was a man of the cloth, young Fuller lost his traditional faith at an early age. He would remain an agnostic, but an agnostic who maintained an enduring, life-long interest in questions of morality and metaphysics. It was not what he learned or would learn in schools, military or academic, but his early internal theological conflicts which would help make Fuller the great military prophet of his times. At an early age he did not merely reject dogma (despite tremendous social and familial pressure against nonconformism), but picked up the habit of evaluating arguments, testing theories and building alternative systems.

In 1897 Fuller entered the Royal Military College and in the next year was sent to garrison duty in Ireland. While he enjoyed fencing and shooting, the budding militarist showed no interest in the social activities of the officer corps. When his classmates went riding to the hounds, Fuller secluded himself in his study, reading, of all things, philosophy. Another young officer noted that Fuller’s conversations and caustic humor generally led to “the complete confounding and obfuscation of the mess.” From the start he was, as he described himself, “a most unconventional soldier.”

Africa and India

The Boer War resulted in Fuller’s being posted to Africa as an intelligence officer. A near fatal illness prevented his assignment to combat. Instead he was given a grab-bag of tasks which included the inspection of garrisons and fortresses, and the training of native scouts. Among all these duties, he still found time to read over 150 books.

Fuller’s unusual assignment allowed him to view the Boer War from a broader perspective than obtained by front-line officers. He gained an appreciation for the value of fortitications, as well as their limitations. He was aware of the tendency of “set piece” engagements to become stalemates. He understood the influence of genetic and cultural factors on morale. The mind which had been honed and rehoned by theological disputes now turned to questions of strategy and tactics. But, unfortunately, the military establishment quickly returned to drills and ceremonies upon cessation of hostilities. What little the commanders had learned, Fuller noted, they quickly forgot.

Fuller’s next overseas tour was the usual one to India, where his inquiring mind was fascinated by Oriental religions and philosophers. He would later write two books on these subjects, Yoga (1925) and The Secret Wisdom of the Qabalah (1937), in which he compared the thoughts of the Eastern sages with Herbert Spencer, T. H. Huxley, and W. H. Lecky. Years before such thoughts would occur to social scientists, Fuller realized that what men believed was a prime determinant of what they did. Despite his agnosticism Fuller was struck by the concepts of the absolute unknowable and of the interconnection of all life. It is not surprising that his fellow officers considered him somewhat odd.

It was in India that Fuller acquired his nickname “Boney,” because of his resemblance to the young Bonaparte both in appearance and in mental outlook. “Give me the power and limitations of any weapon,” he told his seniors, “and in half an hour I will give you a reasonable tactical answer.”

Returning to England in 1906, he was assigned to training duties. Within a year he led his battalion to first place in musketry among the territorial units. At this time he also began writing training manuals. In these highly readable documents (few military manuals can be so described), his suggestions ran from the seemingly obvious (using terrain rather than parade grounds for training exercises) to the abstruse (preventing a military formation from degenerating into a crowd, as defined by Gustave Le Bon).

World War I

In 1914 Fuller was appointed deputy assistant director of railway transport because of an earlier article he had written on troop entrainment. During this assignment he found time to write two books dealing with the tactics of Sir John Moore and of Moore’s training of raw recruits during the Napoleonic Wars. Posted to France, Fuller served in a number of staff posts. Initially he supported the policies of Haig and the War Office, but after studying the results of the Somme offensive he argued for a tactical change from advance in line to advance in files in the hope of reducing losses. In December 1916 he was assigned as senior general staff officer to the Machine Gun Corps — soon to become the Tank Corps. Here Fuller had a chance to come up with the “tactical answers” he had boasted about in India. He saw in the tank a means of overcoming the tremendous defensive advantage of entrenched troops firing rifles and machine guns. Fuller believed a concentrated tank assault could easily puncture such a defense. A deep tactical penetration would then break the stalemate of trench warfare, greatly reducing casualties on both sides. Before he could sell his idea, however, he first had to win a long argument with the military old guard epitomized by Sir Douglas Haig. In his usual fashion Fuller dubbed his superior “The Stone Age General.”

Fuller, later in life

In November 1917 Fuller’s tactics were at last employed. For the first time tanks were massed rather than committed to action piecemeal. At the cost of only 4,000 casualties (ridiculously low by World War I standards), a penetration at Cambrai of one of the most intensely defended sectors of the Hindenburg line was effected. Within twelve hours British tanks had advanced five miles. It had taken three months to gain this same amount of ground at the third battle of Ypres. On the Somme, it had never been accomplished. Eight thousand prisoners were taken at Cambrai along with 100 captured guns. Unfortunately, mechanical failures of the tanks, the lack of an adequate mechanized reserve and the stupidity of the conventionally minded infantry and cavalry commanders prevented full exploitation of the situation. The Germans regrouped, counterattacked and eventually regained most of what they had lost. But Fuller’s point had been made.

Based upon the Cambrai offensive, Fuller proposed a more radical project called Plan 1919. Eventually approved by Foch for use in the year specified, it called for a penetration of the enemy lines by two inner pincers on a fifty-mile front and two outer pincers on a ninety-mile front. The inner pincers were to be composed of 2,500 heavy tanks supported by motorized infantry and cavalry, while the outer pincers would comprise 2,400 medium tanks. Aircraft would interdict supply and communications of enemy headquarters, provide close support of tank formations and serve as reconnaissance. Tank commanders would be in radio contact with each other and with the aerial units. The outer pincers were to be launched first, their target enemy headquarters twenty miles behind the front line. The purpose was to decapitate the enemy, leaving the front-line German troops without any chain of command. The forward troops would then be overwhelmed by the inner pincers. Subsequent pursuit of at least twenty miles per day was to be carried out for five to seven days. By aiming at the enemy’s command and control centers, Fuller believed he could obtain a decisive and yet humane victory. But victory came in 1918, so Plan 1919 was filed away in the military archives.

The Mechanized Army

The close of World War I found Fuller assigned to the War Office, which he dubbed “the tower of Babel,” as a staff officer with primary responsibility for tanks. At the time two thoughts were foremost in his mind: (1) the Treaty of Versailles made another war almost inevitable; (2) armored formations using the methods of Plan 1919 would prove decisive in that conflict. Consequently, he pushed hard for the development of a highly professional, highly mechanized army which would allow Britain to intervene in the continent in a decisive manner at minimal human cost. Fuller’s recommendations were opposed by an unusual coalition. First, there were the pacifists who were convinced that World War I had been the war to end all wars and that military expenditures should now be trimmed to the bone. Second, there were the Colonel Blimps, whose military strategy had not changed in 100 years. Only mechanization, Fuller warned, would permit a return to cavalry methods, since the horse had gone the way of the dodo. Colonel Commandant Neil Haig (cousin of Sir Douglas) served as unofficial spokesman for the Blimps. Replacing the horse with the tank, he argued, was as farfetched as the thought of replacing “our railway systems with lines of airships.”

In 1919 Fuller submitted the winning essay to the Royal United Service Institute’s army competition. His Gold Medal paper argued not only for mechanization, but for training officers in the social and physical sciences so that they could better understand the purpose of modern war and the technological weapons that would dominate the fighting. In 1920 he won that same Institute’s naval prize for the essay “Future Naval Tactics.” As all essays were submitted anonymously, the Admiralty Lords were somewhat embarrassed when they discovered a soldier had won. Fuller, who could never resist the opportunity to unnerve the establishment, claimed that he had in fact only written the essay on a dare, taking but a single weekend to compose it and encountering no difficulty in mastering naval tactics beyond the question of whether a ship was properly referred to as “she” or “it.” The Admiralty was now outraged. Fuller received his monetary prize, but his was the only prize essay never published by the Institute. Eventually he wrote a similar article for the Naval Review contending that the submarine and aircraft carrier had altered naval strategy. The capital ship, he asserted, was headed for the same future as the horse. The lesson Fuller couldn’t teach the Admiralty Lords in London, the Japanese taught them in Malaya.

Fuller produced mountains of books, manuals and articles stressing familiar military themes. His most ambitious work was The Foundation of the Science of War (1926). In it he sought to develop a military science grounded in what he termed “the threefold order.” Any organization or system, he argued, consisted of structure, control and maintenance. This was true of the human body, an army or a nation. Each of the three elements possessed the properties of stability, action and cooperation. Despite the protests of his critics, Fuller never reified the threefold order. He saw it as a heuristic device for concentrating attention on the purpose of a military engagement and the most expedient means to achieve that purpose, given the resources at hand. Today, systems analysis serves a similar purpose, if in a less Hegelian manner.

In 1927 it appeared as if Fuller had finally won the begrudging acceptance of the higher-ups. He was assigned the command of an experimental mechanized force to be employed in the Salisbury Plain exercises. At the same time he was given command of an infantry brigade and a garrison. Fuller saw this as a not unsubtle attempt to spread him so thin as to sabotage the performance of the mechanized force, thus discrediting his theories. His response was to resign from the army, which he reconsidered after receiving a pledge of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff that mechanization would be supported. But the command of the experimental force went to an infantry officer with no interest or background in tanks. So ended the short-lived experiment.

Fuller’s remaining military assignments were mostly uninteresting and unimportant ones which took him far afield from mechanized warfare. He continued his writing, however, and two manuals dealt with the training and utilization of mechanized forces. The second manual was endorsed by Heinz Guderian for use in the development of German armored units, and Russia printed 100,000 copies of it. In England less than 500 copies were sold as late as 1935. In 1930 Fuller was promoted to Major General and placed on half pay. Late in 1932 he published Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure. The tone of the volume, in which the author pointed out that the average age of the world’s greatest generals was forty, while that of his British contemporaries was sixty, proved too abrasive. On refusing command of a second-rate Bombay garrison, he was retired in 1933.

By this time Fuller had described the main elements of the German Blitzkrieg, which was to stun Europe a few years later. He predicted a fast war of movement based upon destruction of the enemy’s will to fight, rather than a war of annihilation. He said highly trained professional forces would replace the massive armies of World War I. Linear defense would give way to area defense, lines would become erratic, battles would take place in the neutral zones between armored “hedgehogs.” Tanks would be employed in reconnaissance and amphibious operations, as would aircraft. While battles would often be fought with lightning speed, prolonged guerrilla warfare might break out in occupied areas. His article on “Tactics” in the 1929 Encyclopaedia Britannica can easily be mistaken for an historical account of the 1939 Polish or 1940 French campaigns.

Oswald Mosley

Anti-Democratic Writings

Freed from the duties and restrictions of military life, Fuller turned to the study of military history and the causes and consequences of war. At the same time he became involved with Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. He saw the leaders of democratic Britain and France as tired old men living in bygone days. Leaders in the totalitarian nations, on the other hand, he found to be quick to grasp the impact of technological advance upon society and warfare. Hitler, Mussolini and Communist Karl Radek were all familiar with Fuller’s works and could discuss them intelligently with him. Perceiving the national will to be stronger in the totalitarian nations, he hoped Mosley’s proposal for conscription would galvanize the British spirit. Fuller also believed the democratic, capitalist nations had proved incapable of solving the cyclic booms and busts that plague them to this day, cycles he felt could be eliminated by basing national wealth on production rather than on gold. He attacked Jewish plutocracy in an article in the Fascist Quarterly entitled “The Cancer of Europe,” so ending any chance of his being accepted back into the government fold. He favored Mussolini’s system of vocational representation on the ground that the only thing the average man knew anything about was his job. Finally, Mosley was the only British politician to give full support to a mechanized army. Fuller felt Mosley was wrong, however, in styling his movement, uniforms and salutes after continental Fascism. He would have preferred a traditional British political party, Fascist in content, not style.

Benito Mussolini

Fuller covered both the Italo-Abyssinian and the Spanish Civil Wars as a news correspondent with the Italians and the Spanish Nationalists, respectively. In both cases he was impressed by Fascist morale. In Spain he got a firsthand view of the anarchist wing of the Communist movement whose doctrine formed “a kind of political jazz that could be danced but not marched to . . . a surrealism . . . not even rational” (Decisive Battles, 1940, p. 1011). The experience of Spain and Abyssinia also convinced Fuller that air bombardment was not as powerful in destroying morale as he had himself once believed. He became a critic of the Douhet-Trenchard doctrine. He would repeat this analysis even more forcefully in his writings on World War II. This has made him persona non grata with the U. S. Air Force. Despite Korea and Vietnam, Air Force journals still take swipes at Fuller.

Fuller’s Decisive Battles (1940) is a brilliant military, diplomatic and economic history of the Western world. Like his other writings of the 30s, its tone is basically anti-democratic and anti-liberal. He deplored the “insane world where the highest statesmanship depends upon the vocal unthinking masses” (The Dragon’s Teeth, 1932, p. 181). By 1936 Fuller openly predicted France and Poland would be overrun by mechanized forces in a fortnight (The First of the League Wars, 1936).

Military Historian

Fuller’s The Second World War (1949) still contains a heavy, self-serving, anti-Churchillian revisionist accent. From a distance (which includes Vietnam) his criticism reads better than it did originally, particularly his attack on “strategic bombing” and his conclusion that “should you when waging war lack a politically sane and strategically possible aim, you are likely to be thrown back on an insane moral one, such as attempting to eliminate ideas with bullets or political beliefs with bombs” (p. 402). Decisive Battles reappeared in three volumes as A Military History of the Western World (1954-56). In addition to expanding the coverage to include World War II, some earlier material is included. The overall tone is markedly less pro-Fascist, though still revisionist, and the chapter on the Italo-Abyssinian and Spanish Civil Wars has been removed. His short Armament and History (1945) also employs a less polemical tone. Along with Carleton Coon’s Story of Man and Darlington’s Evolution of Man and Society it could serve as an excellent text for a college survey of Western civilization.

The Conduct of War (1961) represents the culmination of Fuller’s thinking. It is not a history, but rather a long essay on the impact of the French, industrial and Russian revolutions on warfare. Fuller’s primary point is that contrary to “learned” opinion, democratic wars are the most brutal of all. Further, he notes, that while democratic nations in theory win their wars they have proven singularly incapable of establishing lasting peaces. Fuller attributes these shortcomings to: (1) the failure of moral (or behavioral) science to keep pace with physical science; (2) the economic failures of capitalism; (3) the tendency of democracies to treat wars as “jihads” in which there is “no substitute for victory” rather than accepting Clausewitz’s view of war as a logical extension of foreign policy, in which the means must be adjusted to future ends and future costs. The third point is also capably made by Mr. George Kennan in his American Diplomacy 1900-1950 (1951). Fuller goes beyond Kennan, however, in attempting to explain the irrational behavior of democracies. Taking his cue from Spencer, W. G. Sumner and Sir Arthur Keith, Fuller argues that democracy has produced a reversion to tribal morality, overturning the chivalric system of aristocracy. Like the tribe, democracy is founded on ingroup amity and outgroup enmity. Fuller’s arguments received recent support from Edward Wilson’s Sociobiology (1976).

Fuller concludes The Conduct of War with a statement that modern technology, especially nuclear weaponry, has made all-out war between major powers an obsolete concept. In 1956 he was already predicting that only proxy wars and “police” engagements would take place in the future. In The Conduct of War he argued that the problem of the Western nations was economic, with all of them moving toward a planned economy and the elimination of tariff boundaries. He saw the Soviet sphere as becoming more consumer-oriented as its overall wealth increased and predicted a Russian “bourgeois renaissance.” Both camps would become more alike in that each would move toward the Fascistic system he had advocated in the 30s, though no one (including Fuller in 1960) would dare to call it that.

One of Fuller’s chief concerns was China. In the 1930s he had seen that nation as a potential power, in that it possessed in addition to its natural and human resources “an essential unity which is totally wanting in India.” Unless China solved the problem of industrialization without the overpopulation that usually goes with it, Fuller saw the possibility of war with either Russia in the north or Western interests in the Pacific. Fuller’s message to the Western nations was to get their houses in order.

Francisco Franco

Fuller is important as an historian because he understood not only the importance of technology, as well as genetic and cultural factors, but also the importance of ideas. In discussing the Spanish Inquisition he deplores its cruelty, but notes that without the unifying power of its ideology Spain would be “only a mosaic not a nation.” Though nonreligious himself, Fuller felt Franco was correct in supporting the established church as a means of reunifying Spain. Hitler, he believed, became powerful not only by his economic programs and technology, but because he had an idea of “heroic man” with which he could rouse people against the Marxist concept of “economic man.”

In 1963 the Royal United Service Institute awarded Fuller its Chesney medal, first presented to the American, Alfred Thayer Mahan. On February 10, 1966 General Fuller died. Although long married to the daughter of a Polish doctor, he, like Arthur Keith, Francis Galton and Madison Grant, left no offspring. In The Dragon’s Teeth (1932) he provided his own best epitaph: “If my dislikes are pronounced, it nevertheless will be found that one and all are based on principle. I cannot tolerate cowardice, untruthfulness, and sentimentality.”

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Source: Instauration magazine, May 1977

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Isle of Capri declared a bird sanctuary in 1932

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY was first advanced in fascist nations. Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany were far ahead of the nations of their day. In the cartoon image below, from Punch in 1939, Mussolini’s 1932 declaration of the Italian island of Capri as a sanctuary for birds is depicted. Mussolini is shown as steward of nature and protector of the birds of Italy, giving them a safe and secure domain, away from poaching hands; one grateful bird looks up at him. Beneath the image are a handful of newspaper articles on the event.

From Berkeley Daily Gazette, “New Bird Haven in the Mediterranean,” 1 April 1933; click on the clipped article or follow the source to get a much clearer version.

In early the next year, this article, from the same paper, notes American admiration for the Duce’s policy and speculates about whether the US might do the same for song birds.

This is from San Jose News, 27 April, 1934, summarizing the policy and formation of a “Scholar’s League for Preserving Little Birds,” with its patron Saint, Francis of Assisi.

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Source: Ur-Fascist Analytics

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by K.R. Bolton

THE PARTY-LINE of the Left is that Fascism and Nazism were the last resort of Capitalism.[1] Indeed, the orthodox Marxist critique does not go beyond that. In recent decades there has been serious scholarship within orthodox academe to understand Fascism as a doctrine. Among these we can include Roger Griffin,[2] Roger Eatwell,[3] and particularly Zeev Sternhell.[4] The last in particular shows that Fascism derived at least as much from the Left as from the Right, emerging from Italy but also in particular from Francophone Marxists as an effort to transcend the inadequacies of Marxism as an analysis of historical forces. (ILLUSTRATION: Adolf Hitler in discussion with Reich Minister of Economics and Reichsbank President Dr. Hjalmar Schacht in 1936.)

Among the National Socialists in Germany, opposition to international capital figured prominently from the start. The National Socialists, even prior to adopting that name, within the small group, the German Workers’ Party, saw capital as intrinsically anti-national.  The earliest party program, in 1919, stated that the party was fighting “against usury… against all those who make high profits without any mental or physical work,” the “drones” who “control and rule us with their money.” It is notable that even then the party did not advocate “ socialization” of industry but profit-sharing and unity among all classes other than “drones.”[5] As the conservative spokesman Oswald Spengler pointed out, Marxism did not wish to transcend capital but to expropriate it. Hence the spirit of the Left remained capitalist or money-centered.[6] The subordination of money to state policy was something understood in Germany even among the business elite, and large sections of the menial class; quite different to the concept of economics understood among the Anglophone world, where economics dominates state policy.

Hitler was continuing the tradition of the German economic school, which the German Workers’ Party of Anton Drexler and Karl Harrer had already incorporated since the party’s founding in 1919. Hitler wrote in 1924 in Mein Kampf that the state would ensure that “capital remained subservient to the State and did not allocate to itself the right to dominate national interests. Thus it could confine its activities within the two following limits: on the one side, to ensure a vital and independent system of national economy and, on the other, to safeguard the social rights of the workers.” Hitler now realized the distinction between productive capital and speculative capital, from Feder who had been part of a political lecture series organized by the army. Hitler then understood that the dual nature of capital would have to be a primary factor addressed by any party for reform.[7] The lecture had been entitled “The Abolition of Interest-Servitude.”[8] A “truth of transcendental importance for the future of the German people” was that “the absolute separation of stock-exchange capital from the economic life of the nation would make it possible to oppose the process of internationalization in German business without at the same time attacking capital as such…”[9] While Everette Lemons, apparently a libertarian, quotes this passage from Mein Kampf, he claims that Hitler loathed capitalism, whether national or international. As illustrated by the passage above, Hitler drew a distinction between creative and speculative capital, as did the German Workers’ Party before he was a member.

National economy was a widely held legacy of the German school of economics founded by Friedrich List in the 19th century, the aim being national autarchy as distinct from the English school of international free trade.[10] National economy governed German thinking like Free Trade governed British thinking. At a glance, List stated: “I would indicate, as the distinguishing characteristic of my system, NATIONALITY. On the nature of nationality, as the intermediate interest between those of individualism and of entire humanity, my whole structure is based.”[11] It was an aim that German businessmen readily embraced.

Because the Hitler regime would not or could not fulfill the entirety of the NSDAP program, and because Feder was given a humble role as an under-secretary in the economics ministry, there is a widespread assumption that the regime was a tool of big capital. The Marxist interpretation of the Third Reich as a tool of monopoly capital has been adopted and adapted by their opposite number, libertarians, particularly aided by the book of the Stanford research specialist Dr. Antony Sutton. Sutton followed up his Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution,[12] detailing dealings between U.S. and other business interests and the Bolshevik regime, with Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler.[13] Many libertarians welcome the second book as showing that Hitler was just as much a “socialist” as the Bolsheviks and that both had the backing of the same big-business interests that pursue a “collectivist” state. Lemons, for example, argues that Hitler’s anti-capitalism was an implementation of many of the ideas in Marx’s Communist Manifesto, thereby indicating an ignorance of German economic theory.[14] Lemons refers to Hitler’s “communist style” economy.[15]

Henry Ford – an Early Nazi Party Sponsor?

Portrait of Henry Ford (ca. 1919)

If there was any wealthy American who should or could have funded Hitler it was Henry Ford Sr. Indeed, Ford features prominently in allegations that Hitler received financial backing from wealthy elites. But Ford was not part of the financial elite. He was an industrialist who challenged Wall Street. If he had backed Hitler that would have been an example of a conflict between “industrial capital” and “financial capital” that Ford had himself recognized, and that Hitler had alluded to in Mein Kampf. Not only did his newspaper the Dearborn Independent, under the editorship of W. J. Cameron, run a series of ninety-one articles on the “Jewish question,” but that series was issued as a compendium called The International Jew, which was translated into German. Such was the pressure from Jewish Wall Street interests on the Ford Motor Company that Ford recanted, and falsely claimed that he had not authorized the series in his company newspaper.[16] Yet Ford never funded the Hitlerites, despite several direct, personal appeals for aid on the basis of “international solidarity” against Jewish influence.

Sutton did an admirable job of tracing direct and definitive links between Wall Street and the Bolsheviks. However, perhaps in his eagerness to show the common factor of “socialism” between National Socialists and Bolsheviks, and the way Wall Street backed opposing movements as part of a Hegelian dialectical strategy,[17] Sutton seems to have grasped at straws in trying to show a link between plutocrats and Nazis. Sutton repeats the myth of Ford backing of the Hitlerite party that had been in circulation since the 1920s. As early as 1922 The New York Times reported that Ford was funding the embryonic National Socialist party, and the Berliner Tageblatt called on the U.S. ambassador to investigate Ford’s supposed interference in German affairs.[18] The article in its entirety turns out to be nothing but the vaguest of rumor-mongering, of making something out of nothing at all, but it is still found to be useful by those perpetrating the myth of big-money backing for Hitler.[19] Dr. Sutton quotes the vice president of the Bavarian Diet, Auer, testifying at the trial of Hitler after the Munich Putsch in February 1923, that the Diet long had had information that Hitler was being financed by Ford. Auer alluded to a Ford agent seeking to sell tractors having been in contact with Dietrich Eckart in 1922, and that shortly after Ford money began going to Munich.[20] Having provided no evidence whatsoever, Sutton states that “these Ford funds were used by Hitler to foment the Bavarian rebellion.”[21]

Scott Nehmer, who had his dream of an academic career aborted because he would not write his doctoral thesis according to the preconceptions of his supervisor, undertook a convincing examination of the allegations regarding the supposed link during World War II between the Third Reich, Ford, and General Motors.[22] His would-be dissertation was published as a book. However, it is indicative of the poor shape of scholarship in tertiary education, and not only in the USA. Mr. Nehmer writes of his recent predicament:

I intended to write my book solely concentrating on the patriotism of Ford and General Motors during World War II but my plans were altered causing me to emphasize how Marxist ideology combined with sensationalism has smeared Ford and GM. The book was conceived as a PhD in history dissertation for Central Michigan University. Almost from its inception my advisor, Eric Johnson,[23] attempted to force me to libel the Ford Motor Company. He ordered me to accuse Ford of betraying the United States during World War II using falsehoods based on the faulty implications of sensationalist journalists.[24]

What these accounts of the funding of the Nazi party and even of the Third Reich war machine amount to are descriptions of interlocking directorships and the character of what is today called globalization. Hence, if Ford, General Electric, ITT, General Motors, and Standard Oil are somehow linked to AEG, I. G. Farben, Krupp, etc., it is then alleged that Rockefeller, Ford, and even Jewish financiers such as James Warburg, were directly involved in a conspiracy to aid Nazi Germany. To prove the connections, Sutton has a convenient table which supposedly shows “Financial links between U.S. industrialists and Adolf Hitler.” For example Edsel Ford, Paul M. Warburg and two others in the USA are listed as directors of American I.G. while in Germany I.G. Farben reportedly donated 400,000 R.M. to Hitler via the Nationale Treuhand; ipso facto Edsel Ford and Paul Warburg were involved in funding Hitler.[25] The connections do not seem convincing. They are of an altogether different character than the connections Sutton previously documented between Wall Street and the Bolsheviks.

The story behind the Henry Ford-Nazi legend has been publicly available since 1938. Kurt Ludecke had been responsible for attempting to garner funds for the fledgling Nazi party since joining in 1922. In 1934 he had fallen out with Hitler, had been incarcerated, and then left Germany for the USA, where he wrote his memoirs, I Knew Hitler.[26] He sought out possible funding especially in the USA, met Hiram Wesley Evans, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, the organization, then 5,000,000 strong, impressing him as a good money-making racket for its recruiters, who got 20% commission on membership fees.[27] He met Czarist supporters of Grand Duke Cyril, claimant to the Russian throne, in Paris,[28] and in Britain several aristocrats suspicious of Jewish influence: the Duke of Northumberland, and Lord Sydenham.[29] Money was not forthcoming from any of them. Indeed, Ludecke traveled about perpetually broke.

Ludecke met Ford in 1922. He attempted to persuade Ford that international solidarity was needed to face the Jewish issue, and that the Hitler movement had the best chance of success. Ford could not relate to the political requirements and while listening had no interest in providing funds. It is evident from Ludecke that all of the party’s hopes had been pegged on Ford’s financial backing. Ford’s series on The International Jew was much admired in Nazi circles. Hitler also greatly admired Ford as an industrial innovator, a picture of the industrialist hanging up in Hitler’s office; something that is seen as of great significance to those seeking a Nazi connection.[30]

James Pool, on the subject of the funding of Hitler, spends thirty pages attempting to show that Ford might have given money to the NSDAP on the sole basis that he was anti-Jewish. He frequently cites Ludecke, but decides to ignore what Ludecke stated on Ford. Pool states that Frau Winifred Wagner had told him in an interview that she had arranged for Ludecke to meet Ford, which is correct, but it is evident that her claim that Ford gave Hitler money is pure assumption. Pool conjectures that the money was given by Ford to Hitler via Boris Brasol, an anti-Semitic Czarist jurist, who in 1918 had worked for U.S. Military Intelligence, and had who maintained contact with both the Nazi party and was U.S. representative for Grand Duke Cyril. Again Pool is making assumptions, on the basis that Brasol was employed by Ford. Pool’s “evidence” is the same as that used by Sutton; contemporary newspaper accounts of rumors and allegations.[31]

Had Ludecke succeeded in gaining funds from Ford that would not only have not been an example of funding from Wall Street and international finance, but it would have been an example of how not all wealthy individuals are part of the world’s banking nexus. Ford definitely was not, and drew a distinction between creative and destructive capital. Despite his ignominious surrender and groveling to Jewish interests when the pressure mounted due to his publication of The International Jew, in 1938 Ford described to The New York Times the dichotomy that existed between the two forms of capital:

Somebody once said that sixty families have directed the destinies of the nation. It might well be said that if somebody would focus the spotlight on twenty-five persons who handle the nation’s finances, the world’s real war makers would be brought into bold relief. There is a creative and a destructive Wall Street… [I]f these financiers had their way we’d be in a war now. They want war because they make money out of such conflicts – out of the human misery such wars bring.[32]

Sutton dismissed this, writing: “On the other hand, when we probe behind these public statements we find that Henry Ford and son Edsel Ford have been in the forefront of American businessmen who try to walk both sides of every ideological fence in search of profit. Using Ford’s own criteria, the Fords are among the ‘destructive’ elements.”[33] Contrary to Sutton, however, Pool states that Ford executives had been strongly opposed to their boss’s anti-Jewish campaign, and they persuaded him to drop the campaign in the late 1920s. In the forefront of this was his son, Edsel who owned 41% of the stock.[34]

Ford’s actions show that he was opposed to the forces of war. He did not do himself any favors by opposing the “destructive Wall Street.” In 1915 Ford chartered the Oscar II, otherwise known as the Ford “Peace Ship,” in the hope of persuading the belligerents of the world war to attend a peace conference. The mission received mostly ridicule. Those aboard, including Ford, were wracked with influenza. Ford continued to fund the “Peace Ship” as it traveled around Europe for two years, and despite the ridicule was widely regarded as a sincere, if naïve, pacifist. Dr. Sutton does not mention Ford’s “Peace Ship” or his peace campaign during World War I. Therefore, when he was an early supporter of the America First Committee,[35] founded in 1940 to oppose Roosevelt’s efforts to entangle the USA in a war against Germany, he was too easily dismissed as pro-Nazi, as was America First.[36] Very prominent Americans joined from a variety of backgrounds, including General Robert A. Wood, president of Sears Roebuck, and among the most active, aviation hero Charles Lindbergh. Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas was a regular speaker at rallies. Many Congressmen and Senators resisted the Roosevelt war machine. They included pacifists, liberals, Republicans, Democrats, conservatives. Of Henry Ford, George Eggleston, an editor of Reader’s Digest, Scribner’s Commentator, and formerly of Life, and a major figure in America First, recalled that so far from being a “Nazi,” Ford expressed the hope that there would be a “parliament of man,” “a world-wide spirit of brotherhood, and an end to armed conflict.”[37]

J. P. Morgan & Co. – Thomas Lamont

Thomas W. Lamont, senior partner in J. P. Morgan, was in the forefront of Wall Street agitation for war. Lamont, a supporter of Roosevelt’s New Deal, was a keen protagonist of internationalism. Speaking to the Academy of Political Sciences at the Astor Hotel in New York on 15 November 1939, he stated that the war against Germany was the consequence of the failure of the Versailles treaty and the rise of economic nationalism. In contrast to Old Guard Republicans such as ex-president Herbert Hoover, Lamont did not believe that it was possible to negotiate with Hitler. However, the military defeat of Hitler would not suffice. The USA must abandon isolationism and embrace “internationalism.”[38]

Lamont indeed had it right: international capital versus economic nationalism. The latter now included imperialism, and all autarchic trading blocs and empires. International finance could no longer be constrained by empires and trading blocs. But the world order that Woodrow Wilson had tried to inaugurate after World War I with his “Fourteen Points” and the League of Nations, based around international free trade, had been repudiated even by his own country.[39] The Axis states were building autarchic economic blocs, and had been instituting barter among states, including those that they had occupied. Roosevelt was to candidly state to Churchill during the discussions on the “Atlantic Charter” that the post-war world would not tolerate any empires including the British, and would be based on free trade. He stated unequivocally that the war was being fought over the premise of free trade.[40] Roosevelt stated to Churchill, as related by the president’s son, Elliott Roosevelt: “Will anyone suggest that Germany’s attempt to dominate trade in central Europe was not a major contributing factor to war?”[41] Apparently the cause of the war was not Pearl Harbor, nor the invasion of Poland. Roosevelt made it clear that international free trade would be the foundation of the post-war world, and empires would be passé.

General Motors – James D. Mooney

Another alleged enthusiast for Nazi Germany was James D. Mooney, vice president of General Motors, in charge of European operations. General Motors plays a large role in the alleged nexus between the Nazis and Big Business because of its European affiliates operating in German-occupied countries during the war. Such was Mooney’s supposed enthusiasm for Nazism that he allegedly regarded himself as a future “Quisling” in the USA in the event of a German victory.[42] The most extraordinary nonsense has been widely repeated that Mooney practiced how to technically achieve a Nazi salute and “Sieg Heil” in front of his hotel mirror prior to meeting Hitler in 1934. How Edwin Black knows this is not stated.[43]

It is evident that, utilizing his world-wide connections, Mooney embarked on private diplomacy with the intent of avoiding war. However, already in 1938 a G.M. executive, likely to have been Mooney, approached the British War Office to discuss British requirements in the event of war with Germany. From what is indicated by Mooney’s unpublished autobiography, it seems that, unsurprisingly, a major concern was the German method of trade. A biographer states of this:

Mooney took the opportunity at the dinner to deliver his own “blockbuster”: if the Germans could negotiate some form of gold loan, would they be willing to stop their subsidized exports and special exchange practices which were so annoying to foreign traders, particularly the U.K. and the U.S? Whilst Mooney clearly honestly believed that this might ensure peace, in truth the practices had had a deleterious effect on General Motor’s extraction of profit out of Germany….[44]

Mooney formulated a list of recommendations to ease tensions. Significantly, most of the list involves the return of Germany to the world trading and banking system:

1. Limitation of armaments.

2. Non-aggression pacts.

3. Move into trade practices of western nations:

a) Free exchange

b) Discontinue subsidized exports

c) Move into most-favored-nation practices.

d) Discharge foreign obligations (pay debts).[45]

It seems evident that Mooney was acting as an emissary for international capital, if not also as an intelligence agent for the U.S.A. and/or Britain. Some efforts were made by Walther Funk of the Reichsbank to compromise on terms of trade and finance, but war intervened. On February 4, 1939 Mooney stated before an annual banquet of the American Institute of Banking that an accommodation with Hitler could not be reached.[46]

Reich Commissioner for the Handling of Enemy Property

Allied-affiliated corporations such as Opel, affiliated with General Motors, operating in German-occupied Europe during the war did so under control of the Reich Commissioner for the Handling of Enemy Property.

German state decrees of June 24 and 28, 1941 blocked the assets of American companies, following the blocking of German assets in the USA on June 14, 1941.

In a review for the U.S. National Archives. Dr. Greg Bradsher states that American company and bank assets were seized by a December 11, 1941 amendment to the “Decree Concerning the Treatment of Enemy Property of January 15, 1940.” U.S. corporate and bank assets were controlled by the Reichskommissar für die Behandlung Feindlichen Vermoegens, which was part of the Ministry of Justice. Such trusteeship was part of international law. The Reichskommissar acted as trustee for the property of enemy aliens, in accordance with the German war effort until the end of hostilities, after which they would be returned to the owners with proper accounting. A custodian was appointed for each enterprise, who rendered financial accounts to the Reichskommissar every six months. However, other enterprises were confiscated outright by the Reich Ministry of Economics.[47]

By March 1, 1945, the Reichskommissar Office had taken under administration property in excess of RM 3.5 billion. On that date, the approximately RM 945 million of US property was administered by the Reichskommissar’s Office and another RM 267 million of US property was not administered by the Reichskommissar’s Office.[48]

Therefore, foreign corporations were hardly free to pursue their profits during war-time. Communication with the home office of the corporation was discontinued. Nonetheless, the argument persists that such corporations as Ford and General Motors were in league with the enemy during the war.[49] On the basis that the same German directors of Opel in Germany prior to the war were approved by the Reich office during the war, and that Alfred P. Sloan and Mooney remained theoretically on the Opel board, this is deemed sufficient to show collusion.[50] While Dr. Bradsher is unsure as to what happened to the profits, according to the Dividend Law of 1934, corporations were restricted on the amount of profits and dividends payable to shareholders to 6%. The remainder of profits had to be reinvested into the enterprise or used to buy Government bonds.[51] In short, the foreign-affiliated corporations were run by and for Germany as one would expect, and according to the aim of national autarchy.

Dr. Sutton tries to resolve many contradictions and paradoxes by stating that they are part of a Hegelian dialectical process learned in Germany during the early 19th century by scions of Puritan finance who founded the Yale-based Skull and Bones Lodge 322.[52] Hence, the reason why sections of Big Business dealt with both National Socialist Germany and the USSR; they were promoting controlled conflict that would result in a dialectical globalist synthesis.[53]

Fritz Thyssen

Sutton quotes Fritz Thyssen as to why he supported Hitler, but does not see that the motives are different from Wall Street’s. Thyssen, and other industrialists such as Krupp, who funded Hitler, did so openly and for patriotic reasons. Thyssen wrote, as cited by Sutton: “I turned to the National Socialist party only after I became convinced that the fight against the Young Plan was unavoidable if complete collapse of Germany was to be prevented.”[54] The Young Plan for the payment of World War I reparations was regarded as the means of controlling Germany with American capital.[55] Thyssen is hardly an example of a nexus between Nazism and international capitalism; to the contrary, it shows that German business was motivated by patriotic sentiment to an extent that American business was not then and is today lesser still.

Thyssen was a Catholic motivated by the Church’s social doctrine that sought an alternative to both Marxism and monopoly capitalism. Like many others throughout the world of all classes, Thyssen found the corporatist doctrines of Fascism and National Socialism to reflect Church doctrine on social justice. Thyssen was a member of the conservative National People’s Party. While one of the few industrialists who donated to the NSDAP, at a late date, even this was meagre. The denazification trials in 1948 found that Thyssen donated about 650,000 Reichsmarks to various right-wing parties and groups, of which there were many, including the NSDAP, between 1923 and 1932. He was an adherent of the corporatist theories of Austrian philosopher Othmar Spann. In 1933 Thyssen was asked by the NSDAP to set up an Institute for Corporatism in Düsseldorf.[56] However, this was regarded as rivalling the Labor Front and was closed in 1936. In 1940, after having emigrated from Germany, Thyssen and his wife were captured in France and incarcerated in Germany for the duration of the war.

Prescott Bush

A figure that is associated with Thyssen is Prescott Bush. Because he was, like his son and grandson Presidents George H. W. and George W. Bush, initiated into Lodge 322, vastly nonsensical theories has been woven around the Yale secret society, a.k.a. The Order of the Skull and Bones, as a pro-Nazi death cult, and the scions of influential families as part of an international Nazi conspiracy for world domination.

Prescott Bush was partner with W. Averell Harriman in Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., and the Union Banking Corporation. UBC acted as a clearinghouse for Thyssen interests. Because of this UBC’s assets were seized by the U.S government during the war. That Thyssen languished in Nazi concentration camps for the duration of the war is disregarded by those who seek a Wall Street connection with Hitler via Thyssen. Hence, The Guardian claimed to have new revelations in 2004 which turn out as nothing, with the focus on Thyssen being the businessman who “financed Hitler to power.” However, again more is said of the character of international capital than of big business backing for Hitler. The Guardian article states:

Erwin May, a treasury attaché and officer for the department of investigation in the APC,[57] was assigned to look into UBC’s business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn’t actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC’s president.

May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: “Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart NV of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr. Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest.”

May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel traveled to these companies through UBC.

By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman H. J. Kouwenhoven – who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC – had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen’s Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen’s steel and coal mine empire in Germany.[58]

The connections are tenuous at best, but of the same character as the other supposed associations between transnational corporations and the Third Reich.

Who Paid the Nazi Party?

Like the assumption that Ford could have funded Hitler because they had similar views about Jews, Pool also makes the same assumption about Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, Schacht’s friend, because Norman was also antagonistic towards Jews (and the French). He deplored the economic chaos wrought on Germany by the Versailles diktat and the adverse impact that was having on world trade. On that score, he could have funded the Nazi party, but there is no evidence for it. Pool’s book is useful however insofar as he shows, despite himself, that the Nazi party was not a tool of big business.

I. G. Farben, for example, often depicted as one of the plutocratic wirepullers of the Nazi regime, and as the center of a Third Reich industrial death machine, was headed by liberals. Pool states that from its formation in 1925 I.G. Farben gave funding to all parties except the Nazis and the Communists. Not until 1932, with the NSDAP as the biggest party in parliament, did two representatives of the firm meet Hitler to get his views on the production of synthetic fuel.[59] Not surprisingly, Hitler was in favor, given that it was an important factor in an autarchic economy. However, the matter of funds for the party was not raised.

The upshot that we learn from Pool in regard to Nazi party funding is that, quoting economist Paul Drucker:

The really decisive backing came from sections of the lower middle classes, the farmers, and working class… As far as the Nazi Party is concerned there is good reason to believe that at least three-quarters of its funds, even after 1930, came from the weekly dues…. And from the entrance fees to the mass meetings from which members of the upper classes were always conspicuously absent.[60]

Ludecke, despite his repudiation of Hitler, nonetheless cogently pointed out the difference in world-views between National Socialism and liberal capitalism. He wrote that the “newly legalized concept of property rights in Germany differs radically from the ideas of orthodox capitalism, though Marxian groups in particular persist in the erroneous contention that the Hitler system is a phase of the reaction designed to enforce the stabilization of capitalism.” He pointed out that “this planned economy signifies complete State control of production, agriculture, and commerce; of exports, imports, and foreign markets; of prices, foreign exchange, credit, rates of interest, profits, capital investments, and merchandizing of all kinds…”[61] Ludecke quotes from an article in the Council of Foreign Relations journal Foreign Affairs (July 1937) that “the German conception of capitalism was always essentially different from the Anglo-Saxon, because it was developed under an entirely different conception of the state and government…” Interestingly, the Foreign Affairs writer pointed out that what Hitler enacted was the consolidation of what had already been put in place by Social Democracy.[62] There were Social Democratic governments that had undertaken similar measures. Anyone familiar with New Zealand’s first Labor Government, assuming power about the same time as Hitler, could easily assume that what the Foreign Affairs writer is describing is the Labor Government’s economic policies.

Hjalmar Schacht

Hjalmar Schacht testifying for the defendant Friedrich Flick, said the industrialist contributed to the Nazi Party’s campaign fund in 1933 because Hitler promised to protect private industry and to eliminate all strikes.

A direct link between international capital and the Hitler regime was Hjalmar Schacht. He is instructive as to how the global banking nexus sought to co-opt the Nazi state, and how it failed. While researchers have focused on the first, they have neglected the implications of the latter. Sutton states that “Schacht was a member of the international financial elite that wields its power behind the scenes through the political apparatus of a nation. He is a key link between the Wall Street elite and Hitler’s inner circle.”[63] Schacht was a major figure in the creation of the Bank for International Settlements. The presence of German delegates to that institution during World War II is a primary element of this alleged Nazi-Wall Street nexus. One could say, and some do, the same about the International Committee of the Red Cross[64] and Interpol[65] during the war.

It is tempting to speculate as to whether Schacht was planted in the National Socialist regime to derail the more-strident aspects of the NSDAP ideology on international capitalism. It is unreasonable to claim that Hitler betrayed the National Socialist fight against international capital, because the full economic program of the NSDAP was not fulfillled. There is always going to be a difference in perspective as to what can be achieved when one is not in government. Schacht was obliged to work within National Socialist parameters and could not help but achieve some remarkable results. Like Montagu Norman and others, he was also concerned that the economic chaos in Germany engendered by the post-war Versailles diktat was having an adverse impact on world trade. Sutton does not mention that he ended up in a concentration camp because of his commitment to international capital. At least Higham states early in his book that “Hjalmar Schacht spent much of the war in Geneva and Basle pulling strings behind the scenes. However, Hitler correctly suspected him of intriguing for the overthrow of the present regime in favor of The Fraternity[66] and imprisoned him late in the war.”[67]

Hitler re-appointed Hjalmar Schacht as president of the Reichsbank in 1933, and in 1934 as minister of economics.  Schacht wrote after the war:

National Socialist agitators led by Gottfried Feder had carried on a vicious campaign against private banking and against our entire currency system. Nationalization of banks, abolition of bondage to interest payments and introduction of state Giro ‘Feder’ money, those were the high-sounding phrases of a pressure group which aimed at the overthrow of our money and banking system. To keep this nonsense in check, [I] called a bankers’ council, which made suggestions for tighter supervision and control over the banks. These suggestions were codified in the law of 1934… by increasing the powers of the bank supervisory authority. In the course of several discussions, I succeeded in dissuading Hitler from putting into practice the most foolish and dangerous of the ideas on banking and currency harbored by his party colleagues.[68]

What Schacht did introduce was the MEFO bill. Between 1934 and 1938 12,000,000 bills had been issued at 3,000,000 bills per year. MEFO bills were used specifically to facilitate the exchange of goods.[69] However, once full employment had been achieved, Schacht wanted to return to orthodox finance. Hitler objected, and it was agreed that Schacht would continue as president of the Reichsbank until 1939, on the assurance that the MEFO issue would be halted when 12,000,000 bills had been reached.[70] After the war Schacht assured readers that fiat money such as the MEFO,[71] like barter, should not become the norm for the world, despite their successes in Germany.

Likewise, Schacht opposed the autarchic aims of National Socialism. Schacht was, in short, ideologically inimical to the raison d’etre of National Socialism. Today he would be a zealous exponent of globalization along with David Rockefeller and George Soros. He wrote after the war:

Exaggerated autarchy is the greatest obstacle to a world-wide culture. It is only culture which can bring people closer to one another, and world trade is the most powerful carrier of culture. For this reason I was unable to support those who advocated the autarchistic seclusion of a hermitage as a solution to Germany’s problems.[72]

Yet Schacht was also responsible during six years for re-establishing Germany’s economy, and among the achievements which were in accord with National Socialism was the creation of bi-lateral trade agreements based on reciprocal credits. Schacht wrote of this:

In September 1934 I introduced a new foreign trade programme which made use of offset accounts, and book entry credit…

My plan was to some extent a reversion to the primitive barter economy, only the technique was modern. The equivalent value of imported goods was credited to the foreign supplier in a German banking account, and vice versa foreign buyers of German goods could make payment by means of these accounts. No movement of money in marks or foreign currency took place. All was done through credits and debits in a bank account. Thus no foreign exchange problem came into being.[73]

Schacht then hints at what would result in a clash of systems, and world war:

Those interested in the exchange of goods came into conflict with those interested solely in money. There was soon a battle royal between the exporters who sold goods to Germany, and the creditors who wanted their interest. Both parties demanded to be given preference, but the decision always went in favor of foreign trade.

I concluded special agreements with a number of states which were our principal sources of raw materials and foodstuffs. Anyone who wished to sell raw materials to Germany had to purchase German industrial products. Germany could pay for goods from abroad only by means of home-produced goods, and was thus able to trade only with countries prepared to participate in this bilateral programme. There were many such countries. The whole of South America, and the Balkans were glad to avail themselves of the idea, since it favoured their raw materials production. By the spring of 1938 there were no less than 25 such offset account agreements with foreign countries, so that more than one half of Germany’s foreign trade was conducted by means of this system. This trade agreement system in which two countries – Germany and one foreign country – were always involved, has entered economic history under the name of ‘bilateral’ trading policy. [74]

It created much ill-feeling in countries which were not part of the system. These were precisely those countries who were Germany’s main competitors in world markets, and who had hitherto attempted to effect repayment of their loans by imposing special charges on their imports from Germany. The countries participating in bilateral trade were not amongst those which had granted Germany loans. They were primary producers or predominantly agrarian, and had hitherto scarcely been touched by industrialisation. They utilised the bilateral trading system to accelerate their own industrial development by means of machines and factory installations imported from Germany.[75]

However, Schacht was not even in favor of the permanence of this great alternative method of world trade that allowed for the peaceful development of backward economies. Imagine the difference to the world today had this system been allowed to live and grow. Schacht remained a member of The Fraternity, to use Higham’s term, and he worried that

The bilateral trading system kept the German balance of payments under control for many years, but it was not a satisfactory solution, nor was it a permanent one. It is true that it enabled Germany to preserve its industry and to feed its populace, but the system could not provide a surplus of foreign exchange. No more was ever imported than was exported. Import and export balanced out exactly in monetary terms. Thus this system achieved the very opposite of what I, in agreement with the foreign creditors, had deemed to be necessary.[76]

As if to emphasize that he had never intended to renege on his loyalty to The Fraternity, Schacht lamented apologetically:

Already at the time when I introduced the bilateral trading system I made it known that I regarded it as a most inadequate and unpleasant system, and expressed the hope that it would soon be replaced by an all-round, free, multilateral trading policy. In fact the system did have some considerable influence on the trading policies of Germany’s competitors.[77]

It seems that Schacht had unleashed forces of economic justice and equity upon the world in spite of his intentions and it could only be stopped by war. Again: “For my part I would not say that the bilateral trading system, ranks among those of my measures which are worth copying.”[78] Introducing barter in world trade seems to have been the source of great shame to Schacht.

Schacht criticizes Hitler for having financed the war neither with taxation nor with the raising of loans. “Instead he chose to print banknotes,”[79] which of course is anathema to a banker such as Schacht, claiming the looming prospect of “inflation.” True enough, the “inflation” did not occur because of the other state controls, but Schacht stated that it did happen – in 1945.[80] At the end of the war the bills in circulation amounted to between 40 and 60 billion marks. Schacht comments that it did not result in hyperinflation, and that the aim was to keep the level at that amount.81 Might one conclude then that the fiat money that had been issued by the Third Reich had not been the cause of inflation, but rather the destruction of German production by the end of the war? At any rate it was not until 1948 that the Allied occupation attempted currency reform, based on the recommendations of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., by a massive devaluation of the mark. This is what had devastating consequences upon middle- and working-class Germans, and Schacht states that “malevolent intent was involved.”[82] Fiat money has long been the great bugaboo among orthodox economists. Amusingly, Schacht spent two days during the Nuremberg proceedings trying to explain the MEFO bills, and when asked for a third time, gave up and refused.[83]

The Bank for International Settlements reports show that up to the end of the war the Reich Government used a variety of methods of finance, including what Schacht had ridiculed as “state Giro ‘Feder’ money.”

Another interesting point made by Schacht is that, contrary to the widespread assumption, German economic recovery was not based on war expenditure. Schacht even criticizes Hitler with the assumption that he did not understand the requirements of war preparation. During 1935-1938 armaments expenditure was 21 billion RM.[84] Schacht assumes that this was due to Hitler’s ignorance. The other alternative is that there was no long-term plan to wage a major war or prolonged aggression. There was no buildup of raw materials and no real war economy until 1939.

In 1939 Schacht was replaced by Dr. Walther Funk, who had served in 1932 as deputy chairman of the NSDAP’s economic council under the chairmanship of Feder. The replacement of Schacht by Funk working under the direction of Göring the head of the Four Year Plan, seems to be an indication that a transitional phase had been completed and that the Government was well aware of Schacht’s role as an agent for international capital. Otto D. Tolischus, writing from Berlin for The New York Times, commented:

Dr. Schacht was ousted because he believed that Germany had reached the limit in debt-making and currency-expansion, that any further expansion spelled danger to the economic system, for which he still considered himself responsible, and that the government would have to curtail its ambitions and confine itself to the nation’s means…

No authoritative explanation of the new financial policy is available so far, but judging from hints in the highest quarters, the policy is likely to proceed about as follows:

1. Expand the currency circulation only for current exchange demands and not for special purposes.
2. Open the capital market for private industry and make private industry finance many tasks hitherto financed by the state, either directly or by prices on public orders, which have enabled industry to finance the expansion of new Four-Year Plan factories out of accumulated profits and reserves.
3. Create a non-interest bearing credit instrument with which the state, now having to share the capital market with private enterprise, will finance its own further orders in anticipation of increasing tax receipts from the resulting expansion of production.

In one respect therefore, Herr Funk presumably will continue ‘pre-financing’ the state’s orders as did Dr. Schacht, but whereas Dr. Schacht did it with bills, loans, delivery certificates and other credit instruments, all of which cost between 4½ and 5 per cent interest per year, Herr Funk proposes doing it with non-interest-eating instruments.

How that is to be done is his secret, but the mere mention of interest-free credit instruments inevitably recalls the plan of Gottfried Feder which at one time fascinated Chancellor Hitler, but which Dr Schacht vetoed.[85]

What had taken place was an ultimatum from the Reichsbank, which in January 1939 refused to grant the state any further credits.[86] This amounted to a mutiny by orthodox banking. On January 19 Schacht was removed a president of the Reichsbank, and his position was assumed by Economics Minister Funk.  Hitler issued as edict that obliged the Reichsbank to provide credit to the state.

Funk commented on Germanys’ monetary policy a year later:

Turning from the external to the internal sector, the question, “How is this war being financed in Germany?” is one in which the world shows a lively interest. The war is financed by work, for we are spending no money which has not been earned by our work. Bills based on labour – drawn by the Reich and discounted by the Reichsbank – are the basis of money…[87]

Broadly, it seems that Feder’s ideas were being implemented. The NSDAP broke the bondage of the international gold merchants, and this was being openly discussed as the way of the future. Germany created an autarchic trading bloc both before and during the war, based on barter through a Reich clearing center. Pegging national currencies to the Reichsmark resulted in immediate wage increases in the occupied states. The Bank for International Settlements Annual Report for 1940-1941 quoted finance spokesmen from Fascist Italy and the Third Reich:

The development of clearings in Europe has given rise to certain fears with regard to the future position of gold as an element in the monetary structure. It has since been noted that Germany has been able to finance rearmament and war with very slight gold reserves and that the foreign trade of Germany and Italy has been carried on largely on a clearing basis. Hence the question is being asked whether a new monetary system is being developed which will altogether dispense with the services of gold.

In authoritative statements made on this subject in Germany and Italy a distinction is drawn between different functions of gold. The president of the German Reichsbank said in a speech on 26 July 1940 that “in any case in the future gold will play no role as a basis of European currencies, for a currency is not dependent upon its cover but on the value which is given to it by the state, i.e. by the economic order as regulated by the state.” “It is,” he added, “another matter whether gold should be regarded as a suitable medium for the settlement of debit balances between countries, but we shall never pursue a monetary policy which makes us in any way dependent upon gold, for it is impossible to tie oneself to a medium the value of which one cannot determine oneself.”[88]

After the war Schacht, while acquitted of charges at Nuremberg, did not escape the vindictiveness of the Allies, despite the testimonials of those who stated that he was from the start an enemy of Hitler. In 1959 Donald R. Heath, American ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who had been director of political affairs for the American military government during the time of the Nuremberg trials, wrote to Schacht telling him that he had tried to intervene for Schacht with U.S. prosecutor Robert Jackson:

After consultation with Robert Murphy, now Under Secretary of State, and with the permission of General Clay, I went to Nürnberg to see Jackson. I told Jackson not only should you never have been brought before that tribunal but that you had consistently been working for the downfall of the Nazi regime. I told him that I had been in touch with you consistently during the first part of the war and Under Secretary of State Wells through me, and that you had passed on to me information adverse to the Nazi cause…[89]

In 1952 Schacht applied to establish a bank in Hamburg but was refused on the basis that the MEFO bills had offended banking morality. Notably, it was the Socialists who found the MEFO objectionable. [90]

Who Wanted War?

If some industrialists and businessmen such as Henry Ford Sr. did not want war and supported the America First Committee, others, including those supposedly pro-Nazi, were clamoring for aid to Britain and antagonism towards Germany well before Pearl Harbor. Senator Rush D. Holt, a liberal pacifist, during the last session of the 76th Congress, exposed the oligarchs promoting belligerence against Germany. Commenting on an influential committee, Defend America by Aiding the Allies, headed by newspaperman William Allen White, to agitate for war against Germany, or at least “all aid short of war” to Britain, Senator Holt said the founders included “eighteen prominent bankers.” Among those present at its April 1940 founding were Henry L. Stimson, who had served as counsel for J. P. Morgan and senior Morgan partner Thomas W. Lamont.[91] The campaign began on June 10, 1940, with advertisements entitled “Stop Hitler Now” appearing in newspapers throughout the USA. There was an allusion to the advertisements being paid for by “a number of patriotic American citizens.” On July 11 Senator Holt spoke to the Senate on the advertisement:

You find it is not the little fellows who paid for this advertisement, “Stop Hitler Now!” … Listen to these banks. The directors of these banks, or the families of directors, paid for this advertisement. Who are they? No wonder they want Hitler stopped. Director of J. Pierpont Morgan & Co.; Director of Drexel & Co.; Director of Kuhn, Loeb Co.,  – Senators have heard that name before – Kuhn, Loeb & Co. international banking. No wonder Kuhn, Loeb & Co. helped finance such an advertisement. A Director of Lehman Bros., another international banking firm, helped pay for this “Stop Hitler” advisement, and a number of others.[92]

Holt, referring to a list of names of the advertisement sponsors, stated that they are not the types who die in battle, or the fathers of those who die in battle. He named the wives of international financiers W. Averell Harriman,[93] H. P. Davison,[94] the late Daniel Guggenheim,[95] and John Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Other sponsors included Frederick M. Warburg,[96] a partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.; Cornelius V. Whitney, mining magnate associated with Rockefeller and Morgan interests; and Thomas W. Lamont of J. P. Morgan Co. In communications, there was Henry Luce, publisher of Time, and Samuel Goldman, the Hollywood mogul. Holt described these sponsors not as “patriots,” but as “paytriots.”

In his farewell speech to the Senate, Holt nailed exactly what was behind the agitation for war against Germany, and the different attitude towards the USSR: “Germany is a factor in world trade against England, Russia is not.” “American boys are going to be sent once again to Europe, in the next session of Congress, not to destroy dictatorship or to preserve democracy but to preserve the balance of power and protect world trade.” It is interesting to read now that in reply Senator Josh Lee reminded Holt that Roosevelt had promised that “no American expeditionary force would be sent to Europe.” Holt replied that Roosevelt had broken many promises.[97]

A survey of the newspaper headlines also indicates those most avid in calling for U.S. war against Germany, from as early as 1938; and indeed the war hysteria that was being pushed against Germany from an early date. Apart from President Franklin D. Roosevelt promising that he would not involve the USA in another European war, out of one side one his mouth while out of the other demanding an urgent military buildup, the two individuals who stand out most prominently in war-mongering are presidential confidant and Wall Street financier Bernard M. Baruch and New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman of Lehman Brothers. In October 1938 Baruch and Roosevelt were both calling for increased military spending by the USA. In January 1939 Baruch offered $3,300,000 of his own fortune to help equip the U.S. army. In February 1939 Roosevelt was saying that U.S. involvement in helping Britain and France was “inevitable,” although hostilities were not declared until September. In May 1940, amidst war-mongering by “rabbis” and Roosevelt, “Baruch exhorts U.S. to re-arm.” In June “Lehman tells Roosevelt to send all arms asked.” A few days later James P. Warburg, of the famous banking dynasty, “says only force will stop Hitler.” In July Lehman called for compulsory military service. In January 1941 James P. Warburg “asks for speed” in rearming the USA. A few days previously Rabbi Stephen S. Wise urged “all aid short of war” to Britain, as Roosevelt asked “billions in loans to fight Axis,” and Lehman “urges speedy passage of aid measure.” In February “Jewish Institute to Plan Role in New World Order,” and “Lehman Urges Speed in Voting British Aid Bill.”[98] Lehman, U.S. diplomat Bullitt, and others of the pro-war party were pitching to the American public, overwhelmingly opposed to war, that if Britain is defeated, the USA faced impending invasion.[99] Those such as Colonel Charles Lindbergh, who showed that such alarmist claims were utter nonsense, were pilloried as “pro-Nazi.”

Conclusion

Some Wall Street luminaries who are supposed to have been “pro-Nazi” on the basis of business affiliations in Germany were among those agitating for war against Germany. Foreign business holdings were held in trust throughout the war by Germany in accordance with international law. The one individual who had convincing links with international capital, Hjalmar Schacht, was relieved of all positions by 1939 and ended up in a concentration camp. Those German businessmen who did provide funds to the Nazi party did so at a comparatively late date, and were of nationalistic sentiments in a German tradition that was alien to that of the self-interest of the English free-trade school. Even those foreign businessmen who might reasonably have been expected to fund the NSDAP on ideological grounds, primarily Henry Ford, did not do so, persistent allegations to the contrary.

The Third Reich was a command economy, and corporate executives became “trustees” of their firms, subject to state supervision. The NSDAP premise: “the common interest before self-interest” was upheld throughout the regime. Dividends and profits were limited to a large extent. While it is a widespread assumption that Hitler reneged on the “socialist” principles of the NSDAP program, what the regime did carry out was extensive in terms of bilateral trade, and the use of unorthodox methods of finance. The machinations of international capital, including those who were supposedly pro-German, were for war, especially if Germany could not be persuaded to return to orthodox methods of trade and finance. War came the same year as Schacht was dismissed from office.

Notes

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by James Alexander

ITALIAN CONTRIBUTIONS to political and social thought are singularly impressive and, in fact, few nations are as favored with a tradition as long and as rich. One need only mention names such as Dante, Machiavelli, and Vico to appreciate the importance of Italy in this respect. In the twentieth century too, the contributions made by Italians are of great significance. Among these are Gaetano Mosca’s theory of oligarchical rule, Roberto Michels’ study of political parties, Corrado Gini’s intriguing sociobiological theories, and Scipio Sighele’s investigations of the criminal mind and of crowd psychology. [1] One of the most widely respected of these Italian political theorists and sociologists is Vilfredo Pareto (pictured). Indeed, so influential are his writings that “it is not possible to write the history of sociology without referring to Pareto.” [2] Throughout all of the vicissitudes and convulsions of twentieth-century political life, Pareto remains to this day “a scholar of universal reputation.” [3]

Pareto is additionally important for us today because he is a towering figure in one of Europe’s most distinguished, and yet widely suppressed, intellectual currents.That broad school of thought includes such diverse figures as Burke, Taine, Dostoyevsky, Burckhardt, Donoso Cortés, Nietzsche, and Spengler and stands in staunch opposition to rationalism, liberalism, egalitarianism, Marxism, and all of the other offspring of Enlightenment doctrinaires.

Life and Personality

Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto was born in Paris in 1848. [4] He was of mixed Italian-French ancestry, the only son of the Marquis Raffaele Pareto, an Italian exiled from his native Genoa because of his political views, and Marie Mattenier. Because his father earned a reasonably comfortable living as a hydrological engineer, Pareto was reared in a middle-class environment, enjoying the many advantages that accrued to people of his class in that age. He received a quality education in both France and Italy, ultimately completing his degree in engineering at the Istituto Politecnico of Turin where he graduated at the top of his class. For some years after graduation, he worked as a civil engineer, first for the state-owned Italian Railway Company and later in private industry.

Pareto married in 1889. His new spouse Dina Bakunin, a Russian, apparently loved an active social life, which was rather in conflict with Pareto’s own love of privacy and solitude. After twelve years of marriage Dina abandoned her husband. His second wife, Jane Régis, joined him shortly after the collapse of his marriage and the two remained devoted to one another throughout the remainder of Pareto’s life.

During these years Pareto acquired a deep interest in the political life of his country and expressed his views on a variety of topics in lectures, in articles for various journals, and in direct political activity. Steadfast in his support of free enterprise economic theory and free trade, he never ceased arguing that these concepts were vital necessities for the development of Italy. Vociferous and polemical in his advocacy of these ideas, and sharp in his denunciation of his opponents (who happened to be in power in Italy at that time), his public lectures were sufficiently controversial that they were sometimes raided and closed down by the police, and occasionally brought threats of violence from hired thugs. Making little headway with his economic concepts at the time, Pareto retired from active political life and was appointed Professor of Political Economy at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1893. There he established his reputation as an economist and sociologist. So substantial did this reputation eventually become that he has been dubbed “the Karl Marx of the Bourgeoisie” by his Marxist opponents. In economic theory, his Manual of Political Economy [5] and his critique of Marxian socialism, Les Systèmes socialistes, [6] remain among his most important works.

Pareto turned to sociology somewhat late in life, but he is nonetheless acclaimed in this field. His monumental Treatise on General Sociology, and two smaller volumes, The Rise and Fall of the Elites and The Transformation of Democracy, are his sociological masterworks. [7] Subsequently, we will consider the nature of some of the theories contained in these books.

The title of Marquis was bestowed on Pareto’s great-great-great- grandfather in 1729 and, after his father’s death in 1882, that dignity passed to Pareto himself. He never used the title, however, insisting that since it was not earned, it held little meaning for him. Conversely, after his appointment to the University of Lausanne, he did use the title “Professor,” since that was something which, he felt, he merited because of his lifetime of study. These facts point to one of the most dominant characteristics of this man — his extreme independence.

Pareto’s great intelligence caused him difficulties in working under any kind of supervision. All of his life he moved, step by step, towards personal independence. Because he was thoroughly conscious of his own brilliance, his confidence in his abilities and in his intellectual superiority often irritated and offended people around him. Pareto, in discussing almost any question about which he felt certain, could be stubborn in his views and disdainful of those with divergent opinions. Furthermore, he could be harsh and sarcastic in his remarks. As a result, some people came to see Pareto as disputatious, caustic, and careless of people’s feelings.

In contrast, Pareto could be generous to those he perceived as “underdogs.” He was always ready to take up his pen in defense of the poor or to denounce corruption in government and the exploitation of those unable to defend themselves. As author and sociologist Charles Powers writes,

For many years Pareto offered money, shelter, and counsel to political exiles (especially in 1898 following the tumultuous events of that year in Italy]. Like his father, Pareto was conservative in his personal tastes and inclinations, but he was also capable of sympathizing with others and appreciating protests for equality of opportunity and freedom of expression [8]. Pareto was a free thinker. In some respects, he is reminiscent of an early libertarian. He was possessed of that duality of mood we continue to find among people who are extremely conservative and yet ardent in their belief in personal liberty. [9]

Since he was an expert in the use of the sword, as well as a crack shot, he was disinclined to give way before any threats to his person, a mode of behavior he considered cowardly and contrary to his personal sense of honor. More than once he sent bullies and thugs running in terror. [10]

Pareto suffered from heart disease towards the end of his life and struggled through his last years in considerable ill health. He died August 19, 1923.

Les Systèmes socialistes

A lifelong opponent of Marxism and liberal egalitarianism, Pareto published a withering broadside against the Marxist-liberal worldview in 1902. Considering the almost universal respect accorded the more salient aspects of Marxism and liberalism, it is regrettable that Pareto’s Les Systèmes socialistes has not been translated into English in its entirety. Only a few excerpts have appeared in print. In an often quoted passage that might be taken as a prophetic warning for our own age, Pareto writes:

A sign which almost invariably presages the decadence of an aristocracy is the intrusion of humanitarian feelings and of affected sentimentalizing which render the aristocracy incapable of defending its position. Violence, we should note, is not to be confused with force. Often enough one observes cases in which individuals and classes which have lost the force to maintain themselves in power make themselves more and more hated because of their outbursts of random violence. The strong man strikes only when it is absolutely necessary, and then nothing stops him. Trajan was strong, not violent: Caligula was violent, not strong.When a living creature loses the sentiments which, in given circumstances are necessary to it in order to maintain the struggle for life, this is a certain sign of degeneration, for the absence of these sentiments will, sooner or later, entail the extinction of the species. The living creature which shrinks from giving blow for blow and from shedding its adversary’s blood thereby puts itself at the mercy of this adversary. The sheep has always found a wolf to devour it; if it now escapes this peril, it is only because man reserves it for his own prey.

Any people which has horror of blood to the point of not knowing how to defend itself will sooner or later become the prey of some bellicose people or other. There is not perhaps on this globe a single foot of ground which has not been conquered by the sword at some time or other, and where the people occupying it have not maintained themselves on it by force. If the Negroes were stronger than the Europeans, Europe would be partitioned by the Negroes and not Africa by the Europeans. The “right” claimed by people who bestow on themselves the title of “civilized’ to conquer other peoples, whom it pleases them to call “uncivilized,” is altogether ridiculous, or rather, this right is nothing other than force. For as long as the Europeans are stronger than the Chinese, they will impose their will on them; but if the Chinese should become stronger than the Europeans, then the roles would be reversed, and it is highly probable that humanitarian sentiments could never be opposed with any effectiveness to any army. [11]

In another portion of this same work that calls to mind the words of German philosopher Oswald Spengler, Pareto similarly warns against what he regarded as the suicidal danger of “humanitarianism”:

Any elite which is not prepared to join in battle to defend its position is in full decadence, and all that is left to it is to give way to another elite having the virile qualities it lacks. It is pure day-dreaming to imagine that the humanitarian principles it may have proclaimed will be applied to it: its vanquishers will stun it with the implacable cry, Vae Victis [=”woe to the vanquished”]. The knife of the guillotine was being sharpened in the shadows when, at the end of the eighteenth century, the ruling classes in France were engrossed in developing their “sensibility.” This idle and frivolous society, living like a parasite off the country, discoursed at its elegant supper parties of delivering the world from superstition and of crushing l’Infâme, all unsuspecting that it was itself going to be crushed. [12]

Marxism

A substantial portion of Les Systèmes socialistes is devoted to a scathing assessment of the basic premises of Marxism. According to historian H. Stuart Hughes, this work caused Lenin “many a sleepless night.” [13]

In Pareto’s view, the Marxist emphasis on the historical struggle between the unpropertied working class — the proletariat — and the property-owning capitalist class is skewed and terribly misleading. History is indeed full of conflict, but the proletariat-capitalist struggle is merely one of many and by no means the most historically important. As Pareto explains:

The class struggle, to which Marx has specially drawn attention, is a real factor, the tokens of which are to be found on every page of history. But the struggle is not confined only to two classes: the proletariat and the capitalist; it occurs between an infinite number of groups with different interests, and above all between the elites contending for power. The existence of these groups may vary in duration, they may be based on permanent or more or less temporary characteristics. In the most savage peoples, and perhaps in all, sex determines two of these groups. The oppression of which the proletariat complains, or had cause to complain of, is as nothing in comparison with that which the women of the Australian aborigines suffer. Characteristics to a greater or lesser degree real — nationality, religion, race, language, etc. — may give rise to these groups. In our own day [i.e. 1902] the struggle of the Czechs and the Germans in Bohemia is more intense than that of the proletariat and the capitalists in England. [14]

Marx’s ideology represents merely an attempt, Pareto believes, to supplant one ruling elite with another, despite Marxist promises to the contrary:

The socialists of our own day have clearly perceived that the revolution at the end of the eighteenth century led merely to the bourgeoisie’s taking the place of the old elite. They exaggerate a good deal the burden of oppression imposed by the new masters, but they do sincerely believe that a new elite of politicians will stand by their promises better than those which have come and gone up to the present day. All revolutionaries proclaim, in turn, that previous revolutions have ultimately ended up by deceiving the people; it is their revolution alone which is the true revolution. “All previous historical movements” declared the Communist Manifesto of 1848, “were movements of minorities or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.” Unfortunately this true revolution, which is to bring men an unmixed happiness, is only a deceptive mirage that never becomes a reality. It is akin to the golden age of the millenarians: forever awaited, it is forever lost in the mists of the future, forever eluding its devotees just when they think they have it. [15]

Residues and Derivations

One of Pareto’s most noteworthy and controversial theories is that human beings are not, for the most part, motivated by logic and reason but rather by sentiment. Les Systèmes socialistes is interspersed with this theme and it appears in its fully developed form in Pareto’s vast Treatise on General Sociology. In his Treatise, Pareto examines the multitudes of human actions that constitute the outward manifestations of these sentiments and classifies them into six major groups, calling them “residues.” All of these residues are common to the whole of mankind, Pareto comments, but certain residues stand out more markedly in certain individuals. Additionally, they are unalterable; man’s political nature is not perfectible but remains a constant throughout history.

Class I is the “instinct for combinations.” This is the manifestation of sentiments in individuals and in society that tends towards progressiveness, inventiveness, and the desire for adventure.

Class II residues have to do with what Pareto calls the “preservation of aggregates” and encompass the more conservative side of human nature, including loyalty to society’s enduring institutions such as family, church, community, and nation and the desire for permanency and security.

Following this comes the need for expressing sentiments through external action, Pareto’s Class III residues. Religious and patriotic ceremonies and pageantry stand out as examples of these residues and will include such things as saluting the flag, participating in a Christian communion service, marching in a military parade, and so on. In other words, human beings tend to manifest their feelings in symbols.

Next comes the social instinct, Class IV, embracing manifestations of sentiments in support of the individual and societal discipline that is indispensable for maintaining the social structure. This includes phenomena such as self-sacrifice for the sake of family and community and concepts such as the hierarchical arrangement of societies.

Class V is that quality in a society that stresses individual integrity and the integrity of the individual’s possessions and appurtenances. These residues contribute to social stability, systems of criminal and civil law being the most obvious examples.

Last we have Class VI, which is the sexual instinct, or the tendency to see social events in sexual terms.

Foxes and Lions

Throughout his Treatise, Pareto places particular emphasis on the first two of these six residue classes and to the struggle within individual men as well as in society between innovation and consolidation. The late James Burnham, writer, philosopher, and one of the foremost American disciples of Pareto, states that Pareto’s Class I and II residues are an extension and amplification of certain aspects of political theorizing set down in the fifteenth century by Niccolo Machiavelli. [16] Machiavelli divided humans into two classes, foxes and lions. The qualities he ascribes to these two classes of men resemble quite closely the qualities typical of Pareto’s Class I and Class II residue types. Men with strong Class I residues are the “foxes,” tending to be manipulative, innovative, calculating, and imaginative. Entrepreneurs prone to taking risks, inventors, scientists, authors of fiction, politicians, and creators of complex philosophies fall into this category. Class II men are “lions” and place much more value on traits such as good character and devotion to duty than on sheer wits. They are the defenders of tradition, the guardians of religious dogma, and the protectors of national honor.

For society to function properly there must be a balance between these two types of individuals; the functional relationship between the two is complementary. To illustrate this point, Pareto offers the examples of Kaiser Wilhelm I, his chancellor Otto von Bismarck, and Prussia’s adversary Emperor Napoleon III. Wilhelm had an abundance of Class II residues, while Bismarck exemplified Class I. Separately, perhaps, neither would have accomplished much, but together they loomed gigantic in nineteenth-century European history, each supplying what the other lacked. [17]

From the standpoint of Pareto’s theories, the regime of Napoleon III was a lopsided affair, obsessed with material prosperity and dominated for almost twenty years by such “foxes” as stock-market speculators and contractors who, it is said, divided the national budget among themselves. “In Prussia,” Pareto observes, “one finds a hereditary monarchy supported by a loyal nobility: Class II residues predominate; in France one finds a crowned adventurer supported by a band of speculators and spenders: Class I residues predominate.” [18] And, even more to the point, whereas in Prussia at that time the requirements of the army dictated financial policy, in France the financiers dictated military policy. Accordingly, when war broke out between Prussia and France in the summer of 1870, the “moment of truth” came for France. Napoleon’s vaunted Second Empire fell to pieces and was overrun in a matter of weeks. [19]

Justifying “Derivations”

Another aspect of Pareto’s theories which we shall examine here briefly is what he calls “derivations,” the ostensibly logical justifications that people employ to rationalize their essentially non-logical, sentiment-driven actions. Pareto names four principle classes of derivations: 1) derivations of assertion; 2) derivations of authority; 3) derivations that are in agreement with common sentiments and principles; and, 4) derivations of verbal proof. The first of these include statements of a dogmatic or aphoristic nature; for example, the saying, “honesty is the best policy.” The second, authority, is an appeal to people or concepts held in high esteem by tradition. To cite the opinion of one of the American Founding Fathers on some topic of current interest is to draw from Class II derivations. The third deals with appeals to “universal judgement,” the “will of the people,” the “best interests of the majority,” or similar sentiments. And, finally, the fourth relies on various verbal gymnastics, metaphors, allegories, and so forth.

We see, then, that to comprehend Pareto’s residues and derivations is to gain insights into the paradox of human behavior. They represent an attack on rationalism and liberal ideals in that they illuminate the primitive motivations behind the sentimental slogans and catchwords of political life. Pareto devotes the vast majority of his Treatise to setting forth in detail his observations on human nature and to proving the validity of his observations by citing examples from history. His erudition in fields such as Greco-Roman history was legendary and this fact is reflected throughout his massive tome.

Natural Equilibrium

At the social level, according to Pareto’s sociological scheme, residues and derivations are mechanisms by which society maintains its equilibrium. Society is seen as a system, “a whole consisting of interdependent parts. The ‘material points or molecules’ of the system … are individuals who are affected by social forces which are marked by constant or common properties.” [20] When imbalances arise, a reaction sets in whereby equilibrium is again achieved. Pareto believed that Italy and France, the two modern societies with which he was most familiar, were grossly out of balance and that “foxes” were largely in control. Long are his laments in the Treatise about the effete ruling classes in those two countries. In both instances, he held, revolutions were overdue.

We have already noted that when a ruling class is dominated by men possessing strong Class I residues, intelligence is generally valued over all other qualities. The use of force in dealing with internal and external dangers to the state and nation is shunned, and in its place attempts are made to resolve problems or mitigate threats through negotiations or social tinkering. Usually, such rulers will find justification for their timidity in false humanitarianism.

In the domestic sphere, the greatest danger to a society is an excess of criminal activity with which Class I types attempt to cope by resorting to methods such as criminal “rehabilitation” and various eleemosynary gestures. The result, as we know only too well, is a country awash in crime. With characteristic sarcasm Pareto comments on this phenomenon:

Modern theorists are in the habit of bitterly reproving ancient “prejudices” whereby the sins of the father were visited upon the son. They fail to notice that there is a similar thing in our own society, in the sense that the sins of the father benefit the son and acquit him of guilt. For the modern criminal it is a great good fortune to be able to count somewhere among his ancestry or other relations a criminal, a lunatic, or just a mere drunkard, for in a court of law that will win him a lighter penalty or, not seldom, an acquittal. Things have come to such a pass that there is hardly a criminal case nowadays where that sort of defense is not put forward. The old metaphysical proof that was used to show that a son should be punished because of his father’s wrongdoing was neither more nor less valid than the proof used nowadays to show that the punishment which otherwise he deserves should for the same reasons be either mitigated or remitted. When, then, the effort to find an excuse for the criminal in the sins of his ancestors proves unavailing, there is still recourse to finding one in the crimes of “society,” which, having failed to provide for the criminal’s happiness, is “guilty” of his crime. And the punishment proceeds to fall not upon “society,” but upon one of its members, who is chosen at random and has nothing whatever to do with the presumed guilt. [21]

Pareto elucidates in his footnote: “The classical case is that of the starving man who steals a loaf of bread. That he should be allowed to go free is understandable enough; but it is less understandable that “society’s” obligation not to let him starve should devolve upon one baker chosen at random and not on society as a whole.” [22]

Pareto gives another example, about a woman who tries to shoot her seducer, hits a third party who has nothing to do with her grievance, and is ultimately acquitted by the courts. Finally, he concludes his note with these remarks: “To satisfy sentiments of languorous pity, humanitarian legislators approve ‘probation’ and ‘suspended sentence’ laws, thanks to which a person who has committed a first theft is at once put in a position to commit a second. And why should the luxury of humaneness be paid for by the unfortunate victim of the second theft and not by society as a whole? … As it is, the criminal only is looked after and no one gives a thought to the victim. [23]

Expanding on the proposition that “society” is responsible for the murderous conduct of certain people, with which viewpoint he has no tolerance, he writes:

In any event, we still have not been shown why people who, be it through fault of “society,” happen to be “wanting in the moral sense,” should be allowed freely to walk the streets, killing anybody they please, and so saddling on one unlucky individual the task of paying for a “fault” that is common to all the members of “society.” If our humanitarians would but grant that these estimable individuals who are lacking in a moral sense as a result of “society’s shortcomings” should be made to wear some visible sign of their misfortune in their buttonholes, an honest man would have a chance of seeing them coming and get out of the way. [24]

Foreign Affairs

In foreign affairs, “foxes” tend to judge the wisdom of all policies from a commercial point of view and usually opt for negotiations and compromise, even in dangerous situations. For such men profit and loss determine all policy, and though such an outlook may succeed for some time, the final result is usually ruinous. That is because enemies maintaining a balance of “foxes” and “lions” remain capable of appreciating the use of force. Though they may occasionally make a pretence of having been bought off, when the moment is right and their overly-ingenious foe is fast asleep, they strike the lethal blow. In other words, Class I people are accustomed by their excessively-intellectualized preconceptions to believe that “reason” and money are always mightier than the sword, while Class II folk, with their native common sense, do not nurse such potentially fatal delusions. In Pareto’s words, “The fox may, by his cunning, escape for a certain length of time, but the day may come when the lion will reach him with a well-aimed cuff, and that will be the end of the argument.” [25]

Circulation of the Elites

Apart from his analyses of residues and derivations, Pareto is notable among sociologists for the theory known as “the circulation of the elites.” Let us remember that Pareto considered society a system in equilibrium, where processes of change tend to set in motion forces that work to restore and maintain social balance.

Pareto asserts that there are two types of elites within society: the governing elite and the non-governing elite. Moreover, the men who make up these elite strata are of two distinct mentalities, the speculator and the rentier. The speculator is the progressive, filled with Class I residues, while the rentier is the conservative, Class II residue type. There is a natural propensity in healthy societies for the two types to alternate in power. When, for example, speculators have made a mess of government and have outraged the bulk of their countrymen by their corruption and scandals, conservative forces will step to the fore and, in one way or another, replace them. The process, as we have said, is cyclical and more or less inevitable.

Furthermore, according to Pareto, wise rulers seek to reinvigorate their ranks by allowing the best from the lower strata of society to rise and become fully a part of the ruling class. This not only brings the best and brightest to the top, but deprives the lower classes of talent and of the leadership qualities that might one day prove to be a threat. Summarizing this component of Pareto’s theory, a contemporary sociologist observes that practicality, not pity, demands such a policy:

A dominant group, in Pareto’s opinion, survives only if it provides opportunities for the best persons of other origins to join in its privileges and rewards, and if it does not hesitate to use force to defend these privileges and rewards. Pareto’s irony attacks the elite that becomes humanitarian, tenderhearted rather than tough-minded. Pareto favors opportunity for all competent members of society to advance into the elite, but he is not motivated by feelings of pity for the underprivileged. To express and spread such humanitarian sentiments merely weakens the elite in the defense of its privileges. Moreover, such humanitarian sentiments would easily be a platform for rallying the opposition. [26]

But few aristocracies of long standing grasp the essential nature of this process, preferring to keep their ranks as exclusive as possible. Time takes its toll, and the rulers become ever weaker and ever less capable of bearing the burden of governing:

It is a specific trait of weak governments. Among the causes of the weakness two especially are to be noted: humanitarianism and cowardice-the cowardice that comes natural to decadent aristocracies and is in part natural, in part calculated, in “speculator” governments that are primarily concerned with material gain. The humanitarian spirit … is a malady peculiar to spineless individuals who are richly endowed with certain Class I residues that they have dressed up in sentimental garb. [27]

In the end, of course, the ruling class falls from power. Thus, Pareto writes that “history is a graveyard of aristocracies.” [28]

The Transformation of Democracy

Published as a slim volume near the end of Pareto’s life, The Transformation of Democracy originally appeared in 1920 as a series of essays published in an Italian scholarly periodical, Revista di Milano. In this work, Pareto recapitulates many of his theories in a more concise form, placing particular emphasis on what he believes are the consequences of allowing a money-elite to dominate society. The title of this work comes from Pareto’s observation that European democracies in the 1920s were more and more being transformed into plutocracies. The deception and corruption associated with plutocratic rule would eventually produce a reaction, however, and lead to the system’s downfall. In Pareto’s words,

The plutocracy has invented countless makeshift programs, such as generating enormous public debt that plutocrats know they will never be able to repay, levies on capital, taxes which exhaust the incomes of those who do not speculate, sumtuary laws which have historically proven useless, and other similar measures. The principal goal of each of these measures is to deceive the multitudes. [29]

When a society’s system of values deteriorates to the point where hard work is denigrated and “easy money” extolled, where honesty is mocked and duplicity celebrated, where authority gives way to anarchy and justice to legal chicanery, such a society stands face to face with ruin.

Pareto and Fascism

Before we enter into the controversy surrounding Pareto’s sympathy for Italian leader Benito Mussolini, let us take pains to avoid the error of viewing events of the 1920s through the spectacles of the post-World War II era, for what seemed apparent in 1945 was not at all evident twenty years before. Inarguably, throughout the whole of the 1920s, Mussolini was an enormously popular man in Italy and abroad, with all except perhaps the most inveterate leftists. An American writer puts it as follows:

Postwar [First World War] Italy … was a sewer of corruption and degeneracy. In this quagmire Fascism appeared like a gust of fresh air, a tempest-like purgation of all that was defiled, leveled, fetid. Based on the invigorating instincts of nationalist idealism, Fascism “was the opposite of wild ideas, of lawlessness, of injustice, of cowardice, of treason, of crime, of class warfare, of special privilege; and it represented square-dealing, patriotism and common sense.” As for Mussolini, “there has never been a word uttered against his absolute sincerity and honesty. Whatever the cause on which he embarked, he proved to be a natural-born leader and a gluttonous worker.” Under Mussolini’s dynamic leadership, the brave Blackshirts made short shrift of the radicals, restored the rights of property, and purged the country of self-seeking politicians who thrive on corruption endemic to mass democracy.” [30]

If the Italian Duce was so popular in the 1920s that he received the accolades of the Saturday Evening Post [31] and the American Legion [32], and the highest praises of British and American establishment figures such as Winston Churchill [33] and Ambassador Richard Washburn Child, [34] how much more enthusiastic must have been Italians of Pareto’s conservative bent at that time. They credited Mussolini with nothing less than rescuing Italy from chaos and Bolshevism. The coming tragedies of the ’40s, needless to say, were far away, over a distant horizon, invisible to all.

Pareto invariably expressed contempt for the pluto-democratic governments that ruled Italy throughout most of his life. His rancor towards liberal politicians and their methods surfaces all through his books; these men are the object of his scorn and sharp wit. Pareto translator Arthur Livingston writes, “He was convinced that ten men of courage could at any time march on Rome and put the band of ‘speculators’ that were filling their pockets and ruining Italy to flight.” [35] Consequently, in October 1922, after the Fascist March on Rome and Mussolini’s appointment by the King as Prime Minister, “Pareto was able to rise from a sick-bed and utter a triumphant ‘I told you so!’.” [36] Yet, Pareto never joined the Fascist Party. Well into his seventies and severely ill with heart disease, he remained secluded in his villa in Switzerland.

The new government, however, extended many honors to Pareto. He was designated as delegate to the Disarmament Conference at Geneva, was made a Senator of the Kingdom, and was listed as a contributor to the Duce’s personal periodical, Gerarchia. [37] Many of these honors he declined due to the state of his health, yet he remained favorably disposed towards the regime corresponding with Mussolini and offering advice in the formulation of economic and social policies. [38]

Many years before the March on Rome, Mussolini attended Pareto’s lectures in Lausanne and listened to the professor with rapt attention. “I looked forward to every one,” Mussolini wrote, “…[f]or here was a teacher who was outlining the fundamental economic philosophy of the future.” [39] The young Italian was obviously deeply impressed and, after his elevation to power, sought immediately to transform his aged mentor’s thoughts into action:

In the first years of his rule Mussolini literally executed the policy prescribed by Pareto, destroying political liberalism, but at the same time largely replacing state management of private enterprise, diminishing taxes on property, favoring industrial development, imposing a religious education in dogmas….” [40]

Of course, it was not only Pareto’s economic theories that influenced the course of the Fascist state, but especially the sociological theories: “the Sociologia Generale has become for many Fascists a treatise on government,” [41] noted one writer at the time. Clearly, there was some agreement between Pareto and the new government. Pareto’s theory of rule by elites, his authoritarian leanings, his uncompromising rejection of the liberal fixation with Economic Man, his hatred of disorder, his devotion to the hierarchical arrangement of society, and his belief in an aristocracy of merit are all ideas in harmony with Fascism. Let us keep in mind, however, that all of these ideas were formulated by Pareto decades before anyone had ever heard of Fascism and Mussolini. Likewise, it may be said that they are as much in harmony with age-old monarchical ideas, or those of the ancient authoritarian republics, as with any modern political creeds.

Some writers have speculated that had Pareto lived he would have found many points of disagreement with the Fascist state as it developed, and it is true that he expressed his disapprobation over limitations placed by the regime on freedom of expression, particularly in academia. [42] As we have already seen, however, it was in Pareto’s nature to find fault with nearly all regimes, past and present, and so it would not have been surprising had he found reason occasionally to criticize Mussolini’s.

Neither Pareto nor Mussolini, it should be pointed out, were rigid ideologues. Mussolini once declared, perhaps a bit hyperbolically, that “every system is a mistake and every theory a prison.” [43] While government must be guided by a general set of principles, he believed, one must not be constrained by inflexible doctrines that become nothing more than wearisome impedimenta in dealing with new and unexplained situations. An early Fascist writer explained, in part, Mussolini’s affinity with Pareto in this respect:

“To seek!” — a word of power. In a sense, a nobler word than “to find.” With more of intention in it, less of chance. You may “find” something that is false; but he who seeks goes on seeking increasingly, always hoping to attain to the truth. Vilfredo Pareto was a master of this school. He kept moving. Without movement, Plato said, everything becomes corrupted. As Homer sang, the eternal surge of the sea is the father of mankind. Every one of Pareto’s new books or of the new editions of them, includes any number of commentaries upon and modifications of his previous books, and deals in detail with the criticisms, corrections, and objections which they have elicited. He generally refutes his critics, but while doing so, he indicates other and more serious points in regard to which they might have, and ought to have, reproved or questioned him. Reflecting over his subject, he himself proceeds to deal with these points, finding some of them specious, some important, and correcting his earlier conclusions accordingly. [44]

Though Fascist rule in Italy came to an end with the military victory of the Anglo-Americans in 1945, Pareto’s influence was not seriously touched by that mighty upheaval. Today, new editions of his works and new books about his view of society continue to appear. That his ideas endured the catastrophe of the war virtually without damage, and that they are still discussed among and debated by serious thinkers, is suggestive of their universality and timelessness.

* * *

ENDNOTES

[1] See, for example, W. Rex Crawford, “Representative Italian Contributions to Sociology: Pareto, Loria, Vaccaro, Gini, and Sighele,” chap. in An Introduction to The History of Sociology, Harry Elmer Barnes, editor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), Howard Becker and Harry Elmer Barnes, “Sociology in Italy,” chap. in Social Thought From Lore to Science, (New York: Dover Publications, 1961), and James Burnham, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom (New York: The John Day Company, 1943).

[2] G. Duncan Mitchell, A Hundred Years of Sociology (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1968), p. 115.

[3] Herbert W. Schneider, Making the Fascist State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1928), p. 102.

[4] Biographical details are taken from Charles H. Powers, Vilfredo Pareto, vol. 5, Masters of Social Theory, Jonathan H. Turner, Editor (Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, 1987), pp. 13-20.

[5] Appearing originally in 1909, the Manuele di economia politica has been translated into English: Ann Schwier translator, Ann Schwier and Alfred Page, Editors (New York: August M. Kelly, 1971).

[6] (Geneva: Librarie Droz, 1965). Published originally 1902-3. The book has never been fully published in English.

[7] The Treatise on General Sociology (Trattato di Sociologia Generale), was first published in English under the name The Mind and Society, A. Borngiorno and Arthur Livingston, translators (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Javanovich, 1935). It was reprinted in 1963 under its original title (New York: Dover Publications) and remains in print (New York: AMS Press, 1983). The Rise and Fall of the Elites: An Application of Theoretical Sociology (Totowa, New Jersey: The Bedminster Press, 1968; reprint, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1991) is a translation of Pareto’s monograph, “Un Applicazione de teorie sociologiche,” published in 1901 in Revista Italiana di Sociologia. The Transformation of Democracy (Trasformazioni della democrazia), Charles Power, editor, R. Girola, translator (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1984). The original Italian edition appeared in 1921.

[8] This term, “equality of opportunity” is so misused in our own time, especially in America, that some clarification is appropriate. “Equality of opportunity” refers merely to Pareto’s belief that in a healthy society advancement must be opened to superior members of all social classes — “Meritocracy,” in other words. See Powers, pp. 22-3.

[9] Powers, p. 19.

[10] Ibid., p. 20.

[11] Adrian Lyttelton, Editor, Italian Fascisms: From Pareto to Gentile (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 79-80.

[12] Ibid., p. 81.

[13] H. Stuart Hughes, Oswald Spengler: A Critical Estimate (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), p. 16.

[14] Lyttelton, p. 86.

[15] Ibid., pp. 82-3.

[16] James Burnham, Suicide of the West (New York: John Day Company, 1964), pp. 248-50.

[17] Pareto, Treatise, # 2455. Citations from the Treatise refer to the paragraph numbers that the author uses in this work . Citations are thus uniform in all editions.

[18] Ibid., # 2462.

[19] Ibid., # 2458-72.

[20] Nicholas Timasheff, Sociological Theory: Its Nature and Growth (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 162.

[21] Pareto, Treatise, # 1987.

[22] Ibid. # 1987n.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Ibid., # 1716n.

[25] Ibid., # 2480n.

[26] Hans L. Zetterberg, “Introduction” to The Rise and Fall of the Elites by Vilfredo Pareto, pp. 2-3.

[27] Pareto, Treatise, # 2474.

[28] Ibid., # 2053.

[29] Pareto, Transformation, p. 60.

[30] John P. Diggins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 17. Diggins’ quotations in the cited paragraph come from the writings of an American Mussolini enthusiast of the 1920s, Kenneth L. Roberts.

[31] Ibid., p. 27.

[32] Ibid., p. 206. Mussolini was officially invited to attend the San Francisco Legion Convention of 1923 (he declined) and some years later was made an honorary member of the American Legion by a delegation of Legionnaires visiting Rome. The Duce received the delegation in his palace and was awarded a membership badge by the delighted American visitors.

[33] In an interview published in the London Times, January 21, 1927, immediately after a visit by Churchill to Mussolini, the future British Prime Minister said: “If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly with you [Mussolini] from start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.” See Luigi Villari, Italian Foreign Policy Under Mussolini (New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1956), p. 43.

[34] The United States Ambassador to Italy in the ’20s, Child dubbed Mussolini “the Spartan genius,” ghostwrote an “autobiography” of Mussolini for publication in America, and perpetually extolled the Italian leader in the most extravagant terms. Diggins, p. 27.

[35] Pareto, Treatise, p. xvii.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Franz Borkenau, Pareto (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1936), p. 18.

[38] Ibid., p. 20.

[39] Benito Mussolini, My Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928), p. 14.

[40] Borkenau, p. 18.

[41] George C. Homans and Charles P. Curtis, Jr., An Introduction to Pareto (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934), p. 9.

[42] Borkenau, p. 18. In a letter written to Mussolini written shortly before Pareto’s death, the sociologist cautioned that the Fascist regime must relentlessly strike down all active opponents. Those, however, whose opposition was merely verbal should not be molested since, he believed, that would serve only to conceal public opinion. “Let the crows craw but be merciless when it comes to acts,” Pareto admonished the Duce. See Alistair Hamilton, The Appeal of Fascism: A Study of Intellectuals and Fascism, 1919-1945 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1971), pp. 44-5.

[43] Margherita G. Sarfatti, The Life of Benito Mussolini (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1925), p. 101.

[44] Ibid, p. 102.

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by Kevin Alfred Strom

IF YOU WATCH FOX NEWS or read political blogs you probably have a headache from all the accusations of “fascism” bouncing back and forth from left to right and back again. “Obama’s a fascist!” “Rush is a fascist!” “Bush is a fascist!” “The Zionists are fascists!” “Your grandmother’s a fascist!” “Kevin Strom is a fascist!” And then we have that ridiculous neologism “Islamofascism.” (ILLUSTRATION: John Kennedy delivering his State of the Union address, 1963, fasces displayed behind him.)

Modern Republicans and Democrats both misuse the term “fascist” — and to such a degree that the misuse has started to be enshrined in dictionaries.

In the broad sense, the term (from the Latin for “bundle”) just refers to the strength of a united people — as in the ancient Roman story in which a father asks his sons to gather sticks from the forest and bring them to him. Taking the wooden rods one at a time, he easily breaks each of them in two. But when the very same rods are bound together — symbolizing a united family or people — they are unbreakable.

The symbol of the French republic.

The fascist symbol, or fasces, usually with the rods bound around an axe to signify authority, thus became the symbol of the Roman Republic and its ideals. It was also used by the French republic, was adopted by Mussolini’s 20th century Fascist movement, and was also used by the United States during the same era — among many others.

The U.S. dime displayed the fasces on its reverse from 1916-1945; and it is displayed prominently to this day in the main chamber of the U.S. Congress.

It’s also a prominent element of Daniel Chester French’s highly idealized sculpture in the Lincoln Memorial.

In the narrow sense, fascism means specifically the socio-political movement popularized by Benito Mussolini and to some degree carried on into more recent times by the Movimento Sociale Italiano.

Reverse of the U.S. ten-cent piece, 1916-1945.

It was characterized by the ideal of the state as expressing the will of the people, with the people being an organic, natural entity, not divided into classes with differing economic interests but instead with each sector of society (such as farmers, laborers, administrators, merchants, et cetera) able to elect its own legislative representatives. In practice, many compromises were made with allies and with the old order of things.

The central government and ruling party had a lot of authority under Italian Fascism, and that is really the only similarity real fascism shares with the pop-definition of the word. But other central governments and parties past and present had similar or greater degrees of authority — such in fact being the norm for almost all human societies throughout history.

Abraham Lincoln by Daniel Chester French: Lincoln’s hands rest on two large fasces.

The pop-definition of “fascist” is roughly “big, bad, scary, and mean authoritarianism.”

“Fascist” is used by the Democrat gang to refer to the Republicans and their often authoritarian views on (among other things) war, drugs, and sexuality — and by the Republican gang to refer to the Democrats and their often authoritarian views on (among other things) freedom of association, financial privacy, and taxation.

It’s misused that way because both sides think they can make brownie points by scaring voters with the spectre of authoritarianism from the rival gang.

Here’s the truth: both modern Republicans and modern Democrats score pretty high on the authoritarianism scale — somewhat higher, I’d say, than the Movimento Sociale Italiano.

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The following is from a speech Sir Mosley gave to the English-Speaking Union in 1933. It is partially reproduced in his book, My Life, and appears on OswaldMosley.com. In it, Sir Mosley responds to the claim that fascism lacks a historical and intellectual basis.

OUR OPPONENTS allege that Fascism has no historic background or philosophy, and it is my task this afternoon to suggest that Fascism has roots deep in history and has been sustained by some of the finest flights of the speculative mind. I am, of course, aware that not much philosophy attaches to our activities in the columns of the daily press. However, I trust you will believe that those great mirrors of the public mind do not always give a very accurate reflection, and while you only read of the more stirring moments of our progress, yet there are other moments, which have some depth in thought and constructive conception. (ILLUSTRATION: Sir Oswald Mosley founded the British Union of Fascists to awaken the British will to live.)

I believe that Fascist philosophy can be expressed in intelligible terms, and while it makes an entirely novel contribution to the thought of this age, it can yet be shown to derive both its origin and its historic support from the established thought of the past.

In the first instance, I suggest that most philosophies of action are derived from a synthesis of cultural conflicts in a previous period. Where, in an age of culture, of thought, of abstract speculation, you find two great cultures in sharp antithesis, you usually find, in the following age of action, some synthesis in practice between those two sharp antitheses which leads to a practical creed of action.

I would suggest to you that in the last century, the major intellectual struggle arose from the tremendous impact of Nietszchian thought on the Christian civilisation of two thousand years. That impact was only very slowly realised. Its full implications are only today working themselves out. But turn where you will in modern thought, you find the results of that struggle for mastery of the mind and the spirit of man. I am not myself stating the case against Christianity, because I am going to show you how I believe the Nietszchian and the Christian doctrines are capable of synthesis.

On the one hand you find in Fascism, taken from Christianity, taken directly from the Christian conception, the immense vision of service, of self-abnegation, of self-sacrifice in the cause of others, in the cause of the world, in the cause of your country; not the elimination of the individual, so much as the fusion of the individual in something far greater than himself; and you have that basic doctrine of Fascism, service, self-surrender to what the Fascist must conceive to be the greatest cause and the greatest impulse in the world. On the other hand you find taken from Nietszchian thought the virility, the challenge to all existing things which impede the march of mankind, the absolute abnegation of the doctrine of surrender; the firm ability to grapple with and to overcome all obstructions. You have, in fact, the creation of a doctrine of men of vigour and of self-help which is the other outstanding characteristic of Fascism.

At the moment of a great world crisis, a crisis which in the end will inevitably deepen, a movement emerges from a historic background which makes its emergence inevitable, carrying certain traditional attributes derived from a very glorious past, but facing the facts of today, armed with the instruments which only this age has ever conferred upon mankind. By this new and wonderful coincidence of instrument and of event the problems of the age can be overcome, and the future can be assured in a progressive stability. Possibly this is the last great wave of the immortal, the eternally recurring Caesarian movement; but with the aid of science, and with the inspiration of the modern mind, this wave shall carry humanity to the further shore.

* * *

Source: Ur-Fascist Analytics

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DIANA MOSLEY’S (pictured) A Life of Contrasts (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1977) is an extremely important book. It provides an intimate picture of the age we have lived through, written from the vantage point of a member of one of its foremost political and literary families. Within the overall picture are revealing portraits of many influential figures, including Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill, whom the authoress knew both socially and personally. The connecting thread, as in all good biographies, is the personality of the subject, and her style is as witty as her judgments are judicious.

Diana, Lady Mosley, was born one of the seven Mitford children, three of whom became writers. The eldest sister, Nancy, sketched her impressions of the family in her famous Pursuit of Love. It cannot be said that she was warm-hearted like Diana. In fact, Diana’s humorous description of Nancy as a Girl Guide leader neatly, if obliquely, lays bare the bossy, interfering side of the latter’s nature. Nor was Nancy a particularly loyal sister, even taking into account the fact that her father and mother, her brother Tom, and her sisters Diana, Unity and Pamela were all active sympathizers with fascism, of which she disapproved. Yet towards the end of her life, Nancy, who lived in Paris and later at Versailles, established a rather close relationship with Diana, who lives out at Orsay. Diana did all the German translations for Nancy’s biography of Frederick the Great and nursed her devotedly during her terminal cancer. Only dimly does Diana let it be understood how inconsiderate Nancy could be.

The Mitford family together, circa 1935. From left to right — Unity, Tom, Deborah, Diana, Jessica, Nancy and Pamela

The third writer of the family is Jessica, who became a Stalinist and has long been notorious for abusing the hospitality of the United States. By far the plainest and dumpiest member of an exceptional­ly handsome family, she reveals in her catty little book Hons and Rebels how much she resented the superior height and beauty of Diana and Unity. She also resented her father and mother, of whom a friend of Diana’s remarked, “When your parents were young…they were so beautiful they were like gods walking upon the earth.” Anyone who doubts the political and social significance of good looks should consider the case of Rupert Brooke, whose poetry has been unjustly maligned on the strength of one remark about “temperamentvoll [high-spirited — Ed.] German Jews” and whose handsome features are always described with resentment by liberal critics.

In direct opposition to Jessica and everything she represents stands the compelling and tragic figure of Unity Valkyrie. Never were two names more appropriate, for she desired above all the unity of two great peoples and was a veritable Bruennhilde in her uncompromising support for the Third Reich. Obviously, she was the favorite sister of Diana, who in her book describes the various stages of Unity’s dramatic involvement with Hitler. Having been exceptionally unruly at her schools (from several of which she was expelled), she was persuaded to visit Germany by Diana, although at that time she would have preferred to have gone to France or Italy. They were both overwhelmed by the first (1933) Parteitag at Nuremberg. As Diana puts it, they “witnessed a demonstration of hope in a nation which had known collective despair” and the effect on Unity was akin to a religious conversion. I find it interesting how often in the past hundred years exceptionally sensitive Anglo-Saxons have been converted to some esoteric faith or ideology by the stronger group feelings of other peoples. To some extent, this can be explained as a consequence of the weakening sense of group identity among Anglo-Saxons both in Britain and overseas.

Unity (nine) and Jessica (six) Mitford

Diana tells us that Unity went back to Germany with the fixed intention of meeting Hitler, and of how she achieved this at his favorite restaurant, the Osteria Bavaria in Munich. Her willfulness is not glossed over. As Diana says, “Unity was never awed in her entire life” (the Parteitag excepted). Unity was also inclined to be perverse and she took delight in shocking the prim and pompous. Much play has been made in the press about her famous remark, “But Streicher is a kitten” (which Diana forgets to mention). Anyway, it can hardly be claimed that Hitler liked her because she was a clinging vine.

Unity Mitford

There is also an amusing description of Unity being upbraided for wearing makeup by women who are best described as “Brown Bolsheviks” (i.e., exaggerated “Nazis” who had formerly been left-leaning or actual members of the six-million-strong Com­munist party). Nor can it be claimed that Hitler borrowed some of his ideas from Unity. (Indeed, Diana shows signs of a slight sisterly asperity in denying the possibility). And he never slept with her, despite the existence of a work called I Was Hitler’s Maid, which “described thrilling orgies with Hitler flagellating housemaids and parlormaids on the Berg,” and which had a reference to Unity unpacking her silk underwear. (In fact, she never spent the night in Hitler’s house, since he had already taken up with Eva Braun, whom Diana describes as “pretty and charming.”). “Beachcomber” of the London Daily Express, guyed this and other sensational books by inventing one called I Was Himmler’s Aunt.

But there is nothing humorous about Unity’s despair when her own country declared war upon Germany. She shot herself with a little pistol of the type American ladies sometimes carry in their handbags. The bullet lodged in her brain, but she did not die until after the war, having been returned home by order of Hitler and looked after with loving care by her mother. In her last years Unity was a pale shadow of her former self. Let her remain in our minds as she was before her abortive suicide, a sublime manifestation of Goethe’s “eternal feminine which draws us onward and upward.”

Of the two remaining Mitford sisters, Pamela married a clever scientist called Derek Jackson, who supported Oswald Mosley and rode his own horse in the Grand National; while the beautiful Deborah became Duchess of Devonshire. Their brother Tom, like Diana and Unity, was an active member of the British Union of Fascists. When war came, he joined the British army and died fighting the Japanese in Burma, preferring not to participate in the invasion of Germany, which he loved almost as much as England. Only the philosophy of Heraclitus and the transcendent teachings of the Bhagavad Gita can help us to understand such happenings as part of the divine plan.

Nancy Mitford

Equally noteworthy are Diana’s portraits of her father and mother, known to the children as “Farve” and “Muv.” Lord Redesdale, the father, is described as an overwhelming figure, a tall handsome man with a beige complexion which never changed and astonishing Mitford-blue eyes. As a young man he had edited a journal called The Lady, despite the fact that he “hated London, loathed being indoors and abominated the printed word.” Oftentimes he sought solace by hunting rats in his office with a mongoose. It follows naturally that in later life he used to hunt his children with a bloodhound, though it never bit any of them and they loved the excitement. Still, he recognized himself as Uncle Matthew in Nancy’s Pursuit of Love and read the book with enjoyment. Muv also had her eccentricities. She denied her daughters all the foods forbidden to the ancient Hebrews (her father had been a health crank). Nevertheless she was an extremely kindhearted, no-nonsense kind of mother, always at hand to help her children out of scrapes. Diana describes a touching scene in which her mother was reconciled with her father on his deathbed, following some years of separation after the war.

Diana Mosley’s gift for characterization is evident throughout, but is nowhere better exemplified than in her comments on Adolf Hitler. Even her physical description is at odds with the way we have been taught to see him: “His eyes were dark blue, his skin fair and his brown hair exceptionally fine; it was neatly brushed; I never saw him with a lock of hair over his forehead.” Indeed, an English maidservant, when asked what had struck her most about Hitler, replied that he had such beautiful hair. Diana adds: “He had a high forehead which almost jutted forward above his eyes. I have seen this on one or two other people; generally they have been musicians.” In this connection she quotes Alan Bullock’s crack that Hitler’s taste “did not get much beyond Beethoven” and asks what it means. It presumably means that Hitler did not appreciate Schoenberg, though he admired Bruckner and Wagner, both of whom were post-Beethoven.

Deborah Mitford

Nor was Hitler’s behavior such as we have been led to expect: “I have never heard Hitler ‘rant’ and almost never heard the famous monologue, though I should have been interested to listen to it.” In fact, she found that the only subject on which he verged on the boring was automobile engines. Yet a few of those who knew him at the time have since claimed that his table talk often put them to sleep. Here is Diana’s devastating comment on one of these, Albert Speer: “He was quite often at Hitler’s table; at that time a young architect he has grown into an old writer. On the occasions when I saw him he gave a wonderful imitation of being fascinated by his host; or perhaps he really was fascinated.”

Her quick profiles of two other National Socialist leaders also have their interest. Surprisingly, she describes herself and Unity having a frugal meal with Hermann Goering, who was as usual indulging his taste for fancy dress. Goebbels she characterizes as “intelligent, witty and sarcastic.” Mussolini she did not meet, though she describes the Fuehrer as making fun of his histrionics. The trouble was that Hitler felt a certain loyalty towards the originator of fascism, only later realizing that his involvement with Mussolini had lost him time essential for the conquest of Russia.

Unity’s headstone (she shot herself when discovering that her homeland, Great Britain, had declared war upon her spiritual homeland, Germany; and died some years later from complications related to her suicide attempt)

While accepting that Russian and Chinese crimes were far worse than German ones, Diana implicitly accepts the lie that during the war Hitler deliberately ordered the extermination of Jews, though for some time after the war her husband referred to this crime as “alleged.” Why the change of heart? Well, to begin with, an enormous amount of spurious “evidence” has been manufactured. It was not until long after the war that the Communists threw open a reconstructed Auschwitz in support of their propaganda line.

But much more important was the central part played by the Six Million Myth in the political and social blackmail of the Mosleys in the 1950s and 60s. It must be remembered that Mosley and his wife were not a couple of oldtime rightwingers forced into a corner. They had been highly respected members of the cream of society. Then they were demonized, and the psychic effect must have been shattering. For example, one American lady thought she was being kind when she visited their house and expressed gratification at finding that the Mosleys were “not monsters.” Nor was that all. Their children were subjected to the same sort of whispering campaign. Several times, after their son had left a gathering, I have heard people say things like: “Yes, he’s very charming, but I wonder how charming he would have been if the other side had won.” Outright insults and subtle pressures of this kind account for the largely wasted efforts of the Mosleys to reinstate themselves in the eyes of “public opinion.”

I do not mean that Diana Mosley goes overboard in favor of the Jews. She quotes Arthur Koestler as admitting that the Nuremberg laws reflect the spirit of the Old Testament. But the effects of moral blackmail are shown in her determination to say anything pro-Jewish which actually accords with her experience. One Kommer, who spoiled her chances of acting in an important play, is described as “fat, bald, clever and kind.” Brian Howard, another Jew, was an early friend of hers. He was a failed artist and, judging by her stories about him, an embarrassing homosexual bore as well. Re Brian Howard, she quotes no less a person than Professor Lindemann as saying, “Oh, you can’t like him. He’s a Jew.” And she described an uncle of her first husband, Brian Guinness, as “charming and rather eccentric; he believed in the Hidden Hand and the Jewish World Plot.” Again, she trots out Lloyd George as saying that anti-Semitism has “no basis in reason.”

Oswald Mosley

She might have quoted Churchill too where the Jews are concerned. He is on record as denouncing the overwhelming part played by the Jews in the Russian Revolution. Churchill appears frequently in her pages, which is only natural, in view of the fact that he married a cousin of hers and was very close to her when she was young. What is more, she had some reason to be grateful to him. He released her and Mosley from prison when Muv went to see him and told him of Mosley’s dangerous state of health. And Churchill was instrumental in getting the ban on their traveling lifted after the war — though it took a lot of legal wrangling, an appeal to Magna Carta, and the actual purchase of a yacht, before the Mosleys could pry passports out of the reluctant Foreign Office.

She quotes Winston frequently, and what emerges is a picture of a brave, self-indulgent man who could not bear to be deprived of the standard of living which he had inherited. Intelligence he certainly had, and quickness of wit, but no learning at all. Who else could have written a History of the English Speaking Peoples without once mentioning Shakespeare? But her points in favor of Churchill are salutary, because they restore our sense of proportion and prevent us from making the mistake of the other side in diabolizing our enemies. For instance, she points out that though both Hitler and Churchill had fine hands, Churchill’s were the finer. The point is of little intrinsic importance, but it serves to restore our perspective. Similarly, she reminds us that Lindemann, who pushed for the terror bombing of German working-class districts, was bright enough, during the First War, to work out a way of pulling an aircraft out of the hitherto lethal tailspin, and brave enough to prove his theory by doing it himself.

A far more remarkable man than Churchill is Diana’s husband, Sir Oswald Mosley, who had the rare ability to attract and hold the devotion of a grade A female like Diana. Not only was she extremely beautiful when young, but she is still a fine-looking lady — highly intelligent, full of fun and lissome. Nor is she oblivious of her husband’s faults. She records, for instance, that he was not much of a stoker or gardener while in prison. But how many wives, after a lifetime with their husbands, would describe them as she does him: “the best of companions, he had every gift, being handsome, generous, intelligent and full of wonderful gaiety and joie de vivre. Of course I fell in love with him …”

She tells how he was invalided out of the forces in World War I, having fought in the air and in the trenches, how he became first a Conservative and then a Labour MP, and was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in Ramsay MacDonald’s government after the Wall Street crash. He devised a plan for dealing with unemployment through the organization of useful public works and a national investment board. The Mosley Memorandum, as it was called, was rejected by his party, and Mosley went into the political wilderness. Nevertheless, many saw that he was right and that his plan could have saved both England and the Empire. That is why it was rejected. Any number of prominent figures, on the Left as well as the Right, have gone on record as admiring his economic acumen, and I would refer you to his autobiography My Life for details of his economic and political thinking.

First, he began the New Party, but his meetings were so often disrupted that he turned it into the British Union of Fascists. Remember, only the Fascists were willing to deal with Red violence. Some of the best men in England rallied to him, men like Raven Thomson and General Fuller. He had the sympathy of Bernard Shaw, Lloyd George, Henry Williamson and many others. At the Earls Court in London in July 1939, he held the largest indoor meeting ever held in the world up to that time. How then did he fail to come to power?

Diana Mosley (right) and her sister Unity Valkyrie Mitford. Circa
September 1937 at a Nuremberg National Socialist party rally

We can dispose immediately of the canard that society disapproved of his betrayal of his wife, Lady Cynthia, daughter of the great Lord Curzon. “Cimmie” not only supported her husband, she actively encouraged him to go fascist. The lie has been disseminated that she was really part-Jewish, through her grandfather, Levi Leiter of Chicago. Note that Levi was Leiter’s given name, not his surname, and that he came of Dutch fundamentalist stock. Not only does Mosley record that the Leiter family consisted of “big, blond, blue-eyed people,” but no one ever suggested that they were Jewish until Mosley came into conflict with the Jews. To assume that Levi Leiter was Jewish is like assuming that Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin or Ebenezer Scrooge were Jewish. (Come to think of it, Scrooge might have been Jewish, if it were not for his Christmas goodwill at the end of the story.)

The obsessed propagandist Arnold Leese, distressed at having his ineffectual fascist group superseded by Mosley’s, claimed that Mosley stood for Moses Levi. For the record, Mosley is an old Anglo-Saxon name. Sir Oswald’s second name, Ernald, was that of a pre-Conquest ancestor. He and his brothers are a race of giants, and his characteristic family physiognomy could be that of an aristocrat from anywhere in western Europe. He bears a very striking resemblance to Pitt the Younger, of whom he has a bust in his study.

As I say, the question which should be exercising our minds is just why this outstanding man, with an oratorical power equal to that of any speaker of the twentieth century, with the economic acumen of a Schacht, the personal courage of an old-time gentleman, the ability to command admiration and respect, good political judgement and trustworthy followers, should never have succeeded in ruling Britain.

To begin with, circumstances were not so favorable as in Mussolini’s Italy or Hitler’s Germany. There was no massive Bolshevik threat in England, only a creeping malaise, and there had been no defeat in war entailing mass starvation and misery. The unemployed suffered, it is true, but the middle and upper classes remained comparatively unaffected. Yet there was more to it than that. Mosley is primarily a Cavalier type, like his forebears during the great English Civil War of the 17th century. He represents, therefore, a union of the top and bottom of society against the middle; which is why he so much admires Joseph Chamberlain, the leader of the Liberal Party in the early years of the 20th century, who saw how a reunited nation could develop the enormous possibilities of the Empire. Now, the middle, and especially the lower middle classes in England do include some very degenerate elements: Quakers, Methodists, canting fundamentalists, liberal masochists — all that is most contemptible in the country.

But they also comprise the tough Cromwellian element which was eventually victorious on the battlefields of the Civil War. These people are not instinctively drawn to the gentry, although Cromwell himself belonged to that class. In other words, Mosley represents a tradition which may be compared in many ways to that of the Old South in the United States. The English middle classes sensed this, and were alienated. However, these same people are now being attracted by the tough, uncompromising stance of the National Front. The leaders of the National Front are not restrained by any tender-minded considerations. Mosley, by contrast, was purely defensive in his attitude towards leftwing violence. So he got all the opprobrium, but lost the initiative.

To put it another way, Mosley (and Diana) represent the European tradition of the English upper classes. As with nearly all their kind, their pays de bonheur is France — not the squalid France polluted by Leninist and Maoist intellectuals, but the solid, rooted France which has somehow survived the Revolution. When a combination of leftwing violence and legal collusion finally drove him from England in 1965, it was not in South Africa or Germany that the Mosleys decided to live, but in France and Ireland. Not that they were any less English on that account. Marx remarked that the way to get at the English upper classes was through Ireland, and Wellington, for instance, has regarded himself as one of the “English garrison” there. Nor did they assimilate unduly in France. Diana was brought up to speak French with an English accent, on the grounds that having a good accent in French was pretentious. (Actually, I can reveal that ladies then considered that only a prostitute would speak French like a Frenchwoman.) And she commends her friend Lord Berners for speaking fluent Italian with a firmly English accent.

As for Sir Oswald, his French is a delight to listen to — as anglicized as Churchill’s though a good deal more accurate. He sounds like Henry V speaking to the Princess Catherine. As for his German, it is even more accurate grammatically, but he makes hardly any phonetic concessions at all. Not that this detracts in any way from his admiration for Goethe and Wagner. It might be said of his languages that they are, like his handwriting, meant more for the purpose of ordering his thoughts than for actual communication. Still, he does speak them. The National Front leaders, by contrast, are not at home on the Continent.

Oswald and Diana Mosley in 1962 with their son Mark

All the same, the last laugh may be with Mosley. From the very beginning, he saw that Britain alone did not offer sufficient scope for the creation of a viable economic system. That is why he thought in terms of imperialism and, when the Empire was thrown away, of a European block uniting with the white dominions and developing the continent of Africa. The United States was left out of his calculations, because, I think, he lacked instinctive sympathy for the Northern elements which emerged victorious from the American Civil War.

John Tyndall, leader of the National Front has said that Mosley is now “totally irrelevant.” In purely political terms that may or may not be so. But for the curse of North Sea oil, which maintains the rotten system, he might even now be able to put some backbone into the Center of British politics. Certainly, his mind is as alert as ever, and he inspires devotion in a very large number of intelligent people. And there can be no doubt whatsoever about the lasting nature of his ideas. Tyndall has also said that Mosley is like a mountain. Anyone genuinely trying to find a way forward may make a path round the mountain, but he cannot ignore it.

The central episode in Diana’s book is the lengthy period she spent in prison during the war. She describes how she was taken away from her son Max, then eleven weeks old and being breast-fed by her, and put in the filthy conditions of Holloway Gaol. A few people rallied round. As she says: “Indifference to public opinion is an essential aristocratic virtue; it is rarer than one might imagine, as I discovered in those difficult days.” In prison, conditions had remained unchanged since Oscar Wilde’s time. The sanitation was disgusting and she was deliberately humiliated. Even so, she won round her wardresses with her infectious gaiety. One of them is on record as saying, “We’ve never had such laughs since Lady Mosley left.”

Diana Mosley in the 1990s

The contrast between Diana’s life in the 20s and what it later became cannot be overemphasized. As she freely admits, she was a gay young thing, very pleasure-loving, and some of her friends were definitely unworthy of her. Take, for instance, the randy Welsh artist Augustus John (quite a good painter, incidentally) whose “sparse hair and bloodshot eyes” she graphically describes. It was a mistake of the publisher to include a photograph of him with his arm around her and her pretty head on his shoulder, smiling winsomely. Also, she retains the inflated vocabulary of the period: “divine music,” “delicious food,” “unalloyed joy,” etc. It took time before she grew up mentally and began to think.

Very much on the credit side is her ability to sum people up. Elsa Maxwell “looked like a toad,” Brendan Bracken had “an almost Negroid cast of countenance, thick red hair and black teeth.” Ezra Pound sat quite silent at dinner and looked “nobly benign.” There is also the Duke of Windsor, with his old-fashioned, cockney-sounding English. The Duchess of Windsor appears, too. She is not in any way calumniated, but she was not Diana’s favorite person. In fact, her attitude might be summed up by the contemporary school rhyme: “Hark, the heavenly angels sing! Mrs. Simpson’s pinched our King.” Her ability to arrange her material has long made Diana an excellent propagandist, in the best sense of the word. She was, for example, editor of The European, a literary-political magazine of high quality which kept the light burning for several years and helped to bridge the gap from the end of the war to these present days of deepening gloom and slow resurgence.

So let me finish with a toast: “To Lady Mosley. Long may you keep your excellent health! And when you finally lose it, as all of us must, let your tombstone be inscribed with the same words that mark Unity’s grave, ‘Say not the struggle naught availeth.'”

* * *

Source: Instauration magazine, March 1978

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Le Corbusier (pictured) — a major figure in 20th century architecture — has now become the center of controversy because of his positive statements about Hitler and National Socialism. We may deplore his anti-traditionalist pronouncements and his less-than-creative post-war rectangular blocks, yet acknowledge his more creative works and his concern for architecture’s social value. His affinity for the socialism of Saint-Simon and Fourier places him squarely in the dreamer class, and it is no surprise that such a man saw the revolutionary potential for change inherent in National Socialism.

New research has uncovered these statements from him, among others: “If he is serious in his declarations, Hitler can crown his life with a magnificent work, the remaking . . . → Read More: Le Corbusier Shown to Be a Hitler Sympathizer

by Kerry Bolton

EZRA POUND (pictured) was born in a frontier town in Idaho, 1885, the son of an assistant assayer and the grandson of a Congressman. One could say that both economics and politics were in his blood. He enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in 1901. Pound was an avid reader of Anglo-Saxon, Classical, and Medieval literature. In 1906 he gained his MA and had already started work on his most significant creation, The Cantos. He continued post-graduate work on the Provençal Troubadour poet-musicians, reinforcing his desire to go to Europe.

In 1908 Pound set sail for Venice. There he paid $8.00 for the printing of the first volume of his poetry. A Lume Spento (With Tapers Quenched). Pound then traveled to . . . → Read More: Ezra Pound

THE FALANGE Española was preceded by several similarly oriented organizations which favored a corporate state, nationalism, and respect for tradition and social justice, while vigorously opposing parliamentarianism, class struggle and the money power. One such group, the Partido Nacionalista Español, was founded in 1930 by a neurologist named José María Albiñana and patterned after the French Camelots du Roi. (ILLUSTRATION: José Antonio Primo de Rivera)

Violently nationalist and authoritarian, it introduced the Roman salute into Spanish politics. In 1932 it was reorganized as the Spanish equivalent of the movements of Hitler and Mussolini, but it supported the monarchy and religion. Repeated arrests of Albiñana kept his party in the small-fry category.

The most important pre-Falange Fascist organization was put together by Ramiro . . . → Read More: José Antonio and the Spanish Falange

by James Harting

THE NOTION that the National-Socialism of Adolf Hitler is a type or variant of a more generally defined “fascism” is a staple of Marxist propaganda and analysis. Indeed, the Marxists have been so persistent and strident in making this false claim that it has infected the thinking even of some of those who claim to be NS themselves. (ILLUSTRATION: Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in 1941)

Back in 1970, Dr. William L. Pierce addressed this issue in his column “Questions & Answers for National Socialists,” that appeared in WHITE POWER: The Newspaper of White Revolution, which was a mass distribution tabloid of the National Socialist White People’s Party. (Dr. Pierce is listed as the “Associate Editor” for the issue in . . . → Read More: Dr. William Pierce on the Difference between National Socialism and Fascism

In remembrance of another great but half-forgotten Westerner

OUR MODERN MEDIA like to depict military men as trigger-happy simpletons whose throwback minds are still laboriously progressing from the 18th to the 19th century. Unfortunately, at least within the Western democracies, the rewards and the constraints have been such as to drive creative intellects from the military ranks at Mach I speed. Nevertheless, occasional bright intellectual lights have remained in uniform, despite all the obstacles. By far the brightest such light (a veritable supernova) was Major General John Frederick Charles Fuller (pictured). The treatment accorded General Fuller by British politicians and the British high brass rivalled that given to Galileo by the Inquisition.

Early Life

Fuller was born in Chichester, England, in 1878. As a child, . . . → Read More: Major General J.F.C. Fuller

Isle of Capri declared a bird sanctuary in 1932

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY was first advanced in fascist nations. Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany were far ahead of the nations of their day. In the cartoon image below, from Punch in 1939, Mussolini’s 1932 declaration of the Italian island of Capri as a sanctuary for birds is depicted. Mussolini is shown as steward of nature and protector of the birds of Italy, giving them a safe and secure domain, away from poaching hands; one grateful bird looks up at him. Beneath the image are a handful of newspaper articles on the event.

From Berkeley Daily Gazette, “New Bird Haven . . . → Read More: Il Duce, Protector of Animals and Steward of Nature

by K.R. Bolton

THE PARTY-LINE of the Left is that Fascism and Nazism were the last resort of Capitalism.[1] Indeed, the orthodox Marxist critique does not go beyond that. In recent decades there has been serious scholarship within orthodox academe to understand Fascism as a doctrine. Among these we can include Roger Griffin,[2] Roger Eatwell,[3] and particularly Zeev Sternhell.[4] The last in particular shows that Fascism derived at least as much from the Left as from the Right, emerging from Italy but also in particular from Francophone Marxists as an effort to transcend the inadequacies of Marxism as an analysis of historical forces. (ILLUSTRATION: Adolf Hitler in discussion with Reich Minister of Economics and Reichsbank President Dr. . . . → Read More: The Myth of the Big Business / Nazi Axis

by James Alexander

ITALIAN CONTRIBUTIONS to political and social thought are singularly impressive and, in fact, few nations are as favored with a tradition as long and as rich. One need only mention names such as Dante, Machiavelli, and Vico to appreciate the importance of Italy in this respect. In the twentieth century too, the contributions made by Italians are of great significance. Among these are Gaetano Mosca’s theory of oligarchical rule, Roberto Michels’ study of political parties, Corrado Gini’s intriguing sociobiological theories, and Scipio Sighele’s investigations of the criminal mind and of crowd psychology. [1] One of the most widely respected of these Italian political theorists and sociologists is Vilfredo Pareto (pictured). Indeed, so influential are his writings that “it is not possible to . . . → Read More: Vilfredo Pareto: The Karl Marx of Fascism