The Fundamentals

Fundamentals of a New Movement


The overarching, basic fundamentals of a New Movement are listed here. The link leads to the relevant post below. Also see "The Fundamentals" post list to the lower right. This is our new path. If you agree with this direction, then join with us.


The Old Movement is dead. Let us instead build something that works, a New Movement, a fresh start.



Monday, March 20, 2023

Lincoln's Electric Cord Speech

A different perspective on the origins of American multiculturalism.

There are those - and here I have in mind one Canadian commentator at Majority Rights - who will claim that American multiculturalism had its ultimate roots in the "great wave" immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - the so-called "race replacement that dare not speak its name."

But if we shift back to a famous speech by a well known American in the year 1858, we will find that the real ultimate roots of multicultural American "constitutional patriotism" was in the first large scale "race replacement that dare not speak its name" - the migration of Germans, Irish, Frenchmen, and Scandinavians into an America whose founding population was primarily of British Protestant stock. Yes, there were some other ethnies present, but these were a decided minority of the White population and, as Lincoln suggests, had little or nothing to do with the founding of America. As of 1858, these peoples were seen as essentially foreign to the American experience, and their assimilation into America was viewed as an example of disentangling citizenship from an ethnic basis.

…Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometime about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.

We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty—or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country,—with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men,—we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves—we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, (loud and long continued applause) and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.

Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Irrational Man

Book review.

Irrational Man.  The Amazon description of the book succinctly summarizes its contents:

Widely recognized as the finest definition of existentialist philosophy ever written, this book introduced existentialism to America in 1958. Barrett speaks eloquently and directly to concerns of the 1990s: a period when the irrational and the absurd are no better integrated than before and when humankind is in even greater danger of destroying its existence without ever understanding the meaning of its existence.

Irrational Man begins by discussing the roots of existentialism in the art and thinking of Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Baudelaire, Blake, Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Picasso, Joyce, and Beckett. The heart of the book explains the views of the foremost existentialists—Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. The result is a marvelously lucid definition of existentialism and a brilliant interpretation of its impact.

The author engages in a neo-Spenglerian discussion stating that different eras exhibit (Western) man having innate metaphysical inclinations for different forms of philosophy, literature, and art, with those era-appropriate forms resonating with the people of that time, while other forms, of past eras, would not resonate.  Further, any putative affinity for these expired forms, in the present day, would merely be artificial sentimentality. Thus, he avers that the current age (for him and I presume for us as well) is that of existentialist philosophy and literature, and of modern art. I suppose that he would beleive that a modern preference for, say, Michelangelo or Dante would be philosophical-cultural pseudomorphosis.

The author distinguishes, derived from the thought of Matthew Arnold, the Hebraic worldview of action, doing, and moralism with the Hellenic worldview of thought, intellectualism, and abstraction. While this distinction is somewhat truthful, it is also ironic that the "action-oriented, pragmatic" Hebrew was obsessed with god and the spiritual-moral world of that god, while the "intellectual, abstract" Hellene valued science, the body, and physical beauty.  So, the action-oriented Hebrews were focused on a Big Daddy in the Sky, while the abstract intellectual Hellenes were admiring the physiques of young men and formulating the first foundations of what would later become Western science. The author never recognizes, much less dissects, these contradictions and inconsistencies. The author associates the Hebraic mindset – the one he discusses, not the contradictions and inconsistences mentioned here – as being that which is being revived by existentialism.  I have problems with that thesis, given my focus on the contradictions and inconsistences noted above. 

A key point in the existentialist worldview is that existence (the fact that an entity exists) precedes essence (what that entity is). Platonism and related doctrines flips that by asserting that it are only the essences of entities that are truly real, while the particularities of existence are only ephemeral manifestations of essence. Platonism, with its prioritizing of the universal over the individual, of essence over existence, is presented as the antithesis of existentialism; indeed, it is part of the Classical/Western tradition that existentialism has attempted to overturn. But even here, Plato is said to demonstrate some existentialist characteristics, as his championing of reason as philosophy was for the redemption of the individual, as well as down-to-earth practical matters of designing a perfect polity, rather than being abstraction for the sake of abstraction.  Of course, the author attempts a bit of mind-reading, and avers that Plato’s promotion of the universal and eternal Platonic ideals was Plato’s way of defying the inevitability of change, decay, and death in the real world.  Hence, according to Plato, while the existing particular is ephemeral and not fully real, the fully real Platonic is timeless and eternal. See this for more about Platonic vs. existentialist reality.  Christianity, based as it is on faith and personal redemption, reflects its Hebraic origins, and also has some seeds of existentialist viewpoints.

I finish my summary of this part of the book by quoting the author on Blake and Nietzsche:

“Drive your plow over the bones of the dead” is not the aphorism of a man who is seeking merely to hearken back to the “green & pleasant land” of ancient Britain. If a man marries his hell to his heaven, his evil to his good, Blake holds, he will become a creature such as the earth has not yet seen.  Nietzsche put the same insight paradoxically “Mankind must become better and more evil.”

As regards the heart of the book - the analysis of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre – the summary and interpretation is fine as far as it goes (not that I agree with all of it). Of these four individuals, the only one I really value is Nietzsche (not that I agree with him on all, and, anyway, he didn’t want to be seen as a prophet, nor his views looked at as some sort of dogma). His work has power, and especially that from the second half of his career is eminently readable, unlike the pompous windbag Heidegger, the grand traditionalist who needs a book to make a point more elegantly summarized in a single page, and who can pontificate endlessly (and incomprehensibly) about “Being”. Kierkegaard’s interest in Christianity leaves me cold, and I see Sartre as an over-rated leftist polemicist.

The author’s favoritism is laughably obvious, with his lickspittle defense of, and promotion and admiration of, Kierkegaard, to the point that one wonders if Barrett spontaneously ejaculated while reading Kierkegaard’s work. Not surprisingly, (given Kierkegaard’s Christianity), Barrett also has an obvious bias in favor of God and of religion, while subtly mocking atheism.  The author doesn’t seem to grasp all of the implications of Nietzsche’s Overman and believes it is just an Olympian superman in the clouds, rather than a self-overcoming and a more practical reality (Nietzsche admired Napoleon and to an extent Cesare Borgia).  The author takes the anti-Faustian view that the well-rounded man needs to cultivate some mediocrity and “humor” (juvenile jackassery such as in the Alt-Right?).

A useful insight from the author, re: Nietzsche and the underlying theory about a will to power is as follows:

…the peculiar attraction Communism holds for the so-called backward or underdeveloped countries: it is a will to power on the part of these peoples, a will to take their fate in their own hands and make their own history. This powerful and secret appeal of Communism is something that our own statesmen do not seem in the least to understand.

Far enough. But note that like Christianity, Communism and other doctrines of the Far Left are based on resentment of the lower for the higher, the revolt of the underman, ultimately based on Bioleninism.  In contrast, when Whites, when higher men, want to take their fate in their own hands, they turn to Fascism, to doctrines of the Far Right.  Barrett writes:

…The goal of power need not be defined, because it is its own goal…

…the subject facing the object in a kind of hidden antagonism…Nature thus appears as a realm to be conquered, and man as the creature who is to be the conqueror.

For Nietzsche the era of reason and science raises the question of what is to be done with the primitive instincts and passions of man; in pushing these aside the age threatens us with a decline in vitality for the whole species.

Fair enough. I always say that science and technics – and rationality as a whole – are methods, means to an end, and not ends to themselves.  You cannot ultimately define values, ends, from means, from methods. Relate to that, see this: Racial Existentialism. Also see the role of the rational (Salter) and irrational (Yockey) in pro-White activism discussed here.

Readers of my work know that I am no fan of the pompous windbag traditionalist Heidegger.  With respect to this book the author describes Heidegger’s concept of Dasein as a “field theory” of human being that is analogous to energy field theories of matter in modern (in his day) physics. Thus, a person’s being is not only what is under their skin but encompasses all of their interactions and associations with reality; it is theirs, but it is not specifically confined to a material bodily core.

There is an amusing aside by the author in this section:

David Hume, in a moment of acute skepticism, felt panicky in the solitude of his study and had to go out and join his friends in the billiard room in order to be reassured that the external world was really there.

I am no fan of the leftist windbag Sartre either, and I see little to be gained by his philosophical perspectives. Of course, at the time this book was written, the American public strongly associated existentialism with the likes of Sartre; thus, this had to be an integral part of Barrett’s analysis. Barret describes Sartre as a hyper-masculine Cartesian dualist, whose philosophy is essential alien to nature-based women. Sartre distinguishes the object of Being-in-itself with then subject Being-for-Itself, with the former being more feminine, and the latter, acting through an always conscious act of will, being masculine, defining a life project through free will and the ability to say “no.”

Nothing in the book altered my high regard for Nietzsche, my indifference to Kierkegaard, and my negative attitude toward Heidegger and Sartre.

Conclusion

The book ends with a concluding summary The Place of the Furies (there are some subsequent appendices, but they are not essential enough to comment on in this review). Here, the author indulges in his typical atomic hysteria about man blowing up the world, and makes various insights, some truthful and amusing (Americans are non-intellectual, anti-intellectual, and unreflective by nature) and some controversial (taking the 1984-style idea that communists are Nietzscheans in the sense of caring only about the exercise of power and control – he states that communists “...have thus always exhibited a strange ambivalence: the most naively optimistic view of human nature in theory, and in practice the most brutal and cynical attitude toward human beings”). He believes that abstract rationalism is a threat to humanity; the following may be a reasonable summary of the author’s views:

Contrary to the rationalist tradition, we know now that it is not his reason that makes man man, but rather that reason is a consequence of that which really makes him man. For it is man’s existence as a self-transcending self that has forged and formed reason as one of its projects. As such, man’s reason is specifically human…

That I suppose is to be expected from a book whose title is Irrational Man.  He also states:

Today is always and for all men the digging of one’s way out of the ruins of yesterday.

In summary, he has an anti-Faustian worldview that is at odds with my own.

The book would have benefited from a clearly stated definition and dissection of what (according to the author at least) existentialist thought actually is, instead of assuming the reader already knows and/or can reconstruct the philosophical paradigms from the descriptions of examples of existentialist thought and art examined in the book. The author’s whining about nuclear weapons and the assumed atomic apocalypse around the corner – while perhaps somewhat understandable (but still somewhat hysterical) at the time the book was written - seems dated today (more than 60 years with no nuclear war, how about that?), although hysterics today are becoming breathless about Putin (some things never change).  The author’s commentary about how technology has made traditional politics and diplomacy irrelevant is just more over-heated hysteria.

All in all, despite my reservations about the author and his viewpoints, this is a good introduction to existentialism. And it is not dated, since existentialism has, if anything, declined in the past sixty years; there have been no significant advancements. In the modern age, today, all we have is “critical theory” “deconstructionism” obsessed with race and gender. And if you want a summary of that, just look into an unflushed, used stall toilet in an airport men’s room.

Friday, July 29, 2022

The Evolution of Civilizations

Book review.

See this.

What is a civilization?  How does it evolve?  How and why does it collapse?  We can consider Carroll Quigley’s ideas on these subjects, as outlined in The Evolution of Civilizations.

Quigley’s comments on science, scientific theory, and the scientific method are must reading, particularly for those on the Left (e.g., race deniers, sex/gender deniers) and the Right (HBDers, anti-vaxxers, covid deniers) who have a complete lack of understanding, or misunderstanding, of what science is (i.e., a method, not a constellation of “facts”) and how it works (see Quigley’s fine explanations).

Quigley describes the three ways of describing social groups and the consequences of each view. One approach is to view a social group as nothing more or less than a mere collection of individuals and the group being only the sum of its individual parts; this view promotes self-interested atomized individualism and intra-group competition, as here there is nothing of more importance than the individual and his needs.  This view would also be incompatible with the idea of a cultural tradition being handed down through the generations to form a civilization. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the view as the social group as an organism that is more than the sum of its parts, with individuals within the organism being non-interchangeable.  This view can lead to collectivist totalitarianism in which the rights of the individual are routinely sacrificed for the common good; after all, here the entity of importance is the societal organism, and as a non-interchangeable component of that organism, the individual must – emphasis on must – play their irreplaceable role as a key component, a required body part, of that organism.  Deviation from that role places the existence of the organism in danger, since the individual and their role are not interchangeable; hence, individual choice must be constrained.  The intermediate view is that that the social group is more than the sum of its parts, a novel entity that allows for positive group action and cultural transmission (hence, opposing atomized hyper-individualism); however, in this view individuals are interchangeable and hence to do not require their roles and choices to be tightly constrained.  Thus, if an individual chooses a different path, they can be replaced (as they are interchangeable) and the social group can survive allowing individual freedom since flexibility of social roles is compatible with group survival.  The collectivist organism view would consider the individual akin to a required organ in the social group’s body, the removal of which can kill the group body; the latter intermediate view would consider an individual to be more like a modular component of a machine that can be swapped out for another component, allowing each the flexibility to perform the role they are best suited.

As a conservative in the classic liberal tradition, Quigley seems to prefer the intermediate view that rejects atomized hyper-individualism but that embraces a more muted individualism that allows for group culture while rejecting totalitarian collectivism.  As a national socialist fascist, I prefer the collectivist organism view, and I observe evidence in history that the intermediate view inevitably degenerates into the hyper-individualist “collection of individuals” dystopia.

The basic social group, or social aggregate, can be merely a social group at its lowest level, or it can be a society or a civilization as one moves up in complexity. A (social) group is merely an aggregate of people who come together for a narrow purpose but who have more interactions with those outside the group than with those within; thus, to explain the personalities of the group will require more mention of those without than within the group.  A society on the other hand has more internal interactions than external, the individuals within a society have more interactions with each other than with those without and therefore to explain them and their personalities would predominantly require reference to those within the societal aggregation. Quigley notes that if one considers aspects of the broad culture to be interactions, then most nation states are actually groups rather than societies, since most interactions of those within those states involve concepts and entities bigger than the nation state and peoples of those larger entities.  For nation states of the West, that larger entity, the actual society, is Western Civilization. That analysis is, by the way, a major riposte to petty nationalist ethnonationalist and is supportive of Yockeyian pan-Europeanism.  One can argue that globalism has contributed to the decay of Western Civilization by degrading its exclusiveness and increasing the amount of interactions with concepts and entities outside the West, so that to explain the modern “West” reference to Western Civilization itself is no longer adequate and one must reference even more broad Universalist humanist concepts and entities.

Quigley wrote:

The essential thing about a group is that its members can say who is in it and who is not.

That's exactly what I've been saying about the "movement" for years - with its endless "Who is White?" debates and redefinitions and uncertainties, it cannot be even considered a group, much less a society. In fact, to be successful, a real movement needs to become more and more like a genuine society, to create a parallel society in which individuals interact more among themselves and can be explained predominantly by internal references.  Such a movement can save Western Civilization – or build the next European Civilization – by replacing the inclusive humanist corpse of the modern West with a self-contained exclusive society that represents a vibrant self-referenced civilizational aggregate. I note that Quigley asserts that a political unit is comprehensible – being able to be understood without reference to outside entities – only when it encompasses the entire society.  As he considered Western Civilization as a whole, and not its constituent nations (being only groups), to be a society of the West, then the only comprehensible Western political unit would be something like a Yockeyian Imperium.

Other distinctions are that of parasitical vs. productive societies, with the former using the Earth’s wealth without contributing to it (e.g., hunter gatherers), and the latter actively contributing to wealth (e.g., agriculturalists). Quigley makes a tentative preliminary (and very crude) definition of a civilization as a productive society that has writing and city life (the latter would upset the Type I “twigs and branches” “hobbit hole” “traditionalists” of the “movement”). Please note that Quigley modifies this definition to eliminate the “city life” part (to the “movement’s” relief).

Quigley notes that a “scientific” analysis of civilizations must take into account that human thoughts, opinions, and desires affect the trajectory of a civilization; hence, there will be more subjectivity involved as opposed to an analysis of physical laws, for example.

Quigley gives a digression on rational vs. irrational aspects of examining reality, and contrasts Platonic “rational” analyses that are independent of actual observation (and testing) and are hence anti-scientific to more positivist “irrational” observational analyses, which are complicated by reality being composed of continuous variables. Now, strictly speaking, that may not be true, given quantum theory, but let us assume Quigley is talking about practical real-world observations. Even so, he forgets that taking several (apparently) continuous observations at the same time can result on discrete categories as entities may be continuous on single variables taken in turn but are unlikely to be simultaneously continuous on a larger number of variables taken together, all of which can “fix” different entities into discrete spots on a multi-dimensional continuum.

Quigley makes an important distinction, relevant to us, of social instruments vs. social institutions.  A social instrument is a social organization composed of the sociopolitical (and other) technics needed to achieve the purposes of the subdivisions of a civilization’s basic needs (e.g., Intellectual, Religious, Social, Economic, Political, and Military). However, as a rule of history, “all social instruments tend to become institutions.” A social institution is a social organization that has taken on purposes independent of its original purpose and becomes less and less effective in performing its ostensible purpose. A self-interested, rent-seeking managerial elite takes over that pursues ends that dilute, or even conflict with, what the organization is supposed to be doing. Armed forces are a social instrument to achieve the military ends of a civilization.  Eventually it evolves into an institution more concerned with the career advancement of its leaders, maximizing military budgets, maintaining institutional cultures, getting involved in politics, and pursuing insane objectives like “social justice” and “equity.”  And so its effectiveness in fighting wars is compromised. Such transformations across the board in the various facets of a civilization contribute mightily to its eventual (inevitable?) collapse.  These transformations are met with attempts at reform, circumvention, or reaction. In reform, the instrument is temporarily restored to effectiveness and societal collapse is delayed. In circumvention, the institution retains its privileges but its duties are given to a more efficient new instrument, which itself inevitably degenerates into an institution (while the original institution carries on as a parasite on society).  Although circumvention is obviously less efficient and optimal than reform, it at least restores some effectiveness and can delay collapse.  In reaction, the institution resists all attempts at reform or circumvention, effectiveness and consequent societal dissatisfaction remains and collapse is hastened. These possibilities are termed “development” and so “historical development” describes the changes at one level of society; “historical morphology” describes different levels acting on one another, and “historical evolution” is the sum total the development and morphology acting simultaneously and acting upon each other.

Every civilization has an “instrument of expansion” that is manifest when the civilization is rising; when that instrument becomes an institution, and subject to all of the negatives of societal institutions, the civilization decays. The instrument of expansion is broadly concerned with three aspects of civilizational development: 1) inventing new entities, 2) producing and accumulating a surplus of wealth, and 3) leveraging that surplus to pay for and/or utilize the inventions of the civilization (i.e., using the surplus as an investment to promote progress). Note that at this point, Quigley redefines what a civilization is, since he notes that some civilizations (like the Western) had no significant city life during the early phases of their development. Thus, Quigley more refined definition of a civilization is “a producing society with an instrument of expansion.”

Unfortunately, Quigley blithely dismisses biological explanations about why some groups are more successful than others in these processes, particularly step 1(inventing) and, by extension, step 3 (leveraging surpluses to take advantage of those inventions).  Quigley’s argument basically boils down to the observation that the same peoples, at different times in their history and/or in different locations, may have been more or less inventive.  Putting aside the possibility that the “same people” may not be exactly the same over time, even if we assume that “same” really is same, then the basic problem with Quigley’s argument is that he ignored potentiality.  Yes, a people may not be inventive in a particular historical context, but if they exhibit inventiveness in another context, then we can say that they have a biological potential for invention.  What if another people, throughout their entire history, and in various historical contexts, invent nothing?  Can we not say that they lack the biological potential for invention?  And with respect to the peoples who have invented in different contexts, some may consistently invent more than others, assuming the appropriate historical contexts.  So, there is a spectrum of biological potentiality – high, medium, low, none.  Thus, for example, Europeans would be high, Asians would inhabit the medium and low range, while other groups would inhabit the low to none (e.g., Negroes) range.  Potentiality and actuality are two separate issues; however, to show evidence of potentiality, some actuality must at some point occur. We can also pass over in relative silence Quigley’s racial theories, no doubt influenced by the stupidities of “traditional physical anthropology” (and the tripartite Nordic-Alpine-Mediterranean concept) and the idea that historical round-headed stocky peoples were Homo sapiens-Neanderthal mixes, as opposed to others (in reality, in general, virtually all non-Negro peoples have Neanderthal admixture, and no way near as much as Quigley seems to imply for certain groups).  These racial theories (and all of his babbling about geography and climate) are irrelevant to his main theses, and need not concern us any further. One thing I’ll say though is that the general idea Quigley finishes this section with of Europeans as  a whole genepool being composed of hinter-gatherers, Neolithic farmers, and Indo-European steppe peoples is more or less accurate, although some of the dates he gives for some of these events and specific end results of peoples involved is “off.”

Getting back to the decline of civilizations, Quigley focuses on the problems ensuing when a civilization’s primary instrument of expansion becomes an institution, a degeneration that often occurs when self-serving managerial elites redirect society’s surplus away from investment in inventions (broadly defined) into “nonproductive” endeavors such as displays of status, conspicuous consumption, monuments, and other selfish endeavors that do not contribute to societal advancement. In this manner, the cycle of invention, surplus, and investment collapses and societal expansion ceases and stagnation and decline follow. This naturally causes tension in the society, as people in the society – who have been habituated to constant expansion – now observe a lack of expansion and downward mobility for themselves and for their posterity. Sound familiar?  Even back when Quigley wrote the book (published in 1961) he noted that “contemporary Western civilization” was exhibiting the problems consequent to a slowing down of expansion. Today of course these problems are much worse. Of course, reform or circumvention of this process can delay the inevitable, while reaction hastens the end.

Quigley notes that Western Civilization has gone through multiple cycles of reform, which seems unusual, and would seem to indicate the possibility for future renewal if the West was not destroying itself demographically (that last part is my interpretation. Thus, in 970-1270, the West has the instrument of expansion of feudalism that was institutionalized as chivalry. This problem was circumvented in 1420-1650 by the instrument of commercial capitalism (with the old feudal aristocracy being parasites keeping their old privileges even when no productive activity was derived thereof), which degenerated into the institution of mercantilism, which in turn was reformed into industrial capitalism (1725-1929), an instrument that became the institution of monopoly capitalism.  Note that these divisions are quite different from the culture vs. civilization paradigm of Spengler. Indeed, the terminology is different as well; what Quigley calls a “civilization” is analogous to the “High Culture” of Spengler/Yockey.  Thus, Quigley encompasses Spenglerian “culture” and “civilization” under the broad umbrella of “civilization.”  

Quigley divides the life of a civilization into seven phases:

1. Mixture

2. Gestation

3. Expansion

4. Age of Conflict

5. Universal Empire

6. Decay

7. Invasion

There are some correlations we can make with this to the Spengler/Yockey scheme.  Thus, phases 1-3 would be akin to the “Spring” culture phase, stage 4 to the culture to civilization crisis, moving to “Summer.” The height of civilization would be the Late Summer-Fall Universal Empire of stage 5. Late Fall is stage 6, and then we enter Winter at stage 7, as the High Culture dies.  Looking at our own situation, it seems like we are in stage 7, with mass migration into the West being the Invasion that destroys Western Civilization; further reform (or circumvention) seems unlikely, as the System’s reaction to Far Right attempts at reform is to double down on their institutionalized immigration instrument. We’ll see how that all ends. Note also that Quigley dispenses with concerns over “pseudomorphosis” and pointedly states that civilizations begin with Mixture – a mixing of elements of older civilizations, typically taking place at or near the geographical border between them. The Age of Conflict and subsequent decay typically occurs because of the institutionalization of the key instruments of expansion. In order for reform to occur, all three components of expansion need to be taken care of: invention, accumulation of surplus, and investment. The masses typically focus on redistribution of the surplus, which does nothing to enhance invention and investment, and the rent-seeking, self-interested elites resist any type of reform. More often circumvention occurs to bypass elite resistance and in many cases the emergence of a new instrument of expansion occurs by accident (to the extent that is possible). It would be optimal if institutionalization could be avoided in the first place, which is why rent-seeking, grifting, and free-riding needs to be quashed as quickly as they appear. Unfortunately, it seems almost inevitable that elites selfishly institutionalize instruments of expansion for their own benefit. Interestingly, peripheral areas of the civilization have delayed conflict and decay compared to the core area, in which it happens earlier, but eventually the elites wreck things and the masses are incapable of understanding anything beyond the fact that they are displeased with society’s direction and that they want the surpluses directed toward them in a desperate attempt to restore their lost upward mobility. Peripheral areas tend to conquer core areas during the age of empire building, not only because the core areas crisis first and are thus weakened, but because the peripheral areas tend to focus more on materialistic issues like technics and military power as compared to the cultural core that is more concerned with intellectual pursuits and abstractions.  Further, the core being more advanced on the historical timeline not only means it has entered crisis first, as mentioned before, but would be more exhausted from previous war and the population more “jaded” and less willing to endure sacrifice and more prone to “losing nerve” compared to the more vigorous peripheral areas.

A few more points about this scheme. To most people within the civilization, stage 5 seems like a “Golden Age” but this is a misleading surface prosperity.  At this point, the elites and their selfish interests have, for the most part, firmly entrenched their institutions, crushing reform through class warfare to oppress the masses, imperialism to distract from internal problems and create an artificial prosperity (e.g., substituting for a lack of internal intensive economic expansion with imperialistic extensive expansion), and irrationalism to mask discontent and distract the masses via various types of false prophets and crazy memes. Eventually, this is not sustainable and decay sets in, as living standards decline, the ability to project power diminishes, chaos increases, and the civilization loses the allegiance of the people. When then civilization is no longer able to defend itself because it is not willing to defend itself, it succumbs to some sort of invasion, and ends.  This end may result in the birth of a new civilization through mixture between the old destroyed civilization and new elements, including possibly the invaders themselves, but in some cases this does not occur. In my own opinion, I think stage 7 leads to a new stage 1 only when the new elements have innate (biological) potential for civilization and that they are biologically and culturally/spiritually not that different from the population of the destroyed civilization. I see little hope that anything useful will emerge from those destroying the West, nor would such a development be useful. 

The peoples of the West would need to build a new civilization by mixing new elements of their own making (and perhaps something borrowed from compatible people – like the Classical civilization, which was European) with the best of the West.  Also, civilizations are in danger of destruction only in their early or late stages, and a civilization in decay can even be destroyed by uncivilized “barbarians” – something that has occurred at various times in the past.  When two civilizations at or near their prime come into conflict, it is typically the one at stage 3 (or closes to that stage) that prevails, but the losing civilization is typically not destroyed (stage 7) unless it is at stage 6 (or maybe at stage 1 or early stage 2). 

A few more points of interest.  Quigley defines the Age of Conflict (stage 4) as being defined by “(1) decreasing rate of expansion, (2) imperialist wars, (3) class conflicts, and (4) irrationality.”  The parallels to today’s America and overall Western decline are obvious.  Related to this, Quigley defines capitalism as “a form of economic organization motivated by the pursuit of profit within a price structure” and that the instrument of expansion of commercial capitalism becomes institutionalized into mercantilism when the means of profits (originally meant to obtain the end of an improved standard of living and societal well-being) becomes an end to itself, to the detriment of the civilization. Again, behold America and the West. One can also find Age of Conflict parallels in the American pro-White “movement.”  Decreased expansion is evident in the collapse of the Alt Right and its consequences; imperialist wars are akin to, first, the attempt of the Alt Right to dominate the “movement” and now for the HBD-Nordicist-ethnonationalist alliance and WN 3.0 to do so; class conflict is akin to Amnats vs. Wignats; and as far as irrationality goes, while that has always been a hallmark of the American Far Right, it has gotten worse with the lunatic hysteria over the covid “death jab,” conspiritard theories (“viruses don’t exist” or “nuclear weapons are a hoax”), and the totality of hobbit hole traditionalism. With respect to how civilizations are born and die, Quigley emphasizes five practical steps: (1) law and order being established or lost, (2) long distance trade increasing or decreasing, (3) town and city life increasing or decreasing, (4) middle class prospering or disappearing, and (5) literacy increasing or decreasing – with, obviously, the increasing for each category associated with birth and decreasing with death.  In today’s West, all except #3 are decreasing (with #2 breaking down recently with supply chain disruptions); one can even question #3 as the breakdown of law and order (#1) makes city life more dangerous.  

Quigley on the Canaanite Civilization that gave us the Jews, besides being intelligent they were: “Vigorous, practical, almost crude; grasping, unesthetic…filled with sensual desires and crass superstitions…”  Sound familiar?  Oy vey!  Tribal kinship ties were important for these people (as they are today); further, Quigley suggests that the Jews originated with “Habiru” outcasts (surprise!).

The instrument of expansion for the Classical Civilization was slavery, which essentially doomed that civilization from the start.  That instrument was quickly institutionalized with absentee landlords running slave farms and misusing accumulated surpluses and even under optimal circumstances, slavery was an inefficient economic system and always stifles technological innovation.  Breaking up the large slave farming lands wouldn’t have helped in the end, since the distributed wealth wouldn’t have allowed for a concentrated accumulated surplus that could have been plowed back for invention and expansion; only a completely new instrument of expansion, from a new civilization (e.g., feudalism in the West) solved the problem. The inefficient slave economy, and other economic problems, did not allow the later (Western) Roman Empire to field the mass cavalry required to beat back barbarian invasions at a time when cavalry began to replace infantry as the cutting edge of military technology. Even earlier, slavery in Greece not only hampered innovation for the obvious reason that slave labor made technology less immediately and obviously necessary, it also discouraged simple improvements in agricultural efficiency – if agriculture became more efficient and less labor and time intensive, then what would be slaves be doing during the time they were now idle?  It seems like an inefficient economy was a price paid to maintain an aristocratic, hierarchical master-slave society (the Antebellum American South seems to have suffered from the same problems).

Quigley states what in his mind was the defining characteristics of the classical world; of these, the most important to me are its emphasis on aristocratic and hierarchical values, the willingness to sacrifice material well-being for honor, for dignitas, for all of these aristocratic and hierarchical values (as with the costs of slavery discussed above); that the Classic world was “clarid” – clear and rational without Oriental obfuscation; finally, in contrast to the Western civilization, the Classical world was pessimistic, stoic, and socially regressed – the Golden Age was in the past and current degeneration had to be heroically endured. An important point is that with the partial exception of Periclean Athens of the Socrates-Plato-Aristotle timeframe, Classical culture was understood and practiced by a relatively small elite fraction of the population, not the masses.  Thus, diminution of that aristocratic elite by various dysgenic trends would in turn eliminate the soil upon which the Classical Civilization grew.  There is no need to invoke Nordicist fantasies of mass miscegenation altering entire populations through racial panmixia. A culture that is ultimately an elite phenomenon will always be vulnerable to the fate of that elite. Quigley notes that science typically suffers as irrationalism increases in a society (such as in the West today and in Der Movement in microcosm).  However, in the Classical civilization, science suffered because of hyper-rationalism, the idea that reality can be discerned solely by rational, logical thought, with clearly distinct categories (part of the “clarid” nature of the Classical world), instead of the more messy reality derived from scientific observation of a world that at the macroscopic level is full of continua and not discrete categories at all times (Quantum theory at the microscopic level is another matter).

[Side note – I do not like Quigley’s correlating fascist states and movements to irrationality in the sense he does – while such movements were opposed to hyper-rationalism of modernity, they were not irrational in the sense of what was best for the nation and ethny and the organization of society had many positive rational aspects. I would argue that modern liberal democracy is truly irrational].

Quigley suggests that the Classical Civilization was in decay by 200 AD and that sounds reasonable.  However, decay is not the same as the end, and a decaying civilization can continue for quite a while. True enough, as well, The Roman Empire of Late Antiquity was culturally somewhat different than what was present in the Republic and the earlier (prime) Imperial Period, and of course from the earlier Greek version of the Classical. Theodosius was different from Marcus Aurelius (and earlier Roman leaders), never mind from the Greeks. Nevertheless, those differences can be ascribed to the aforementioned decay (and of course the Christian and other influences that foreshadowed the Medieval World of the West, once the interregnum of the Dark Ages was past). The (Western) Roman Empire of Late Antiquity may have been somewhat different from the past, it was a decaying Classical World, but it was still the Classical Civilization. There was sufficient similarity and continuity to fully accept the Rome of, say, 360 AD and 450 AD, etc. as part of the Classical Civilization.  Putting a precise date on the fall of a civilization is of course an imprecise business, but in the case of the Classical, it would seem that September 4, 476 AD fits better than any other, the say that Odoacer deposed emperor Romulus Augustulus and the Western Roman Empire came to an and in every meaningful sense.

The decay of the Classical world is described by Quigley thus:

As this aristocratic, clarid, urban, moderate, mundane culture was destroyed, it was replaced by a welter of unprincipled violence, grasping materialism, crass ignorance, crude illiteracy, and narrow, rural provincialism.

Sounds much like the decay of America (or perhaps of the “movement, “eh?). Further, “crass ignorance, crude illiteracy, and narrow, rural provincialism” sounds much like the “Bring Out Your Dead” ethnostate envisioned by the “traditionalists.” I can also point out the archaeogenetics data suggest that the terminal decay described by Quigley occurring in Late Antiquity was accompanied by a shift toward more “Northern” and “Western” genetic strains.  One can argue that the seeds of decay started earlier, but Quigley doesn’t ascribe racial reasons for the decline and fall of the Classical world in any case. The final collapse of the Western Roman Empire was due to a convergence of mechanisms. The Classical Idea had practically expired and the new Christian idea, although entrenched in late Rome, as essentially incompatible with the Classical world and required a new civilization to bring it to fruition.  Roman infantry could not stop barbarian cavalry, could not adopt to the new methods, and the inefficient Roman economy could not support mass cavalry even if they adopted it. The Mediterranean climate and soil was ill suited for the agricultural techniques required to support mass cavalry; Europe north of the Alps was much better suited. Not specifically mentioned by Quigley is that the loss of North Africa to the Vandals undercut the vitality of the West’s economy and the split of the West from the richer East deprived the former of the resources of the latter. Thus, fell the Western Roman Empire and the Classical Civilization ended with it.

The question of the Byzantine civilization is addressed in the book. Quigley notes that the Byzantine and Classical Civilizations are different enough so that the former cannot be simply viewed as a renewed and altered version of the latter, but yet some similarities and continuity exist and the Byzantine doesn’t seem to be its own independent civilization. Quigley raises the possibility that the Byzantine was the forerunner of an upcoming (Russian) Orthodox Civilization, which I agree is a possibility.  Another [possibility is that the Byzantine was a fusion of the Classical and Magian Civilizations, but with some novel aspects that had obviously had influence on Orthodox Europe.  Regardless, I believe that the consensus is that the Byzantine Empire was not a continuation of the Classical, it was quite distinct from even the decaying Western Roman Empire of Late Antiquity, which itself ended with the Fall of that Western Roman Empire.  From the wreckage if the Classical Civilization, Quigley states that three new civilizations grew on its periphery, the Western (in France), the Russian/Orthodox (to the north and east and linked to Byzantium) and the Islamic (to the south and east). We will focus in the West.

With respect to our current Western Civilization (or what is left of it), Quigley subscribes to the theory that the (pessimistic - Golden Age perceived to be in the past) Classical civilization was distinct and different from the (optimistic – Golden Age is perceived to be something that can be achieved in the future) Western Civilization.  Now, when I first came across this idea in the work of Spengler and Yockey I more or less was hostile to it and essentially rejected it.  However, these days I see the point and am willing to recognize that the fundamental differences between the Classical and Western Civilizations are profound enough to consider them separate.  

So, when Cola di Rienzi pondered the ruins of Rome nearly 900 years after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, this was a man of one civilization pondering the material remains of a previous distinct one that had occupied the same territory in the past.  Where I part with the Spengler-Yockey (and Quigley?) view is that while I note that the Classical and Western are distinct civilizations, I reject the idea that there is no organic, real connection between the two – not a civilizational continuity but a racial-historical one. Both civilizations arose in Europe among European peoples. Italians were a core population factor in both civilizations. There is a historical link between the two, via Christianity, the memories of the Roman empire and its model for attempted empires to come, and, of course the Renaissance and the overall study of antiquity. While we can recognize the Classical as different and distinct, it is not alien, as are other distinct civilizations that arise from non-European races. It would be wrong to view the relation between the Classical and Western to be the same as that between, say, the Western and non-European civilizations (the Chinese for example). The Classical resonated with Rienzi (and with other Men of the West) in a way that other civilizations did not and could not.  The rise of two civilizations from Europeans is a fundamental point, pointing to this race’s cultural fertility and ability to give rise to more civilizations in the future.  I have written of this in the past. We cannot blind ourselves to the important associations between the Classical and the Western Civilizations even if we recognize their distinctiveness. By the way, if optimism about the future is characteristic of the West, then given the pessimism and malaise of today, can we not see that this civilization is in terminal decay, at least in its present form?

In any case, we have, originating in France, an optimistic West, based on Christian ethos, with an economy and technology originally founded on animal power, centered around castles and military cavalry as opposed to the pessimistic, aristocratic Classical world with its clarid pagan rationality, an economic technology build around slavery, centered on cities, and with a military focused on infantry. Spengler would of course cite the “Faustian” nature of the West, which is linked to what Quigley describes as optimism and future orientation.

Quigley states that the essence of the West is the idea that:

Truth unfolds through a communal process.

Thus, truth is not some final definitive entity that is known or becomes known and that’s that – instead, we have a continual process of striving toward truth, achieving ever-closer approximations, but without ever really knowing that “this is it.” This process is achieved through a group, communal, societal process that is both cooperative and competitive, achieved through observation, experimentation, and debate, not through any person, god, or other type of entity, handing down a final, truth to us. Thus, this is opposed to the Classical, where an aristocratic elite arrives at a final truth through rational processes (but the process of dialectic debate is adopted by the West from the Classical) and the Islamic, where truth is what is in the Koran. This Western idea is manifested in the scientific method, in which there is no final truth but only hypotheses that are tested and that – so far and so far only – have survived falsification, and the Western political tendency toward liberalism as opposed to authoritarianism, since truth is strived for by group activity not imposed in final form by a higher authority. Thus, the Western ideal is marked by pluralism and moderation, finding a balanced effective compromise position to keep society on the upward track toward the truth.  For this reason, Quigley states that the “extremist fanatic” Hitler was not part of the Western tradition. Of course, a counter-argument would be that at times “extremist fanaticism” is required to save a civilization under threat and the only way to save Western pluralism from truly non-Western fanaticism is through Western fanaticism (i.e., in my opinion, National Socialism).  When pluralistic moderation fails to protect a High Culture from fanatical enemies, then, to paraphrase Goldwater – extremism in defense of civilization is no vice.

There is much talk of economics in the book, particularly in the section about the West; this is useful, but too detailed to discuss here and I don’t want this review to be as long as the book itself. One thing Quigley notes is that capitalism is an instrument when it attempts to increase profits by reducing costs (e.g., of production, trade, etc.) and becomes an institution when profits are only (or predominantly) obtained by increasing prices. With today’s inflation, guess which of those two exist; and, after all, costs have been reduced through outsourcing our entire productive economy to China, a move that, regardless of what Quigley may have believed, seems to me more of a destructive institutionalization of the economy than it working as a healthy instrument.  I would like to cite the following equations Quigley provides. Total prices = total costs and profits.  Because those costs and profits go to pay those in the firms, we can say Total incomes = total costs and profits. That means that Total prices = total incomes. But savings are held back from incomes so that Available purchasing power = incomes minus savings plus investment.  Unless all savings are plowed back into investment that means that the available purchasing power is not adequate to pay for goods sold at the given process. If there is an inefficient distribution of income so goods cannot be bought then there is no incentive to invest savings and the problems worsen, as in The Great Depression. Quigley’s entire analysis is very economics-oriented and seems to make economics the major causative factor in the ups and downs of civilizations. One wonders though whether economics is a cause or an effect; probably both – it exerts an influence and it is influenced upon by other factors, such as race and culture. In the midst of a deep demographic and cultural decline, economics-based solutions will be both ineffective and, in the case of temporary alleviation of superficial problems, counter-productive, by delaying the inevitable and the real underlying problems worse.

A careful reading of Quigley makes clear his belief that authoritarian forms of government tend to be associated with eras in which the tools of force and coercion – military weapons and tactics – are expensive enough and specialized enough that they require smaller forces of expert professional soldiers rule by an elite that uses this instrument of force to control the population. On the other hand, democracy and various forms of political pluralism are associated with eras in which military weapons are cheap enough, mass produced enough, and easy to use to the extent there can be a mass army and as general armed citizenry; thus, small elite groups cannot monopolize the tools and tactics of force and thus use coercion to impose their will on the masses. This leads to nationalism mass armies of patriots fighting ideological wars of annihilation, sustaining mass causalities through high morale (as opposed to mercenaries fighting small scale set piece battles and relatively unwilling to sacrifice their lives for whomever is paying them). 

Today in the West (and in general) while we still have relatively cheap weapons, they cannot compete with nuclear bombs, ICBMs, tanks, fighter jets, etc. – assuming of course an equal will to fight.  Thus, there will be some who say “stone age Afghans beat off the Soviets and the USA, and look at the Vietnam war” – well, yes, if the “big boys” want to “win hearts and minds” and/or the “big boys” have fat and stupid hedonistic populations with low morale, then, yes, high morale peoples with nothing to lose and who are willing to sacrifice may beat foreign invaders.  But what about a nation controlling its own people, particularly when that people have become coddled hot house plants?  Can Billy Bob stand off against the US Army here in America the same way Afghan tribesmen can do thousands of miles away (and even there, the USA could nuke the Afghans out of existence if they wanted to, and the Soviets were the same). “Movement” Turner Diaries fantasies aside, I wonder if the new age of military technology, as well as surveillance technology, is enabling authoritarianism – meaning that dissidents either must politically obtain power or hope for a collapse that equalizes the forces to a low level in which the dissidents have more of a chance. In any case, Quigley notes that the rise of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in the 20th century had much to do with the increasing specialization and technical advances of the military, which once again concentrated the power of coercion to specialists and their elite leadership. Further, increased communication coupled with increased power projection means that nationalism is no longer sufficient and we now have ideological struggles spanning continents (The Cold War in Quigley’s time, which followed the two World Wars).  As far as the future of democracy, Quigley believes that would require new weapons and tactics that would make guerrilla warfare and other small scale force projection viable against weapons of mass destruction.  Some may think that the tactic used in Vietnam and Afghanistan would qualify, but as I have stated, I do not see that applying for internal struggles within Western nations.

So, more than 60 years ago, Quigley described the then state of the West as an army of specialists in an ideological state, with a pluralistic planned economy, ruled by managers.  That is similar to today, but can be modified to – an army of incompetents in a Far Left ideological state, with a crumbling economy, ruled by hysterical social justice warriors.  Quigley’s question as to whether the West will be mired in an Age of Conflict leading to inevitable decay or whether it can revive to another era of expansion has, I believe, been answered in favor of the former. That may well be for the best.  The West has become so degenerate demographically and culturally that some sort of economics-based revival will only make the inevitable Fall all the worse.  It’s time for a new civilization for the European peoples.

As regards the book itself, the author could have invested sometime contrasting his views with that of Spengler more than the brief mention “The Philosopher of History” received in this work. I actually found Quigley’s book more informative than The Decline of the West, although the latter was more entertaining and certainly less “dry” than Quigley’s more “scientific” effort.

In summary, Quigley’s work is a useful and thought-proving book; it is recommended reading.

Addendum

One of the most insightful comments about Hitler that I have ever read was made by Quigley in this book:

The inability of Hitler to make such a shift from a nationalist to an ideological (or other wider) basis at a time when his factual power was so much wider geographically than the area of Germanism was but one of his fatal errors.

Thus, Hitler’s narrow German nationalism and hegemonic desires and the Germanocentric Nordicism of Hitlerian National Socialism did not have an appeal in the wider non-Germanic Europe that he expanded into at the height of his powers. Hence, he failed to appeal to Europeans as a whole and to the broad Western Civilization, which helped doom his efforts. If he had instead made National Socialism into a true pan-European movement aimed at a regeneration of Western Civilization, instead of Deutschland Uber Alles, he would have been more successful. This view is supported by the fact that when, after Stalingrad, the Nazis moved a bit – at least superficially – in a more pan-European direction there was a bit more support from rightist, anti-communist, and fascistic elements in Europe, some of which joined a Waffen SS that was then somewhat more relaxed in its Nordicist racial standards.  One can also consider how the Germans were originally hailed as liberators in Ukraine before they alienated the native population with Germanocentric Nordicist anti-Slav attitudes. Quigley is therefore correct. While Hitler latched onto National Socialism as an ideological antidote to Marxism, he made an error in restricting it to Germanics, an error that became fatal when he conquered and/or gained influence over, most of continental Europe. He had little to offer non-Germans in his embryonic empire.

Sunday, April 3, 2022

Transnational Fascism?

A leftist analysis of the failure to implement authentic transnational fascism.

Read the whole thing; here I examine excerpts and summarize my thoughts on the matter. To start with – the author.

See this.

Also see this.

Abstract

To better understand cross-border fascist solidarity, this article suggests a new conceptual framework revolving around the term ‘pan-fascism’ and its ‘paradox’. It argues that the existence or non-existence of a pan-fascist ‘paradox’ in the minds of historical fascists is a matter of optics, as it all depends on who is mobilizing the notion of fascist transnationalism. 

It is always easy to identify pseudo-intellectual leftist pablum by reading such phrases as “mobilizing the notion of fascist transnationalism.”  And now we have “unpacked” - 

Because of such optical issues, which all must be unpacked historically...

…the conceptual framework of ‘pan-fascism’ does not offer a simple solution. It, rather, puts emphasis on a key question: how did certain fascists, at various moments in their lives, think about the possibility of fascist transnationalism? To demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, this paper takes the work, thought, and practices of the French editors of Je suis partout as a case study, and demonstrates how they attempted to reconcile their commitment to French nationalism with fascist transnationalism.

If we overcome the Culture Retarding petty nationalism promoted by some on the Far Right, then there would be no need to “reconcile” national and transnational fascism.

Although these editors at JSP publicly engaged in collaboration with foreign fascist movements from mid-1936 onward, they never renounced their commitment to French nationalism. This, then, raises a thought-provoking question that transcends the particularities of these French fascists and their unique contexts: how do nationalist-minded fascists think transnationally?

The people best suited to answer that question are actual fascists, not snide leftists writing superficial analyses that use obfuscating language to hide the lack of intellectual heft.

This article sets out to answer this question. The first section examines the historiography on transnational fascism and argues that the current theoretical framework for understanding cross-border collaboration and interaction between fascists is limited. It, thereafter, demonstrates that cross-border connections between fascists can best be examined from the conceptual framework of ‘pan-fascism’. Pan-fascism, as defined in this paper, contains the capacity of a very distinct way of understanding fascism, seeing that it seems to bear a paradox within its own name: how does transnational fascism comport with nationalist and imperialist aspects inherent to many fascist ideologies?2 It is this friction which makes ‘pan-fascism’ inherently unstable.

Putting aside the irritating leftist jargon, the core point here is the assumption that a paradox exists because fascism is inherently hostile to the other, with self and other defined in strictly ethnic and national terms; therefore, any type of transnational ”pan-fascism” is “inherently unstable.” This fallacy – or is leftist wishful thinking – will be exposed by my critique and comments below. At this point, we can understand that is petty nationalist/ethnonationalist versions of fascism that results in the stereotype underlining the assumption leading to the “paradox.”  It should come as no surprise that the name “Yockey” does not appear, not even once, in this leftist screed.  After all, a certain agenda must be promoted and, hence, source material must be cherry picked to fit that agenda. The agenda is, of course, to delegitimize transnational fascism, and, by extension, pan-European racial nationalism, and promote division within the international Far Right. That the Left finds willing accomplices for this agenda among certain denizens of the Far Right supports the Yockey’s contention that petty nationalist Culture Retarders are, essentially, traitors to Europe and to the West.

The word ‘paradox’, here, helps to underscore that there is a tension between the desire to create a community of fascist nations, or perhaps even a supranational fascist community, and the seeming impossibility of achieving this.3 This goes beyond the question of how one could create an international movement out of national movements, as there are a multitude of examples from the eighteenth century onward where nationalism was not primarily organized around defeating other nationalisms, but where nationalist movements aimed to dismantle—for instance—absolute monarchies, and dynastic state formations. Buried in there was also a latent possibility for conflict, but ‘ideologically’ these forms of nationalism were mostly structured around a common enemy. A great deal of ‘fascist’ ideologues in the first half of the twentieth century, however, primarily structured their thinking about ‘nationalism’ around defeating other nationalisms, rather than implying that national movements in different countries could happily exist besides one another.

That’s the sort of petty nationalist ethnonationalist that treasonous filth like the Counter-Currents crew promotes.

Apart from a conceptual friction in the term ‘pan-fascism’, the existence or non-existence of a pan-fascist ‘paradox’ in the minds of historical fascists is clearly a matter of optics, as it all depends on who is mobilizing the notion of fascist transnationalism; as well as on their reasons for doing so. Because of such optical issues, which must all be unpacked historically, the conceptual framework of ‘pan-fascism’ does not offer simple solutions. Rather it puts emphasis upon several key questions: how did certain fascists, at various moments in their lives, think about the possibility of cross-border fascist solidarity? Why did they—or: why did they not—believe that fascist transnationalism was intrinsically paradoxical, and how did this affect them, their thinking, and their actions? This framework, in other words, offers a distinct perspective to analyze how fascists mediated the relationship between nationalism and transnationalism.

The preceding paragraph is essentially meaningless nonsense.  It has no explanatory power nor does it point to any direction leading to such power.

The second section of this paper employs this conceptual framework in a very practical sense. It takes the work, thought, and practices of the French editors of JSP as a case study, and demonstrates how they attempted to reconcile their commitment to French nationalism with fascist transnationalism. 

I’ll look at what this buffoon has to say about that, see below.  Essentially, the French were hoodwinked by the Germans, but the delusional French were complicit in their own hoodwinking.

The third section of this article argues that one should consider ‘pan-fascist romanticism’ to understand how individual fascists thought transnationally. By zeroing in on the relationship between these French editors and foreign fascists, it illustrates that most instances of ‘fascist transnationalism’ were driven by distinct ‘romantic’ narratives. 

I’m sure I will not like any of that nonsense.

Practically, this means that the ‘myths’ are altered to cater to a different ‘in-group’. These narratives could be grounded upon antisemitism, pan-Europeanism, various forms of transnational racialism (such as Aryanism or white supremacism), anti-Bolshevism, anti-capitalism, or a complicated combination and overlapping of these and other ideas. 

Note – “myths.”

This third section also examines cases of interaction between the editors of JSP and various representatives of the German National Socialist regime in the 1930s. 

This emphasis on “the German National Socialist regime in the 1930s” mirrors the “movement’s obsession with that regime. Given what we will learn here (see below), which is generally supportive of the known historical narrative of the Germans being selfishly focused on narrow ethnic – or at nest, pan-Germanic or subracial – interests, this obsession has been unfortunate and feeds into the “movement’s” Nordicism and culture-retarding ethnonationalism.

The fourth section of this paper demonstrates that the narratives of ‘pan-fascist romanticism’ could be employed to achieve contradicting goals. Whereas they could stimulate and facilitate interaction and collaboration between fascists, they could also be used to manipulate foreign fascist peoples, movements, and regimes. Certain representatives of the Nazi regime, for instance, fed into a specific narrative of cross-border fascist collaboration, as a vehicle to further their own ultra-nationalist, imperialist, goals. Some of these representatives saw ‘pan-fascist romanticism’ as a form of camouflage, which could be employed to—temporarily—conceal Nazi Germany’s drive for geographical expansion and physical struggle.9 Through the continuing assertion and dissemination of ‘pan-fascist romanticism’ in their communication with French fascists, these individuals hoped to implant ‘pan-fascist illusions’ in the minds of France’s ultra-right, and aimed to further ‘obscure’ something which these Nazis regarded as the irreconcilable paradox of fascist transnationalism.

This is important and exposes one reason why the “movement’s obsession with the Nazi experience is so destructive.  Rather than being authentic “pan-Aryan” fascists, with an interest in the well-being of all Europeans, the Nazis had a “drive for geographical expansion and physical struggle” against other Europeans, and faked an interest in transnational fascism. Indeed, it was only after the disaster of Stalingrad that the more pan-European elements of the SS dominated over the more strictly Nordicist faction and it is questionable how sincere even that pan-European faction really was.  Did they have an authentic attachment to the pan-European ideal, or was it a desperate expediency to mobilize anti-Bolshevik Europeans to “buy into” German war aims?

And here is another important point. Is it possible that the “movement” learned from the Nazis too well? Just as the German Nationalists used transnational fascism as a camouflage to mask their narrow national imperialist agenda, and thus hoodwinked foreign fascists into accepting Germanocentric agendas under the guise of “unity,” so do modern White nationalists who are really Nordicist hoodwink Southern and Eastern Europeans to follow an agenda that exclusively serves Northwest European interests, with those narrow interests camouflaged behind a mask of “White unity.”  Thus, exposing the Nazi scam may assist in exposing the modern one, and pointing sincere pan-Europeanists away from the modern scam and toward an authentically pan-European movement.

The goal of this article, ultimately, lies beyond discussing the particularities of its case study.10 It demonstrates that approaching case studies from the perspective of ‘pan-fascism’ and its ‘paradox’ can make sense of the ideological flexibility found in the work, thinking, and practices of historical agents involved in fascist connections and collaboration across borders. It might stimulate scholars to turn, or stay, away from one-dimensional approaches to fascist transnationalism. And instead of trying to replace these inflexible perspectives with a new, global, or more complicated theory of fascist transnationalism, this paper—again—points towards ‘the pan-fascist paradox’. It does so for one reason in particular: fascism as a clearly defined body of ideas does simply not exist. 

That last part is really a stretch. Fascism may be protean but there is always a core present.  Whether one wants to deny that core id “a clearly defined body of ideas” depends upon one’s “optics” – to borrow the phraseology of this author.

The Heterogeneity of Fascist Transnationalism

Fascist politicians and intellectuals have often been depicted as ideologues who espoused extreme nationalism, condemned cross-border collaboration, and preached cultural parochialism.12 As a result, many scholars have approached fascism from a ‘national’ lens, and investigated their historical subjects in the context of national histories. Scholars of ‘international fascism’, in contrast, predominantly aimed to discern characteristics to differentiate between fascist ideologies and movements in time and space. Rather than examining fascist parties and practices in their unique historical contexts, they focused on constructing abstract typologies.13 A recent strand of research on ‘transnational fascism’, however, foregrounds cross-border cooperation and intellectual exchange between fascists. Certain scholars affiliated with this emerging school of thought have started emphasizing the pan-European elements of fascism, to challenge the conception that right-wing movements were purely driven by nationalism.14

Those “certain scholars” are on the right track, at least for fascisms other than the German variety.

One example of this is Arnd Bauerkämper’s article ‘Ambiguities of Transnationalism’ (2007) in which he effectively employed the idea of pan-Europeanism to emphasize the vital role of cross-border exchange and collaboration between European fascists.15 Recently, Bauerkämper published a collection of thirteen essays on the same topic with Grzegorz Rossollinski-Liebe, entitled Fascism without Borders (2017). The editors argued against the idea that fascism is inseparable from nationalism. Instead, they focused on ‘transnational connections and cooperation between movements and regimes in Europe’ and urged scholars to recognize the pan-European aspects of fascism.16 But while setting out to show that fascism transcended borders, the underlying thought that connected all the contributions in this collection was that a small group of right-wing politicians and intellectuals, to a certain extent, had substituted national borders with European borders. Rather than truly dismantling the logic of ‘thinking in borders’, and the nationalist sentiments underlying fascism, they simply displaced them.

So?  Leftists are offended that the fascist ingroup is limited to Europeans and does not include their favored Colored populations of African and Asian racial descent? I realize that leftist academics become hysterical over borders and any exclusion, but an ideology based in part on “ultra-nationalism” needs to define some sort of “nation” – be it ethnic or racial. A “nation” encompassing all of humanity loses any substantive meaning.

Studies that approach fascism from this pan-European fascist paradigm are particularly effective in elucidating the limitations of ‘national’ approaches to fascism. When trying to analyze the transnational dimensions of fascism, however, this perspective is limited in its own right, as it heavily relies on one particular possibility of transnationalism: pan-Europeanism.

Again, so?

Firstly, this notion of pan-Europeanism deals awkwardly with fascism outside Europe or collaborations between ‘European’ and ‘non-European’ fascists. One thing that comes to mind is South African right-wing nationalism in the 1930s. Whereas many members of the Ossewabrandwag felt closely related to the Netherlands and Belgium as their Stamlande [‘root-countries’], some of them supported the Nazis in their occupation of these countries, as they felt that it was a necessary step to defeat the British and dismantle their empire. Other examples are how the leaders of the Chinese government in Nanjing had become particularly enchanted by Italian and German fascism, or how a group of predominantly white and Dutch settlers in the Dutch East-Indies wanted to establish an Indonesian ‘fatherland’ independently from the Netherlands; for which they employed anti-Dutch and anti-European fascist language and attempted to mobilize native nationalism among the population of Indonesia. To examine such complicated cases of fascist transnationalism, the prism of pan-Europeanism falls short.

It doesn’t “fall short,” you mendacious retard, if you realize that “pan-European” includes Europeans in the Diaspora, and not only in Europe itself.  If that excludes your precious Chinese, then that is just too bad (HBDers weep).

Of course, no author seems to defend the position that fascist transnational solidarity was exclusively about European categories…

Why do non-fascist (typically leftist) academics feel the need to “defend the position” of fascists?  Isn’t that the obligation of fascists themselves?

This is insufficient, as it perpetuates Eurocentrism…

Do you need any more evidence of the biases of this author?  If academics objectively study the reality that White fascists are concerned with White people, then acknowledging that reality is perpetuating “Eurocentrism.”  On the one hand, it is a good thing that anti-fascist academics are so deluded, but it does make much of their work more or less useless for our purposes.

Secondly, the pan-European paradigm sheds a very narrow light on the thought and work of fascists—both outside and within the presupposed borders of Europe—because it primarily fixates on the extent to which these fascists dreamt about (the rebirth of) a ‘Europe’ for the ‘Europeans’. It does not give much room to recognize that the thought and work of most fascists was only abstractly related to this pan-European perspective, that pan-European language was often employed to convey disparate meanings, and that most fascists evoked more complicated possibilities of transnationalism.18

A mostly meaningless paragraph, the only agenda of which is to be anti-“Eurocentric.”

There was a seemingly paradoxical relationship between France and Nazi Germany in Cousteau’s analysis of the contemporary political situation, as Hitler was regarded both as a threat to France, as well as its savior…What needs to be made clear, here, is that the JSP editors were not primarily driven by Germanophilia. They did not choose Germany’s nationalism over France’s. Instead, they regarded German officials as natural allies in their struggle against the Third Republic and the French government, while remaining loyal to a mythical image of France. 

Mythical?

In contrast to Cousteau, Brasillach—who functioned as JSP’s editor-in-chief from June 1937 onward—was skeptical about collaboration between France’s ultra-right and the German National Socialists.30 Brasillach openly affiliated himself with fascism, but with ‘Latin fascism’ in particular. 

Blasphemy!  

While being particularly fond of Spanish fascism, he had also praised Benito Mussolini for being a Latin poet, and he recognized ‘the Latin fascist traditions’ in the Belgian politics of the French-speaking Léon Degrelle.31 Brasillach asserted that France, historically, had always been the primary guardian of the ‘Latin culture’. 

Durocher weeps.

German fascism, however, was inherently different. Brasillach wrote in the early 1930s that he was worried about Hitler’s ‘primary racism’, that he regarded Hitler’s speeches as the work of ‘a sort of enraged teacher’, and that he believed that Nazi Germany was the greatest political threat to France.32

Blasphemy!

Brasillach still asserted that the German National Socialism could function as a model for French fascism. He admired the fascist aesthetics of Nazi Germany, as well as the ‘social’ impact of National Socialism. In the Third Reich, according to Brasillach, people were energetic and joyful. There, people had a sense of sacrifice and honour. He wanted to reproduce this in France. But, to succeed, ‘the French must find their poetry, their myths, their French images, as well as confidence in themselves and in a national ideal’. He concluded that ‘we can make it ours, not by a useless copy or imitation but by a more developed knowledge of who we are’.37

That seems reasonable to me.

Brasillach’s early engagement with fascism was primarily intellectual, seeing that his journalism and writings mostly discussed aesthetics and racism, without putting forward a political, social, or economic program. His dreams and hopes, however, were of a political nature. He wanted France to arise ‘Phoenix-like’ from the political and cultural decadence of its time, but rather than pushing for this to happen, he believed that it would be the result of spontaneous combustion. 

Passiveness never accomplishes anything.

Brasillach believed that the existence of a uniquely French fascism, grounded in French culture, would be enough to spark a fascist revolution. The fact that it did not, made him increasingly more disillusioned.

He should have blamed himself. You need to work for change.  The greater the change, the more work and effort required.  Nothing comes easy, least of all, a new society.

It made Brasillach’s later work—from mid-1938—more dismissive about France’s culture and people. 

Projection.

It, at the same time, prompted his thinking about foreign fascist movements to become progressively heroic and romantic; as many foreign peoples, in contrast to the French, had brought about profound social and national revolutions. 

And their leaders worked to make it happen; they did not assume it would occur automatically.

To instigate a French fascist revolution, some editors at JSP even considered asking the Nazis, once the exotic other, for military assistance. Rebatet, at one point, publicly invited Hitler to invade France. 

Madness.

While diagnosing the decline and decay of France on countless fronts, these JSP editors prophesied that fascism could bring about a spiritual and cultural renewal. Fascism, for them, was the antidote to the decadency of democracy, capitalism, liberalism, and Marxism. According to them, a fascist revolution would—undoubtedly—lead to the cultural, spiritual, and national rebirth of France. They found proof of this in other countries, such as Nazi Germany. Although Brasillach, throughout the 1930s, kept regarding Nazi Germany as the ‘other’, due to the ‘foreign’ content of its national symbols and myths, the JSP editors consistently presented this country as a magical and safe place, untouched by the corruption of democracy, Judaism, capitalism, liberalism, and Marxism. It was depicted as a place where the Jews and Bolshevists could not impose their decadent ways. Germany, in other words, was sculptured into a purer mirror of an impure France.

More Germany worship from the Far Right. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

While agreeing on the goal, the editors of JSP employed different strategies to spark a fascist revolution: Cousteau warned the French people that they had to eliminate the ‘internal enemies’ and overthrow the French government themselves, in order to prevent Nazi Germany from invading France to eradicate the Judeo-Bolshevists. Brasillach, in contrast, asserted in his early work that intellectual engagement with a uniquely French fascism, grounded in French culture, would be enough to trigger a French revolution. 

Cousteau was right.

Before thinking about the specific relationship between these French fascist editors at JSP and the German National Socialists, one must first recognize that the Nazis themselves were quite hesitant to export their ideology abroad. Hitler himself strongly doubted that exporting National Socialism would be possible, because he regarded it as an exclusively German phenomenon. 

The man was an idiot, despite whatever other virtues he had. National Socialism as an ideology can be applied to virtually any ethny, at least in theory.  It is a form of fascism that stresses biological race, in the form of a collectivist people’s community in which biological-genetic-racial-eugenic principles and interests are paramount.  Now,the particular German manifestation of this ideology was “an exclusively German phenomenon” but not the ideology itself. It is like saying that communism was specifically Russian (or, more properly, Jewish).

He, however, also believed it to be counterproductive, as it ‘would only lead to a strengthening of nationalism in other countries’, which ‘leads to a weakening of Germany’s position’ on the world stage. 

There you go, the self-centered petty nationalist culture retarding ethnonationalist par excellence.  And how did that work out for Germany?  In actuality, Germany’s long term stability and well-being would have been optimized as part of a strong and secure Europe in which all peoples enjoyed the protection of fascistic and national socialist principles.  By attempting to selfishly grasp too much, Hitler and the Nazis lost all.  It is analogous to a billionaire who destabilizes his host society by greedily trying to get more and more money of low marginal value, instead of protecting his already sufficient wealth by supporting a stable society to live in.

Hitler, therefore, was glad that the Nazi parties in other countries had ‘not produced leaders of his own calibre’, who were often ‘mere copyists’ without ‘original or new ideas’. As ‘they only imitated us and our methods slavishly’, he believed that they ‘would never amount to anything’.44 

Wonderful. Some pro-White leader he was.

The primary issue here, for Hitler, was ‘belatedness’. Much of Hitler’s contempt for foreign fascist movements seems to come from the fact that they come late, making them inevitably minions and imitators. For this reason, Hitler did not expect much from most foreign fascists: ‘in every country you have to start from different premises and change your methods accordingly’.45

So?  One could adopt basic principles to each people’s particular traits.

This, however, did not stop the Nazis from interacting with foreign fascists, nor from spreading ‘pan-fascist romanticism’. Already on 16 November 1933, Hitler proclaimed in an interview with the French journalist Fernand de Brinon that he wanted to start conversations ‘between the good French and the good Germans, between the good Poles and the good Germans, and between 100 % English people and 100 % German ones’. He asserted that cross-border collaboration between all ‘superior human races’—such as the ‘Aryan’ French and German races—could lead to a strengthening of the social, cultural, and political position of these peoples in their respective countries.46 People of ‘mixed race’ and ‘internationalists’, in contrast, had to be kept outside of these conversations.

Truth or lies?

This Nazi narrative of pan-fascist romanticism, drenched in transnational racialism, was fundamentally at odds with the core message of most of Hitler’s German-language speeches and writings, which was shamelessly German-nationalist. Hitler, for instance, consistently depicted the French as irredeemable since they had gone too far in their degenerative process of ‘Vernegerung’ [‘negrification’]. In his German speeches and writings, the Führer consistently repeated throughout the 1930s that the inferior status of the French people and race posed a lurking danger to ‘white humanity’ and ‘the white race’.47 

So, the previous comments were lies.  One could imagine his attitude toward Italians. Well, there's a passage in Mein Kampf about Southern Italy that makes the disdain clesr.

For the translation-process of Mein Kampf…This narrative, obviously, contrasted greatly from what Hitler wrote and said to his German audience. There, Hitler continued to argue that France as a country should be perceived as ‘a sin against the existence of white humanity’… Mein Kampf’s original narrative of German-nationalist, fascist, romanticism was thus substituted by a narrative of non-national, racialized transnationalism. Hitler’s book was profoundly altered to lead a second life as a carrier of pan-fascist romanticism.

So the Nazis were lying to non-Germanic Europeans about Nazi attitudes toward intra-European ethnoracial differences, camouflaging the real Germanocentric racial contempt with a false mask of transnational fascism. This is similar to how the “movement” lies to White ethnics, pretending to believe in “White unity” while in actuality the real attitude is contempt for White ethnics.

After Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Nazi propaganda originally aimed to cultivate and establish amicable relations with French ministers and diplomats. Until early 1936, the Nazis kept close ties with various French officials.56 To help these negotiations, and to further their cause, the Nazis deemed it advisable to deemphasize the ideological and political significance of Hitler’s blatantly anti-French statements in Mein Kampf. 

More fundamental dishonesty.

Seduction, Deception, and Self-Delusion

That sounds like the relationship of the “movement” with White ethnics.

The relationship and interaction between certain members of the Nazi regime and the editors of JSP, however, cannot be fully explained by noting that these French fascists were solely passive recipients of ‘Nazi’ narratives of pan-fascist romanticism. The story, of course, was a whole lot more complicated. In the thought of a handful of Nazi officials including Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels, there was a certainly a strong belief that the nationalist and transnationalist dimensions of fascism were irreconcilable, or, in other words, that transnational fascism was intrinsically paradoxical. So, in their minds there was not really so much a ‘paradox’ as, rather, the recognition of a pattern of delusion on the side of the other fascist peoples and movements that they wished to exploit. 

That shows how absolutely despicable the Nazis were with respect to their relations with non-Germanic peoples, and is akin to how today’s “movement” treat White ethnics.

Consider what non-German fascists tried to do.

The conference was not able to bridge the gulf between those participants who proposed achieving national integration by a corporative socio-economic policy and those who favored an appeal to race.[9] Pretensions to "universal fascism" could not survive this rift, and the movement did not meet its goal of acting as a counterbalance to international communism.

If true, that analysis suggests that one reason for the failure of inter-war transnational fascism was ideological, not any “instability” due to the “paradox” of “ultra-nationalists” trying to engage across national identities.  Also, the German resistance to transnational fascist cooperation and Mussolini’s capture as a vassal of Germany (another hoodwinked fascist) meant that such conference were no longer being promoted by an established fascist state.

Back to the original essay:

Because they were convinced that they saw through the paradox of transnational fascism, and believed they understood where German interests really lay, they attempted to manipulate foreign fascist peoples and movements by feeding into the narrative of ‘pan-fascist collaboration’, and feeding into the ‘delusion’ through a continuing assertion and dissemination of pan-fascist romanticism. This, for them, served the purpose of implanting ‘pan-fascist illusions’ in the minds of foreign fascists to further obscure, what they regarded as, the paradoxical nature of transnational fascism.

The paradox was not inherent, it was due to the petty nationalist tendencies of ethnonationalist filth.

There was, however, a lot of conflict among Nazi officials regarding the desired treatment of France. Himmler and Goebbels were especially hostile to the idea of collaborating with France’s ultra-right, and Hitler was initially hesitant as well. 

Surprise!

When looking at the position of the French fascists working at JSP, one should not forget that they had actively sought out rapprochement with the Nazis themselves. They did so for a couple of reasons. The JSP editors had been extremely hostile to the French government from mid-1936 onward, which caused them to create two dissociated conceptions of France. In their minds, it was their mission to defeat France as a ‘political entity’ to save their ‘ideal’ and ‘mythical’ conception of France. From mid-1938 onward, however, they became profoundly frustrated after they believed that a uniquely French fascist revolution was postponed indefinitely due to the ‘weakness’ and ‘unmanliness’ of the French population. In addition to their racial disillusionment, they were jealous about supposedly successful ‘social’ and ‘national’ revolutions in other countries and hoped to learn—and to receive inspiration—from foreign fascists. At the same time, they understood their position as a relatively powerless minority group in France, which meant that their collaboration with the German regime and officials was grounded upon an asymmetrical power relationship…For the longest time, the JSP editors also kept explaining away anything that contradicted their ‘illusory’ convictions. Whenever Cousteau, for instance, was confronted with the anti-French sentiments from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, he asserted that these statements were simply outdated.

That is all perfectly consistent with the delusions White ethnics have with the “movement.”  When confronted with ingoing “movement” Nordicism and disdain for Southern and Eastern Europeans, many ethnics try to convince themselves (and others) that it is “simply outdated” and doesn’t mean anything.

This logic, of course, was of a circular kind. To explain why they had omitted the anti-French passages in Ma Doctrine, the JSP editors referred to the Nazi’s pan-fascist narrative of the last years to illustrate and prove that Hitler had changed his attitude towards France and the French people, even though their Nazi-authorized publication, at the same time, propounded exactly the same pan-fascist narrative, and was produced and disseminated to re-assert it. Rather than regarding such examples of crooked logic as failed attempts to defend themselves against allegations from negative reviews, it seems to be emblematic of what the JSP editors themselves believed in from mid-1938 onward. 

Sound familiar?  I suppose I was guilty of doing the same in the past as well.

Reality be damned.

Indeed.

Conclusion…many fascists often incorporated countless combinations of contradictory elements into their thinking and constantly kept modifying their ideas, definitions, and principles throughout their careers. Seeing that tackling their self-defined problems was usually seen as a matter of life and death, many fascists, and this is, of course, particularly the case for ‘fascists’ who had not managed to secure the support of their ‘target groups’, and who had become disillusioned by the social, cultural, and political realities of their time, were also overly flexible in their choice of allies. 

Too much flexibility makes you snap, as what has happened to many in the “movement” today.

How did certain individual fascists, at specific moments in their lives, think about the possibility of cross-border fascist solidarity? How did they mediate the relationship between nationalism and transnationalism; and how did these fascists—in other words—‘think transnationally’?

For example, if one does regard nationalism as a core element of fascism, then that logically seems to mean that transnational fascism is—at least partially—paradoxical. 

Again, this describes the ethnonationalist error. True White nationalism – the fascism that makes sense today – has race as nation (what this author decries as “Eurocentric”) and can eliminate the “paradox."

The thought, work, and practices of fascists, however, almost never followed simple logical assumptions. Fascist thinking, instead, is all too often molded by resentment, fear, and shame…

Typical leftist ad hominem.

When doing so, one will easily find that many individual fascists do not regard nationalism as a core element of fascism; and, because of this, most of them will not regard transnational fascism as inherently paradoxical. 

Yes.

…especially after 1945, it is apparent that distinguishable groups of fascists have substituted nationalism with racism.

That’s my whole point.  So much for the “paradox?”

For many of them, ‘the white race’ …

Note the scare quotes. Leftist alert!

…has become the common denominator, which is inherently transnational. The claim to defend ‘white superiority’ ..

Liar.  Who on the Far Right (apart perhaps Spencer) talks about “white superiority?”

The main takeaway from this paper on the usefulness of ‘pan-fascism’ for future historical studies on transnational fascism is that it all boils down to optics. 

Nonsense.

As regards footnotes:

This paper maintains Roger Griffin’s definition of ultra-nationalism, namely that it is essentially xenophobic and is known to legitimize itself ‘through deeply mythicized narratives of past cultural or political periods of historical greatness or of old scores to settle against alleged enemies’. Cyprian P. Blamires, ed., World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006), 452.

The definition is palingenetic ultra-nationalism, you mendacious leftist scum.

In 2020, Anson Rabinbach wrote that fascism should be understood as an ‘ethos or Gesinnung, a willingness to adhere to the general precepts of a worldview, which was vague and indistinct enough to embrace a variety of related perspectives’. Somewhat similarly, Sven Reichardt argued that one should think about fascism as seven distinctive ‘processes’, because ‘fascism as a movement, acting within a democratic system, should be understood as fundamentally different from a state carrying out a genocide in the exceptional situation of the Second World War’. Sven Reichardt, ‘Fascism’s Stages: Imperial Violence, Entanglement, and Processualization,’ History of Ideas 82, no. 1 (2021): 85–107; Anson Rabinbach, Staging the Third Reich: Essays in Cultural and Intellectual History, eds. Stefanos Geroulanos and Dagmar Herzog (London, etc.: Routledge, 2020), 121, 160, 174.

There’s some truth in that, given that flexible and protean nature of fascism, but shouldn’t be taken too far.

Some individual fascists at various moments in time, however, were primarily committed to the ‘pan-European’ idea. As Roger Griffin wrote: ‘certain strands of interwar fascism were actively concerned with resolving the decadence brought about by the status quo as a whole, not just in a particular nation, and thus thought of rebirth in pan-European or even Western terms’. Roger Griffin, ‘Europe for the Europeans: Fascist Myths of the European New Order 1922–1992,’ in A Fascist Century: Essays by Roger Griffin, ed. Matthew Feldman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 132–181.

And that’s a good thing.

My bottom line – genuine pan-Europeanism eliminates the so-called “paradox” in fascist thought, and the “paradox” lingers on today because of the culture-retarding ethnonationalists who divide Whites and who proudly self-identify as petty nationalists (e.g., Greg Johnson).