The Little Führer

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Re: The Little Führer

Postby American Dream » Sun Apr 02, 2017 8:28 pm

April 1 Anti-Muslim Protests and Counter-Protests: Toronto

Reports from those who were attended indicated that the Soldiers of Odin and Jewish Defence League were both present, though there were not more than 20 people on the fascist side. One carload was confronted by antifascists in an underground parking garage and, “literally burned rubber” leaving, though it seems that they might have been able to make it to the protest some time after this occurred. As it was, the fascist protesters had a significantly less productive day than they did on March 19.

The antifascists showed up in significantly larger number than they did on March 19 (though still less than on March 4). The fascist protesters, who could only seem to hold their position for a bit more than an hour, weren’t able to get their speakers working and any chants they may have engaged in were drowned out by the larger group antifascists. All of this contributed to a significant amount of frustration and demoralization on the fascist side.

Unlike March 19, the fascist protesters were unable to march and needed not only the bike police to act as escorts back to the underground parking garage, but also a full riot squad. It was also reported that of the arrests, two were fascists though there aren’t any details concerning who they were or what charges, if any, they will be facing. It is clear though that the SoO were especially aggressive based on some of the photos and videos we’ve seen.


More at: http://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/2 ... s-and.html
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Re: The Little Führer

Postby American Dream » Tue Apr 04, 2017 9:47 am

https://mystical-politics.blogspot.com/ ... -anti.html

In Hungary, Sebastian Gorka Backed an Anti-Semitic Militia. Now can we say he's an antisemite?

Now we know that Sebastian Gorka really is an antisemite: Sebastian Gorka Backed Anti-Semitic Militia.

As a Hungarian political leader in 2007, Sebastian Gorka, President Trump’s chief counter-terrorism adviser, publicly supported a violent racist and anti-Semitic paramilitary militia that was later banned as a threat to minorities by multiple court rulings.

In a video obtained by the Forward of an August 2007 television appearance by Gorka, the future White House senior aide explicitly affirms his party’s and his support for the black-vested Hungarian Guard (Magyar Gárda) — a group later condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for attempting to promote an “essentially racist” legal order.

Asked directly on the TV interview program if he supports the move by Jobbik, a far-right anti-Semitic party, to establish the militia, Gorka, appearing as a leader of his own newly formed party, replies immediately, “That is so.” The Guard, Gorka explains, is a response to “a big societal need.”

Hungary’s official military, he stressed, “is sick, and totally reflects the state of Hungarian society…. This country cannot defend itself.”


[snip]

During the 11-minute interview, which aired on Hungary’s Echo TV, Gorka dismissed concerns expressed by the Jewish community, and in particular fears that the Guard provoked among Hungarian Holocaust survivors. As is often the case in Hungary, the interviewer refers to Holocaust survivors obliquely, as “people who experienced 1944” — when hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps — or as those who experienced “the Arrow Cross regime.”

Many such people, the interviewer noted, “are saying now is the time to leave Hungary. So in effect [the establishment of the Hungarian Guard] is facilitating the flaring-up of anti-Semitism?”

“This is a tool,” Gorka replied. “This type of accusation is the very useful tool of a certain political class.


And who might those people be? The Jews, I presume.

The Guard was well known for its members’ anti-Semitism. Members often attended memorial ceremonies for World War II-era Hungarian fascists. In a 2008 speech, István Dósa, who served in the Guard as a high-ranking captain, referred to Jews as “Zionist rats” and as “locusts” while also discussing “Zionist-Bolshevik genocide” and calling Hungarian Jews “nation-destroyers.”
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Re: The Little Führer

Postby American Dream » Tue Apr 04, 2017 10:43 am

Mobster-in-Chief Donald Trump: Life imitates art.

If life imitates art, then the behind-the-scenes Trump story is torn from the pages of a John Le Carre novel. For those who don’t know his books, they are political and social commentary in the form of spy novels, complete with complex skulduggery and corruption.

Up until now, Oaklandsocialist has said that the real reason Trump was under such attack was that he was intent on using his administration for personal enrichment at the expense of US capitalism’s global interests. It seems this was only half right.

At best.

No, as crazy as it sounds, the reality is Trump’s connections with the Russian Mafia, whose interests he must serve...


Tiger by the Tail
The attacks on Trump on the major news outlets like CNN clearly show that the tops of Corporate America – the US capitalist class – want Trump out. But why, then, are Trump’s links with criminals like Sater not being trumpeted on the news?

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Bill and Hillary Clinton helping the Trumps celebrate their wedding.

The reason is that they have a tiger by the tail. It’s equally clear that these links also involve the Department of Justice (Caldwell) as well as the FBI. In addition, Trump is not isolated from the US capitalist class in general, as his high-end 2016 wedding to Melania shows.

At the end of the day, this entire Trump affair shows the utter depravity of the US capitalist class and its government. If this ever fully sees the light of day, it could set off a protest movement that would dwarf 2011’s Occupy movement. Let’s hope that happens and do everything we can to further that!


Read at: https://oaklandsocialist.com/2017/04/04 ... tates-art/
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Re: The Little Führer

Postby American Dream » Wed Apr 05, 2017 2:54 pm

ACTIVISTS, ORGANIZERS, AND AMIN HUSAIN ON HOW WE HANDLE TRUMP

Rounding up immigrants, pissing on transgender bathroom rights, barring press from press briefings… The only good thing Donald Trump has done is to galvanize millions of people into political outrage. For months now we've gone to dozens of marches and rallies. Of course, this isn't enough, but what more to do?


Read at: http://www.pmpress.org/content/article. ... 4173849434
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Re: The Little Führer

Postby American Dream » Tue Apr 18, 2017 4:22 pm

Definitely part of a larger ecology:


Why the Alt-Right Are So Weak

And Why They’re Becoming So Dangerous

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Although bullies can appear to be powerful, everything they do to wield power only disempowers them. To have real power, you have to be based in a community that supports you in freely disposing of your potential as you see fit, which requires building meaningful ties with those who are different from you. Bullies give up on this, relying on force in their relations with others rather than interchanging care. Lacking any sense of self-worth, having given up on accomplishing anything meaningful to enrich others’ lives or their own, the only form of pride that remains to fascists is membership in an abstract category. They do not consider themselves valuable as individuals, but only as citizens, white people, “Western chauvinists,” members of a gang. This is the consolation prize of identity, reserved for weak individuals who feel that they have no value on their own merits.

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This consolation prize does not come cheaply. To obtain it, they have to crush everything beautiful in themselves, everything that renders them capable of empathy or creativity. They must contort their sexuality. They have to memorize mantras of entitlement—for those who benefit from unfair advantages, however slightly, are always nagged by the sneaking suspicion that they do not deserve what they have. They have to work hard not to identify with others, not to recognize themselves in those who are different from them, not to stand out as unique.

This sort of self-policing is a full-time job. Rendering themselves helpless and weak before their overlords, they imagine they are rooting out weakness. Destroying everything in themselves that could render them capable of freedom, they imagine they are defending their freedom. Rendering relations of mutual trust impossible, they tell themselves they are protecting their communities.

At the bottom of all their sadism, we find a fundamental masochism. To justify their behavior, they need to be on the receiving end of violence. They must be at once master race and underdog, torturer and victim. Carrying out genocides, they protest that they are the ones targeted for genocide. Wracked with self-loathing, on some level they must genuinely desire to be exterminated for the exterminations they hope to carry out.

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In fact, it is their own leaders who are victimizing them—think of all the Nazis who died carrying out orders for Adolf Hitler, and all the money pouring into the pockets of savvy businessmen like Donald Trump at the expense of the suckers who support them. Above all, they are victimizing themselves, giving up their agency in return for the addictive experience of being a cog in the machinery of violence.

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To protect themselves from recognizing this, they require external threats. Where such threats do not exist, they must be created. This is the meaning of the Muslim Ban, for example: it is intended to create outsiders, to provoke them into reciprocal violence. Bullies who feel that they offer nothing of value to humanity can only hope that some symmetrical threat can make them look good by comparison. If ISIS did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it; Islamophobic violence is intended to accomplish precisely this.

These goons are of great use to the authorities. They can carry out attacks that the state is not yet able to, intimidating those who might otherwise rebel. They distract from the institutionalized violence of the state, which is still the cause of most of the oppression that takes place in our society. Above all, they enable the authorities to portray themselves as neutral keepers of the peace. Yet in clashes between fascists and those who oppose them, the police are anything but neutral. This explains why we saw a large number of unmasked fascists attacking masked demonstrators in Berkeley: those who defend themselves against rising fascism must conceal their identities so the police do not charge them with criminal activity, while unmasked fascists are free to assault people with knives and guns without fear of police intervention.

At a time when so many people feel powerless—both because the unfair advantages they used to have are eroding and because life is becoming more difficult for all but a few wealthy people—to be given a free hand to take out their frustration on those weaker than themselves is seductive indeed. This is what Trump, Putin, le Pen, Erdogan, and other aspiring despots are hoping poor people will do with their resentment. If they can create a feedback loop in which the more oppression is inflicted on people, the more people identify with them, their power will be secure forever.


https://crimethinc.com/2017/04/17/altright
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Re: The Little Führer

Postby Elvis » Tue Apr 18, 2017 4:33 pm

Wealthy Jews are Bankrolling Trump Protesters


I'm glad somebody is doing it!
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: The Little Führer

Postby American Dream » Sun May 21, 2017 10:40 am

Trump Crisis is a Crisis of US Capitalism

Trump’s election represents a yearning for those old days that cannot return. As such, he is not an accidental figure; he’s a representative of the present contradictions. The problem for US capitalism is that he is also out of their control due to his links with the Russian oligarchs/mafia. In the past, they would have been able to get the president’s own party to discipline him. And now? Not so much. Max Boot, lifelong Republican and contributor to the influential Council on Foreign Relations, recently approvingly quoted commentator Fareed Zakaria: “It appears that the Republican Party is losing any resemblance to a traditional Western political party, instead simply turning into something more commonly found in the developing world: a platform to support the ego, appetites and interests of one man and his family.” In other words, not only has the US capitalist class lost control over its president; they’ve partially lost control over their preferred political party!

This situation stems from the degeneration of the capitalism itself. It has become increasingly parasitic, basing itself on speculation and repression (as well as arms sales). The class that leads this system – the US capitalist class – itself is increasingly parasitic and individualistic, thinking only of individual, immediate profits. And this translates into their preferred party, whose top members think far more about their own individual careers, often at the expense of the political interests of the system itself.



Image
Scylla and Charybdis
According to Greek myth, these twin dangers on either side of a narrow and perilous strait of waters threatened all navigators. Steer to one side or the other and doom would follow. That seems to be the problem facing US capitalism.


More at: https://oaklandsocialist.com/2017/05/19 ... apitalism/
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Re: The Little Führer

Postby American Dream » Mon May 22, 2017 9:05 am

Repeat to yourself: "There is no conspiracy here, There is no conspiracy here, There is no conspiracy here, There is no conspiracy here, There is no conspiracy here, There is no conspiracy here, There is no conspiracy here, There is no conspiracy here, There is no conspiracy here..."

Now you are well on your way to enlightenment.





http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... l-timeline
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Re: The Little Führer

Postby American Dream » Fri May 26, 2017 5:24 am

The Terror of Lynching Haunts Black Americans Again

Steven W Thrasher
May 24, 2017
The Guardian (UK)


A Mississippi legislator called for lynchings on the same day that a black student was stabbed on campus. We are facing a crisis of racism.


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‘A lynching is a spectacular murder that serves as a warning to a whole group.’

Lynching is back in America's headlines. On Saturday, an African American student, Richard Collins III, was stabbed and killed on the campus of the University of Maryland in what was widely - and rightly - called a lynching. That same day, the Mississippi state representative Karl Oliver wrote on Facebook that people who supported the removal of Confederate memorials "should be LYNCHED".

Both cases are grotesque, obscene, and very reflective of our present racist crisis embodied by the Trump era.

The man who reportedly killed Collins was a white student named Sean Ubanski, who is said to have been involved with a Facebook group called Alt-Reich: Nation.

A lynching is a spectacular murder that serves as a warning to a whole group, as did Jim Crow-era hangings and 2015's murders at Emanuel AME Church. The Collins killing reinforces the fear in African Americans that there is no space or activity - not buying Skittles in a suburb, buying a toy in a store, or going to a party - which is safe for us.

State representative Oliver's call to lynch those standing up to Confederate hagiography is a warning to people fighting anti-blackness that we're in danger. Regardless of intent, Collins' lynching assaulted African Americans everywhere, as did Oliver's threat.

Those presenting these kinds of sentiments are being emboldened by the Trump era, in which lynching history and culture are a part of what it means to "make America great again".

Urbanski and Oliver are white men. So are Dylann Roof, most people who kill police and most people who commit mass shootings. Yet unlike Muslims, immigrants or black people, white men as a group will not be broadly pathologized or stigmatized by association.

Few in media will wring their hands about the violence of white male culture or ask what needs to be done to de-radicalize this dangerous demographic. The American pastime of fear-mongering about "the other" while ignoring murderous white men is a US tradition older the constitution. And it is one that has increased perilously under Donald Trump.


Continues at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... rd-collins
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Re: The Little Führer

Postby American Dream » Sat May 27, 2017 5:30 am

The Problem with Liberal Opposition to Islamophobia

Critiquing common liberal arguments like these can help organizers imagine and articulate other types of responses to Islamophobia: responses that do not merely shift the position of Muslims in the state’s existing racial landscape, but upheave and re-make this terrain altogether. Doing so is particularly important in our present political moment, when the ostentatious Islamophobia of far-right organizations and the Trump administration is often understood as exceptional — occluding continuities and similarities with the Islamophobia of liberal governments like Obama’s or Trudeau’s. This in turn perpetuates the dangerous illusion that liberal politics are a refuge from right-wing racism, when the truth is that they are constructed of many of the same components.

Of course, opposition to Islamophobia should not remain limited to the discursive field. It should also include — and in fact prioritize — building and organizing within racialized communities to assert dignity, power and freedom. Examples of such organizing abound. For instance, the first iteration of Trump’s Muslim ban was met by a general strike by the primarily Muslim New York Taxi Workers Alliance, whose inspiring actions set off a spate of airport shutdowns that were crucial to defeating the administration’s first set of executive orders. Similarly, hours after the Québec shooting, Muslim organizers and their allies issued a call for days of action across Canada against Islamophobia, white supremacy and deportations.

Deconstructing widespread liberal fallacies is therefore by no means a comprehensive or sufficient approach to a genuinely anti-Islamophobic politics. What it may do, however, is strengthen and further our collective struggle against the intertwined scaffolding of racism, patriarchy, colonialism, imperialism and capitalism upon which the Islamophobia of the neoliberal security state and the neo-fascist right continues to rest. Deepening our analysis in the days to come, when it may seem easier not to, would be a critical first step in building towards the worlds we want to live in.


https://roarmag.org/magazine/problem-li ... amophobia/
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Re: The Little Führer

Postby American Dream » Sat May 27, 2017 10:46 pm

Suspect in Portland Hate Crime Murders is a Known White Supremacist

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Jeremy Christian, now accused of hate crime murders, at the right-wing "March for Free Speech" on April 29 DOUG BROWN


The man accused of the brutal hate crime slayings of two people at the Hollywood Transit Center on Friday afternoon is a known local white supremacist.

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Jeremy Christian's mug shot

Jeremy Christian, 35, was booked early Saturday morning on two aggravated murder charges, an attempted murder charge, two intimidation (hate crime) charges, and a felon in possession of a restricted weapon charge.

The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) reported that the man "was on the MAX train yelling various remarks that would be best characterized as hate speech toward a variety of ethnicities and religions. At least two of the victims attempted to intervene with the suspect and calm him down. The suspect attacked the men, stabbing three, before leaving the train."

Witnesses told the police that he was harassing two women who appear to be Muslim. One was described as wearing a hijab. One of the men he stabbed died at the scene, one was pronounced dead at a hospital, and one is expected to survive.

Christian is a known right wing extremist and white supremacist. On April 29, Christian showed up to the right-wing "March for Free Speech" on 82nd Avenue in Montavilla with a baseball bat in an attempt to assault left-wing protesters. The bat was quickly confiscated by Portland police officers. He ranted how he was a nihilist. He'd soon yelled racial slurs ("fuck all you n*****s") and gave the Nazi salute throughout the day. He yelled "Hail Vinland" throughout the day.

A few Portland police officers on April 29 appeared to be familiar with Christian, but not threatened by him. They claimed he had a head injury and was mentally ill.


Continues at: http://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown ... upremacist
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Re: The Little Führer

Postby American Dream » Wed May 31, 2017 7:29 am

Who is Jeremy Christian? Facebook shows a man with nebulous political affiliations who hated circumcision and Hillary Clinton

"I think the most important thing is when it comes to extremist right-wing politics is that they are murky," Burley said.

In April, Christian was filmed and photographed doing a Nazi salute while shouting: "Die Muslims!" at an alt-right "free speech" rally.

In response to the attack, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said the city wouldn't issue permits for two planned events he characterized as "alt-right," in June and asked the federal government to revoke an existing permit for one of the events, angering alt-right supporters and bringing the American Civil Liberties Union into the discussion of free speech in Portland.

On Twitter and other social media, however, people who identify as alt-right are distancing themselves from Christian, calling him a Bernie Sanders supporter. Liberals also refuse to claim him, pointing out that he was also a Donald Trump supporter.

His Facebook page shows a complicated picture. His posts reveal a comic book collector with nebulous political affiliations who above all else seemed to hate circumcision and Hillary Clinton.

In his milder posts, Christian wrote about buying and selling comic books. But many of his other posts had angry and violent themes.

"I want a job in Norway cutting off the heads of people that Circumcize Babies....Like if you agree!!!" Christian posted on May 9. That post got 14 shares, and 34 reactions, some of which were laughing and "wow."

"If you support the cutting of babies genitals in sick tribal rituals in America get off my page," he wrote in another post. "I don't care if you are friend of family."

He went on to suggest that a law banning circumcision would "stop True Patriots from having to kill otherwise good doctors inside hospitals."

"F-- You if you say my body my choice but support circumcision," reads another post.

"Stop the WAR on babies' Foreskins!!!" says another.

The question of whether Christian was a Trump supporter or a Sanders supporter, doesn't have an either/or answer, except: he definitely was not a Clinton supporter.

"Bernie Sanders was the President I wanted," wrote Christian in December. "He voiced my heart and mind. The one who spoke about the way America should gone. Away from the Military and Prison Industrial Complexes. The Trump is who America needs now that Bernie got ripped off."

But on Nov. 11, he posted that he was unable to bring himself to vote for Trump.

"I've had it!!! I gonna kill everybody who voted for Trump or Hillary!!!" he said in another post in early January. "It's all your fault!!! You're what's wrong with this country!!! Reveal yourselves immediately and face your DOOM!!!"

Burley said that he believes Christian could have supported Sanders because he was against globalization and then, when Sanders lost, he "could have supported the kind of America first protection espoused by Trump."

"What it looks like with him is a person going through an ideological process," Burley said.

In February 2016, Christian wrote, "Just to clarify a few things: 'I Hereby Solemnly swear to Die trying to Kill Hillary (Herself a filthy Murderess) Clinton and Donald Trump should they be elected to the post of President in my faire country on Vinland. This I swear to Odin, Kali, Bastet and all other Pagan Gods and Goddesses in my Aryan Theosophical Nucleus. This is my duty as a Viking and Patriot. In Jesus name....I Feel The Bern!!!!"

Burley said that "Vinland" is far right lingo that alludes to the part of eastern Canada supposedly settled by Leif Erikson in the 11th century. Burley said white nationalists use "Vineland" to assert themselves as "distinct people with a spiritual lineage."

In late January, however, Christian wrote, "If Donald Trump is the Next Hitler then I am joining his SS to put an end to Monotheist Question. All Zionist Jews, All Christians who do not follow Christ's teaching of Love, Charity, and Forgiveness And All Jihadi Muslims are going to Madagascar or the Ovens/FEMA Camps!!! Does this make me a fascist!!!"



More at: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/inde ... acebo.html
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Re: The Little Führer

Postby American Dream » Thu Jun 01, 2017 5:06 pm

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Re: The Little Führer

Postby American Dream » Tue Jun 06, 2017 10:24 am

Nothing New Under the Fascist Sun

SHANE BURLEY ALEXANDER REID ROSS

The American alt-right has imported some aspects of the French fascist movement. Faye is no stranger to the American scene and appears as one of the most profound influences on Richard Spencer’s white identitarianism. His Identity Bloc inspired the group Identity Evropa, led by Nathan Damigo, a fascist convicted of a hate crime and recently embroiled in controversy after punching a woman in the face during a street brawl in Berkeley. The alt-right’s attempts to move into academia follow in the footsteps of France’s far-right student groups.

It’s also easy to recognize a number of intersections between the National Front and Steve Bannon’s ideology. Not only has he suggested that reactionary Catholics look into the works of Alexander Dugin, he takes Charles Maurras — the former leader of French Action and a fascist collaborator — as a key source of inspiration. Bannon’s ideas on immigration so resemble the Front’s that he shares one of his favorite books, The Camp of the Saints, with both Le Pens.

The American far right has always tacitly supported the Le Pen family, though they prefer the vulgar patriarch over his daughter. Support for Marine came from the hope that she could “pull a Trump” and actually win the race. Le Pen’s racialist rhetoric, her scapegoating of Muslims and immigrants, and her direct connection to the fascist right make her an even more appropriate vessel for the alt-right’s vision of a global nationalist alliance. A number of alt-right Twitter trolls still have photos of Marine as their avatars or in their photo libraries.

The National Front’s youth movement has also taken cues from the alt-right, albeit with more overtly religious overtones: their memes might put Pepe next to a Crusader cross and the French tricolor flag. While supporters may not subscribe to antisemitism as much as they once did, the racialized, xenophobic rhetoric of “Islamization” remains prominent. Due to the emphasis on religious struggle rather than religion itself, whether or not the FN actually counts as a Catholic party remains open for debate.

While reciprocal, the relationship between the American and French far right is complicated by the differences between far-right and fascist ideologies. Richard Spencer only mildly supports Le Pen; during the election, he chose to focus on recent battles with antifascists in Berkeley and Auburn instead. Indeed, his revolutionary stance often separates him from democratic reformers even at home as the unceremonious end to his dalliance with Trump shows. The French “identitarian” strain he aligns with most closely does not agree with the populist National Front on every issue. While he made his support for Le Pen clear, he has bigger issues on his mind.

Alt-right commentator Patrick Le Brun made the rounds, first on Counter Currents radio and later at Red Ice, to talk about the importance of Le Pen’s first-round success. He argued that her chance of winning comes from the disaffected workers in deindustrialized areas of the country who might otherwise have voted for left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He also suggested that scandals around François Fillon would make the National Front appear as the real solution to late capitalism in Western Europe. Since Brexit and Trump both won on a racist campaign of financial resentment, channeling support away from capitalist institutions and toward the working class, Le Brun believed — as did many others — that Le Pen had a real shot.

This hypothesis warrants some consideration, particularly with regard to Le Pen’s call for French independence from the European Union and NATO. Mélenchon’s foreign policy criticized the European Union from the left against Macron’s neoliberalism, and some left-nationalists have moved to the right thanks to these reorientations. Dutheil de la Rochère, Philippot, Coûteaux, Garnier, and other unconventional FN members have demonstrated Le Pen’s strange allure.

Colin Liddell, the infamous editor of the New Alternative Right who famously penned articles suggesting mass genocide for black Africans, devoted a whole podcast to the election, relying on his experience in British nationalist party politics to describe the possibilities Le Pen holds for France. As usual, his rhetoric focused on the fact that her victory would create an opening for a more extreme fascist revolution. She does not represent the endgame, only the critical turn in European consciousness needed to build the rank and file of a militant racialist movement.

The alt-light, the crossover elements that helped the alt-right enter the mainstream, more uniformly celebrated Le Pen’s first-round victory. Mike Cernovich, the Men’s Right’s guru behind the DeploraBall, compared her success with Trump’s victory. Having found her own subcultural fame after leading a violent rally in Berkeley, Lauren Southern began tweeting images of Marine as Joan of Arc, evoking the FN’s typical mythologies complete with the ironic hashtag #ImWithHer.

As a result, Trump — unlike most of the Republican Party — saw Le Pen as a potential ally. Indeed, she would have been to France what Bannon’s faction of the Trump administration is to the United States. Days before the first-round vote, Trump told the Associated Press that she was the “strongest” candidate, “strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France.” Le Pen has also been a vocal supporter of the American president, telling CNN that “Donald Trump has made possible what was presented as completely impossible.”

If we cannot properly call the National Front fascist, at least we can accept that it became precisely what its founders set out to create: an instrument to further the interests of fascism through alliances with other far-right forces. By distancing herself from the party, Le Pen signaled her leadership role in what she hopes will become an international unity of reactionary forces.

Fortunately, Le Pen soundly lost in the second round: Macron took 66 percent of the vote. So far, France’s cordon sanitaire against the fascist creep is weathering the reactionary storm. But, if Mélenchon and the Left want to beat the FN in coming years, they will have to parlay their unprecedented vote tally into victories in the legislative elections coming soon. Part of that mission requires developing a critical engagement with the European Union that clearly opposes the reactionary position of “national sovereignty.”


More at: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/06/nati ... -alt-right
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