Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text [1 ed.] 0415899192, 9780415899192

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Tables
List of Figures
1 European Fascism in Talk and Text—Introduction • Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson
2 Radical Right Discourse contra State-Based Authoritarian Populism: Neoliberalism, Identity and Exclusion after the Crisis • Daniel Woodley
3 Italian Postwar Neo-Fascism: Three Paths, One Mission? • Tamir Bar-On
4 The Reception of Antisemitic Imagery in Nazi Germany and Popular Opinion—Lessons for Today • Andreas Musolff
5 “Calculated Ambivalence” and Holocaust Denial in Austria • Jakob Engel and Ruth Wodak
6 German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist Right • Claudia Posch, Maria Stopfner and Manfred Kienpointner
7 Education and Etiquette: Behaviour Formation in Fascist Spain • Derrin Pinto
8 The CDS-PP and the Portuguese Parliament’s Annual Celebration of the 1974 Revolution: Ambivalence and Avoidance in the Construction of the Fascist Past • Cristina Marinho and Michael Billig
9 Continuities of Fascist Discourses, Discontinuities of Extreme-Right Political Actors? Overt and Covert Antisemitism in the Contemporary French Radical Right • Brigitte Beauzamy
10 Racial Populism in British Fascist Discourse: The Case of COMBAT and the British National Party (1960–1967) • John E. Richardson
11 Variations on a Theme: The Jewish ‘Other’ in Old andNew Antisemitic Media Discourses in Hungary in the 1940s and in 2011 • András Kovács and Anna Szilágyi
12 The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right: The Case of VO Svoboda • Per Anders Rudling
13 New Times, Old Ideologies? Recontextualizations of Radical Right Thought in Postcommunist Romania • Irina Diana Mădroane
14 European Far-Right Music and Its Enemies • Anton Shekhovtsov
15 The Branding of European Nationalism: Perpetuation and Novelty in Racist Symbolism • Mark McGlashan
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

ROUTLEDGE CRITICAL STUDIES IN DISCOURSE

Analysing Fascist Discourse European Fascism in Talk and Text Edited by Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson

Analysing Fascist Discourse

This book focuses primarily on continuities and discontinuities of fascist politics as manifested in discourses of postwar European countries. Many traumatic pasts in Europe are linked to the experience of fascist and nationalsocialist regimes in the 20th century and to related colonial and imperialist expansionist politics. And yet we are again confronted with the emergence, rise and success of extreme right-wing political movements, across Europe and beyond, which frequently draw on fascist and national-socialist ideologies, themes, idioms, arguments and lexical items. Postwar taboos have forced such parties, politicians and their electorate to frequently code their exclusionary fascist rhetoric. This collection shows that an interdisciplinary critical approach to fascist text and talk—subsuming all instances of meaning-making (e.g. oral, visual, written, sounds) and genres such as policy documents, speeches, school books, media reporting, posters, songs, logos and other symbols—is necessary to deconstruct exclusionary meanings and to confront their inegalitarian political projects. Ruth Wodak is Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University, UK. John E Richardson is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, UK.

Routledge Critical Studies in Discourse Edited by Michelle M. Lazar, National University of Singapore

1 Framing Discourse on the Environment A Critical Discourse Approach Richard J. Alexander 2 Language and the Market Society Critical Reflections on Discourse and Dominance Gerlinde Mautner 3 Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust The Concept of the Body Politic Andreas Musolff 4 Hybrid Voices and Collaborative Change Contextualising Positive Discourse Analysis Tom Bartlett 5 Analysing Fascist Discourse European Fascism in Talk and Text Edited by Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson

Analysing Fascist Discourse European Fascism in Talk and Text Edited by Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson

First published 2013 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Analysing fascist discourse : European fascism in talk and text / edited by Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson. p. cm. — (Routledge critical studies in discourse; 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Discourse analysis—Political aspects—Europe. 2. Fascist propaganda—Europe. 3. Fascism and literature—Europe. 4. National socialism and literature—Europe. I. Wodak, Ruth, 1950– II. Richardson, John E., 1974– P302.77.A53 2012 320.53'30141—dc23 ISBN: 978-0-415-89919-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-07184-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Tables List of Figures 1

European Fascism in Talk and Text—Introduction

vii ix 1

RUTH WODAK AND JOHN E. RICHARDSON

2

Radical Right Discourse contra State-Based Authoritarian Populism: Neoliberalism, Identity and Exclusion after the Crisis

17

DANIEL WOODLEY

3

Italian Postwar Neo-Fascism: Three Paths, One Mission?

42

TAMIR BAR-ON

4

The Reception of Antisemitic Imagery in Nazi Germany and Popular Opinion—Lessons for Today

56

ANDREAS MUSOLFF

5

“Calculated Ambivalence” and Holocaust Denial in Austria

73

JAKOB ENGEL AND RUTH WODAK

6

German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist Right

97

CLAUDIA POSCH, MARIA STOPFNER AND MANFRED KIENPOINTNER

7

Education and Etiquette: Behaviour Formation in Fascist Spain

122

DERRIN PINTO

8

The CDS-PP and the Portuguese Parliament’s Annual Celebration of the 1974 Revolution: Ambivalence and Avoidance in the Construction of the Fascist Past CRISTINA MARINHO AND MICHAEL BILLIG

146

vi

Contents

9

Continuities of Fascist Discourses, Discontinuities of Extreme-Right Political Actors? Overt and Covert Antisemitism in the Contemporary French Radical Right

163

BRIGITTE BEAUZAMY

10 Racial Populism in British Fascist Discourse: The Case of COMBAT and the British National Party (1960–1967)

181

JOHN E. RICHARDSON

11 Variations on a Theme: The Jewish ‘Other’ in Old and New Antisemitic Media Discourses in Hungary in the 1940s and in 2011

203

ANDRÁS KOVÁCS AND ANNA SZILÁGYI

12 The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right: The Case of VO Svoboda

228

PER ANDERS RUDLING

13 New Times, Old Ideologies? Recontextualizations of Radical Right Thought in Postcommunist Romania

256

IRINA DIANA MĂDROANE

14 European Far-Right Music and Its Enemies

277

ANTON SHEKHOVTSOV

15 The Branding of European Nationalism: Perpetuation and Novelty in Racist Symbolism

297

MARK MCGLASHAN

Contributors Index

315 323

Tables

11.1 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Egyedül vagyunk (January–December 1942). 11.2 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Harc (May–July 1944). 11.3 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Barikád (March–May 2011). 11.4 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Kuruc. info (June–August 2011).

205 206 213 213

Figures

10.1 12.1

12.2

12.3 and 12.4

12.5 12.6 12.7 12.8

12.9

12.10

15.1

Post-war development of British Fascist parties. “Bandera—Our Hero,” giant portrait of the OUN(b) leader displayed by far-right football fans, the “Banderstadt ultras,” during a game between Karpaty Lviv and Shakhtar Donetsk. “Territory: Banderstadt,” Ultra-nationalist event for adolescents, sponsored by the OUN(b) front organization the Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement and by the OUN(b)-affiliated Ukrainian Youth Movement, Kyiv. Torchlight parade on the anniversary of the 1918 Battle of Kruty, Lviv, January 29, 2011, organized by Svoboda deputy Iuryi Mykhal’chyshyn and “autonomous nationalists.” Denial of war crimes: Bi-lingual Svoboda billboard on the site of the Polish village Huta Pieniacka. “We are Banderites!” Political propaganda of the autonomous nationalists. Lviv, April 2009. Svoboda poster. Lviv, April 28, 2011; March in commemoration of the 68th anniversary of the establishment of the Waffen-SS Galizien. “March in honor of the Heroes of UPA,” Lviv, October 16, 2011, leaflet by the Autonomous Nationalists. “100 years since the birth of the ideologue of the social and national revolutions, Yaroslav Stets’ko,” 2012 Svoboda poster. Heuristic reinterpretation of the DHA.

185

233

234

236 238 240 244

245

246

246 299

1

European Fascism in Talk and Text—Introduction Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson

DISCOURSE STUDIES, FASCISM, AND THE / REWRITING OF HISTORY Since the late 20th century, much research in Discourse Studies (DS) and Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) has analysed the many dimensions of national and transnational ‘identity politics’ and started to investigate how the discursive construction of such identities draws on collective and individual memories, on hegemonic and common-sense narratives, and on myths which are proposed as constitutive for national identification. Indeed, one might claim that the entire field of ‘language and politics’ in postwar Europe since the 1960s and 1970s was triggered by the urge to grasp the influence of persuasive rhetoric in and on totalitarian regimes and related major catastrophes in the 20th century, thus trying to come to terms with the traumatic pasts in Europe and beyond (Postoutenko, 2010; Wodak and Auer-Boreo, 2009). Of course, many of these traumatic pasts in Europe are linked to the experience of fascist and national-socialist regimes in the 20th century and to—sometimes—related colonial and imperialist expansionist politics (Judt, 2007; Snyder, 2010). In this book, we focus primarily on continuities and discontinuities of fascist politics and experiences as manifested in text and discourse of all kinds in postwar European countries. We believe this to be a most relevant and timely topic as we are confronted with the emergence, rise and success of extreme right-wing populist parties across Europe and beyond (e.g. Wodak, KhosraviNik, Mral, 2012; Harrison and Bruter, 2011; Schweitzer, 2012) which frequently draw on fascist and national-socialist ideologies, themes, arguments, topoi and lexical items as well as idioms. Usually, however, such intertextual relationships are not easily detected, as postwar taboos have forced such parties, politicians and their electorate to frequently code their exclusionary fascist rhetoric (Richardson, 2011; Wodak, 2007, 2011a, b). This is why we endorse an interdisciplinary critical approach to fascist text and talk subsuming all instances of meaning-making (e.g. oral, visual, written, sounds) and genres such as policy documents, speeches, school

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books, party/movement media, posters, songs, logos and other symbols. We also emphasise in this book (and all chapters) that instances of text and talk (in this wide sense) have to be contextualised adequately to be able to illustrate intertextual and interdiscursive relationships explicitly. Moreover, we attempt to trace the trajectories of fascist text and talk into the 21st century via the systematic analysis of processes of recontextualisation (Heer et al., 2008; Richardson and Wodak, 2009a, b). Investigating fascist and national-socialist language use is, of course, not new; as early as the 1940s, close links between general research on language and studies on political change were established, mainly in Germany. Linguistic research in the wake of National Socialism was conducted primarily by Victor Klemperer (1947, 2005) and Rolf Sternberger et al. (1957), who both paved the way for the new discipline of Politiolinguistik (Schmitz-Berning, 2000). Klemperer and Sternberger sampled, categorized and described the words used during the Nazi regime; many words had acquired new meanings, other words were forbidden (borrowed words from other languages, like cigarette) and neologisms (new words) were created (e.g. Maas, 1985); similar language policies labelled as langue du bois were adopted by the former communist totalitarian regimes (Wodak and Kirsch, 1995). Controlling language in this way implies an attempt to control the (minds and thoughts of) people. The novel 1984, by George Orwell was, of course, another significant point of departure for the development of the entire field (Chilton, 2006). All these studies were influenced by the massive use of propaganda during the Second World War and in the emerging Cold War era, in the 1950s. After 1989 and the end of the Cold War, more research was dedicated to the assessment of the Communist era and the so-called transformation (or transition) in Central and Eastern Europe (Galasin´ska and Krzyz˙anowski, 2009). Overall, it became apparent that most societies have experienced traumatic events in their past, whether war and war crimes, revolution, torture or mass killing and rape which were frequently denied or swept ‘under the carpet’ (Judt, 2007)—official rhetoric wanted to make ‘a clean break’ and move on to the future (Blommaert, 2005; De Cillia and Wodak, 2009a, b; Ensink and Sauer, 2003; Steinmetz, 2011; Wodak and De Cillia, 2007; Wodak et al., 1990, 1994). Nevertheless, these experiences were and are passed on to future generations in the form of collective and individual memories that serve to construct hegemonic narratives (Assmann, 2009). Thus far, a great deal of academic work has examined the various ways that societies may remember traumatic pasts and may use knowledge and understanding of these pasts variously as a therapeutic tool to cleanse and to reconcile, as a way to achieve closure and allow societies to ‘move on’ or (least frequently) as a way to honestly and openly face a shared history of mutual violence (Achugar, 2008; Assmann, 2009; Anthonissen and Blommaert, 2006; Verdoolaege, 2008). However, the discourses of contemporary

European Fascism in Talk and Text—Introduction 3 fascisms frequently act as a form of ‘anti-memory’, revising, reformulating, reclassifying and on occasion openly denying the trauma and violence that arises inexorably from fascist ideological commitments. The chapters in this book reflect the range of these debates and argue that a more context-sensitive ‘definition’ of fascism is required, in contrast to theorists searching for a ‘one-size-fits-all’ fascist minimum (see chapters by Bar-On, Posch et al., Musolff, and Woodley in this book). That said, certain political realities are shared by all countries across Europe. Understandably, the Nazi industrialisation of mass murder during the Second World War has meant that, since 1945, there is little electoral cachet in labelling a party or movement ‘fascist’. This political landscape has led to two perpetually recurring strategies for fascist parties across Europe: dissociating themselves from fascism and rehabilitating it. Parties taking the second route necessarily consign themselves to a position outside democratic politics, leading the party down a pseudo-revolutionary path, trying to secure power through violence and ‘street politics’ (see chapters by Kovács & Szilágyi, McGlashan, Rudling, and Shekhovtsov in this book). Fascist parties seeking power through the ballot have universally adopted the first political strategy—explicit verbal dissociation from fascism, in terms of both political and ideological continuities. In Britain, this approach was initially exemplified by Oswald Mosley and the Union Movement (Macklin, 2007; Renton, 2000). The fascist euphemistic commonplaces that the British Union of Fascists used before the war—such as ‘national unity’, ‘common culture’ and ‘strong government’—were rebranded and relaunched after the war as “a synthesis of the best elements of fascism and of the old democracy” (Mosley, n.d.: 17). So, in the discourse of Mosley’s Union Movement, which was launched in 1948, fascism was now referred to as ‘European Socialism’, the free-to-be-exploited Empire became a united ‘Europe-Africa’ and single-party rule became “definite, conscious and economic leadership” (Skidelsky, 1981: 495–6; see chapter by Richardson in this book). Similar ‘rebranding’ has since taken place across Europe, wherein parties with fascist political predecessors—including the Austrian FPÖ and BZÖ, the French FN, the German REP and NPD, the Portuguese CDS/PP and PNR, the Spanish PP, the British BNP and several others—both orientate towards and simultaneously deny any continuity with the arguments and policies of previous movements (see chapters by Beauzamy, Ma˘droane, Marinho and Billig, Pinto, Richardson, and Engel and Wodak in this book). The result is an intriguing and often contradictory mix of implicit indexing of fascist ideological commitments accompanied by explicit denials of these same commitments. It is, however, apparent that many answers to overarching questions have not been provided to date. How do fascist ideologies re-emerge? Are there any continuities, and how do these become apparent? Are these manifestations context-dependent and in which ways? Which functions do such continuities fulfil in contemporary politics?

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COMPARING AND/OR EQUATING? DEFINING ‘FASCISM’ Judt’s seminal book Post-War (2007) presents a comprehensive and detailed account of different aspects of the world’s responses to (the aftermath of) the Second World War. He succeeds in illustrating how specific and, indeed, diverse the responses in various countries were and are to the salient traumatic experiences of the past. In this vein, Pelinka (2009: 49) argues that [i]n dealing with war crimes and crimes against humanity, three different, sometimes conflicting patterns have been developed since 1945. The three patterns can be distinguished according to their different guarding principles: Justice: Perpetrators must be brought to court and convicted. Truth: All major aspects of the crimes must become known to the public. Peace: At the end of any process, social reconciliation must become possible. He continues that “on the short run, neglecting justice and truth in favour of peace and reconciliation may have a positive impact on stabilizing democracy in a peaceful way; but on the long run, such a neglect has its price especially regarding social peace”(ibid.). More specifically, Pelinka (2009) claims that, on the one hand, “without comparing the quality and the quantity of evidence, any debate about conflicting narratives is losing any kind of academic liability and responsibility” (p. 50); thus comparison should take place, always in a context-dependent way. On the other hand, however, comparisons should not lead to any equation of traumatic events. Thus, Pelinka emphasises that Fascism is not Fascism is not Fascism. Too easily the term fascism is used to blur significant differences between different regimes. Spain under Franco is not Italy under Mussolini is not Austria under Dollfuß is not Portugal under Salazar is not Hungary under Horthy—and they all are not Germany under Hitler. All these different types of fascism or semi-fascism have a lot in common—non-democratic rule, oppression of political opponents, ending the rule of law. But the intensity of suppression as well as the existence of a monopolistic mass party make a lot of difference—not to speak of the Holocaust which is the decisive quality of Nazism and not of fascism in general. (ibid., p. 53) Careful deconstruction of many current debates about the past in different parts of the world illustrates indeed that certain terms become ubiquitous— such as ‘Holocaust’ and ‘fascism’. Following Pelinka’s argument, certain terms can lose their distinctiveness when used to label similar but very different events and experiences in different national contexts. Such terms can tend to be employed like ’empty signifiers’, and their context-dependent meanings become blurred. Hence, research about past events necessarily

European Fascism in Talk and Text—Introduction 5 has to consider the sociopolitical and historical contexts of each experience and avoid undifferentiated generalisations. Related to this, Milza and Bernstein (1992: 7) argue that “No universally accepted definition of the fascist phenomenon exists, no consensus, however slight, as to its range, its ideological origins, or the modalities of action which characterise it”. Indeed, for the past 80 years, there has always been variability and disagreement about how to classify or define fascism. These disagreements have themselves shifted, so the arguments of the 1930s were different to those of the 1960s, different again to the debates now and shaped in part by the histories, debates and current political realities in different national contexts. Nevertheless, a sense remains that there must be an ideological core—or collection of essential fascist political traits—that allows us to recognise and identify fascism qua fascism—or, at minimum, a group of “definitional characteristics of the genus fascism, of which each variety is a different manifestation” (Griffin, 1998: 2). Accordingly, since the 1970s, there have been repeated academic attempts to codify the plurality of what fascism ‘really’ was—and perhaps is—and what the aims and characteristics of a fascist political movement may be. Central to these discussions were a number of debates which have yet to be resolved: Was fascism an ideology or a system of rule? Was fascism limited to a period until 1945—a mini-epoch—or is it a system or an ideology that has survived the end of the Second World War? Is fascism modernising or conservative? Is fascism revolutionary, reactionary or counterrevolutionary? To what extent was fascism a generic phenomenon, with various permutations within one unified ideological family? Or were different regimes the product of different indigenous conditions and political and historical traditions? Moreover, theorists have argued variously for the specific clarificatory advantages of adopting psychological/ psychotherapeutic, sociopolitical and ideational approaches to analysis. Taking each in turn: should we regard fascism as an aberration? As a product of crisis and disease in society (Gregor, 1974/1997: 28) or of “blackest, unfathomable despair” (Drucker, 1939: 271)? Or as a reflection of the ‘prejudiced personality’ of fascist leaders and their supporters (Adorno et al., 1950)? Within work advancing sociopolitical and socioeconomic frames of reference, fascism has been given a bewildering variety of contradictory classifications and placed at almost all points on the ideological spectrum: as a counterrevolutionary movement of the extreme right (Renton, 1999), as the extremism of the centre (Lipset, 1960), as a synthesis of both left and right offering a combination of “organic nationalism and anti-Marxist socialism” (Sternhell, 1986: 9) or as a particular form of totalitarian government, which shares key features with the Communist left (Friedrich, summarised in Kitchen, 1982: 27). Third, following the waning of the ‘totalitarianism’ explanation of fascism, a body of work developed that approached fascism primarily as an ideology and aimed to extract the ideological core of “generic fascism that may account for significant and unique similarities between the various

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permutations of fascism whilst convincingly accommodating deviations as either nationally or historically specific phenomena” (Kallis, 2009: 4). Ernst Nolte (1968) developed the first ‘fascist minimum’ (defined as anticommunism; antiliberalism; anticonservatism; the Führerprinzip; a party army; and the aim of totalitarianism), and his objective (though not his theoretical approach) was then developed in novel and fruitful ways by others—amongst them Juan Linz, Stanley Payne, Roger Eatwell and Roger Griffin. Such work reaches its apotheosis in the work of Griffin, whose one-sentence definition of fascism—“Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism” (Griffin, 1991: 26), or, “formulated in three words: ‘palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism’ ” (1998: 13)—is, truly, a minimal fascist minimum. Indeed, the extreme brevity of his definition drew withering comments from Paxton (2005: 221), who suggests that Griffin’s “zeal to reduce fascism to one pithy sentence seems to me more likely to inhibit than to stimulate analysis of how and with whom it worked.” There is, in short, an almost insuperable volume of work on fascisms. De Felice (1991), for example, lists 12,208 books and articles in a bibliography devoted to Italian Fascism, generic fascism and the history of the Second World War; Rees’s annotated bibliography on fascism in Britain—published in 1979—lists 608 publications on/about British fascism alone and a further 270 written by fascists themselves. Given this outpouring and the ways that such theorisation has, in part at least, reflected broad trends in Western geopolitics (particularly post–World War II), it should come as little surprise that one’s definition of fascism (or, indeed, Fascism) is as much a reflection of the political commitments of the writer—and, specifically, his or her perception of scholarship on fascism and its role in praxis—as the material or historical ‘facts on the ground’. As Woodley (2010: 1) has put it, the socalled new consensus in fascism studies developed by ‘revisionist historians’ such as Griffin “is founded less on scholarly agreement than a conscious rejection of historical materialism as a valid methodological framework.” On the one side of the argument we find the challenging polemics of Renton (1999: 18), demanding “how can a historian, in all conscience, approach the study of fascism with neutrality? . . . One cannot be balanced when writing about fascism, there is nothing positive to be said of it.” On the other, there is Griffin (1998) as the Pied Piper of the new consensus, who argues that historians should “treat fascism like any other ideology” (p. 15), in that it can be approached and defined “as an ideology inferable from the claims made by its own protagonists” (p. 238). Thus, the study and analysis of fascism are contested territories. One justification for using the generic term ‘fascism’ is that it enables appreciation and comparison of tendencies common to more than one country and more than one period in time—and also that it helps draw out the interconnections between these different periods in time. But, we would argue, any appropriate theory of fascism must begin with the idea that fascism must

European Fascism in Talk and Text—Introduction

7

be interpreted critically. A critical approach means that we need to take a step beyond the immediate and take into account detailed analysis of the social, political and cultural factors, as well as the significance of ideas and arguments (Iordachi, 2010); to look at what fascists do as well as what they say; and to closely examine the dialectical relations between context and the text/talk of (assumedly/potentially fascist) political protagonists. DISCOURSE AND SOCIAL CHANGE—INTERTEXTUALITY AND RECONTEXTUALISATION The chapters in this book are based on an integration of Pelinka’s argument, with concepts from CDS. In this context, the notions of ‘intertextuality’, ‘recontextualisation’ and ‘entextualisation’ lend themselves for further theorizing (Blommaert, 2003; Wodak and Fairclough, 2010). An important assumption common to various approaches to CDS, and Discourse Studies in general, is that processes of social change are in part processes of change in discourse and that change in discourse may, subject to certain conditions, have constructive effects on processes of social change more generally. The challenge is to develop theories of social change which coherently integrate relations between discourse and other elements of the social process, as well as methodologies for focusing specifically on these relations, and the particular place and impact of discourse, in interdisciplinary research on social change (Fairclough, 1992; Heer et al., 2008; Kovács and Wodak, 2003; Krzyz˙anowski and Wodak, 2009). (Critical) Discourse Analysis is concerned with the analysis of texts in relation to other elements of social processes—written texts, spoken interactions, ‘multi-semiotic’ texts which combine language, visual images, music, symbols, and so on. Texts are the relatively stable records of the discourse element of social events (also, in a broad sense, including actions, interactions and happenings). Insofar as discourse analysis focuses on texts in researching relations between discourse and other elements of social change, the theoretical and methodological challenges involve simultaneously addressing (a) relations between discourse and other social elements (i.e. ‘mediation’) and (b) relations between social events/texts and more durable, more stable or institutionalized, more abstract levels of social reality: social practices and social structures. Moreover, since events and texts are linked to, affected by and have effects on other events and texts in different places and at different times, a further challenge consists of developing ways to address (c) broadly spatial and temporal relationships between events and texts (see Wodak and Fairclough, 2010, for more details). Spatial and temporal relationships between texts include relations of recontextualization whereby texts (and the arguments which they deploy) move between spatially and temporally different contexts and are subject to transformations whose nature depends upon relationships and differences

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between such contexts. Recontextualization as one of the salient linguistic processes governing historical change is concretely manifested in the intertextuality and interdiscursivity of texts. Recontextualization is thus frequently realized in the mixing of ‘new’ elements and ‘old’ elements, such as particular old words, expressions, arguments, topoi, rhetorical devices and so forth, and new discourses and genres.1 During processes of change, conflicts between different agents and strategies usually include struggle between discourses and may lead to the hegemony of particular discourses, argumentative standpoints or ideologies manifested in these discourses. Within this approach, the focus needs to be not only on individual events (and texts) but also on chains of events (and chains of texts) and on the effects of agency and strategy in shaping events (and texts) over time (Wodak and Fairclough, 2010). Struggles for hegemony, which can thus be reconstructed in a longitudinal way, also require very subtle context-dependent analyses. In this way, the theorization of contexts becomes crucial to any dialectic analysis (e.g. the ‘four-level model of context’ [Wodak, 2001]; see chapters by Kovács and Szilágyi, McGlashan, Ma˘droane, Musolff, Richardson, and Engel and Wodak in this book). We assume that such changes occur on several levels at different times and with different speed (or sometimes not at all); thus, nonsimultaneity needs to be accounted for in differentiated, context-dependent ways. These intricate and complex processes also suggest the necessity of the concept of ‘glocalization’: of understanding how more global processes are being implemented, recontextualized and thus changed on local/regional/ national levels (see Wodak, 2010). Such observations are particularly salient regarding the ideologies and moments of European fascism, given the ideational and interdiscursive relations that exist—synchronically and diachronically—between parties and traditions across a wide number of European nations—relations that are expressed and revealed through, inter alia, discursive processes of revision, reinterpretation, recontextualization, rehabilitation and open mimetic reproduction. These social processes also take place simultaneously in different spheres, domains and social fields, as well as through relationships between them and between events and texts within them. SUMMARIZING THE BOOK This book explores ‘the dis/continuities of fascisms’ from a discourseanalytic perspective. It is obvious that all dimensions and levels of language and communication can be functionalized in revisionist ways to achieve a particular‘re/writing of history’ and the continuity of different fascisms. This book aims primarily at raising awareness of the ‘power of the written and spoken word’ in all public and private contexts in our lives, which requires careful and critical reading/listening and viewing in order to understand the implied frequently controversial and conflicting meanings.

European Fascism in Talk and Text—Introduction 9 In accordance with the theoretical underpinnings of (Critical) Discourse Studies, we argue that the meanings of such politically controversial and promiscuous text and talk are fully revealed only when in-depth analysis situates them in their historic contexts. Hence, this book examines discourse from across Europe, including all major national fascist traditions, in order to more fully reflect both the diversity and the commonalities of revisionist fascist discourse. In the most theoretically focused chapter of the collection, Daniel Woodley examines the tension between state-based authoritarian populism and radical-populist movements of the far right in the wake of the current financial crisis. By deliberating the ‘containment’ of dominated discourses within the dominant discourse of neoliberalism, his work highlights the tension between the totalizing sovereign violence of global and regional financial capital and the localized symbolic violence of the far right, which compete for discursive space at the internal periphery of postliberal politics. Following this chapter, the book turns towards a series of detailed, historically contextualised empirical studies of European countries. We start with chapters examining the Fascist and National Socialist (NS) traditions of Italy and Germany, and specifically the ways that neo-fascist political movements and neo-fascist political ideologies have emerged and are invoked and reflected in postwar discourses. We place such emphasis on the Italian and Germany traditions in European fascism to acknowledge the fact that theirs were the only two regimes whose politics were indelibly and unquestionably fascist. Tamir Bar-On first examines three main neo-fascist tendencies that have emerged in postwar Italy—the Italian Social Movement, the New Order, and a meta-political tendency influenced by the ideas of the French Nouvelle Droite—and the extent to which they represent a continuation of interwar and wartime Italian Fascism. Andreas Musolff’s chapter on the reception of antisemitic imagery in Nazi Germany asks what role antisemitic policies played in German public consciousness between 1933 and 1945. Focusing in particular on Hitler’s metaphorically framed announcements in key speeches, the chapter argues that changing correlations between Hitler’s prophecy of an “annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe” and the public reception accorded his speeches provide insights into the cognitive import of fascist discourse. The legacies of fascist politics and their role in minimising and justifying the Holocaust specifically remain in the political discourses of these European countries, albeit expressed and enacted in coded or euphemised discursivepragmatic practices and devices. Jakob Engel and Ruth Wodak analyse contemporary political discourses of Austria, and specifically the incidence of Holocaust denial in political discourse. Through two closely worked case studies—the utterances of John Gudenus, a member of the Bundesrat (the second governmental chamber in Austria) and the scandal surrounding Barbara Rosenkranz’s candidacy for Austrian president in 2010—Engel and Wodak demonstrate the implicit and coded ways that Holocaust denial is

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discursively accomplished in Austria, despite the legal constraint of the Verbotsgesetz, which prosecutes any public utterances which even insinuate NS ideology. Finally for this opening section, Claudia Posch, Maria Stopfner and Manfred Kienpointner analyse the legacies of NS ideology in Germanspeaking countries after 1945. Although the discursive strategies of parties such as the German NPD, REP and DVU, the Austrian FPÖ and BZÖ, and the Swiss APS and SVP, amongst others, differ profoundly from ‘classical’ Nazism, some leaders of these parties nevertheless attempt to (partially) revise history by casting doubt on the historical reality of NS atrocities. Focusing on party programs, campaign speeches and articles in the print media, the chapter reveals the most important argumentative and stylistic strategies functionalised by such parties as part of their political revisionism. The next group of chapters examines political discourse in countries with what one could describe as, at best, a contentious history of fascist politics. Whether the political regimes of Franco and Salazar were, in fact, fascist remain questions of deep controversy in the political and historic literature; French interwar and wartime fascism, questions of collaboration/occupation and the role and significance of the Vichy regime in particular are still more unsettled. Derrin Pinto’s chapter focuses on such issues of Spanish political history, addressing the question of the fascist pedigree of Francoism in a direct and incontrovertible way while analysing school books as a socialisation agent for hegemonic ideologies. The chapter thus examines how the teaching of manners attempts to contribute to the formation of the national spirit, the name given to the curricular component under Franco that entailed instilling in the young students of this period a sense of national group identity. The second stage of the analysis illustrates the mechanisms that are employed to legitimize the discourse and exert control over the conduct of the young readers. The debatable status of fascism in certain countries and, therefore, questions of how we should look at such issues of historic injustice and memory opens a discursive space that contemporary extremist political movements can exploit. The chapter by Cristina Marinho and Michael Billig and that by Brigitte Beauzamy both analyse extreme right-wing parties that have a fascist ideological heritage but which wish to present themselves as conventionally democratic parties. Examining the annual celebration held in the Portuguese parliament to mark the overthrow of the Salazarist regime, Marinho and Billig show that the extreme right-wing Portuguese Party, the CDS-PP, neither wishes to discard their ideological heritage nor present it too obviously. Although at first glance the party appears to participate in these celebrations, their chapter shows, through close attention to the rhetorical details of the speeches, how the CDS-PP subtly shift the meaning of the celebration and the history that was supposedly being commemorated, thereby manipulating democratic practices to their advantage. Beauzamy’s chapter more specifically examines the transformations of antisemitic discourses produced by the French Front National since the 1980s and the

European Fascism in Talk and Text—Introduction 11 ways that blaming ‘the Jews’ shifted from being the FN’s main explanation of the problems experienced by French society to a peripheral element of discourses usually formulated in a covert fashion. Demonstrating that such discourses are not hermetically sealed in an extreme-right milieu, Beauzamy’s chapter additionally analyzes antisemitism in the works of Kemi Seba, leader of the black radical identity movement “Les Damnés de l’Impérialisme” (Movement of the Damned of Imperialism), showing the strong parallels and divergences with the antisemitism and the discursive strategies of Marine Le Pen. The attention given to the British fascist tradition is, arguably, disproportionate to its success and influence (Payne, 1995; cf. Rees 1979). However, certain factors are worthy of note and therefore justify academic examination and political critique, First, the BUF was highly unusual in that it was launched in 1932 with a full and coherent political programme, in contrast to the usual ad hoc incrementalism typical of fascist agitation (Thurlow, 1987). Second, postwar British fascist parties were the first to conceal the true violence of their extremist political programme beneath a veneer of racial populism. A key figure in the development of racial populism as a campaign strategy is the activist and politician John Bean. As the leader of the second British National Party (1960–67), Bean realised that mass political activism could be organised around the single issue of ‘stop immigration now’, enabling the BNP to conceal fascist political aims under a campaign that aped the preoccupations of mainstream politics. John E. Richardson’s chapter charts the development and functions of racial populism during this period through a diachronic and historically contextualised analysis of the BNP’s newspaper COMBAT. In a section introduction of his otherwise excellent Reader, Kallis (2003: 192) claims that, while pre-1945 fascism was antisemitic in Germany, Romania, France and Britain, it was “not actively so in Hungary”. The chapter by András Kovács and Anna Szilágyi demonstrates that this is not entirely accurate. Analysing a corpus of two Hungarian print newspapers (Egyedül vagyunk and Harc) that spread Nazi propaganda in the 1940s and two contemporary websites (Barikad.hu and Kuruc.info.hu), they examine the weight and function of the antisemitic discourse of the Hungarian extreme right from both the wartime and contemporary periods. Kovács and Szilágyi conclude that, while wartime antisemitism functioned as political ideology, to mobilize substantial social groups by the promise that, with victory, they would be able to appropriate the social positions and resources of the Jews, today’s antisemitic rhetoric serves primarily as a medium for establishing an extreme right-wing identity. Per Anders Rudling focuses on the breakthrough of the significant ultra-nationalist party the All-Ukrainian Association (Vseukrains’ke Ob’iednanne, VO) Svoboda at the national level in the Ukraine. He discusses in great detail its ideology, historical myths and the political tradition to which this party adheres. This study of the current turn to the extreme

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right in western Ukraine argues that the rise of the extreme right should be seen in the context of the instrumentalization of history and the official rehabilitation of the far right, rather than as marking a distinction between a “moderate” and a “radical” hard right. These tendencies relate to other European debates such as the controversies surrounding the Wehrmacht exhibitions from 1996 and 2000 in Austria and Germany (Heer et al., 2008). The Romanian Legionary or Iron Cross movement represents a mystical, semireligious variety of European fascism and is, excepting Italian Fascism and German Nazism, one of the few categorically fascist movements that formed a government without occupation or intervention (Barbu, 1968, in Kallis 2003: 198). Irina Diana Ma˘droane’s chapter contextualises and unpacks the various layers of signification embedded in the discourse(s) of contemporary radical-right movements in Romania and specifically discusses the potentiality and opportunities for the reappropriation of interwar radical myths and nationalist ideologies available to extremists in postCommunist societies. Taking the ‘New Right’ organisation as a case in point, Ma˘droane shows how their construal of Romania’s past, present and future entails a transformation premised on the spiritual and material regeneration of the Romanian nation and a ‘dismantling’ of the political views of their adversaries, in accordance with a tradition of ‘illiberal democracy’. Ma˘droane discusses how they attempt to reposition their political project as non-fascist—as simply ‘a movement of national and Christian rebirth’— whilst simultaneously declaring an open affiliation with the Iron Guard and Legionary Movement and their inegalitarian, organicist, ultra-nationalist and authoritarian political programme. Finally, the book ends with two chapters which explore the inter- and pan-national dimensions of European fascism and the significance of the cultural and aesthetic dimensions to fascist ideological projects. Anton Shekhovtsov discusses the emergence of far-right music scenes in Europe and their relationship with right-wing organisations; he also explores the theme of the Enemy articulated through far-right music. He argues that while some White Power bands can be compared and generally associated with pseudo-revolutionary neo-Nazi groupuscules, other ‘metapolitical fascist’ artists seem to replicate the European New Right’s rejection of immediate political goals in favour of a quest for cultural hegemony. He concludes by arguing that White Power bands are more ‘internationalist’ in character than most political organisations of the far and extreme right since, by adopting ‘Aryan racism’, they define their in-group (and hence the market for their music) as the whole ‘Europeanised’ world. In his chapter, Mark McGlashan examines the symbols and political logos of European far- and extreme-right political parties and argues that their appropriation of brand marketing principles is part of a wider glocalisation of European political branding strategies. That is, he demonstrates that the branding of European nationalist political parties in local contexts reflects and has incorporated international (European) trends in their symbolic realisations of

European Fascism in Talk and Text—Introduction 13 racist discourses. Analysing the discursive and symbolic practises of nationalist political parties from Germany, Austria, Great Britain, Hungary and Sweden, McGlashan reveals the importance of visual texts to the political strategies of the far and extreme right, and specifically the ways that racist discourses may be covertly embedded in the logos of such political parties.

NOTE 1. In a similar vein, Blommaert (2003: 177) employs the term ‘entextualisation’, which guides the “production of historical texts”. Thus, Blommaert argues, entextualisation means “setting /desetting /resetting events in particular (morally and politically loaded) time frames, and this in turn involves the usual power differences of entextualisation: access to contextual spaces, the importance of ‘the record’, orientation towards authoritative voices, shifts in referential and indexical frames and so on”.

REFERENCES Achugar, Mariana (2008). What We Remember: The Construction of Memory in Military Discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Adorno, Theodor W., Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daneil Levinson & Nevitt Sanford (1950). The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper & Row. Anthonissen, Christine, and Jan Blommaert (eds.) (2006). Critical Linguistic Perspectives on Coping with Traumatic Pasts: Case Studies. Special Issue. Journal of Language and Politics. Vol. 5, Issue 1. Assmann, Aleida (2009). From Collective Violence to a Common Future: Four Models for Dealing with a Traumatic Past. In Ruth Wodak and Gertraud AuerBoreo (eds.), Memory and Justice (pp. 31–48). Vienna: Passagen Verlag. Blommaert, Jan (2003). Orthopraxy, writing and identity. In Jim R. Martin and Ruth Wodak (eds.), Re-reading the Past: Critical and Functional Perspectives on Time and Value (pp. 177–94). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Blommaert, Jan (2005). Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chilton, Paul (2006). Orwell’s 1984. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd revised edition). Oxford: Elsevier. De Cillia, Rudolf, and Ruth Wodak (2009a). ‘Restitution: Yes, but. . . .’ In Ruth Wodak and Gertraud Auer-Boreo (eds.), Memory and Justice (pp. 195–212). Vienna: Passagen Verlag. De Cillia, Rudolf, and Ruth Wodak (eds.) (2009b). Gedenken im „Gedankenjahr“. Zur diskursiven Konstruktion österreichischer Identitäten im Jubiläumsjahr 2005. Innsbruck: Studienverlag. De Felice, Renzo (1991). Bibliografia orientativa del fascism. Rome: Bonacci. Drucker, Peter (1939). The End of Economic Man. In Roger Griffin (ed.) (1995), Fascism (pp. 270–71). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Engel, Jakob, and Ruth Wodak (2009). Kalkulierte Ambivalenz: Störungen’ und das Gedankenjahr: Die Causen Siegfried Kampl und John Gudenus. In Rudolf de Cillia and Ruth Wodak (eds.), Gedenken im “Gedankenjahr”: Zur diskursiven Konstruktion österreichischer Identitäten im Jubiläumsjahr 2005 (pp. 79–100). Innsbruck: Studienverlag.

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Ensink, Titus, and Christoph Sauer (eds.) (2003). The Art of Commemoration. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Fairclough, Norman (1992). Discourse and Social Change. London: Polity. Galasin´ska, Aleksandra, and Michał Krzyz˙anowski (eds.) (2009). Discourse and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Gregor, A. James (1974/1997). Interpretations of Fascism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Griffin, Roger (1991). The Nature of Fascism. London: Pinter. Griffin, Roger (ed.) (1998). International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus. London: Arnold. Griffin, Roger (2007). Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Harrison, Sarah, and Michael Bruter (2011). Mapping Extreme Right Ideology. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Heer, Hannes, Walter Manoschek, Alexander Pollak and Ruth Wodak (eds.) (2008). The Discursive Construction of History: Remembering the Wehrmacht’s War of Annihilation. Basingstoke: Palgrave (translated from the German by Steven Fligelstone: Wie Geschichte gemacht wird. Zur Konstruktion von Erinnerungen an Wehrmacht und Zweiten Weltkrieg [Vienna: Czernin, 2003]). Iordachi, Constantin (ed.) (2010). Comparative Fascist Studies: New Perspectives. London: Routledge. Judt, Tony (2007). Post-War. London: Penguin. Kallis, Aristotle (ed.) (2003). The Fascism Reader. London: Routledge. Kallis, Aristotle (2009). Genocide and Fascism: The Eliminationist Drive in Fascist Europe. London: Routledge. Kitchen, Martin (1982). Fascism. London: Macmillan. Klemperer, Viktor (1947). LTI. Lingua Tertii Imperii. Die Sprache des Dritten Reiches. Leipzig: Reclam. Klemperer, Viktor (2005). The Language of the Third Reich: LTI. Lingua Tertii Imperii. London: Continuum. Kovács, Andras, and Ruth Wodak (eds.) (2003). NATO, Neutrality, and National Identity. Vienna: Böhlau. Krzyz˙anowski, Michał, and Ruth Wodak (2009). Theorising and Analysing Social Change in Central and Eastern Europe: The Contribution of Critical Discourse Analysis. In Aleksandra Galasin´ska and Michał Krzyz˙anowski (eds.), Discourse and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (pp. 17–40). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Lipset, Stanley M. (1960). Political Man. London: Heinemann. Maas, Utz (1985). Als die Sprache eine Gemeinschaft fand. Stuttgart: WDV. Macklin, Graham (2007). Very Deeply Dyed in Black: Sir Oswald Mosley and the Resurrection of British Fascism after 1945. London: I. B. Tauris. Martin, Jim R., and Ruth Wodak (eds.) (2003). Re-reading the Past: Critical and Functional Perspectives on Time and Value. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Milza, Pierre, and Serge Bernstein (1992). Dictionnaire historique des fascismes et du nazisme. Brussels: Editions Complexe. Mosley, Oswald (n.d.). European Socialism [self published]. Nolte, Ernst (1968). Die Krise des liberalen Systems und die faschistischen Bewegungen. Munich: R. Piper. Paxton, Robert O. (2005). The Anatomy of Fascism. London: Penguin. Payne, Stanley G. (1995) A History of Fascism, 1914–1945. London: Routledge. Pelinka, Anton (2009). Justice, Truth and Peace: Three Dimensions of Consequences. In Ruth Wodak and Gertraud Auer-Boreo (eds.), Memory and Justice (pp. 48–66). Vienna: Passagen Verlag. Postoutenko, Kiril (ed.) (2010). Totalitarian Communication: Hierarchies, Codes and Messages. Stuttgart: Transcript-Verlag.

European Fascism in Talk and Text—Introduction 15 Rees, Philip (1979). Fascism in Britain: An Annotated Bibliography. Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press. Renton, David (1999). Fascism: Theory and Practice. London: Pluto Press. Renton, David (2000). Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Britain in the 1940s. London: Macmillan. Richardson, John E. (2011). Race and Racial Difference: The Surface and Depth of BNP Ideology. In Nick Copsey and Graham Macklin (eds.), British National Party: Contemporary Perspectives (pp. 38–61). London: Routledge. Richardson, John E., and Ruth Wodak (2009a). The Impact of Visual Racism: Visual Arguments in Political Leaflets of Austrian and British Far-right Parties. Controversia 6: 45–77. Richardson, John E., and Ruth Wodak (2009b). Recontextualising Fascist Ideologies of the Past: Right-wing Discourses on Employment and Nativism in Austria and the United Kingdom. Critical Discourse Studies 6(4): 251–67. Richardson, John E., and Ruth Wodak (eds.) (2009c). Discourse, History, and Memory. Critical Discourse Studies (special issue) 6(4). Schmitz-Berning, Claudia (2000). Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Schweitzer, Eva (2012). Tea Party. Die weiße Wut. Munich: DTV. Skidelsky, Robert (1981). Oswald Mosley. London: Macmillan. Snyder, Timothy (2010) Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. NewYork: Basic Books. Steinmetz, Willibald (ed.) (2011). Political Languages in the Age of the Extremes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sternberger, David, Gerhard Storz and W. E. Sußkind (1957). Aus dem Wörterbuch des Unmenschen. Hamburg: Claassen. Sternhell, Zeev (1986). Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France. Berkeley: University of California Press. Thurlow, Richard (1987). Fascism in Britain: A History 1918–1985. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Verdoolaege, Annelies (2008). Reconciliation Discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Wodak, Ruth (2007). Pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis. A CrossDisciplinary Analysis. Pragmatics and Cognition 15(1): 203–25. Wodak, Ruth (2010). The Glocalisation of Politics in Television: Fiction or Reality? European Journal of Cultural Studies 13(1): 43–62. Wodak, Ruth (2011a). The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual (2nd revised edition). Basingstoke: Palgrave. Wodak, Ruth (2011b). Suppression of the Nazi Past, Coded Languages, and Discourses of Silence: Applying the Discourse-Historical Approach to Post-War Anti-Semitism in Austria. In Willibald Steinmetz (ed.), Political Languages in the Age of Extremes (pp. 351–79). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wodak, Ruth, and Gertraud Auer-Boreo (eds.) (2009). Memory and Justice. Vienna: Passagen Verlag. Wodak, Ruth, and Rudolf de Cillia (2006). Politics and Language: Overview. In: Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2nd revised edition), vol. 9 (pp. 707–19). Oxford: Elsevier. Wodak, Ruth, and Rudolf de Cillia (2007). Commemorating the Past: The Discursive Construction of Official Narratives about the Rebirth of the Second Austrian Republic. Discourse and Communication 1(3): 337–63. Wodak, Ruth, and Norman Fairclough (2010). Recontextualizing European Higher Education Policies: The Cases of Austria and Romania. Critical Discourse Studies 7(1): 19–40. Wodak, Ruth, and Walter Kirsch (eds.) (1995). Totalitäre Sprachen—Langue de Bois. Vienna: Passagen Verlag.

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Wodak, Ruth, Majid KhosraviNik, and Brigitte Mral (eds.) (2012). Rightwing Populism across Europe: Discourse and Politics. London: Bloomsbury. Wodak, Ruth, Florian Menz, Richard Mitten and Frank Stern (1994). Die Sprachen der Vergangenheiten. Öffentliches Gedenken in österreichischen und deutschen Medien. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Wodak, Ruth, Johanna Pelikan, Peter Nowak, Helmut Gruber, Rudolf de Cillia and Richard Mitten (1990). ‘Wir sind alle unschuldige Täter’. Diskurshistorische Studien zum Nachkriegsantisemitismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Woodley, Daniel (2010). Fascism and Political Theory: Critical Perspectives on Fascist Ideology. London: Routledge.

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Radical Right Discourse Contra State-Based Authoritarian Populism Neoliberalism, Identity and Exclusion after the Crisis Daniel Woodley

In revisionist historiography, fascism is understood as a nationalist ideology based on regenerationist myth. Representative of this view are Sternhell’s (1986) definition of fascism as ‘regenerative nationalism’ and Griffin’s (1991) complex descriptor ‘palingenetic ultranationalism’. Both locate fascism in a millennial assault on liberal cosmopolitanism and constitutional democracy, although, as Mosse (1979) notes, fascism required middle-class respectability to progress politically, claiming to defend middle-class values in the face of rapid social change. Yet, while the demand to ‘take fascism seriously’ has stimulated research into the literary-philosophical production of right-wing intellectuals, the ‘new consensus’ school marks a retreat from critical social science by explaining fascism in anthropological terms as a form of ‘primordial modernism’—a timeless expression of the yearning to transcend temporality and revalorize traditional values for a new epoch (Griffin 2007). The effect of this is to abstract ideational production from material conditions, leaving us with a programmatic reading of ideology as an autonomous system of beliefs detached from practice.1 Revisionists thus overlook the continuous reproduction of anti-egalitarian discourse in the historical organization of capitalism: radical-right discourse crystallizes historic struggles which naturalize inequality at an ideological level. Presenting fascism as ‘totalitarian religion’, revisionists leave no scope for a critique of the reciprocal relation between neoliberalism and right-wing populism or of the extent to which the authoritarian structure of the neoliberal state creates the political conditions for passive revolution, enabling elites to ‘undercut mobilization from below and [introduce] more far-reaching transformation’ (Robinson & Barrera 2011: 3). Rather than search for a typology of fascism and its more recent manifestations, it may be more fruitful to examine the social function of the radical right in the global capitalist order—namely to overcome a tension between globalizing capital and localized reaction using new forms of political communication to bridge the gulf between subjects as atomized consumers (precarized workers and human assets of capital) and collective producers of identity (native communities unified by instinctive allegiance). The element which constitutes the unifying principle of ideology is not the individual

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elements of discourse—which have limited significance in their own right— but the identity of interpellated subjects constituted through a particular condensation of contradictions (Laclau 1977). The discursive space the radical right occupies in the continuum of counterrevolutionary ideology is neither accidental nor contradictory; to understand its appeal, we must first consider the logic of the New Right assault on social democracy in its correct economic-historical perspective. It is also necessary to consider how positions identified with the populist right originate less obviously in nationalist traditions than in a political response to neoliberal globalization, a process of economic integration which ‘decodes and deterritorializes wealth through monetary abstraction, flows of production through merchant capital, the means of production through the formation of industrial capital, and states through financial capital’ (Doty 2003: 12). In the present essay, fascism and right-wing populism are resituated in a theoretical critique of neoliberalism, as modes of subjectification based on the production of hegemonic dispositions which orient themselves to their object, allowing the subjects of the capitalist mode of power to rule out for themselves what is ruled out for them already (Bourdieu 1991). For Laclau, the prior condition for a hegemonic relation exists when a particular social force claims representation of a totality which is incommensurable with it. Fascism and right-wing populism represent two historical forms of political subjectification based on ‘identitarian identification’: locating an ‘abstract social feature underlying all social grievances’, he argues (2005: 95), rightwing populist movements interpellate subjects not as individuals or members of classes but as ‘the people’, appealing to voters disillusioned with politics as an inconsequential contest between right-wing business elites and left-wing cultural elites. Yet, while the populist right may mobilize intermediate strata against the ‘existing system of power management’ (Baier 2011), the net effect of populist interventions is to neutralize counterhegemonic discourses arising on the left, reasserting the ‘universal’ validity of the particular values of capitalist classes. Right-wing populists employ left-wing rhetoric to call for a return to protectionism, but, by demanding a restriction of entitlements to ‘native’ citizens, the right provides ideological cover for elites seeking to curtail state-mediated distributions. As capital is concentrated among fewer transnational corporations, neoliberal globalization presents an increasing threat to the economic liberty and security of the Western middle class (Lynn 2010). Trends suggest that what is typically referred to as the ‘middle class’ is a diminishing fraction of the working class: a stratified buffer between the propertied class and the propertyless mass whose brittle prosperity belies the nature of neoliberalism as a ‘regime in which the relatively few who own capital exploit the labour of the many’ (Ebert & Zavarzadeh 2008: 94–5; cf. Marshall 2010). As Žižek notes, this new middle class ‘still appropriates surplus value, but in the (mystified) form of what has been called the “surplus wage”: they are paid rather more than the proletarian “minimum wage” . . ., and it is this

Radical Right Discourse Contra State-Based Authoritarian Populism 19 distinction from common proletarians which determines their status. The bourgeoisie in the classic sense thus tends to disappear: capitalists reappear as a subset of workers, as managers who are qualified to earn by virtue of their competence’ (2012: 10). With the global socialization/integration of production, class polarization and the potential for conflict are increasing, and, with the subordination of democratic authority to transnational capital, states no longer have the capacity to resist the erosion of constraints on labour exploitation, creating anxiety among those who benefited from statedemocratic capitalism. After decades of unprecedented material prosperity, the financial crisis has revealed the insecurity not only of the ‘losers’ of neoliberalism (the structurally unemployed) but also of those salaried workers who are increasingly vulnerable to proletarianization. The success of the populist right is traditionally explained in terms of the ‘normal pathology’ of industrial democracies, where disenfranchised voters express their resentment towards elites and minorities by voting for the radical right. Yet, as Mudde argues, what we are to give may in fact be the ‘pathological normalcy’ of capitalist society based on a radicalization of mainstream values among the middle class; ‘far from being an aberration,’ he argues, ‘attitudes and ideological features of the populist radical Right are fairly widespread in contemporary European societies. Instead of being understood as a normal pathology, the contemporary populist radical Right needs to be seen as a pathological normalcy’ (2010: 1). Just as sociologists once placed excessive explanatory weight on the erosion of solidaristic ties and the survival of preindustrial traditions, the normal-pathology thesis ignores the supply side of politics, rehearsing the neoconservative critique of mass society which conflates atomization and pathological individualism, an error repeated in communitarian theories which explain radicalization as a ‘crisis of meaning’.2 As Mudde notes, the ‘difference between the populist radical right and Western democracy is not to be defined in kind . . . but in degree, i.e. by moderate versus radical versions of roughly the same views’ (ibid.: 6–7). For this reason, it is important to abandon the idea that a cordon sanitaire separates the populist and mainstream right and to acknowledge that the prevailing security discourse of the modern prerogative state is incubated in the economic ideology of neoliberalism itself.3 As Harmes (2008) suggests, nationalism is perfectly compatible with neoliberalism because neoliberals favour economic globalization as a way of promoting the interjurisdictional competition which they believe consolidates neoliberalism at a domestic-political level. In what follows, I assess parallels and continuities between fascism and neoliberalism, distinguishing patterns of ideological development in the core capitalist economies of western Europe, the unevenly developed semiperipheral economies of southern Europe, and the peripheral economies of east-central Europe which remain caught between retraditionalization and modernization (Mitrovic´ 2010) and where the rapid transition to capitalism after 1989 created additional complexities in relation to identity politics

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(Bustikova & Kitschelt 2009). Although the risk of capital flight limits the capacity of all states to assert economic sovereignty (the ‘synarchic’ logic of global capital creates an informal transnational system of financial and political control that transcends the interests of national economies),4 the financial crisis has had severe effects in the periphery, intensifying social inequalities and political tensions as governments try to balance the pressure from financial markets against demands for a fair distribution of the debt burden. In the core states of the European Union, austerity has produced limited displays of dissent, centred on public-sector workers and students; by extending neoliberal exclusionary practices in the periphery, however, the crisis has heightened conflict between transnational elites and comprador bourgeoisies acting as agents for globalizing capital, reopening historic struggles between neo-bourgeois and popular classes in Greece, Portugal, Latvia, Romania and Hungary. This highlights the illusory character of globalization ideologies which mistake the political determination of uneven development in the hierarchical structure of global capitalism for ‘international integration’ (Poulantzas 1975). It also reveals important variations in the response of radical-right parties to the crisis of neoliberalism based on their country’s respective location in the transnational capitalist hierarchy.5 FROM FASCISM TO NEOLIBERALISM ‘Fascism’ refers to those capitalist regimes which exercise an authoritarian dictatorship based on the fusion of state and corporate leadership, supported by a national-popular movement subject to mass mobilization. Fascism develops not outside the framework of liberal politics but within the existing logic of capitalism as a totalizing formation which ‘generates ceaselessly what is “new”, while regenerating what is the “same” ’ (Postone 2006: 95). Reproducing itself in new political forms, capitalism sustains its hegemonic power by shedding the juridical ideology of the liberal-democratic state for the authoritarian carapace of oligarchy. The political forms of capitalism are closely determined by changes in the social organization of business and the changing relation of power between state and economic actors. The aim of fascist corporatism is to limit competition between the constituent elements of business organizations to promote stability, encouraging a routinization of transactions through vertical integration and horizontal combination. By eliminating pluralism, corporatism creates barriers to entry in the market—a function repeated at the political level, through the creation of ‘governments of national unity’ or through the introduction of martial law to ensure that capitalist policies are implemented despite public opposition. In the interwar-era, fascist regimes recognized the bureaucratization and societalization of economic life and the necessity of state intervention to maintain profitability. These structural tendencies increased pressures for collective solutions to societal integration, extending the appeal of populist

Radical Right Discourse Contra State-Based Authoritarian Populism 21 narratives of identity and power opposed to capitalist individualism. Fascist political economy developed as a new type of ‘political capitalism’, an early variant of the ‘warfare-welfare state’ which predominated in Europe and the United States after 1945—one in which the legal-rational institutions of civil society were incorporated into the organic unity of the race-nation.6 Although fascist and New Deal policies failed to end the Depression (profitability is restored only by the experience of recession itself, which allows the cost of capital investment to fall as unemployment reduces labour costs [Mattick 2011]), they led to the corporatization of business through the formation of cartels to reduce risk and price competition, integrating state and society in an authoritarian system of financial and commercial controls. Under fascism, uncompetitive companies exploit commercial and political methods to stabilize their dominant position. The peculiar nature of fascism is that the state intervenes in an exceptional way by defending unprofitable corporate interests at the price of economic reason, leading to a fusion of dominant capital and reactionary power (Poulantzas 1974). This is a logical consequence of the declining profitability of private business, which creates incentives for collusion between corporate and state actors, exempting dominant capital from the usual constraints of the market. Governments led by fascists seek not to abolish private business but only to resolve the social contradiction between market exchange and concrete development through the myth of ‘crisis-free economy’, attempting to ‘freeze’ capitalist relations in an administratively controlled system where profits are privatized and risk socialized (Salvemini 1936). Through fascism, corporations become the beneficiaries of the legal-administrative authority of the state, monopolizing rights as individuals and smaller economic units are reduced to the status of ‘fiduciaries’—that is, subjects possessing duties, entrusted with property or power solely for the benefit of superiors. This hierarchical relation of power has reappeared in new ways under neoliberalism, undermining the classical liberal myth of continuous peaceful accumulation while exposing the oligarchic tendencies of the ‘free market’ which give investors social power by allowing them to withhold capital from social use and by separating the economy into a hierarchy of companies in which strategic activity replaces price competition as the key determinant of success (Ouroussoff 2010). As Nitzan and Bichler comment, hierarchy is a mode of exclusion exercised indirectly: ‘what matters is the right to exclude and the ability to exact terms for not exercising that right. This right and ability are the foundation of accumulation’ (2009: 228). This relation of power is more significant where owners are transnational institutions with no connection to the industrious activity of their subsidiaries other than legal entitlement, which confers on corporations the right to incapacitate society through ‘strategic sabotage’.7 In the present financial crisis, the political form of capital threatens again to transgress the established juridical ideology of bourgeois political society, jettisoning the liberal myth of consent for a return to the prerogative state. Yet, to give weakness in discussions of neoliberalism stems from a tendency to

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equate the market state with ‘free market’ ideology. A popular misperception of neoliberalism is prevalent because neoliberal market discourse maintains what Konings terms ‘a hold on our common sense and intuitions’ (2010: 743), leading us to ignore the violence and collusion that facilitate the growth of state-endorsed oligopolies. Despite a fundamentalist faith in the advantages of free exchange, the aim of neoliberalism is not to hasten the end of the state as a collective actor but to use the market to subject human life to new forms of discipline, subordinating the cultural and economic life of society to the totalizing logic of capital. The aim of neoliberalism is not to increase freedom (‘unanimity without conformity’, as Friedman [1962: 23] claimed) but to liberate capital from political constraint, to reduce the power of labour, and to weaken the sovereign power of states to redistribute revenue obtained by taxing corporate profits. As Liodakis (2010) notes, neoliberalism announces a new stage of ‘totalitarian capitalism’ distinct from earlier periods of capitalist integration, leading to the elimination of small producers and the rise of a transnational capitalist state. Like fascism, totalitarian capitalism is contingent on the privatization of political power based on the substitution of private planning elites for elected public authorities. As in the 1930s, the growth of oligarchy has transformed politics into a ‘mechanism for the allocation of resources to business’, leading to the assumption of private debt obligations by sovereign states (Miller 2010: 30–1). Unlike fascism, however—which was driven by the geopolitical aspirations of rising nation-states in a challenge to British hegemony—neoliberalism is a transnational project: a globally administered postpolitical market order linked to the hegemony of the banking sector. Yet fascism and neoliberalism developed in response to the same political challenge, namely democracy: fascism emerged in response to the crisis of bourgeois rule after 1918, diverting the political insecurity of the middle class into an assault on the left, and neoliberalism emerged as the ideological glue of the New Right in the 1970s, a transnational class project unifying capitalist elites, managers and skilled workers behind the myth of ‘popular capitalism’ (cf. Duménil & Lévy 2005). Both fascism and neoliberalism depend on the suppression of rival nationalisms and primitive accumulation; in addition, both coincide with a violent intensification of financial capitalism as it exerts ecological dominance over rival fractions of capital formed in the disjunction between financial and productive capital. Neoliberalism increases labour discipline, augmenting employers’ rights to reorganize relations of exploitation while promoting managerial complicity in the de-democratization of political power (Buck 2008). Neoliberalism is, argues Giroux, ‘antithetical to nurturing democratic identities, values, public spaces, and institutions and thereby enables fascism to grow because it has no ethical language for recognizing politics outside the realm of the market, for controlling market excesses, or for challenging the underlying tenets of a growing authoritarianism’ (2005: 12–13). Yet, while some observers predict a future shift away from neoliberalism

Radical Right Discourse Contra State-Based Authoritarian Populism 23 towards a more ‘rational’ form of capitalism, the evidence suggests otherwise. Explaining the evolution of neoliberalism in the present crisis, Konings observes that ‘[i]f we see the disjunction between neoliberal theory and practice as a constitutive aspect of the construction of power relations and political capacities over the last three decades, then recent developments appear less as the breakdown than as the provisional culmination of the neoliberal era and its distinctive practices’ (2010: 760). To explain this paradox, it is necessary to understand what we mean by the term ‘crisis’, which Osborne (2010: 24) defines as a ‘decisive or separating moment’, the end of one historic cycle and the beginning of another. Crises are ‘modes of appearance of structural contradictions’, as states try to restore patterns of accumulation by renewing the terms of the contradictions giving rise to instability: ‘the cyclical character of crises of accumulation tends to instil less a sense of possibility than of repetition.’ Yet, he adds, the ‘periodic character of crisis and the commodity-form each produce modes of experience of temporal abstraction that undermine the historical experience of crises and, thereby, function to repress the political possibilities they contain’ (ibid.). Depressions provide not merely a ‘cure’ for declining profits, paving the way for a new periods of prosperity; they also provide an opportunity to restore the political legitimacy of an economy based on private ownership for private profit. From this perspective, the present crisis is qualitatively similar to previous cycles: it reveals that the policy objective of states is not to engineer ‘recovery’ but to ‘cover over’ the reorganization of social relations necessary to sustain the hegemony of dominant capital, which has led to the imposition of structural adjustment programmes in the West once reserved for developing nations. But, while the nature of the crisis is obscured by official media, the impoverishment of the middle class is threatening to polarize an already moribund political culture, increasing support for the populist right, which locates the cause of the crisis in the egalitarian logic of the social-democratic state. FETISHIZED IDENTITY-DRIVEN CONSUMPTION To explain the relationship between neoliberalism and right-wing populism, we must examine the link between private economic power and cultural racism as two self-reinforcing narratives in the discursive organization of capitalism. In defence of globalizing capital, neoliberalism translates the interests of corporations into the political-cultural framework of the nationstate; it articulates a structural interrelation between the sovereign power of capital as a globally disembedded, self-augmenting value in perpetual motion (Westra 2010), and labour as a territorially embedded commodity organized for the fulfilment of socially necessary labour within discrete spatial units. As a key component in the scalar reorganization processes in capitalism (Brenner 2011), however, labour mobility within the EU (both legal and

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non-legal) has altered the demographic profile of Europe, problematizing an ideological commitment to multiculturalism and humanitarian migration in liberal rights discourse. In defence of transnational market flows, neoliberalism extends the chrematistic logic of capital as value augmentation, yet reproduces an analogous logic of securitization and exclusion in radical right discourse—a political force which takes seriously the cultural ‘superiority claim’ implicit in European imperial history, demanding the exclusion of legal and non-legal migrants (and the repression of ‘domestic extremists’) who challenge the fictive narrative of the sovereign nation-state as a coherent spatial unit in the capitalist world system. The monocultural ideological violence and fanaticism of right-wing populism derive less from a primordial eruption of nationalism than from an inherent tension between capitalism and democracy epitomised by the decline of the culturally homogeneous welfare-warfare state, leaving a broad constituency of voters without fixed allegiance and therefore vulnerable to the changing slogans of populist demagoguery. Political responses to the global crisis provide an insight into the ways right-wing populism and neoliberal corporatism interact to structure subjects’ effective connection to reality. On the one hand, political leaders seek to reaffirm the myth of ‘equivalent fair exchange’, which enables subjects as consumers to rationalize inconsistencies in the discursive narrative of capitalism. On the other hand, political leaders attempt to re-impose social order by co-opting the ‘paranoiac’ demands of the far right, which seeks boundary maintenance and stable cultural identification but which can also be recruited to consolidate a competition state based on the corporatization of public administration and the securitization of citizenship (Watson 2009; Kaya 2009). Populist anger towards globalization constitutes an emotional displacement of the anxiety of decline that is threatening sections of the middle class in a period of fiscal collapse, asset devaluation, rising structural unemployment, and the impact of ‘digital Taylorism’—as a result of which increasing numbers of whitecollar jobs are being fragmented into routine labour functions or relocated offshore, undermining perceptions of economic status among the middle class (Brown et al. 2011). The middle classes continue to value their limited assets, which distinguish them from the propertyless and poor; but when their assets (or jobs) are devalued (or deskilled) conflicts erupt revealing to subjects their lack of knowledge of or control over economic processes which determine the ‘natural’, ‘taken-for-granted’ operation of the ‘free market’. At the same time, immigration and multiculturalism reveal to native petty bourgeois subjects their lack of control over the internal boundaries of their communities, threatening their sense of ‘taken-for-granted identity’ rooted in popular-historical memory (Klein & Simon 2006: 246). In an economic and cultural sense, then, the destabilizing effect of neoliberalism erodes the ‘natural, taken-for-granted’ functioning of the capitalist nation-state. To make sense of this, we must explain the discursive power of capitalist ideology in its contemporary form. As a hegemonic discourse

Radical Right Discourse Contra State-Based Authoritarian Populism 25 adapted to the expansion of global capital, neoliberalism arrests popular consciousness by creating a fantasy of freedom and gratification that compensates for the lack of real satisfaction in market societies though the production of role-identities which increase the power of the commodity form over the social imagination, facilitating the penetration of marketized values into civic, communal and personal life. Neoliberalism facilitates a fetishistic disavowal of the sociosynthetic process of real abstraction which renders opaque the ‘socialization of private production through the medium of the market’ (Žižek 1989: 14). The force of capitalist ideology consists less in the production of false consciousness than in the capacity of subjects to repress what they know to be the case yet choose to disavow, as a result of which illusions are materialized in effective social activity. What subjects misrecognize when they fail to see there is anything to see ‘is not the reality but the illusion which is structuring their reality, their real social activity. They know very well how things really are, but still they are doing it as if they did not know. The illusion is . . . double: it consists in overlooking the illusion which is structuring our real, effective relationship with reality’ (ibid.: 29–30). For consumers habituated to respond to market incentives— to believe in the free circulation/availability of commodities—disturbances in the ‘natural’ self-regulation of the market, combined with disturbances in the ‘natural’ reproduction of the societal culture, reveal to subjects the insecurity of their values and their existential vulnerability to an objective reality which is fetishistically disavowed. Otherwise put: disruptions to the discourse of ‘free equivalent exchange’ (which conceal the particular form of exploitation necessary for the creation of value) undermine the illusory construction of order necessary to interpellate subjects as consumers socialized to acquire and perform new role-identities as substitutes for affectively rewarding self-activity (praxis). The principal dynamic of neoliberalism is the substitution of public authority by privatized power. As Cutler argues, ‘private authority becomes a form of rationality as an ideology and a political aspiration, but one that appears in a fetishized form as neutral and devoid of politics’ (2011: 49). The preference for privatized citizenship can be traced back to the Lockean notion of civil society as a sphere of noninterference in which individuals act only for self-interest: on this view, prudent citizens accept a ‘precipitous withdrawal of social rights being justified by the needs of a healthy economy coupled with a revival of the punitive nineteenth century language of moral failure, individual blame, the shame of “dependency”, and the celebration of “personal responsibility” ’ (Somers 1999: 123). Neoliberals insist that freedom (consumer choice) and prosperity (material acquisition) are the sole conduits to happiness, yet hyperindividualism creates a different outcome, namely hedonistic withdrawal and communicative irrationality. The insecurity of neoliberal market culture intensifies the need for psychic and material disemburdenment to mitigate status anxiety, loss of meaning and the fragmentation of identities in communities where social integration

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and systemic reproduction require subjects to function as consumers rather than producers—diverted from overexposure to reality (Clarke 2010). As in the 1930s, when the ‘commodity spectacles of Nazi mass culture entertained the individual with the utopian illusion that certain spaces remain beyond control, beyond politics, beyond the effects of coordination’ (Koepnick 1999: 52), ‘consumer citizenship’ displaces older forms of association, as a result of which ‘customary social and political structures are debilitated, providing little tangible or intangible support, and the sense of community is weakened. Traditional politics are viewed as irrelevant . . . and we are left with politics as emotion and advertising’ (Holliday 2010: 16). Consumerism creates dependence on approved corporate identities, cultivating a demodern mindset where the ‘balance of conformity/order/security and approved of autonomy/stimulation/distinction are reflected in the public sphere in the pathological form of, on the one hand, a neurotic immersion in and adherence to narrowly focused routines and systems of regimentation, measurement and control and, on the other, a brittle veneer of anxious but seemingly capricious and over-confident risk-taking individualism’ (Bone 2010: 732). If socialist discourse channels class conflict into counterhegemonic strategies which interrogate private economic power, the social function of antiestablishment populism is not to foster ‘anti-capitalism’ but to pressure the state to manage an emergent contradiction between the transnational organization of globalizing capital and the localized interests of native communities for whom there exists a single, non-exchangeable cultural value: the nation-form. The political commodity ‘neoliberalism’ holds value not because it promotes freedom but because it reproduces a fantasy of material prosperity and security, mobilizing subjects to consume via emotional suggestion; the political commodity ‘fascism’, by contrast, holds value not because it is well conceived but because it, too, is realized through emotion: the populist right extends the potential for fetishized identity-driven consumption by offering to extinguish difference within in-groups, resolving through a simulation of community the performative contradiction between subjects as consumers and co-producers of identities. Attracted by its defence of the ‘small man’ against economic interests organized through the state, the subject of radical-right discourse acquires political identity not in opposition to neoliberalism but through a reconciliation of (marginal) market value and cultural status. To explain in material terms the rearticulation of counterhegemonic discourse in the ideology of the neoliberal state, it is necessary to see that fascism is generated in the commodity fetish—namely in the production of identity from heterogeneity. As Harootunian notes, it this relation of fascism to the commodity form ‘that is missing in most accounts of fascism and that offers a plausible explanation for its capacity to return punctually, as well as its own suppression of history for the mystery of myth and origin [. . . and] predilection for repetition’ (2006: 27). As a recurring phenomenon, fascism reaffirms the coextension of economy, identity and

Radical Right Discourse Contra State-Based Authoritarian Populism 27 territory in the nation-state and expresses the fetish character of the commodity as it produces consciousness, disorganizing autonomous subjectivity via the codification of identity and the exclusion of unmediated exchange. This reflects not merely the real subsumption of production within circuits of capital but the materialization of social relations as things, connecting the bearers of social relations in the directionless self-expansion of capital. This highlights the relevance of Marx’s theory of value as the social form of the product of labour: value is ‘the property of being the product of labor of each commodity producer which makes it exchangeable for the products of labor of any other commodity producer in a determined ratio’ (Rubin 1928: 72). Just as the fetish character of the commodity-form conceals the reified expression of social labour in the economic value of objects, so the political commodity fascism disguises the nonidentity of subjects in the social order of postliberal capitalism. Fascism is, in other words, a form of ideological valorization, an attempt to resolve conflict within the framework of the capitalist mode of power. By ‘overcoming’ the capitalist division of labour (where unequal labours are mutually conditioned in the exchange-value of commodities), fascism (re)specifies the limits of heterogeneity constituting the unity of the people (Laclau 2005), disciplining sense perception through affective communication while determining which kinds of identity can legitimately be reproduced in a given system of social relations. MAINSTREAMING FASCISM The production of homogeneity thus plays a critical role in right-wing discourse, given the reifying logic of capitalism in which all social relations can be exchanged equally as commodities. As Desai notes, cultural nationalism is a nationalism ‘shorn of its civic-egalitarian’ emphasis, which ‘gives coherence to, and legitimises, the activities of the nation-state on behalf of capital, or sections thereof, in the international sphere. . . . Neoliberalism cannot perform this role since its simplicities make it harsh not just towards the lower orders, but give it the potential for damaging politically important interests among capitalists themselves’ (Desai 2006: 231). As a populist undercurrent in right-wing neoliberal discourse, the radical right identifies opportunities and articulates antagonisms which allow it to initiate debate on politically sensitive issues (Hervik 2006). Kitschelt (1995) maintains that the closer the moderate right is to the political centre, the greater the opportunities for the radical right to increase its parliamentary representation; where neo-nationalists are more strongly represented in conservative parties, as in Britain, the space for radical-right populism is reduced, whereas in countries where there is less to distinguish the main parties, such as France and Austria, opportunities for the populist right increase, leading centrists to adapt their ideology to compete more effectively. As a rule, moderate right-wing parties respond pragmatically to the rhetoric of the

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radical right, while radical-right parties adapt their rhetoric to market discourse if they wish to escape the ghetto of protest politics that characterizes many right-wing populist parties in Germany and the UK (Copsey 2004; cf. Klein & Simon 2006). By mainstreaming fascism, radical-right parties function as outriders, placing authoritarian demands on the agenda by identifying ‘niches’ between the position of marginal voters and the position of politicians on issues ranging from immigration to the family (Rydgren 2006; Norris 2005). Policies advocated by the radical right are, in turn, co-opted by right-wing neoliberals to protect their flank against competitors in national and local elections. Translating right-populist demands into ‘pragmatic’ policies which then serve to marginalize the centre left (and the radical right) electorally, right-wing neoliberals concede opportunities for indirect influence while monopolizing executive power. Butterwege (1998) argues that a mutuality of interests exists between the neoliberal and the populist right based on three narratives: (i) defence of native identities against cosmopolitanism; (ii) tax populism (opposition to welfare progressive taxation as fiscally imprudent and/or harmful to the family); and (iii) new forms of economic racism which dispense with liberal humanitarian citizenship discourse in favour of entrepreneurialism, selfreliance and production of value (cf. Hedetoft 2004). Though distinct from cultural racism, economic racism, as a neoliberal technology of power, is a cipher for processing humans according to market utility, a concept founded on the ‘basest nationalism’ (Cohen 2006). For the domestic audience, official immigration discourse constitutes a ‘technology of anti-citizenship’ in which migrants become a burden unless they possess or produce ‘value’; to avoid being a burden (and thus an object of resentment for the ruined middle class), migrants must adapt to the ethic of self-reliance embodied in the shift towards ‘prudentialism’ (Kaya 2009: 25). On the other hand, official discourse excuses the West from responsibility for the reality of migration: ‘nowhere in the official programmes of anti-illegal immigration appear the complex histories of Fortress Europe’s economic, geopolitical, colonial entanglement in the regions . . . it now designates as “countries of transit” and “countries of origin”. Instead, we are presented with an external force of “illegal immigration”, rooted in regional disorder, for which the EU is then positioned as a benign framework of protection and prevention’ (Kaya 2009: 9). The role of the West in fomenting disorder in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria is set aside to preserve the liberal-imperialist ideal of ‘humanitarian intervention’ which conceals the de facto persistence of the founding myth of European sovereign right as a new ‘nomos of the earth’.8 Mars defines the discursive logic of the populist right as a product of ‘bitterness generated by success.’ The ‘white man’, he notes, ‘has begun the battle for privileges of the rich global north’ (Mars 2011: 6). This point is highly apposite, but, to conclude our analysis, it is necessary to differentiate between patterns of ideological development in the core economies of northern Europe, the semiperipheral economies of southern Europe and the

Radical Right Discourse Contra State-Based Authoritarian Populism 29 peripheral post-Communist economies of eastern Europe, each of which possess their own historical traditions of right-wing politics. If the political success of the right can be measured more effectively by its capacity to mainstream fascism (projecting their message beyond grassroots subcultures which reject democracy out of hand) than in its quantitative performance in national and regional elections, then it is clear that the contagion of rightwing populism may be far more serious than political scientists realize. To demonstrate this, three examples of the appreciating currency of exclusionist discourse can be cited, namely the UK, (a core capitalist state), Greece (a dependent comprador state), and Hungary (a peripheral post-Communist economy). The UK, Hungary and Greece occupy distinct locations in the transnational capitalist hierarchy, but a common theme characterizes rightwing discourse in each, namely exclusionary populism, which Betz defines as a ‘restrictive notion of citizenship, which holds that genuine democracy is based on a culturally, if not ethnically, homogeneous community; that only long-standing citizens are full members of civil society; and that society’s benefits should only accrue to those who have made a substantial contribution to it’ (2001: 393). Support for the radical right in Britain has grown steadily since the 1990s and is centred on three main political groups: the UK Independence Party (UKIP), the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL). UKIP emerged from the remains of the UK Referendum Party and claims to be a nonracist right-wing libertarian party dedicated to the preservation of UK sovereignty, reduced income tax, increased spending on defence, harsher sentencing policies and repeal of the Human Rights Act.9 Although the party campaigns on serious policy issues, its aim is to win over right-wing conservative voters disillusioned with the pragmatism of the Conservatives, and UKIP won almost a million votes in the 2010 election. The BNP, on the other hand, is a viewed by most commentators as a protest party, which retains a hard core of support in and around London and the Midlands, as well as in towns in the north, where working-class voters are disenfranchised by the two main parties as they compete for support in the affluent areas of London and the southeast. As a white-nationalist party, the BNP grew out of the struggles for control of the old National Front, which had risen to prominence in the economic crisis of the 1970s, gaining popularity for its opposition to Asian immigration. The party won a halfmillion votes in the 2010 general election, but these votes (like the votes for UKIP) failed to produce any seats in Parliament due to disproportionalities caused by the single-member plurality voting system used in UK elections. Finally, the EDL came to prominence in 2009 as a protest movement in two small towns near London, where the four Muslim suicide bombers allegedly responsible for the London bombings of 2005 embarked on their mission. Although the original leadership of the group is disputed (the far right in the UK is notorious for factionalism), the figure who initiated protests against Muslims (who were themselves protesting the killing of Afghan civilians by

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the soldiers of the British Royal Anglian Regiment) was Paul Ray, who has since accused others of discrediting his ‘counter-jihad’ movement.10 Some observers take the EDL very seriously, believing it represents a constituency of people keen to ‘register more general discontent with mainstream politics’ (Jackson 2011: 5). Jackson notes correctly that the movement uses traditionally English principles such as tolerance and democracy as markers of identity to discredit non-Western ideological values such as religious orthodoxy, patriarchy and devotion to nonsecular authority. For others, the EDL is a front organization created by the intelligence services to divert naïve far-right activists from more dangerous activities and to undermine the BNP as a viable electoral choice for middle-class voters.11 Still others have identified the wealthy backers of the group, which stands accused of having links with the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik and with rightwing parties in Europe like the Sweden Democrats.12 In contrast with the numerous splinter groups of the radical right that appeal only to grass-roots activists rather than to the wider electorate, these organizations find support among a diverse cross-section of society alarmed at the ‘threat’ posed to society by Islam, by the acceleration of European integration, by the failure of the political class to support ‘British’ families and by the threat posed to local communities by globalization. Whereas British fascism in the 1930s can be understood as a legacy of social imperialism, an extra-parliamentary means for integrating a newly mobilized population resistant to socialism, radical-right populism in the present era fulfils a new function, namely to reassert the ‘irreconcilability of the political’ against the postpolitical consensus of neoliberal capitalism. A democracy deficit has arisen in capitalist economies like the UK and France that is based on a belief that participation in the democratic process is futile. Yet, despite the constant emphasis on ‘liberty’ and ‘democracy’ in the rhetoric of the radical right, the real target of the ‘new far right’ is state multiculturalism, an idea supported by right-wing neoliberals such as David Cameron, who declared at an international conference on security in February 2011 that ‘we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and [a] much more active, muscular liberalism’ (Hoskin 2011). To understand this statement, it is important to see it in its theoretical context, that is, as a refutation of the multiculturalist demand for recognition and a rejection of liberal neutrality. Although the liberal demand for state neutrality in Western political theory ignores the ways in which hegemonic groups in the West have used the state to promote specific identities at the expense of minority cultures (and the fallacious view that the secular values of liberalism can be detached from the cultural values of Western society), it at least recognized that the state possesses the capacity to promote recognition and that a denial of rights to those belonging to minority cultures not only undermines their self-respect but prevents them from achieving moral autonomy as equal citizens. By adopting a ‘muscular liberalism’, Cameron’s undeclared neoconservative aim is to vocalize, in nonracist language, the right of the state to determine which kinds of identity have the right to be reproduced.

Radical Right Discourse Contra State-Based Authoritarian Populism 31 Yet the increasing acceptability of Islamophobia (in contrast with the 1970s) and the tendency of many British citizens to take seriously liberalimperialist narratives of ‘humanitarian intervention’ are indirectly fuelling support for groups like the EDL, whose paranoid warnings of ‘Islamization’ serve a more prosaic function, namely to mobilize voters against progressive left-democratic politics at a time of deep economic and cultural uncertainty. For neoconservatives and radical-right commentators, the important point is to use political Islamism as a means for legitimizing the concept ‘domestic extremism’ as a threat to the alignment of identity and security of the British state realized through the chauvinistic delegitimation of cultural alterity and uninterrupted consumption. In his apocalyptic novel Kingdom Come, J. G. Ballard highlighted the ugly combination of chauvinism and consumerism in English culture which thrives on ‘mass sentimentality, compounded of anger, fear, resentment and self-pity [rather than] the customary politics of decency, pragmatism, property and reason’ (Holliday 2010: 14). The mass mobilization of emotion acts as a ‘brake’ on political progress, reinforcing the status quo through the fetishization of hegemonic societal identities. Yet ‘Englishness’ increasingly appears as an ‘epigone’—an eviscerated identity reproduced through sporting rivalry, militarism and memories of empire. This reflects a deep postimperial melancholia, where neither ‘homogeneity nor the antipathy towards immigrants and strangers who represent the involution of national culture can be separated from that underlying hunger for reorientation. Turning back in this direction is also a turning away from the perceived dangers of pluralism and from the irreversible fact of multiculture’ (Gilroy 2004: 97). As right-wing reaction to the civil disorder in London in August 2011 shows, the potential for right-wing mobilization intensifies at precisely those junctures where welfare-capitalist politics are overtaken by a discourse of security and authority: cultural racism against the victims/perpetrators of violence in the Afro-Caribbean community of London was rearticulated in economic terms as ‘class racism’, directed against a ‘feckless underclass’. As the UK Socialist Equality Party warned, however, there was more than a whiff of fascism in the repeated appeals to ‘property owners’ and ‘respectable citizens’ to ‘take back the streets’ from those described as ‘feral rats’. . . . Max Hastings described youth involved in the disturbances as ‘wild beasts’ who ‘respond only to instinctive animal impulses.’ In the early nineteenth century . . ., ‘spasmodic outbreaks of violence’ by the ‘underclass’ were dealt with ‘by force and draconian legal sanctions, foremost among them capital punishment and transportation to the colonies. (SEP 2011) Although unrest had been predicted if the Conservatives forced through austerity policies (Younge 2011) and although much of the disorder was opportunistic, the right was quick to identify ‘moral collapse’ among the underclass as the cause of the disturbances, fuelling a knee-jerk response

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for tougher policing, economic penalties in addition to legal sanctions and even ‘lawful vigilantism’. The rioting provided a pretext for training soldiers from the Third Battalion of the Parachute Regiment for future deployment in London, to support the police in maintaining order (Rayment 2012). It also provided an opportunity for EDL members to claim political capital as de facto defenders of property by mobilizing its supporters to patrol residential streets against troublemakers (Jackson 2011). A more disturbing example of this phenomenon is taking place in Greece, a peripheral state in the EU transformed by globalization and the current crisis of neoliberalism, which has acquired features more typical of a metropolitan state (Michael-Matsas 2010). Since independence, Greece has served as a client state of Western capital, and, following the collapse of the fascist dictatorship, in 1944, the United States has repeatedly intervened in defence of right-wing and monarchist interests. As in Latin America, the Greek security services were modelled on the CIA, and although the United States supported democracy in public, the ‘measures adopted to produce a westerntype political environment were certainly not democratic’ (Kassimeris 2009: 684). On the contrary, the elite in Athens was maintained through a series of clientelistic political mobilizations of the right supportive of NATO against the rising influence of the left (Pappas 1999: 69–70), which increased its support as a result of the failure of a rapidly urbanizing population to benefit from economic growth (ibid.: 688). The crisis that erupted in 1964 over the right of the government to exercise control over the armed forces created tensions between the liberal elite and the military, leading to a declaration of martial law in 1967. Although the dictatorship lacked ideological purpose, as in Latin America the justification for military rule was anticommunism, and the colonels made use of neoconservative rhetoric to legitimize their repression of democracy. Unlike in Portugal, however, the collapse of the regime in 1974 was caused not by mobilization within the armed forces but by divisions in the junta over liberalization. Democracy was re-established not by ‘revolution, not a riot, not a strike—no mass movement—nothing inevitable like the Polytechnic [uprising of 1973]: just a noiseless and discreet withdrawal by those directly responsible’ (Panourgiá 2009: 151). Greece has entered its most dangerous political crisis since 1974, and, while attention has been focused on the issue of debt, the civil disturbances which have gripped Athens since 2008 must be understood in their correct social and economic-historical context. In language familiar to media editors in the UK, the violence on the streets of Athens has been portrayed by Greek media as a ‘revolt of youth’,13 rather than as a class mobilization in response to the failed liberalization of the Greek economy and the false economic security created by Greece’s ill-advised decision to join the Single Currency in 2000, which provided the necessary guarantees for the country to export jobs and capital to neighbouring countries and to increase its national debt to unsustainable levels. From 2004 to 2009, the right-wing New Democracy government liberalized the Greek economy using a ‘free

Radical Right Discourse Contra State-Based Authoritarian Populism 33 economy and strong state’ model combining authoritarian-populism and debt-fuelled consumption, while using the state to generate employment and the 2004 Olympic Games to boost national sentiment.14 Yet, until recently, the success of ‘Balkan Thatcherism’ in Greece was limited, as the right was unable to introduce welfare reforms in the face of mass opposition. After the fall, in 2011, of George Papandreou, who dared to impose higher taxes on the elite and defy the EU, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank by promising a referendum on the first EU bailout, the ‘government of national unity’ has pushed through wage freezes, nationalizations and cuts to social spending unimaginable without external pressure from the global financial community or a return to martial law. The main consequence of these developments has been a growing polarization of Greek society between the generation which benefited from liberalization and the ‘lost generation’ of today, between workers and capitalists and between workers and union leaders co-opted into the power structure whose aim is to limit radicalization and to prevent young people switching their allegiance from PASOK to the Communist Party (KKE) and to the Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA). Greek society is facing potential collapse, as the state parties argue over how to accommodate the demands of the EU while deflecting intense popular anger at the corruption and incompetence of the elite. With the collapse in support for PASOK, the unity government of November 2011 was formed only with the help of the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), a neo-fascist party formed by Yiorgos Karatzaferis, who was expelled from New Democracy in 2000 and who campaigns on a platform to ‘preserve the current . . . population ratio of citizens of Greek descent in Greece’, to unify the Greek minority in Albania (Epirus) with the Greek state (Papachliminitzos 2011) and to reaffirm the homogeneity of the Greek people. Although inflammatory language is not uncommon in Greece (the leader of New Democracy, Antonis Samaras, makes incendiary comments about the Republic of Macedonia to bolster his populist image), it does little to address the social origins of the country’s collapse as Greeks are forced to pay for the insolvency of a financial system which (as in Argentina in 2001–02) can be resolved only by unilaterally defaulting and introducing a new sovereign currency. As the social crisis deepens, with a growing salience of nationalist rhetoric in debates, an opening is emerging for the populist right to exert greater influence over the course of events. LAOS is determined to blame Germany for trying to dominate the peripheral economies of southern Europe, demanding the introduction of laws to stem the flow of migrants into Greece (an easy point of entry into the EU) and to prevent non-Greeks from acquiring citizenship. Immigration from Albania and Bulgaria is a controversial issue in the country, even if most Greeks remain reluctant to define citizenship in a purely ethnic sense (Kalaitzidis 2010). Yet the crisis reveals a mutuality of interests between the centre-right and the populist right, and the participation of LAOS in the transitional unity government (until February 2012) was purchased with a promise to deny

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citizenship to non-native Greeks (Granitsas 2011; Elgot 2011; Weinberg 2011). The oscillation of the Greek political system between democracy and dictatorship during the past sixty years has parallels with developments in other peripheral European economies, notably Hungary, a culturally isolated nation which lurched violently from authoritarian capitalism to fascism to communism between 1918 and 1989. Like other transitional states in eastern Europe, Hungary adapted to the ‘institutionalization of relations between the Centre of the World System and the post-communist periphery . . . in the hope of achieving dependent development and the rapid, spontaneous emergence of the institutional and cultural fabric that constitutes the foundation for contractual civilization and institutional strategy (Staniszkis 1999: 103). Following a policy of ‘shock therapy’ recommended by Western banks, Hungary abandoned hybrid ownership, opting for rapid privatization of state enterprises, derestriction of exchange controls and deregulation of investment, leading up to EU accession in 2004. Having briefly regained its sovereignty, the state was absorbed into the framework of neoliberal global capitalism, which has effectively excluded traditional political actors from exercising public control over the process of transition, leading to the ‘depoliticization and technocratization of decisions [. . . and] privatization of certain components of the state’ (ibid.: 116). Hungary’s accession to the EU and its reintegration into the capitalist world system triggered an economic and political crisis which is becoming apparent as the neo-bourgeois state elite strives to balance the technocratic rules of European supranational governance against nationalist demands for withdrawal from the EU (Than 2012). The increasingly bitter polarization in Hungarian politics between support for and rejection of transnational capitalism has led to growing support for the radical right and open displays of right-wing paramilitarism and racism (Vago 2009; Fabry 2010). This polarization has its roots in the commemorative events of 2005–06, held to mark the fiftieth anniversary of 1956. The centre right and the radical right both used the opportunity of the commemoration to accuse the Socialists (MSZP) of being ‘crypto-communists’ in the service of ‘Jewish capital’, sentiments which hardened as the crisis destroyed the value of the Forint (making it harder for ordinary people to repay mortgages to foreign banks) and as the fiscal crisis increased the costs of servicing the national debt. Like Greece, Hungary was forced to accept a humiliating IMF rescue package to prevent the state from defaulting, leading the radical right to demand that Hungary free itself from ‘subjugation’ by financial capital (‘the tanks have gone, the banks have come!’) and to address the demographic ‘imbalance’ caused by the declining birth rate of the Magyar population and the rising birth-rate of ‘criminal’ Roma communities (Follath 2010). After 1989, the agenda of the far right in Hungary was dominated by territorial disputes, which had been frozen under state socialism. This issue held particular resonance for Hungary, which lost territories to Slovakia,

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Romania and Yugoslavia at Trianon and which pursued irredentist claims during the fascist era and again after the collapse of communism. As Mareš points out, irredentist claims were not proclaimed exclusively by the radical right but were also put forth by established parties that ‘under the pressure of Europeanization openly declared territorial demands transferred mainly into the extreme right-wing part of the political spectrum’ (2009: 95). Hungary, he argues, is one of the most striking examples of this phenomenon, where the irredentist claims and the racial-identitarian rhetoric of right-wing movements like Jobbik and Magyar Gárda have filtered into mainstream discourse and gained popular acceptance. In the 2010 elections, Jobbik received 17 per cent of the vote in the first round (850,000 votes), increasing its support by citing Roma and Jews as reasons for the country’s economic plight. Like the EDL in England and LAOS in Greece, Jobbik claims to offer an alternative to corrupt ‘politics as usual’, articulating the unspoken cultural and political convictions of Magyar society. Without doubt, the Hungarian radical right has shown itself capable of building a mass base and challenging the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence (Fabry 2010), as the ugly events in Gyöngyöspata in 2011 clearly demonstrate.15 Yet the real significance of the radical right lies less in the triumphalism and rhetoric of Gábor Vona or István Csurka than in the speed with which nationalist, anti-Trianon, antisemitic and anti-Roma sentiment has permeated the mainstream. As one commentator notes, although Jobbik and Fidesz [the ruling conservative party] have denied having any direct political ties, they both share the same disgust for the previous socialist government and for liberal intellectuals. Jobbik’s insidious role is reflected in its parliamentary support for any government policies that reaffirm identity politics. . . . The government may find Jobbik’s support to be convenient, but this could prove a deadly weapon against democracy, since the parliamentary representatives of Jobbik are always pushing for the adoption of even more extremist policies. (Dinescu 2011: 2) Fidesz, adds Dinescu, contains several leaders who are themselves notorious for right-wing agitation and who regularly call for censorship of the media, mindful of the unpopularity of the government’s austerity policies. In effect, the Fidesz leadership around the prime minister, Viktor Orban, is using authoritarian-nationalist discourse to stem its waning support among middle-class voters who have abandoned the MSZP and who are now increasingly attracted by Jobbik’s populist anticapitalist rhetoric. CONCLUSION In a period of economic crisis and growing political conflict, there are fewer constraints on the rise of the radical right as neoliberalism erodes the

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democratic framework of national politics, producing anxiety, uncertainty and violence against the state. The radical right opposes elitism, yet defends the hierarchy of material incentives and culturally specific commodities which define the symbolic order of late capitalism in particular local contexts. Right-wing populism is conservative in defence of identity but radical in defence of economic freedom, defending structured inequality and culturally specific distributions of power in a ‘fortress state’ closed to multiculturalism. The aim is to restore the ‘natural’, ‘taken-for-granted’ functioning of equivalent exchange and received identity via a reassertion of property rights, privatized authority and fetishized consumption against the levelling force of democracy. There is thus a link connecting tax populism, nationalism and racism, evidenced by the neoconservative view that shared values between individuals with the same culture or ethnicity promote social stability and reduce the risk and the transaction costs of exchange. As Wintrobe argues, the political economy of nationalist exclusion is what ‘makes it so attractive from the point of view of a rational individual or ethnic group (if not necessarily that of society). In economic terms, ethnic groups may be said to have a peculiar and unique quality, which is that entry into and, to some extent, exit from them is blocked’ (2006: 200). The discursive logic of right-wing populism thus lies in the fetishized identity-driven consumption of communities whose priority is to preserve the taken-for-granted nature of identity and exchange organized through the commodity-form. This nexus between neoconservatism and neoliberalism is constitutive of fascism; it disarticulates opposition to the hegemonic narrative of globalization while reproducing in specific national contexts relations of authority and exclusion upon which globalization depends. It is for this reason that fascism is linked to the capital relation itself and cannot be overcome without addressing the expansion of the value-form as the structuring principle of capitalist society. NOTES 1. In contrast with critical theorists like Lukács, who connected the compulsive and irrational discourse of fascist decadence to the deautonomization of cultural production in the European avant-garde and the aesthetic reconstruction of subjectivity in politics. On the question of fascism and modernity, see Woodley (2010), chapter 2. 2. See, for example, Hedges’s (2007) study of ultra-conservative Christian fundamentalism in the United States. 3. The myth of a cordon sanitaire between the New Right and the far right was, of course, destroyed in practice by the admission of the FPÖ into the Austrian federal government coalition in 2000. 4. See Cutler (2011). ‘Synarchy’ is poststatist form of co-governance. In its classic elitist formulation, it entails an ‘aristocracy of purpose’, a closed, informal and hierarchical system of ‘guardianship’. Chryssochoou defines ‘organized synarchy’ in the EU as ‘a general system of shared rule among highly interdependent states and citizens that escapes the classical categories of political

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5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

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authority, resting instead on the dialectical fusion of segmental autonomy and collective policy formation’ (2009: 131). Here it might be useful to recall Betz’s (1994) distinction between the neoliberalpopulist right and and the national-populist right, whose reactions to the crisis are conditioned by their relative adaptation to market ideology. This can be seen in the distinction between Austria, where the FPÖ/BVÖ support economic liberalism, and Hungary where the Movements for a Better Hungary (Jobbik) has gained support by criticizing Hungary’s reintegration into the global economy (Day 2012). See Aly (2005), who examines how planners in the Third Reich channelled funds from imperial plunder directly into social spending designed to increase the popular legitimacy of the Hitler regime. See Veblen’s (1923) classic analysis of absentee ownership and corporate capitalism. On the relevance of Carl Schmitt for discussions of neo-imperialism, see Zolo (2007). See the UKIP website for details (http://ukip.org/content/ukip-policies). See Paul Ray’s blog ‘Lionheart’ (http://lionheartuk.blogspot.com) for an example of the ultra-patriotic social attitudes of EDL members. See Mouze (2010). EDL members are subject to intensive surveillance by the UK National Public Order Intelligence Unit, which infiltrates all radical organizations with informers posing as genuine activists. In some cases, these informers are accused of ‘steering’ the groups in question into illegal activities which are then used as grounds for prosecution. The increased media profile of the EDL around the time of the May 2010 election raised suspicions that it was being used to generate negative publicity for the far right in general and the BNP in particular. See Gadher and Henry (2011). For an analysis of EDL ideology, see Jones (2011). On the leadership and organization of the EDL, see Lowles (2011). Amid the chaos, the Greek and international media have downplayed the role of far-right groups in ‘defending’ neighbourhoods against troublemakers and migrant workers and the use of right-wing civilian auxiliaries to turn legitimate peaceful mass protest into violent disorder by provoking the police with staged attacks. As Panourgiá (2009: 155) notes, the Greek government used the Olympics to justify a further extension of police powers to satisfy US concerns. As the UK prepared for the 2012 Games, the United States expressed similar concerns about the deficiencies of security planning by the British government, allowing it to station hundreds of its own armed operatives in London. Jobbik activists descended on the town of Gyöngyöspata to ‘impose discipline’ on the local Roma population, openly challenging the rule of law. The intention was to force Roma families to evacuate the area and to replace the local mayor with a Jobbik official.

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Italian Postwar Neo-Fascism Three Paths, One Mission? Tamir Bar-On

With the defeats of the Italian Fascist regime in 1943 and the short-lived, pro-Nazi Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale Italiana—RSI) in 1945, it was assumed that fascism had died in the post-World War II period. Despite the horrors associated with Fascism in Italy, announcements of fascism’s death were premature because fascism was simultaneously an ideology, a movement, and a political party in power (Payne, 1995; BarOn, 2007). In postwar Italy, three main neo-fascist tendencies emerged, but all initially desired the collapse of liberal democracy. The first was the creation of political parties such as the Italian Social Movement (MSI— Movimento Sociale Italiano), which garnered around 5 to 8 per cent of the popular vote from the late 1940s until the 1980s. A second, more radical tendency included extra-parliamentary outfits such as New Order (Ordino Nuovo–ON) and National Vanguard (Avanguardia Nazionale— AN), which were involved in the infamous ‘strategy of tension’ from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. A third neo-fascist tendency, which emerged in the mid-1970s and was influenced by the ideas of the French Nouvelle Droite (ND—New Right), took a metapolitical path by seeking to win hearts and minds as a prelude to the destruction of liberal democracy throughout Europe (Bar-On, 2007; Woods, 2007). The ND sought to extend the pan-Europeanist thrust of the European Social Movement and Jeune Europe, which included the participation of neo-fascists from Italy and numerous European countries (Mammone, 2008, 2009; Bar-On, 2011). This essay focuses on the three aforementioned neo-fascist or revolutionary right-wing political tendencies, while examining continuity and change in Italian neo-fascism from 1945 until today. Recent developments in Italian neo-fascism such as the dissolution of the Italian Social Movement, the birth of the ‘post-fascist’ National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale—AN), in 1995, the participation of neo-fascists in conservative national coalition governments, and the re-emergence of die-hard neo-fascist movements and parties such as New Force (Forza Nuova—FN) are also explored. The essay asks the question whether Italian fascism pursued three different paths, but with a shared mission to undermine or destroy liberal democracy?

Italian Postwar Neo-Fascism 43 REVOLUTIONARY RIGHT-WING POLITICS Let me begin by clarifying what I mean by ‘revolutionary right-wing’ because all the political tendencies highlighted in this essay originate from the revolutionary right-wing milieu, but not all are necessarily fascist or perhaps even revolutionary right-wing today. So, for example, the MSI was clearly a neo-fascist parliamentary outfit under its leader and founder, Giorgio Almirante (1914–1988). Almirante served in the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 1948 until his death, in 1988. The former MSI leader was named Chief of Cabinet of the Minister of Culture in 1944 under the pro-Nazi RSI. Moreover, Almirante played the double game of the ‘cudgel and doublebreasted suit’ as the MSI leader in the 1960s and 1970s. On the one hand, he sought to cultivate an image of a party that was respectable, moderate, and willing to play by the legal rules of the parliamentary game. On the other hand, Almirante maintained ties with extra-parliamentary terrorist outfits of a neo-fascist persuasion such as ON, which utilized a ‘strategy of tension’ in order to undermine liberal democracy. This double game was the stock in trade of ‘movement fascism’ (Ledeen, 1972) from 1919 until the March on Rome in 1922 and even after with the murder of the Socialist politician Giacomo Matteoti in 1924. While the MSI under Almirante had lingering nostalgia for Italian Fascism and the RSI, its successor, the AN, charted a ‘post-fascist’ path. One expert on the extreme right-wing and neo-fascist milieux wrote the following about the MSI’s political trajectory: “Alleanza nazionale represents an intriguing case of evolution from die-hard neo-fascism to post-fascism and even away from extremism” (Ignazi, 2006, 255). Under its new leader, Gianfranco Fini, the AN entered Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right governments in 1994 and 2001; Fini headed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as deputy prime minister apologized for the ‘absolute evil’ of the ‘infamous’ Fascist race laws while in Israel in 2003. Yet, Fini’s positions were not necessarily approved by the rank and file of the AN, which still displayed an affinity for Benito Mussolini and the Fascist past (Luconi, 2009, 22). In addition, it was reported that after Fini’s historic declaration in Israel, the AN leader “sent members of Alleanza Nazionale a confidential letter stating that the meaning of words changes according to the place where they are uttered” (Luconi, 2009, 22). In short, there is still some debate about whether the AN, which merged with the ruling liberal-conservative Forza Italia (Forward Italy—FI) party in 2009 to create Il Popolo della Libertà (The People of Freedom—PdL), retains lingering neo-fascist residues among leaders and supporters. In this respect, one might ask why the AN retains an openly neo-fascist party, the MSI, under its logo. It is indeed odd that a party that now claims to be ‘post-fascist’ retains the old fascist symbolism of the MSI, the tricolor flame. In addition, Fini has refused to openly reject his party’s historical bonds with the pro-Nazi RSI, claiming that such a rejection was implicit in

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the 1995 Fiuggi Congress motion that condemned all forms of totalitarianism (Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, 1997–1998). With this in mind, by ‘revolutionary right-wing’ I mean the following: (1) individuals and movements that subjectively identify themselves more with the right than with the left; (2) individuals and movements that can be objectively situated on the right (inequality) more than on the left (equality) on the basis of Norberto Bobbio’s (1996) right-left classification; (3) individuals and movements that aim for a revolution, or what Eric Hobsbawm (2007, 269) calls “a wholesale political change in which men are conscious of introducing an entirely new epoch in human history.” Revolution “comes from the Latin word revolutio, meaning a turn around” (Bar-On, 2010, 7). A revolution is a radical change of the existing political, economic, social, cultural and institutional frameworks of a society and state. According to Hannah Arendt (1963, 21–58), modern revolutions re-create longings conceived in the ancient Greek polis (city-state) in which citizens have “the right and possibility of participating actively in the affairs of the common-wealth” (Hobsbawm, 2007, 271). For Arendt (1963, 28), the modern notion of revolution was unknown before the late 18thcentury liberal revolutions and implies that “the course of history suddenly begins anew.” Moreover, revolutions can be violent or semiviolent, such as the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 or the Fascist Revolution in Italy in 1922. Revolutions can also be ‘nonviolent’, as with the ‘Quiet Revolution’ in Québec (Canada) from roughly 1960 to 1966, corresponding to the tenure of the Liberal Québec premier Jean Lesage. The ‘Quiet Revolution’ represented a nonviolent revolution in state and societal institutions and mentalities, a turn away from the rural and clerical authoritarianism of the past and a shift towards modernization, industrialization, secularization, civil rights, nationalist assertiveness and state involvement in the economy (Thomson, 1984). While we often equate revolutions with violence, Arendt (1963, 18) posits, “To be sure, not even wars, let alone revolutions, are ever completely determined by violence.” At the outset, I pointed out that postwar Italian neo-fascism took three different paths. One path was metapolitical and was influenced by the ideas of the French ND. With French and Italian ND intellectuals in mind, I propose a broader understanding of revolutions beyond the violent models of 1789 (the French Revolution) or 1917 (the Bolshevik Revolution). One can “examine long-term revolutionary processes with no precise dates, which nonetheless engender profound and radical changes in society, its institutions, and its dominant values” (Bar-On, 2010, 7). Contemporary ND thinkers search for their own ‘Quiet Revolution’ on the European continent, a ‘nonviolent’ revolution against liberalism and multiculturalism that will arise through the triumph of its cultural values in the political realm and the emergence of “an entirely new epoch in human history.” More than

Italian Postwar Neo-Fascism 45 40 years after its foundation in 1968, the failed revolutionary movement of May 1968 in France is still viewed by ND thinkers as inspirational because it was largely nonviolent and because it demonstrated that “revolution in an advanced industrial country was possible in the conditions of peace, prosperity, and apparent political stability” (Hobsbawm, 2007, 307). It should be noted that the Italian Nuova Destra (ND—New Right) was formed in 1974 after contacts were established with the French ND (BarOn, 2007, 144–45). Marco Tarchi, the head of the Italian ND, was heavily influenced by the ideas of Alain de Benoist, the leading French ND theoretician. Furthermore, if we follow the metapolitical argument I have presented about the French ND, it is possible to view that the Italian ND and the MSI-AN as political movements and parties with a revolutionary right-wing orientation in the context of decidedly ‘anti-fascist’ times. In short, even participation in national coalition governments can be interpreted not as respect for liberal democracy but as a tactical manoeuvre designed to infiltrate power centres in the state and in civil society. Moreover, despite the ND’s nonviolent metapolitical orientation and ‘opening to the left’ and ‘direct democracy’ in the 1980s and 1990s, this did not stop the ND leader, Alain de Benoist, from promoting, valorising, and legitimizing French fascists such as Drieu de la Rochelle or German authors who were conservative revolutionaries but with a pro-Nazi bent, such as Oswald Spengler and Carl Schmitt. THREE DIFFERENT PATHS At this juncture, I trace the three distinctive paths of the Italian neo-fascist or revolutionary right-wing milieux after World War II. Three distinctive paths emerged for nostalgic Italian fascists after World War II: (1) parliamentary neo-fascism (e.g. the MSI-AN); (2) extra-parliamentary neofascism (e.g. AN and ON); and (3) metapolitical neo-fascism (e.g. the Italian and French ND). I argue that paths 1 and 3 were most successful in terms of influencing civil society and the highest sectors of the state, while path 2 led to the delegitimization of neo-fascism precisely because the violence of the ‘strategy of tension’ reminded Italians in smaller measure of the horrible violence of the interwar years and Italian Fascism. Path 1 was most significant because it attained de facto political power. Path 1 under the MSI banner could attain only about 4 to 8 per cent of the popular vote in Italian elections until its electoral breakthroughs in the 1990s. Path 2 was marginalized by its violent excesses, although some former supporters of path 2, such as Gianni Alemanno, the mayor of Rome, gave up official support for violence to join path 1. It is more difficult to ascertain the impact of path 3 because it is hard to measure impact on civil society, but it is certain that the French and Italian ND reflected a cultural climate that increasingly became more antiliberal and anti-immigrant in the 1980s and 1990s.

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When Fascism finally died (or so we thought) in 1945 with the defeat of Nazism and the demise of the radicalized philo-Nazi fascism of the RSI, its legacy of antisemitic race laws, repression of political dissidents, militaristic colonialism and totalitarian state control crashed like a house of cards. As the Italian political historian Norberto Bobbio (1996, 10–11) argued, the legitimacy of Fascism was so tainted after the war that the ‘pole star’ of the left rose so high in the post–World War II era that it was impossible to imagine fascism ever returning. However, the impossible has occurred; neo-fascists have made a dramatic comeback in Europe. In order to understand neofascism’s revival, we must understand how established conservative political parties such as Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s FI and later PdL colluded with neo-fascists in rising to power. That is, they accepted neo-fascist parties like the MSI and the extreme-right, anti-immigrant Northern League (Lega Nord—LN) as coalition partners, as far back as 1994 and twice (2001 and 2008) in the new century. In addition, contemporary neo-fascists had plenty of ‘cosmetic surgery’ in the postwar era in order to hide the pockmarks of the past. Postwar neo-fascists called themselves ‘post-fascists’ after the overtly neo-fascist MSI was dissolved in 1995 and replaced by the AN. The breakthrough for neo-fascists came in 1994. Until then, no Italian political party would cooperate in coalition governments with the neo-fascist MSI. The taboo regarding cooperation with neo-fascists ended in 1994. Italy, the land which first gave the world Fascism, was the first government in Europe after World War II to welcome fascists or former fascists into government. On the heels of disdain for the ruling Christian Democrats and corruption scandals implicating most of the established parties, Silvio Berlusconi, the right-wing media magnate and AC Milan owner turned prime minister, came to power under the FI banner in 1994. Berlusconi broke the fascism taboo and invited the MSI to join its national coalition along with the federalist, anti-immigrant LN. Italy’s politics was turning right, both in terms of Berlusconi’s penchant for neo-liberalism and under the weight of the neo-fascist and extreme right-wing coalition partners. The MSI’s former leader, Giorgio Almirante, played the double game of legality and illegality, which was crucial for ‘movement fascism’, or revolutionary, noninstitutionalized fascism before its rise to official power in 1922 (Ledeen, 1972). Almirante’s strategy was dubbed the ‘cudgel and double breasted-suit’. That is, Almirante straddled what I have called paths 1 and 2 of Italian neo-fascism. Almirante cultivated ties to the neo-fascist diehards in the party, including indirect support to neo-fascist terrorists in the late 1960s and 1970s during the infamous ‘strategy of tension’. His aforementioned strategy yielded modest results, reaching a high mark of around 8 per cent of the popular vote in the 1972 Italian elections. Yet, Almirante was also grooming Gianfranco Fini, the future MSI leader, by moving the party away from fascist symbolism as early as 1970 and declaring his support for the democratic system. This strategy would reap its harvest with Berlusconi’s stunning coalition invitation to the MSI in 1994.

Italian Postwar Neo-Fascism 47 After Berlusconi swept the right to power for the first time in 34 years in 1994, he was unceremoniously ousted from power after a short sevenmonth stint in office due to disagreements with coalition partners, particularly the leader of the LN, Umberto Bossi. Bossi sought to separate northern Italy from the rest of the country or, at minimum, to give the north regional autonomy along federalist lines. From 1996 to 2001, when the centre-left was in power, Berlusconi was the leader of the parliamentary opposition. Between 2001 and 2006, Berlusconi wrestled power from the centre-left again and included the AN in its coalition, again with the LN. He made Gianfranco Fini, the AN leader, his deputy prime minister and foreign minister. Claiming to be ‘post-fascist’, Fini even visited Israel on an official state visit in 2003 and apologized for the absolute ‘evil’ of the race laws under Fascist Italy. Because of the vicissitudes of Italian coalition politics, Berlusconi’s alliance was again ousted by Romano Prodi’s centre-left coalition. In 2008 his renamed party, PdL, was elected, and he became Italy’s prime minister for a third time (i.e., 1994 and 1995, 2001–2006, 2008–2011). The AN and LN, both anti-immigrant, with the latter virulently anti-southern and anti-Rome, were critical for Berlusconi’s coalition success. In addition, former neo-fascists captured the Italian capital in 2008. On April 28, 2008, the neo-fascist firebrand Gianni Alemanno was elected mayor of the ‘eternal city’ of Rome with a whopping 53.6 per cent of the popular vote. It was the first time the right had claimed power in Rome since Fascism crashed to an ignominious defeat with the war’s end in 1945 (Popham, 2008). Alemanno’s ‘post-fascist’ turn has been questioned by liberal critics. He certainly had brushes with the law as a former MSI member, as did others in the party, from its former leader Giorgio Almirante to the fascist diehard Pino Rauti. Rauti was connected to the shadowy ultranationalist, pro-fascist terrorist group ON in the 1960s but was later exonerated by the courts in 1972. Despite the rhetoric of ‘post-fascism’ in the MSI and, later, the AN, Alemanno’s electoral victory led to eerie cries of ‘Duce, Duce, Duce!’, fascist salutes and nostalgic fascist-era songs. Alemanno wears a Celtic cross, the symbol of many on the revolutionary right. It was a gift from a fallen neo-fascist comrade killed during a demonstration, insists Alemanno, while lamenting the ‘demonization’ of his past by the liberal and left-wing media (Popham, 2008). Neo-fascists came to power in Rome by downplaying their connections to historical Fascism, Mussolini and the odious race laws of 1938. They even waved the ‘anti-fascist’ banner of their liberal and left-wing adversaries (Bar-On, 2001, 2007). That is, the old, violent jackboot ultra-nationalism of the fascists has been replaced by a New Right agenda, which is more sophisticated and uses cultural, legal and parliamentary means to achieve power and return Europe to a more homogeneous continent cleansed of nonEuropean immigrants (Spektorowski, 2003, 55–70). This neo-fascist tactical shift has its roots in the events of 1968 and the ideals of the New Left, which the neo-fascists mimicked in their search for power in a decidedly

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‘anti-fascist’ age (Bar-On, 2007, 2009). The neo-fascists today borrow modern and antimodern discourses, neo-fascist and New Left themes, mythological and scientific impulses, and democratic and antidemocratic tendencies to push their ultra-nationalist or ultra-regionalist, anti-immigrant project (Bar-On, 2007, 2011). Alemanno’s dramatic rise to power was based on legal and cultural means. It is indebted to what I have called path 3, metapolitical fascism. It is the reverse of the old fascist formula of violently intimidating and killing political opponents through the black-shirted fascist squads (squadristi). In this sense, Alemanno mimics the gaining political ascendancy of the intellectual ND throughout Europe. Alemanno is married to the daughter of Pino Rauti, a hard-core fascist, who split from the AN to form the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Fiamma Tricolore (MS-FT—The Tricolour Flame Social Movement) after Fini took the AN in a ‘post-fascist’ direction in 1995. Rauti claimed to continue the fascist legacy allegedly abandoned by the AN and harkened back to Mussolini’s pro-Nazi RSI. Alemanno, however, stressed his ties to the cultural, legal wing of the neo-fascists. That is, fascism will rise again, reasoned Alemanno, through legal, parliamentary and cultural means. The march through the wilderness for the ghettoized neo-fascists had its modest beginnings in 1977 and 1981 when neo-fascists participated in Campo Hobbit, a festival of MSI youth which sought to transcend the excesses of the terrorism of both left and right and re-think the sterile legacy of fascism (Ignazi, 2006, 1–20). The camp took its name from The Hobbit, the popular novel penned by the esteemed English fiction writer J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973). Campo Hobbit sought to create alternative cosmologies and strategies for a right that was then outflanked by the liberal-left in the universities and media. The Hobbit was written for Tolkien’s own children, but it appealed to neo-fascist youth like Alemanno because of its thirst for adventure, the quest of Bilbo Baggins and the ‘hobbits’ against great odds, the battle against the deadly Five Armies (its martial theme appealing to neofascists romantic about war and militarism) and the mystical song, meals and joy of comrades fighting for a common purpose. In conjunction with cultural renewal projects like The Hobbit, the French ND created think tanks throughout Europe in a transnational spirit. It was instrumental in influencing politicians like Alemanno and the Italian ND in general. The ND sought to change the perception of the right, tarred by the brush of fascism, and to rehabilitate its legacy in more acceptable forms. A major influence was Alain de Benoist, the French ND guru, who longed for a return to mythical, pre-Judeo-Christian, hierarchical, roots-based IndoEuropean societies where egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism and Americanization were forever crushed by virile elites (De Benoist, 1979). De Benoist began his project back in 1968, the year of the spectacular student protests inspired by the New Left. While de Benoist was an ultra-nationalist and favoured the colonial notion of French Algeria as a Paris university student

Italian Postwar Neo-Fascism 49 in the 1960s, he felt envy for the leftist protestors and lauded their heroes such as Che Guevara and Herbert Marcuse (GRECE, 1998). De Benoist cleverly distanced the right from overt associations with Fascism, Nazism, racism, colonialism, totalitarianism and antisemitism. Yet, de Benoist’s key insight was to use an Italian leftist icon, Antonio Gramsci (1890–1937), to argue that cultural hegemony, rather than the police or the army, was the key to power. Change peoples’ dominant perceptions on issues such as immigration or their view of the right, argued de Benoist, and you will have more durable, long-lasting power. Alemanno’s victory in Rome is a victory for a pragmatic strategy of ideological renewal and survival inherited from Alain de Benoist and Marco Tarchi, the leader of the Italian ND. Tarchi was formerly a youth activist with the neo-fascist MSI. Alemanno won the ‘eternal city’ because he consciously downplayed his fascist past and stressed law and order and even democratic, ‘left-wing’, and environmental discourses. Yet, questions remained in respect of Alemanno as when, in 2008, he refused to condemn fascism as evil. Similarly, in the same year, the Italian defence minister, Ignazio La Russa (from the MSI and today the PdL), paid homage to Italian Fascist troops who had fought with the Nazis in resisting the Anglo-American landings of World War II. In addition, the political climate in Italy and western Europe had dramatically drifted decidedly towards the anti-egalitarian right on both economic issues and cultural, regional and national-identity questions. So, for example, LN leader Umberto Bossi wants a stop to non-European immigration into northern Italy, particularly from the Muslim world and from the African continent. In 2009, the Swiss held a referendum seeking to ban minarets. In 2010, the French parliament passed a law banning the Islamic veil (hijab) from public places. More Europeans are questioning the merits of liberal multiculturalism in a post-9/11 climate in which ‘Islamist terrorism’ is also a European problem, as evidenced by the Madrid and London subway bombings in 2004 and 2007 and the killing of a Dutch filmmaker critical of Islam (Buruma, 2006). Fear of the ‘other’ is growing throughout Europe, while Americanization, globalization, immigration and multiculturalism have caused worries about the loss of European regional and national cultures. Alemanno’s victory is based on the steady cultural and political return of a conservative right with ties to neo-fascism, which we thought was buried in the ashes of World War II. Fascism and the right were forever associated with more than 50 million dead during World War II, the Final Solution against Jews and other ‘enemies’ of the state and the invasion of more than a dozen sovereign states in contravention of international law. Alemanno and other neo-fascists had to deal with this terrible image for the right in general. Furthermore, we should also remember that Alemanno’s rise to power would be impossible without the collusion of established elites. Non-fascists

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like Berlusconi, Veltroni and Prodi have colluded in Alemanno’s rise (or the rise of the MSI-AN) and the European turn towards what the French social critic Jean Baudrillard (1995, 135) called a turn towards an anti-immigrant ‘white fundamentalist Europe’, which increasingly questions the merits of immigration and multiculturalism. It is also a historical truism that Mussolini’s ascent to power would not have been possible without the vacillation of King Victor Emmanuel III, the Vatican and other political, military and economic elites. As fascism rose to power in stages from movement to rooting in party systems and later conquest of the state (Paxton, 1998), a fateful error was made by the Italian king, who believed that Mussolini could be tamed in a grand national coalition. The same dreadful error, with more menacing consequences for all of Europe, was made in Germany in the Nazi rise to power in 1932 and 1933 under the magnetic appeal of Adolf Hitler (Paxton, 1998, 12–18). The question we might ask is whether the Italian conservative establishment is making the same error in the new millennium by inviting neo-fascists or ‘post-fascists’ into government. Or, will participation in government tame Italian neo-fascism and increase adherents’ support for liberal democracy, rule of law and nonviolence? RECENT TRENDS IN ITALIAN NEO-FASCISM I have argued that in the post–World War II era, Italian fascism/neo-fascism pursued three different paths, but all originally sought to defeat or undermine liberal democracy. In addition, postwar Italian neo-fascism became increasingly more European, rather than strictly national, although even interwar fascism had transnational and international dimensions (Bar-On, 2008; Mallet and Sorensen, 2002). Italian neo-fascists or ‘post-fascists’ saw their great success in 1994, 2001 and 2008, when they were invited to national coalition governments. Yet, Italian neo-fascism followed parliamentary, extra-parliamentary, and metapolitical paths. I have also pointed out that the three paths are distinctive but are interrelated in that some parliamentary figures originated in the extra-parliamentary milieu, and the metapolitical path paved the way for greater acceptance of neo-fascists or ‘post-fascists’ in government and civil society (i.e. universities, mass media, soccer stadiums, the Internet). Or, to give another example, Cento Bull (2011, 94) argues that, despite the ‘post-fascist’ turn of the AN, the party today “appears concerned with shielding neo-fascist paramilitary organisations from any responsibility in the various acts of stragismo, even in the face of copious evidence produced by judiciary investigations and trials.” In short, despite the AN’s ‘post-fascist’ orientation, in conjunction with sectors of the police, army, intelligence services and important political officials, the party played the cover-up game in respect of the ‘strategy of tension’. In this case, paths 1 and 2 colluded to undermine truth, national reconciliation and Italian democracy.

Italian Postwar Neo-Fascism 51 Furthermore, I argued that, in general, post-war Italian neo-fascism attempted to downplay its ties to Fascism, Benito Mussolini, race laws, antisemitism, excessive militarism or the pro-Nazi RSI. While Julius Evola (1898–1974), Franco Freda (b. 1941), and others, such as AN and ON, were exceptions to the rule, the Italian football star Paolo Di Canio (b. 1968) mimicked the aforementioned neo-fascist theoreticians in 2005 when playing for the Roman outfit Lazio (Mussolini’s favourite club), he justified his fascist salute by stating: “I will always salute as I did yesterday because it gives me a sense of belonging to my people” (Bar-On, 2007, 1). Yet, overt manifestations of support for the Fascist past has declined in the new millennium, with former neo-fascists opting for path 1 (parliamentary neo-fascism) and path 3 (metapolitical neo-fascism). Path 2 (extra-parliamentary neo-fascism) has also dramatically declined in Italy as the ‘strategy of tension’ and ideological confrontation declined in the 1980s and 1990s with the fall of the Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union. Whittaker (2007) estimates that between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, 14,000 terrorist incidents rocked Italy, with neo-fascists, extremist leftists and sometimes state officials implicated in the violence. The most notorious incidents of the ‘strategy of tension’ (i.e. the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan in 1969 and the Bologna train station bombing in 1980, which killed 17 and 85 people, respectively) were the works of Italian neo-fascists. The neo-fascists sought to use terrorism as a strategy in order to prevent Italy’s communist drift and impose authoritarian rule. More recently, Italian neo-fascism displayed a degree of fragmentation, particularly after the historic Fiuggi Congress heralded the end of the MSI and the formation of the purportedly ‘post-fascist’ AN. In 1995, the Tricolour Flame Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Fiamma Tricolore— MS-FT) was formed by Pino Rauti to continue the tradition of fascism left behind by the AN. The MSI-FT embraces the pro-Nazi RSI as the true legacy of Italian Fascism, while guaranteeing free membership for ex-RSI military. In 2004, the MS-FT sent Luca Romagnoli to the European Parliament. The MSI-FT was part of the House of Freedoms centre-right coalition under Silvio Berlusconi for the 2006 Italian elections. In addition, after Fini’s historic visit and apology in 2003, some die-hard fascists also left the AN. One high-profile neo-fascist who rejected Fini’s characterization of Fascist Italy’s race laws as ‘absolute evil’ was Alessandra Mussolini (b. 1962). The granddaughter of the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini and currently part of the ruling PdL in the Chamber of Deputies, Alessandra Mussolini left the AN in 2003 and created her own party, Social Action (Azione Sociale—AS), until its dissolution in 2009. AS merged with the ruling PdL under Silvio Berlusconi. In 2003, another die-hard neo-fascist party, New Force (FN—Forza Nuova), emerged under the leadership of the singer Massimo Morsello (1958–2001) and Roberto Fiore, who mysteriously fled to London after the Bologna bombing in 1980. Fiore took up the seat in the European Parliament

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vacated by Alessandra Mussolini. FN sought to cultivate neo-fascist transnationalism through the European National Front, a structure consisting of European Third Positionist, anticommunist, anticapitalist, and ultranationalistic parties. In March 2011, Fiore led the FN in demonstrations against illegal immigrants from Tunisia and other African countries to the island of Lampedusa. Fiore insinuated that if Berlusconi’s government did not act, FN would step in to secure the territorial integrity of Italy and Europe. It is important to note that not all neo-fascists have taken up the antiimmigrant polemics of Fiore. In 2005 Fini endorsed the right of immigrants to vote in local elections, while Alessandra Mussolini spoke out against the anti-immigrant scapegoating of some sectors of the PdL. Under the impact of path 3 (metapolitical fascism) and the French and Italian ND, some neofascists have sought to blame capitalism for Europe’s immigration problems, rather than immigrants themselves, who are viewed as the victims of a cruel and heartless capitalist system. Moreover, it is the ‘anti-fascist’ LN which has been far more polemical and virulent in its anti-immigrant stances than the AN. Members of the LN have particularly vilified Muslim immigrants and southerners. Umberto Bossi has compared the struggles of northerners against the pro-immigrant and pro-multiculturalism Italian state as equivalent to the struggles for survival of indigenous peoples worldwide. CONCLUSION With the defeats of the Italian Fascist regime in 1943 and of the short-lived pro-Nazi RSI in 1945, it was assumed that fascism had died in the post– World War II period. Despite the horrors associated with Fascism in Italy, announcements of fascism’s death were premature because fascism was simultaneously an ideology, a movement and a political party in power. In postwar Italy, three main neo-fascist or revolutionary right-wing tendencies emerged (i.e. parliamentary neo-fascism, extra-parliamentary neo-fascism and metapolitical neo-fascism), but all desired the collapse of liberal democracy. All three political paths originated in fascism, neo-fascism or what I have broadly called the revolutionary right-wing milieux. Yet, there are questions about whether elements of paths 1 (parliamentary neo-fascists, such as the MSI-AN) or 2 (metapolitical neo-fascists, such as the French and Italian ND) can today be fitted with the fascist or revolutionary rightwing labels. This essay focused on these three distinctive neo-fascist or revolutionary right-wing political tendencies, while examining continuity and change in Italian neo-fascism from 1945 through today. This essay asked the question whether Italian neo-fascism pursued three different paths but with a shared mission to undermine or destroy liberal democracy. A second important question asked whether neo-fascists, particularly from paths 1 and 3 (i.e., parliamentary and metapolitical neo-fascists) have been ‘tamed’ by their participation in civil society and the state, thus

Italian Postwar Neo-Fascism 53 entering a ‘post-fascist’ phase in which liberal democracy, the rule of law and nonviolence are firmly accepted within these movements and parties? If fascism is making a comeback in Europe, we must better grasp what we mean by fascism. First, fascism was simultaneously a political ideology, a movement and a regime in power which flourished in Europe as a result of multiple crises in the interwar years. Second, two eminent historians, Stanley Payne and Roger Griffin, disagree about whether the ND is a fascist movement. Griffin (1995) says that its ‘palingenetic ultra-nationalism’ is fascist, while Payne (1995) insists that it does not strictly operate from the fascist tradition and thus cannot be fascist. Payne (1995, 7) also argues that fascism requires a maximalist set of characteristics (13), which are not all met by the ND or AN. Yet, the key neo-fascist thinker in France in the postwar era, Maurice Bardèche (1907–1998) (1961) said that fascism would be reborn with ‘another name, another face’, thus not excluding the ND, the MSI-AN, or the Roman mayor Gianni Alemanno from the fascist classification. In Payne’s 13 interpretations for the rise of fascism, one is a unique metapolitical explanation that certainly might include the ND under its ambit (Payne, 1995, 441–86, 459–61). Diverse non-Marxist scholars have viewed fascism not in simple political or socioeconomic formulations but as ‘a unique historical phenomenon that attempted to synthesize or symbolize the special features of a distinct early twentieth-century historical trend’ (Payne, 1995, 459). Nolte (1969) argued that fascism’s project was based on the ‘resistance to transcendence’; a rejection of liberal and communist ideologies based on an Enlightenment-based emancipatory framework. Griffin (1995, 2007) also stresses the ‘positive’ goals of fascism in that it was not an agent of a specific class, its epochal framework and the ‘palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism’ which united fascists as they sought to create an alternative form of political modernism. It is this metapolitical interpretation that can best be utilized to highlight the framework of the ND, MSI-AN and Alemanno, as well as the mutation of its discourse in a decidedly anti-fascist era. Yet, if we take Payne’s separation of right into fascist, radical right, and conservative right, Alemanno is indebted to all of them yet does not fit into any of the three categories. Or, if we take Payne’s exhaustive checklist definition of fascism along the lines of ideology and goals, fascist negations and style and organization (Payne, 1995, p. 7), the ND and Alemanno meet some but not all the prerequisites of fascism. So, for example, the French and Italian ND today do not engage in the fascist penchant for open violence, reject the goal of empire and call for a Europe of regions rather than nations. Similarly, Fini, the leader of the AN, today embraces the values of liberal democracy and has denounced the excesses of fascism. The victory of Alemanno in Rome, as well as the dramatic rise of extreme right-wing and neo-fascist political parties in Italy, Austria, Holland, France

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and other European countries from Russia to Hungary, shows that neofascists are willing to work within the liberal democratic framework in order to seek the demise of liberalism, equality and multiculturalism. In short, the neo-fascists of today are tactically aware of the times, and they have cultivated a more sophisticated right, which liberals and the left generally fail to acknowledge and which is light years away from the brutal violence of the fascist squadristi or Nazi Brown Shirts. Fascism was able to mutate in the postwar years, and one intellectually impressive strand was the ND. This raises questions of definitional issues over what constitutes fascism, whether it was epochal and whether fascism is about core ideological goals and tactical and organizational framework. The ND, in combination with anti-immigrant parties such as the French National Front (Front National— FN) and the Italian LN, have been instrumental in shifting the European discourse against immigration, minorities, the figure of the Islamic ‘other’ and multiculturalism. Aided by the ‘post-fascist’, ‘leftist’ and ecological discourse of the ND, Alemanno ultimately seeks a new rights framework through populist referenda (Taggart, 2000) in which the collective rights of the ethnic group trumps individual rights. Neo-fascism has changed its tactical framework and uses multiple paths in order to undermine liberal democracy. We must be fully aware that the danger today, as Primo Levi (1987, p. 397) pointed out, is the possibility of “a new fascism, with its trail of intolerance, of abuse, and of servitude . . . walking on tiptoe and calling itself by other names.” REFERENCES Arendt, H., 1963. On Revolution. London: Penguin. Bardèche, M., 1961. Qu’est-ce que le fascisme? Paris: Les Sept Couleurs. Bar-On, T., 2001. ‘The Ambiguities of the Nouvelle Droite, 1968–1999’, The European Legacy 6(3), pp. 333–51. ———, 2007. Where Have All the Fascists Gone? Aldershot, England: Ashgate. ———, 2008. ‘Fascism to the Nouvelle Droite: The Dream of Pan-European Empire’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 16(3) (December 2008), pp. 327–45. ———, 2009. ‘Understanding Political Conversion and Mimetic Rivalry’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 10 (3–4) (December 2009), pp. 241–64. ———, 2010. ‘Las Revoluciones en el Mundo. Revolutions in World History’, Retos Internacionales 3 (Fall), pp. 7–8. ———, 2011. ‘Transnationalism and the French nouvelle droite’, Patterns of Prejudice, 45(3) (July), pp. 199–223. Baudrillard, J., 1995. The Perfect Crime. London: Verso. Bobbio, N., 1996. Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction (trans. Allan Cameron). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Buruma, I., 2006. Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance. New York: Penguin. Cento Bull, A., 2011. Italian Neofascism: The Strategy of Tension and the Politics of Nonreconciliation. New York: Berghahn. De Benoist, A., 1979. Vu de droite. Paris: Copernic.

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De Benoist, A., 2012. Les Amis d’Alain de Benoist, http://www.alaindebenoist.com/ pages/librairie.php (accessed March 25, 2012). GRECE, 1998. Le mai 1968 de la nouvelle droite. Paris: Labyrinthe. Griffin, R. (ed.), 1995. Fascism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Griffin, R., 2007. Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hobsbawm, E., 2007. Revolutionaries. London: Abacus. Ignazi, P., 2006. Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ledeen, M., 1972. Universal Fascism: The Theory and Practice of the Fascist International, 1928–1936. New York: Howard Fertig. Lega Nord, 2012. Available at http://www.leganord.org/ilmovimento/manifesti2009. asp (accessed March 25, 2012). Levi, P., 1987. If This Is a Man. London: Sphere Books. Lucconi, S. 2009. ‘Alleanza Nazionale and the Legacy of Anti-Semitism in Italy’, Quarterly Journal of Ideology 32(1–2), pp. 1–40. Mallett, R., and Sorensen, G., 2002. International Fascism, 1919–45. London: Frank Cass. Mammone, A., 2008. ‘The Transnational Reaction to 1968: Neo-fascist Fronts and Political Cultures in France and Italy’, Contemporary European History 17, pp. 213–36. ———, 2009. ‘The Eternal Return? Faux Populism and Contemporization of NeoFascism across Britain, France and Italy’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies 17(2) (August), pp. 171–92. Mann, M., 2004. Fascists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nolte, E., 1969. Three Faces of Fascism: Action Francaise, Italian Fascism, National Socialism. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969. Paxton, R., 1998. ‘The Five Stages of Fascism’, Journal of Modern History, 70(1) (March), pp. 1–23. Payne, S., 1995. A History of Fascism, 1919–45. London: University College London Press. Popham, P., 2008. ‘Neo-fascist Sweeps in as Rome’s Mayor’, The Independent, [Internet] 29 April, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/neofascistsweeps-in-as-romes-mayor-817128.html (accessed June 24, 2010). Spektorowski, A., 2003. ‘Ethnoregionalism: The Intellectual New Right and Lega Nord’, The Global Review of Ethnopolitics, 2(3) (March 2003), pp. 55–70. Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism (1997–1998). ‘Italy: Country Reports’, http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/ asw97–8/italy.html (accessed March 25, 2012). Sternhell, Z., 1994 (with Maia Asheri and Mario Sznajder). The Birth of Fascist Ideology (trans. David Maisel). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———, 1995. Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France (trans. David Maisel). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Taggart, P., 2000. Populism. Buckingham, England: Open Books. Thomson, D. C., 1984. Jean Lesage et la révolution tranquille. Saint-Laurent, Québec: Éditions du Trécarré. Whittaker, D. (ed.), 2007. The Terrorism Reader. London: Routledge. Woods, R., 2007. Germany’s New Right as Culture and Politics. Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

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The Reception of Antisemitic Imagery in Nazi Germany and Popular Opinion—Lessons for Today Andreas Musolff

PROPHECY, METAPHOR AND GENOCIDE On 30 January 1939, in his annual speech to celebrate the anniversary of his “seizure of power” on 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler issued the infamous announcement that if “international finance Jewry” succeeded in “precipitating the nations into a world war”, the result would “not be the Bolshevization of the earth and with it the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation [Vernichtung] of the Jewish race in Europe” (Domarus 1965: 1058; translations of this and the following German examples by A. Musolff). It was the climax of an extended passage, in which Hitler portrayed Germany as a nation that over the centuries had allowed the Jews who “had nothing of their own, except for political and sanitary diseases” to infiltrate and sponge off it until they had turned the Germans into “beggars in their own country” (Domarus 1965: 1056–1057). He insisted that the condition for any “satisfactory” solution of the “Jewish question” in Germany had to be the end of the misconception “that the good Lord had meant the Jewish nation to live off of the body and productive work of other nations”; otherwise, Jewry might “succumb to a crisis of unimaginable severity” (Domarus 1965: 1057). This prediction was followed by the “prophecy” quoted earlier and was completed by the scornful, ironic advice that the Jews had “better take heed”, for the “laughter” with which they had allegedly greeted his previous prophecies was “already sticking in their throats” (Domarus 1965: 1058). With hindsight, it is almost impossible not to read Hitler’s “prophetic” threat as a kind of précis of things to come, framed within his own ideological perspective of blaming the Jews in advance for what he wanted to do to them. Many historians have therefore interpreted Hitler’s 1939 “prophecy” as an explicit announcement of his genocidal intentions (Friedländer 1998: 310; Kershaw 2000: 152–153; Burleigh 2001: 340; Longerich 2003: 70–71; Evans 2005: 604–605; Herf 2006: 5–6). If we look at the speech in its historical context, that is, without imputing to his audience the knowledge of what happened afterwards, however, the prophecy seems only to reiterate Hitler’s view of Jews as parasites on the body of the German people, which he had

The Reception of Antisemitic Imagery in Nazi Germany 57 outlined more than a decade earlier in Mein Kampf (Bein 1965; Chilton 2005; Musolff 2007, 2010: 23–42; Rash 2006: 155–156). Within the context of the speech, the “prophecy” repeats the preceding warning of an unprecedented “crisis” to which Jewry would succumb and specifies only one further condition—the outbreak of a world war. Given the contemporaries’ awareness of the fact that war between Nazi Germany and a multinational, if not worldwide, coalition had only narrowly been avoided in the preceding year and was still looming because of border disputes with Poland, the conditions for the enactment of the genocidal prophecy could be seen as close to being fulfilled. But did the contemporaries understand it in that way? Even such an astute observer as the linguist Victor Klemperer, who survived Nazi rule thanks to his status of being married to a non-Jewish wife and who later published the first seminal account of Nazi rhetoric, Lingua Tertii Imperii (Klemperer 1975, 2000), seems to have attached no particularly ominous significance to the passage; in his secret diary, published a half-century later, he noted the speech only as an instance of Hitler’s trick “to make all his enemies into Jews” (Klemperer 1995, 1: 461). The 1939 speech is also mentioned in the reports of the clandestine Social Democratic Party’s underground organisation (SOPADE) and in the secret records of popular opinion compiled by the GESTAPO and the SS intelligence “Security Service” (SD), but neither of these noted any specific realisation by members of the populace that the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany would soon enter a new, exterminatory phase growing out of the prophecy speech (Behnken 1980, 6: 123; Kulka and Jäckel 2004: 386). After the war, many Germans claimed, disingenuously, “not to have known” about the Holocaust as the central genocidal project of the Nazi regime and that statements such as the 1939 prophecy or the ubiquitous slogans that announced or demanded the extermination and annihilation of Jewry had been too vague or too figurative to be taken seriously (Longerich 2006). Whilst this blanket claim of ignorance has been falsified (Kershaw 1983; Kulka and Rodrigue 1984; Hilberg 1992; Bankier 1992, 1996; Schoeps 1996; Gellately 2001; Longerich 2006), the argument that the imagery of an extermination of political enemies as parasites (Parasiten, Schmarotzer) could be misunderstood as wild, hyperbolic rhetoric may seem at first sight plausible. After all, sociohygienic and biological metaphors have been used in political discourse for more than two millennia and by so many different speakers that general conclusions about their political bias are difficult to draw (Sontag 1978; Guldin 2000; Musolff 2010). With regard to the contemporary recipients of Nazi propaganda during the “Third Reich”, we also have to take into consideration that any interpretations and warnings that linked the use of such imagery by Nazi leaders to genocide and war were consistently denied and denounced by the state authorities as “atrocity propaganda” (Schmitz-Berning 2000: 283–286). It is therefore by no means a trivial question to ask whether the German population of the 1930s and 1940s took the antisemitic metaphors of Nazi propaganda and ideology

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seriously, that is, as a programme for genocide. If the answer turns out to be negative, the imagery will have to be judged as incidental to the genocide and as irrelevant for any evaluation of the degree of popular knowledge about it; if it is positive, the role of imagery as a means of guiding genocidal policies may have to be reassessed. This chapter attempts to contribute to providing such an answer by analysing the impact of antisemitic parasite metaphors on German popular discourse. Our approach is informed by Critical Discourse Analysis and Discourse History (Wodak 2007; Wodak and Chilton 2005; Reisigl and Wodak 2009), Cognitive Metaphor Analysis (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Lakoff 1996; Charteris-Black 2004, 2005) and, last, Discourse-oriented Metaphor Analysis, which attempts to integrate the insights of the Cognitive and Discourse Approaches by situating the cognitive effects of language data in their historical and discursive-narrative context, in which they gain social force as action-guiding concepts (Musolff 2004, 2006; Zinken 2007; Semino 2008; Sperber and Wilson 2008; Zinken, Hellsten and Nerlich 2008; Musolff and Zinken 2009; Wilson 2011). Discourse metaphors and the narrative-argumentative scenarios that they evoke play a particularly significant role in communication insofar as they suggest specific courses of action as “default” options/solutions and attach socioethical evaluations to them, such as the “necessity” of eliminating parasites, which is transferred from the physical/medical sphere to that of social/political actions. Hitler’s prophecy quoted earlier can thus be seen as representing the “outcome” of a scenario in which Jews, identified as a separate “race”, were depicted as a parasitic threat to the health of the German nation, which was conceptualised as a human body. The Jews as parasites had supposedly infected the national body, and Hitler’s regime saw itself as the healer who, by 1939, had already largely achieved the isolation of the parasite. However, other European nations were still being infected and, as a result, were turning against Germany. Germany would therefore have to fight and overcome them and make sure that the parasite would no longer be capable of infecting any other nation; that is, it had to be annihilated completely. This scenario can be summarized as containing a schema of infection-crisistherapy, with the parasitic Jewish enemy-race on the one hand and the healing agent, that is, Nazism and Nazi-led Germany, as implacable antagonists of each other. The scenario outcome would be an apocalyptic confrontation, in which the healing forces of good would win over the forces of evil and save and redeem the nations of Europe and, on a global scale, the whole world. PREPARING THE GERMAN PUBLIC FOR THE GENOCIDE: NAZI ANTISEMITIC IMAGERY, 1933–1939 Antisemitic policies were at the top of the Nazi government’s agenda right from the start of their rule. Soon after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor

The Reception of Antisemitic Imagery in Nazi Germany 59 of the Reich at the end of January 1933 had been confirmed in the elections of 5 March (which gave the National Socialists and their coalition partner, the German National People’s Party, a parliamentary majority and the chance to gain dictatorial powers through the so-called “Enabling law”), Hitler, Goebbels and Julius Streicher, the Franconian Gauleiter and editor of the rabidly antisemitic newspaper “The Stormer” (Der Stürmer), organised the first nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses, on 1 April 1933. In his retrospective explanation of the action on 6 April, the new minister for “Public Enlightenment and Propaganda”, Joseph Goebbels, referred to the Jews explicitly as “an alien, separate people with parasitic characteristics”, intent on sabotaging the urgent national healing process (Schmitz-Berning 2000: 463). The boycott was, of course, terrifying to Jewish people in Germany. Victor Klemperer felt as if he was experiencing “a pogrom in the deepest Middle Ages or tsarist Russia” (Klemperer 1995, 1: 15). In combination with the start of professional discrimination, harassment in the street, arbitrary arrests and the withdrawal of protection by the police and the courts, the boycott helped to drive 37,000 Jews out of Germany within the year (Evans 2005: 15). In the general population, the boycott met with widespread indifference (Friedländer 1998: 22–23), and it is difficult to determine to what extent the specifically antisemitic measures were distinguished in public perception from the simultaneous repression of Communists, Social Democrats and other political enemies of the Nazis, which accounted for the vast majority of arrests, killings and the approximately 100,000 incarcerations over the course of 1933. Even the parasite stigma was not exclusively applied to Jewish people but was used to describe all those who did not conform to the Nazi vision of a homogeneous society, including political adversaries, so-called gypsies and other marginalised groups (beggars, vagrants, prostitutes), criminals and sexual “deviants”, that is, homosexuals (Gellately 2001: 48–49, 67, 80–83, 184–188). However, in order to target the Jews as much as possible, official police reports and Nazi press and party discourse routinely highlighted their supposed involvement in all kinds of criminal activities (Gellately 2001: 49). Even the alleged near coup d’état by leaders of the Nazi storm troopers (SA) in June 1934, which was invented to justify their killing—presented as the burning out of a tumour and the destruction of parasites—was linked to Jewish co-conspirators in the emigrant press (Domarus 1965: 421–422; Klemperer 1995, 1: 121). In this way, Jews were made to appear as the core parasite group behind each and every danger to the state. At the Nuremberg Party rally of the following year, the Nazis announced (and made the Reichstag immediately pass) laws to exclude all sociopolitical parasites from the people’s body in the form of laws “for the Protection of German Blood and Honour”, which excluded Jews from German citizenship and from marriage or sexual relations with Germans (Kershaw 1999: 568–573; Friedländer 1998: 146–170; Longerich 2006: 92–100). The SD

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and resistance reports this time indicated tacit approval among the German public because the legislation was expected “to restore calm to the streets and put an end to behaviour [by Nazi thugs!] that was besmirching Germany’s image as a civilized country” (Bankier 1996: 77). The “Nuremberg laws” themselves were overcomplicated and even contradictory because the supposed “racial” heredity was solely defined in terms of one’s ancestor’s religion. The resulting calculations of degrees of blood admixture became the subject of endless debates among Nazi administrators up to and even beyond the “Wannsee conference” of 20 January 1942, which coordinated the then already ongoing genocide (Pätzold and Schwarz 1992; Roseman 2002: 55–107; Browning 2004: 411–427; Friedländer 2007: 349–343). Notwithstanding these problems of definition, the laws ensured that from 1935 onward “proof that one was not of Jewish origin or did not belong to any ‘less valuable’ group became essential for a normal existence in the Third Reich” (Friedländer 1998: 153). Furthermore, the exclusion of Jews from German society could be used as a basis for further criminalising any personal relationships between Jews and non-Jews as “race defilement” (Przyrembel 2003). Lurid depictions of alleged acts of rape and seduction of non-Jewish girls and women by Jews had always formed part of antisemitic Nazi propaganda, such as Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1933: 357) and Streicher’s The Stormer, but now the Reich’s legal experts went to considerable lengths to describe and define precisely all activities that might be subsumed under the label of “race defilement”; party members and ordinary citizens eagerly used these descriptions as an opportunity to engage in the rewarding business of denunciation (Gellately 2001: 134–145; Evans 2005: 550–554). In order to fit the facts to the stereotype of “the Jew” as a sexual predator, the Nazis did not shy away from enacting, as it were, relevant matching behaviour. The Social Democrats’ secret reports mention, for instance, the “coincidental” public kissing of a Jewish GP by two female patients to effect his arrest as a race defiler and the case of a 15-year-old Jewish boy and his 13-year-old non-Jewish sweetheart who were chased by Nazis into a dark corridor to arrest them (and, later, the boy’s parents) for attempted rape (Behnken 1980, 2: 1037, 1042). As part of nationwide campaigns against Jewish “race defilement”, alleged race offenders were paraded through streets and publicly humiliated before being taken to concentration camps (Schoenberner 1980: 35; Evans 2005: 551–553). The general link “Jewish parasitism—criminality” was thus further specified and linked with criminal sexuality. The climax of the Nazi pre-war anti-Jewish actions was the so-called “Crystal Night” pogrom of 9–10 November 1938, staged by GESTAPO, SA and SS as a supposedly spontaneous outbreak of popular fury over the assassination of a German Embassy official in Paris. It included the burning of synagogues and Jewish shops in cities, towns and villages up and down the country and the ransacking of homes and violence that cost hundreds of lives and led to the arrests of about 30,000 Jewish men (Obst 1991;

The Reception of Antisemitic Imagery in Nazi Germany 61 Gilbert 2007). Reactions among the German public, as registered by the Social Democrat resistance groups as well as by the SD, ranged from isolated offers of help, open protests over displays of shame and fear of negative foreign reactions to collusion in the looting and profiteering from stolen Jewish property (Behnken 1980, 5: 1204–1211, 6: 211–226; Bankier 1996: 86–88, Friedländer 1998: 295–198; Gellately 2001: 127–129; Kershaw 2005: 587–592; Aly 2005: 58–63). Violence and destruction were as open as possible to “intimidate as many Jews as possible into leaving Germany” (Evans 2005: 581). Notwithstanding this ostentatious brutality, the official Nazi newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter, claimed that “not a single hair had been touched on a Jewish head” (Völkischer Beobachter, 11 November 1938). Such a brazen denial can hardly be explained as a purposeful attempt at “covering up” the extreme violence against Jews vis-à-vis either the German or the world public. Why, then, did the Nazis understate so grotesquely the pogrom’s main aspect— the threat of violent injury and death? The historian Marion Kaplan proposes to explain this paradox by characterising the Nazi persecution’s aim as that of transforming the victims “into the object of a general, hateful taboo” (Kaplan 1998: 44). The “failure” to mention Kristallnacht’s deadly violence against Jews in the official discourse conveyed the “knowledge” that the victims could be attacked and killed and that this knowledge itself was unmentionable at the same time. However, the unrestricted persecution of Jews still had to be propagated and justified in order to become effective, and it was here that the parasitetherapy metaphor played a crucial role. It provided the discursive frame in which the annihilation/elimination of the European Jews was “mentionable” after all, by way of analogy. The destruction of biological parasites is a legitimate concern in the context of hygiene and medicine. Its analogical counterpart, the annihilation of sociopolitical parasites (i.e., Jews in the Nazi ideological system) “borrowed”, as it were, these implications of a therapeutic purpose as an implicit pseudo-justification for the genocide (Musolff 2010: 35–42). The analogy enabled its users to announce and even brag about policies that they could not admit to in literal terms. This paradoxical structure of taboo-based public communication also characterized Hitler’s prophecy of the Holocaust in terms of the annihilation of the Jewish parasite “race” in Europe in his speech of 30 January 1939. On the basis of the parasite-annihilation scenario, Hitler contrived to talk openly about the “destruction of the European Jews” (Hilberg 2003), without once breaking the taboo of mentioning mass murder or genocide. ‘FULFILLING THE PROPHECY’: HOLOCAUST RHETORIC, 1940–1942 Hitler repeated his 1939 annihilation prophecy many times, and it was shown in the widely released propaganda film “The Eternal Jew” (Der ewige

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Jude) from 1940, which presented it as the obvious solution to the problem of Jews, who were directly likened to disease-spreading rats (HornshøjMøller 1995; Mannes 1999; Welch 2007: 245–253). In the anniversary speech of 30 January 1941, Hitler proudly repeated his prediction that “the whole of Jewry [would soon] have ceased to play a role in Europe” (Domarus 1965: 1663). One nation after another was, he claimed, accepting Nazi Germany’s “understanding of race”; only British politicians, due to “softening of the brain” caused by Jewish emigrants, were still unable to see this “truth”, but he hoped that even they would soon come around to his view and recognize the Jews as their main enemy (Domarus 1965: 1663–1664). The underlying assumption for his boastful threat was, of course, Hitler’s belief in German superiority over all enemy powers, which was based on the victories over Poland, the Benelux countries, France, Denmark and Norway. Annihilating European Jewry and winning the war were the combined objectives of the seemingly unstoppable German offensive. Once the attack against the Soviet Union was under way, the Nazi regime saw this twin goal coming tantalisingly close: together with the initial victories on the battlefield, the invasion delivered an additional 2.5 million Jews into their hands. During the late summer and autumn of 1941, SS Einsatzgruppen, Police Reserve Battalions and Wehrmacht troops, with the support of parts of the indigenous population, started mass killings that quickly escalated to murders of whole regional Jewish communities (Browning 1992: 86–121, 2004: 309–352; Matthäus 2004: 253–308). In these murder campaigns, Hitler’s prophecy, linked to references to Jews as parasites, appeared time and again in letters of perpetrators and training journals for Order Police units (Browning 2001: 179, 2004: 299–300). Triumphantly, Goebbels wrote in his weekly magazine Das Reich in November 1941 that the Führer’s prophecy was in the process of being fulfilled. As a result of the then newly introduced stigmatization of the “Star of David” sign, Goebbels gloated, even the Jewish parasites who had survived in Germany so far would no longer be able to hide under their “mimicry”, and anyone who felt, let alone showed, compassion or solidarity with them was just as much an “enemy of the nation” as they and should also be forced to wear the “Star of David” stigma and suffer the same treatment (Goebbels 1942: 85–87). However, after the defeat of the German offensive near Moscow and the entry of the United States into the war, in December 1941, the strategic context of the war and the genocidal campaign changed. The USSR, which the Nazis had supposed to be an easy target and victim allegedly because it was being ruled by Jews, had shown its ability to fight back successfully, and the war coalition against Germany had been strengthened immeasurably. At the very least, the war would last for a considerably longer period than envisaged and involved more risks. The genocidal “solution” of the “Jewish problem” thus also became more difficult and at the same time more urgent as a prerequisite for final victory. This new urgency was reflected in Hitler’s

The Reception of Antisemitic Imagery in Nazi Germany 63 anniversary speech on 30 January 1942, when he presented the alternative that the war could end either “with the obliteration of the Aryan peoples” or with “the disappearance of Jewry from Europe” (Domarus 1965: 1828– 1829). His response to the rhetorical question—which outcome would it be?—was to recite his prophecy of “annihilation”, this time embellished with a reference to the “ancient Jewish law ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’ ” (Domarus 1965: 1829). According to the SD reports, the speech was praised; specifically, the accusations against the Jews and the emphasis on the “eye for an eye” phrase were interpreted as an indication that the Führer’s “fight against the Jew was being conducted with utmost consequence to its end” (Kulka and Jäckel 2004: 485). Of course, we cannot take the SD observation data at face value: to some extent, the popular support is likely to have been the “required” response, which the SD were keen to elicit so as to document support for the regime at a time of crisis, but at the very least the reports show that the “updated” annihilation message had been received, even if again couched in rhetoric- and metaphor-laden language. During the whole year of 1942, with the mass murder of Jews and military offensives in Russia advancing relentlessly, Hitler continued to boast of his prophecy and to emphasize its consequences with sadistic pleasure. At the end of September, with the 6th Army poised to conquer Stalingrad, he harked back to the alleged mockery of his prophecy by the Jews in Germany before he came to power, a topic that had figured also in the prophecy. He wondered “whether by now there were any left who were still laughing at him” and promised that they would soon stop, not just in Germany but “everywhere” (Hitler, speech on 30 September, in Domarus 1965: 1920). Saul Friedländer rightly calls the prophecy’s function by this time that of a “mantra announcing to all and sundry that the fate of the Jews was sealed and soon none would remain” (Friedländer 2007: 402). It served as a quasimagical incantation to reassert the double strategy of war and genocide. Victory on the battlefield made the deportation and subsequent murder of European Jews possible, and the genocide guaranteed that there would be no contamination or loss of German strength on account of any remaining parasites. RACIAL ANNIHILATION AS AN INSURANCE AGAINST TOTAL DEFEAT? HOLOCAUST RHETORIC, 1943–1945 However, with the catastrophic turnaround in Germany’s military fortunes at the battles of El Alamein and Stalingrad in late 1942 and early 1943, the strategic context changed once more. In addition, the mass murder of millions of Jews was by now becoming widely known in Germany through dissemination of soldiers’ eyewitness and participant accounts to relatives and friends (Kulka and Jäckel 2004: 486, 489, 491, 510, 528–531, 533; Neitzel

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and Welzer 2011: 145–192). At the same time, Hitler’s and Goebbels’s public references to the 1939 prophecy disappeared. With military victory becoming less likely if not impossible, the nexus between the prophecy’s twin goals—military victory and the annihilation of the European Jews— had to be redefined. Instead of emphasising the triumphant prospect of a double—military and genocidal—victory over all enemies, the Nazi leaders now stressed the necessity of the genocide as a means to avoid defeat. Of course, this position still fitted their racist worldview, which held that any Jewish person alive was a deadly parasitic threat whose annihilation was necessary under all circumstances (Jäckel 1981; Herf 2006). What was new was that this “defensive” motivation of racial parasite annihilation was now resolutely foregrounded. On 30 January 1943, when the anniversary of the Nazi power seizure coincided with the capitulation of the 6th German Army at Stalingrad, Hitler’s radio speech, which was read out by Goebbels, stated that only National Socialism could put an end to the “tearing apart” (zerfleischen) and “decomposing” (zersetzen) of humanity perpetrated by “the Jew” (Domarus 1965: 1978). The same imagery of decomposition was used by Goebbels in his “total war” speech of 18 February 1943 at the “Sports Palace” in Berlin, in which he interpreted the loss of the 6th Army as a brave “sacrifice” that had to be redeemed by the nation’s fighting on with “total” commitment, lest an apocalyptic alternative to German victory should become reality: Behind the advancing Soviet divisions we can already see the Jewish execution commandos and behind them we see the terror, the spectre of millions starving and complete anarchy in Europe. International Jewry thus proves itself to be the devilish ferment of decomposition, feeling as it does an outright cynical pleasure in plunging the world into the deepest chaos and causing the demise of age-old civilizations, which it never had a part in. (Goebbels 1971, 2: 178–179) In his “total war” speech, Goebbels thus reinterpreted the Soviet victory as a “negative proof” of the death-by-parasite/decomposition scenario. In his perspective, the defeat at Stalingrad showed what a defeat of the German forces would result in, namely the destruction of human civilization at the hands of the Jewish parasite. This detailed depiction of the potential apocalyptic outcome of the war was, of course, still linked to the “reassurance” that Germany had a chance to avoid it: if the nation followed the Führer unquestioningly and intensified its war effort, it would still win. The radical measures to stop the Jewish infection and the further sacrifices that the whole of the nation would have to make were accordingly likened by Goebbels to a “surgical intervention” that might look gruesome but was necessary “to heal the patient” (Goebbels 1971, 2: 182, 188). The speech was meant to defeat defeatism inside Germany and to convince the enemies that hopes of a German surrender were futile (Fetscher 1998; Kallis 2005: 130–137).

The Reception of Antisemitic Imagery in Nazi Germany 65 Klemperer, who read it in a Dresden newspaper (to which he had clandestine access through a sympathetic lawyer), noted the implicit double threat to Jewish and non-Jewish Germans: the former were already stigmatized as “killable” parasites; the latter were vulnerable to the same stigma the moment they were deemed to stand in the way of the “total war” effort (Klemperer 1995, 2: 332–333). For all his insistence on the certainty of a Nazi victory, Goebbels’s appeal to optimism by way of an apocalyptic warning underlined the real possibility of defeat and decomposition. Such a “disingenuous” reading of Goebbels’s speech and Nazi propaganda in general was not confined to the few surviving Jews but was becoming widespread even in the majority German population, as SD reports show. The impact of the Allied bombing campaign was commonly perceived as “revenge” for the persecution of the Jews (Bankier 1992: 144–146; Kulka and Jäckel 2004: 503, 526, 528, 540). When Goebbels tried to utilize the discovery of the human remains of thousands of Polish officers in Katyn killed on Stalin’s orders as “proof of Bolshevik-Jewish atrocities” in 1943, the publicity given to the finds created fear of Soviet-Jewish revenge atrocities that would follow a defeat of Germany and led to damning comparisons between the Katyn murders and the German “treatment” of Jews (Kulka and Jäckel 2004: 516–520, 525). In order to compare and equally condemn the murders, people had to know what “annihilation of the Jewish parasite” referred to—mass murder. Even Goebbels’s last large-scale campaign to reinforce the vilification of Jews under the label The Jew as World Parasite, in 1944, elicited ambivalent, at best “politically correct” responses (Kulka and Jäckel 2004: 524–525, 535, 537, 540, 547). One SD report from Franconia even spelt out the apocalyptic outcome as the digest of general opinion: “people are convinced that in case of a victory of the others, Jewry will pounce on the German people’s body and will make real all its devilish and bestial plans, as publicized by our press” (Kulka and Jäckel 2004: 543). Nazi propaganda could thus be judged to have been successful in establishing the notion of “the Jew” as a deadly parasitic threat to the German people’s body in popular opinion, but only at the expense of producing a national nightmare. Even Hitler’s own use of the metaphor of the defence of the national body against the Jewish/parasites seems to have been affected by the lack of a plausible victorious outcome after Stalingrad. In his public speeches, which became rarer and were only broadcast, he continued to allege a disastrous impact of the Jewish parasite on those European and non-European nations that did not dare to combat the Jewish “bacteria” or “pestilence” but timidly “stroked” and submitted to them (e.g. Domarus 1965: 2083–2084, 2196–2197, 2203–2224). Of course, he maintained that Germany would be exempt from the apocalyptic fate of such nations and that the urgency of its crisis was at the same time the symptom of its impending recovery (Domarus 1965: 2196). However, in the context of the desperate military-political situation of 1944–45, the parasite-annihilation scenario could have only contradictory outcomes: the submission of more

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and more nations to the Jewish parasite (as manifested in the enemy advances in Europe) or Nazi Germany’s redemption by way of a miraculous rescue from the parasite-induced crisis. This contradiction was insoluble. Our discourse-historical overview of the use of the parasite metaphor complex during the “Third Reich” has identified some continuities but also significant changes in its discursive manifestation. Whilst the ideological core belief—the view of Jews as parasites on the body of the nation— remained the same among the Nazi leadership during their rule, the public presentation of the therapy-through-parasite-annihilation scenario changed in relation to the contextual conditions of its public reception in Germany. Three main phases can be distinguished in its discourse “career”. From 1933 to the start of 1939, the parasite metaphor was propagated continuously in order to establish in the public mind the strongest possible link between Jews and topics of illness-infection-decomposition, sexual depravity and criminality and to justify the ever-escalating legal and socioeconomic measures designed to destroy Jewish presence in Germany. At the same time, however, the Nazi leaders were still camouflaging their intentions and denying any accusations of racism as figments of “atrocity propaganda”. This pretence was still kept up even on the occasion of the “Crystal Night” pogrom: whilst the outright violence of SA, SS and GESTAPO against Jews and the hate-filled rhetoric of Nazi speeches left no doubt about the desired outcome of eliminating Jews in Germany altogether, official government statements and the state-controlled media claimed that “not a hair had been touched on a Jew’s head”. All this changed with the imminence of a second “World War”, which enabled Hitler to link the parasite-annihilation scenario to the prediction of the complete destruction of European Jewry in case of war in the “prophecy” of 30 January 1939. The prophecy’s reiteration and referencing in speeches up to autumn 1942 marks the second phase of the Nazis’ publicly announcing the genocide-in-progress as fulfilment of the promised victory over the world pestilence/world parasite. From the SD and SOPADE reports and from Klemperer’s notes it is evident that these speeches and their reinforcement by the party-controlled media were received by an audience that, if they had not thought about the meaning of the “annihilation” prophecy earlier, started to become familiar with the—still unofficial—knowledge that the “final solution” of the parasite-therapy lay in genocide and that viewed the impact of the Allied war effort as “revenge” for Germany’s murder of the Jews. Plain descriptive or evaluative vocabulary (e.g. “mass killing”, “murder”, “gassing”) remained officially taboo, but, by mid-war, the biomedical terminology as applied to Jews had become so transparent that any “camouflage” effect must have been minimal. After the defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler’s boastful references to the double fulfilment of the 1939 prophecy—military victory and annihilation of the Jew/parasite—ceased. Strategic developments were from now on conceptualized in terms of defending the German fatherland and Europe. Their

The Reception of Antisemitic Imagery in Nazi Germany 67 only link to the “Jewish question” was the abstract notion that “the Jew” was the secret power behind all enemy forces and their activities. Parasite imagery was still being used, but its popular reception now took place in the context of impending military collapse, which drastically contradicted the previously envisaged victorious outcome. The propaganda function of the parasite-annihilation scenario thus changed again: formerly it had announced the imminent completion of racial-cum-military triumph; now it presented the destruction of “the Jew” as a last-ditch defensive survival strategy. Given the knowledge of the genocide and the imminence of Germany’s military collapse, a disingenuous reading of this outcome as an involuntary prediction of complete defeat became, as we know from the secret reports on popular opinion, ever more widespread. Hitler’s prophecy about racial/ national parasite annihilation had made the German populace into accomplices and, at the same time, hostages of their own national catastrophe. OUTLOOK What happened to the parasite-annihilation scenario as the ideological and discursive centre of antisemitism and/or racism in general after 1945? In the aftermath of Nazi Germany’s complete military and political defeat, it was, of course, initially impossible to maintain any such discourse, and, in the newly emerging public spheres in East and West Germany, a thoroughgoing critique of Nazi jargon and ideology, including its imagery, became de rigueur, sometimes on the basis of critical political or linguistic analysis, in other cases with the main purpose of denouncing new adversaries as being Nazi-like (Klemperer 1975 [first published 1946]; Sternberger, Storz and Süskind 1989 [first published 1947]; Seidel and Seidel-Slotty 1961; Handt 1964; Bein 1965; Maas 1984; Ehlich 1989; Schmitz-Berning 2000; Kopperschmidt 2003; Kämper 2005; Eitz and Stötzel 2007). The crucial role of body-, illness-, and parasite-related metaphors in racist stigmatization and hate speech was recognized and investigated, with Nazi ideology and discourse providing the most infamous historical point of reference (Sontag 1978; Bosmajian 1983; van Dijk 1987; Hawkins 2001). Given this tradition of critical analysis, one might be forgiven for expecting some diminution or decrease, however slow, in the use of such imagery, at least in countries that profess to have learnt the “lessons from history”, in particular from Nazism. Unfortunately, however, this does not seem to be the case at all: hate speech couched in illness and parasite imagery still persists (Wodak 2009): it may count as “politically incorrect” but not as socially or legally significant (Lakoff 2000). A relatively recent scandal about racist remarks in Switzerland can serve to illustrate this issue. In 2008, Dominic Lüthard, leader of the far rightwing “Party of Nationally Oriented Swiss,” protested against the election of the Zurich-born Whitney Toyloy as “Miss Switzerland” and against the

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runner-up, Rekha Datta, because both of them, on account of their darker skin colour, personified the “brown tumour that was eating up” free Switzerland (Die Welt Online, 15 October 2008; Tages-Anzeiger, 2 February 2009). Whilst a local judge initially imposed a fine of 500 Swiss francs on Lüthard, the district court acquitted him because his attack against Toyloy and Datta as personifying a “brown tumour” did not constitute “racial discrimination” (Freitag, 3 April 2009; Tages-Anzeiger, 3 April 2009). The verdict, which was celebrated by Lüthard and his sympathisers as a victory for free speech, betrays a naïve understanding of the use of metaphors in political speech: they are seen as “colourful” ornaments that may be emotionally loaded and ethically reprehensible but also as having no bearing on the core information of a statement and its implications, for which the speaker can be held legally responsible. By contrast, modern cognitive and pragmatic linguistics have established that “metaphors . . . are among our principal vehicles for understanding” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 159) and that “metaphorical interpretations are arrived in exactly the same way as [literal, loose, and hyperbolic] interpretations” (Sperber and Wilson 2008: 84). Still, verbal imagery is treated officially and in common parlance as a kind of vague, secondary meaning that has no “truth value” in the semantic sense or legal value in the social sphere. Little wonder, then, that the 2009 acquittal was seen as an encouragement by Lüthard to continue his attacks in a similar vein. In 2011 he denounced the current Miss Switzerland, Alina Buschschacher, for her Caribbean family background, saying that she contributed to the “multicultural decomposition” of Switzerland (Blick, 28 September 2011). Again, as in 2009, commentators doubted that Lüthard could be successfully prosecuted because he avoided making “factually incorrect” statements and used only subjective imagery (Blick, 28 September 2011). It seems perverse that seven decades after the historic Holocaust and its “justification” by the Nazis in terms of the parasite-annihilation metaphor, the depiction of “racial” others as tumours or elements of decomposition is regarded as not explicit or specific enough to count as racist in a legally meaningful sense. As in the case of the parasite metaphor, the statements “X is a tumour in Y” or “X contributes to the decomposition of Y,” made with reference to a nation or state (= “Y”), evoke the idea of the latter as a (human) body that is under attack from a fatal illness and is in need of urgent therapy. This scenario provides a narrative-argumentative frame in which the destruction of the tumour or element of decomposition—that is, its destruction—is considered practical and ethically necessary. In the case of a genuine medical treatment, such an intended pragmatic inference or, in the terminology of relevance theory, “implicature” (Sperber and Wilson 2008: 98–99) can be inferred naturally from the diagnostic statement. In the metaphoric-analogical application to the state, this therapy scenario is transferred from the domain of human medicine to that of sociopolitical entities, carrying with it the same inference, that is, the affirmation of

The Reception of Antisemitic Imagery in Nazi Germany 69 a necessity to destroy the perceived threat. Judges who acquit racist hatespeakers who use such imagery effectively pretend not to know what a diagnosis of tumour/parasite/decomposition normally means, in order to be able to negate the corresponding analogical inferences at the metaphorical level. Critical discourse and metaphor analysis thus still face a massive task in overcoming attitudes toward communication that provide racists with rhetorical and legal loopholes. REFERENCES Aly, Götz (2005). Hitlers Volksstaat. Raub, Rassenkrieg und nationaler Sozialismus. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer. Bankier, David (1992). The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion under Nazism. Oxford: Blackwell. Bankier, David (1996). German Public Awareness of the Final Solution. In: David Cesarani (ed.), The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation. London/ New York: Routledge, 215–227. Behnken, Klaus (ed.) (1980). Deutschland-Berichte der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Sopade) 1934–1940. 7 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Petra Nettelbeck, Zweitausendeins. Bein, Alexander (1965). Der jüdische Parasit. Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 13, 121–149. Bosmajian, Haig (1983). The Language of Oppression. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Browning, Christopher (1992). The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Browning, Christopher [1992] (2001). Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. London: Penguin. Browning, Christopher (2004). The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942. With contributions by Jürgen Matthäus. London: William Heinemann. Burleigh, Michael (2001). The Third Reich: A New History. London: Pan. Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2004). Corpus Approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Charteris-Black, Jonathan (2005). Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Chilton, Paul (2005). Manipulation, Memes and Metaphors: The Case of Mein Kampf. In: Louis de Saussure and Peter Schulz (eds.), Manipulation and Ideologies in the Twentieth Century. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 15–43. Domarus, Max (1965). Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945. Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen. Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag. Ehlich, Konrad (Hrsg.) (1989). Sprache im Faschismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Eitz, Thorsten, and Georg Stötzel (2007). Wörterbuch der “Vergangenheitsbewältigung”: Die NS-Vergangenheit im öffentlichen Sprachgebrauch. Hildesheim: Olms. Evans, Richard J. (2005). The Third Reich in Power, 1933–1939. London: Penguin. Fetscher, Iring (1998). Josef Goebbels im Berliner Sportpalast 1943 „Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg?“. Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. Friedländer, Saul (1998). Nazi Germany and the Jews. Vol. 1: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939. London: Phoenix.

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Sontag, Susan (1978). Illness as Metaphor. New York: Vintage Books. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson (2008). A Deflationary Account of Metaphors. In: Raymond W. Gibbs (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 84–104. Sternberger, Dolf, Gerhard Storz and Wilhelm E. Süskind (1989). Aus dem Wörterbuch des Unmenschen. Frankfurt am Main/Berlin: Ullstein. Van Dijk, Teun (1987). Communicating Racism. London: Sage. Welch, David (2007). Propaganda and the German Cinema 1933–1945. Revised ed. London / New York: I. B. Tauris. Wilson, Deirdre (2011). Parallels and Differences in the Treatment of Metaphor in Relevance Theory and Cognitive Linguistics. Intercultural Pragmatics, 8(2): 177–196. Wodak, Ruth (2007). Pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis: A Crossdisciplinary Inquiry. Pragmatics and Cognition, 15(1): 203–225. Wodak, Ruth (2009). Prejudice, Racism, and Discourse. In: Anton Pelinka, Karin Bischof and Karin Stögner (eds.), Handbook of Prejudice. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 409–443. Wodak, Ruth, and Paul Chilton (eds.) (2005). A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis: Theory, Methodology and Interdisciplinarity. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Zinken, Jörg (2007). Discourse Metaphors: The Link between Figurative Language and Habitual Snalogies. Cognitive Linguistics 18(3): 445–466. Zinken, Jörg, Iina Hellsten and Brigitte Nerlich (2008). Discourse Metaphors. In: Roslyn M. Frank, René Dirven, Tom Ziemke and Enrique Bernárdez (eds.), Body, Language and Mind. Vol. 2: Sociocultural Situatedness. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 363–385.

5

“Calculated Ambivalence” and Holocaust Denial in Austria Jakob Engel and Ruth Wodak

POSTWAR AUSTRIA: NARRATIVES OF VICTORY OR DEFEAT At the “zero hour” of 1945, as they emerged from the ruins of World War II, the ruling élites of what would become Austria’s Second Republic were preoccupied with how to cope with the frequently contradictory demands they faced. This included Allied forces that demanded a comprehensive denazification process, a war-weary population that had survived the bombings, displaced persons and survivors of camps returning to their homes and expecting compensation, former Nazis expecting integration, and former Wehrmacht soldiers who also expected to have their sacrifices recognised. Continuities with National Socialism or Austrian fascism (between 1934 and 1938) were (officially) renounced, and the “new” Austrian government announced the rebirth of an Austrian Republic that was morally unburdened by past events or experiences (see Reisigl 2007; Wodak & De Cillia 2007). The first part of the so-called Moscow Declaration of 1943, in which the Allied forces had declared Austria to have been the “first victim of Nazi aggression,” supported this hegemonic narrative (Rathkolb 2009). This definition remained essentially unchallenged until the election of Kurt Waldheim, a former SA officer, to the Austrian presidency in 1986 (see Wodak et al. 1990; Mitten 1992). The second part of the Moscow Declaration— namely that Austrians were also responsible for Nazi war crimes—was usually swept under the carpet.1 Within this climate, the persecution and extermination of Jews that had occurred during the Third Reich were not so much denied as concealed. A number of studies attribute this lack of public debate and reflection to cynicism and/or to the remains of antisemitic hostility among political élites (Knight 1988; Rathkolb 1988; Stern 1991). Moreover, the deafening silence that surrounded discussions of the “Jewish question” must be seen within the aforementioned context of Austrian identity (re-)formation and the development of a new collective or public memory shaped by the Allied occupation, a reservoir of antisemitic prejudices from the First Austrian Republic and a commitment to becoming a Western democracy (Wodak et al. 2009; Wodak 2011a).

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Thus, the “Jewish question” took a subordinate place in Austria’s official public memory of the Nazi period. This new understanding, described in detail in Mitten (2000), resulted in the creation of a new “community of victims” in which Jews were regarded victims like everyone else. This view was first challenged by the so-called Waldheim affair of 1986, and then in the context of ceremonies commemorating the passage of 50 years since the Anschluss in 1988 (Wodak et al. 1994; De Cillia & Wodak 2009). Doubts, feelings of guilt and the need to justify or rationalize past behaviour encouraged the development of strategies among many for coming to terms with this past (Vergangenheitsbewältigung). Since the beginning of the 1990s, public debates about the question of Austrian responsibility and, more recently, exhibitions about the crimes of the German Wehrmacht have further contributed to the lifting of this taboo (Heer et al. 2008). This chapter explores debates around the legal punishment of Holocaust denial (juxtaposed with legislation on freedom of speech) in Austria. We present two cases: the so-called Gudenus affair in 2005, and the scandal surrounding the candidacy of Barbara Rosenkranz in 2010 for Austrian president. We conclude by discussing the significance of such disruptions in the public sphere and the range of strategies employed (such as the “strategy of calculated ambivalence” and the “strategy of provocation”);2 nonetheless, it is important to contextualise such events in the long-standing failure to confront National Socialist ideology and beliefs after 1945 and to understand the impact this has had on discourses throughout Austrian society. THE POST–WORLD WAR II INTEGRATION OF THE FAR RIGHT INTO THE POLITICAL MAINSTREAM When investigating manifestations of fascist and national socialist ideologies (and related discourses and texts) after 1945, it is, of course, important to briefly trace the history of how former members of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) adapted to the “new” everyday life of the Second Austrian Republic. In 1949, “liberals” with a strong German National orientation and not much of a classical liberal tradition (see BailerGalanda & Neugebauer 1997: 326), who felt unable to support either the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) or the (formerly Christian) conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), founded the VdU (Verband der Unabhängigen—Association of Independents). This party became the electoral home for many former Austrian Nazis. The FPÖ, founded in 1956, was the successor party to the VdU and retained an explicit attachment to a “German cultural community”.3 In the 1949 parliamentary elections, the VdU won 12 per cent of the national vote, making it the third-strongest party in the country. Soon thereafter, the VdU called for the abolition of all laws governing de-nazification procedures. The argument that the VdU employed to this end rested above

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all on the reversal of the perpetrator-victim dichotomy: the real victims were not those persecuted by the Nazi regime but rather former members of the NSDAP who were now being singled out.4 Given the early VdU ideology, as well as the fact that the party was a conglomerate of members sharing a very broad spectrum of views on the role of an Austrian “third political force”, it did not take long before the party entered a significant crisis, resulting in an even stronger pan-Germanist and pro-fascist agenda coming to the fore. It was amidst this crisis that the Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs—FPÖ) was established in 1955–56, clearly being “funded as a German nationalist party of the far right, in which former, seriously incriminated National Socialists took the leading functions” (Schiedel & Neugebauer 2002: 16). For example, the first FPÖ chairman, Anton Reintaller, had once been “a member of the National Steering Committee of the Austrian NSDAP and the SS-Brigadenführer and held the position of Minister of Agriculture in the first Nazi-led Austrian government” (ibid.). Reintaller’s Nazi past, as well as that of other key members of the FPÖ at the time of its founding (such as Lothar Rendulic and the later FPÖ chairman Friedrich Peter), made the FPÖ the “successor to the Austrian NSDAP” (Manoschek 2002: 7) and shaped its character in a way which precluded any treatment of the party “as a normal third party like the German Liberals (FDP) or other small liberal parties in West European Countries” (ibid.). In its more than 50-year history, the FPÖ has, therefore, never been a liberal party in the European sense, although there were always tensions between more liberal and more conservative members. For instance, in 1986 Jörg Haider was elected as leader of the party and unseated Norbert Steger, who belonged to the liberal wing. Following this, the FPÖ progressively gained votes, reaching 26.9 per cent of all the votes cast in the Austrian elections of October 1999 (1,244,087 voters). Throughout the 1990s, the FPÖ’s party policy and politics became conspicuously more anti-immigrant, anti-European Union and widely populist, resembling Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National in France (Reisigl & Wodak 2000). From 4 February 2000, the FPÖ constituted part of the Austrian government, having formed a coalition with the conservative ÖVP. This development caused a major upheaval internationally and nationally and led to the so-called sanctions against the Austrian government by the 14 other member states of the European Union (see Möhring 2001). In September 2000, the EU found an exit strategy, and the sanctions were lifted because of a report by the three “wise men” appointed by the European Union member states to investigate the situation in Austria and to recommend how a facesaving solution could be found. Nevertheless, the report stated that the FPÖ should be regarded as a “right wing extremist populist party, a right wing populist party with radical elements”. In May 2005, a section of the FPÖ splintered off to form a new party, the Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (Association for the Future of Austria—BZÖ). Haider, a chief architect of the creation of the BZÖ, remained regional

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governor in Carinthia, but Peter Westenthaler took over the leadership of the party. Heinz-Christian Strache, in many ways emulating the younger Haider, took over the more far right-wing, traditional FPÖ. In the 2006 parliamentary elections, the SPÖ (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs) gained the majority in Austria after having been in opposition for six years. The BZÖ’s proportion of the vote was 5 per cent, securing only seven seats in parliament; the FPÖ attracted around 11 percent of the vote and was also represented in parliament. However, since 2006, the FPÖ, under the leadership of Heinz-Christian Strache, has risen to almost 26 per cent in the 2010 Vienna municipal elections. The overt rhetoric of scapegoating, persecution and victimhood—this time by “invading Muslim hordes” and immigrants—remains central to the FPÖ’s strategy and is increasingly mimicked by the governing parties. While the FPÖ’s extreme right-wing nationalist base (some of whom are former Nazis) constitutes only a small portion of the electorate, it is, as will be argued in this chapter, still catered to deliberately through innuendos and a strategy of calculated ambivalence about questions of war guilt, the Holocaust and the crimes of the Third Reich. HOLOCAUST DENIAL AND LEGISLATION IN AUSTRIA Central to the two cases being examined in this chapter is the complex history of Austrian de-nazification and particularly the Verbotsgesetz, a body of postwar legislation in Austria known simply as “the prohibition law”, which effectively prohibits the glorification, mystification or denial of National Socialist crimes. De-nazification measures were passed in the immediate aftermath of World War II, on 8 May 1945, and were reformulated in 1947. The laws forbid, among other things, any activity related to National Socialism. De-nazification measures also required the registration of all NSDAP, SS and SA members, the payment of fines and the participation in reconstruction works projects. Moreover, former Nazis were barred from public-sector employment as well as from high-level private-sector positions. However, in 1957, following an amnesty, many of these more punitive measures were lifted. The most relevant part of the Verbotsgesetz in the cases examined in this chapter, Paragraph 3, has been repeatedly amended since 1945—most recently in 1992—and states that, “even outside of these organisations, no one may be active for the NSDAP or its aims in any form.” While Paragraphs 3a to 3f focus primarily on the re-establishment of organisations that disseminate National Socialist propaganda or on the dissemination of such materials in print or similar means, Paragraph 3g states: Anyone who becomes active in the National Socialist sense in ways other than those specified in §§3a-3f—unless the offence carries a

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harsher sentence under other legislation—is punishable with imprisonment of one to ten years, and in case the offender is of exceptional danger of up to 20 years. Paragraph 3h of the Verbotsgesetz, which is the most relevant in the case studies examined, includes the following passage: Prosecution according to §3g also applies to anyone who seeks to deny, flagrantly downplay [gröblich verharmlost], glorify or justify the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in print material, a broadcast or other medium, or in any other form accessible to many people. This paragraph, specifically, punishes public denial of the Holocaust or other extreme revisionist views pertaining to National Socialist crimes.5 The emphasis on the word “flagrant” (gröblich) has in the past frequently allowed for the dismissal of Holocaust denial lawsuits, particularly against prominent individuals; while they could be found to have downplayed or mitigated Nazi crimes, their acts were found to not be flagrant (Wodak 2007). As in many other European countries, there have been significant controversies around the Verbotsgesetz, most notably in its relationship to the freedom of speech.6 The European Court of Human Rights has, however, consistently rejected any claims against the law, arguing that it “can be justified as necessary in a democratic society in the interest of national security and territorial integrity as well as for the prevention of crime.”7 In recent years, there has been an increase in the trials for violations against the “Verbotsgesetz”, with 153 in 2010 (as opposed to 104 in 2009 and 17 in 2008).8 Despite this, the number of convictions has remained relatively constant in the past few years, implying that a growing number of lawsuits have been dismissed or resulted in acquittal. THE DISCOURSE-HISTORICAL APPROACH Kahn (2005) argues that Holocaust denial trials—and arguably the treatment of Holocaust denial more broadly—are impacted by the specific historical experiences of the respective country with the Holocaust, that is, that the treatment is strongly context-dependent. In this sense, the discoursehistorical approach (DHA), in its attempt to systematically integrate all available background information into the analysis and interpretation of the many layers of a text, becomes particularly salient in the analysis of Holocaust denial debates. Relating individual utterances to the context in which they were made—in this case, to the historical events that were being written or talked about—is

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crucial in decoding the discourses of racism and antisemitism, for example, during the Waldheim affair (see Wodak et al. 1990; Wodak 2003, 2011a) or during the two scandals investigated in detail in this chapter, the so-called Gudenus affair and the Rosenkranz affair.9 Without these contexts, current metaphors, implicatures, presuppositions and allusions referring to “the past”, Nazism, the Holocaust and antisemitism would be incomprehensible (see also the chapter by John Richardson in this volume). When analyzing the political controversies surrounding the explicit uttering of Holocaust denial, we focus primarily on strategies of positive self- and negative otherpresentation, as well as on strategies of justification and legitimation. We distinguish between five types of discursive strategies, which underpin the justification and legitimization of specific claims and ideologies. Due to space restrictions, we focus on referential, predicational and justificatory strategies (which employ argumentative schemata) in this chapter.10 “Strategy” generally refers to a (more or less accurate and more or less intentional) plan of practices, including discursive practices, adopted to achieve a particular social, political, psychological or linguistic goal.11 Referential or nomination strategies construct and represent social actors through the creation of in-groups and out-groups. This is done through a number of categorization devices, including metaphors, metonymies and synecdoches, in the form of a part standing for the whole (pars pro toto) or a whole standing for the part (totum pro parte). Furthermore, social actors as individuals, group members or groups as a whole are characterized through predications. Predicational strategies are, for example, realized as evaluative attributions of negative and positive traits in the linguistic form of implicit or explicit predicates. Third, there is a fund of topoi through which positive and negative attributions can be justified. Positive self- and negative other-presentation requires the explicit or implicit (coded) use of justification and legitimation strategies; the latter imply the usually strategic and manipulative application of specific argumentation schemes as well as topoi and fallacies (Reisigl & Wodak 2009: 102). Within argumentation theory, “topoi” can be defined as the formal or content-related warrants or “conclusion rules” which connect the argument(s) with the conclusion. As such, they justify the transition from the argument(s) to the conclusion (Kienpointner 1996: 194). Topoi are not always expressed explicitly but can be made explicit as conditional or causal paraphrases such as “if x, then y” or “y, because x”.12 Argumentation schemes are reasonable or unreasonable. If the latter is the case, we label them fallacies. There are rules for rational disputes and constructive argument, which allow the discerning of reasonable topoi from fallacies.13 These rules include the freedom to argue, the obligation to give reasons, the need to correct references to the previous discourse by the antagonist, the obligation to “matter-of factness”, the correct references to implicit premises, the respect of shared starting points, the use of plausible

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arguments and schemes of argumentation, the employment of logical validity, the acceptance of the discussion’s results and the need for clarity of expression and correct interpretation. If these rules are flouted, fallacies occur. However, as Reisigl and Wodak (2009: 102) admit, it is not always easy to distinguish precisely whether an argumentation scheme has been employed as reasonable topos or as fallacy. In this context, it is important to emphasize that the “strategy of calculated ambivalence” serves to convey at least two contradictory messages in one utterance which address different audiences (which also oppose each other and have different stand points and ideologies). We will come back to specific examples when presenting our case studies.

THE “GUDENUS AFFAIR”

“That’s How it Is Written in the Schoolbooks”— Chronology of Events The year 2005 saw both the 60th anniversary of the war’s end and the 50th anniversary of the Second Austrian Republic. These had been the occasion for commemoration events in past years and decades—such as those in 1988 and 1995.14 “Disruptions” took place during the 2005 commemorative events (see Wodak et al. 1994; Wodak & De Cillia 2007; Engel & Wodak 2009). Individual politicians—possibly deliberately or, at first, perhaps unconsciously—used public speeches and interviews, coinciding with carefully planned and organised commemorative events and services, to challenge or undermine the general consensus with respect to Austria’s recent history (see Wodak 2011a). The two most significant cases in 2005 were statements by two representatives in Austria’s second chamber of parliament (the Bundesrat), Siegfried Kampl (BZÖ) and John Gudenus (FPÖ), in which they expressed revisionist views on the treatment of complicit Austrians in the aftermath of World War II (in Kampl’s case) and on the actual existence and scope of the Jewish extermination during the Holocaust (Gudenus).15 In this chapter, we particularly examine the statements made by John Gudenus and their relationship to a continuous downplaying or denial of the Holocaust and National Socialist crimes in postwar Austria.16 We analyse the statements made by John Gudenus on three distinct levels, following the context definitions of the DHA: • First, on the individual level, we investigate what might have caused Gudenus to publicly voice his revisionist interpretations of history. • Second, we examine these statements in the context of the official commemorative services and anniversary celebrations and thus as a reaction to a specific consensus about recent history, especially to the

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Jakob Engel and Ruth Wodak official formation and affirmation of Austrian identity that is propagated through events of this kind. • Third, we interpret Gudenus’s statements as a response to the split of the “third camp” in Austrian politics. In this division, both the newly founded BZÖ, replacing the FPÖ as coalition partner in the Austrian government, and the greatly weakened FPÖ were at the time trying to reposition themselves and attract German nationalist voters (while simultaneously keeping a safe distance from them in public), as well as trying to attract the attention of the media and thereby provoke and influence public debates.

These strategies are recognisable not so much in the statements of the representative themselves but in the responses they elicited from leading politicians of all parties. So how was it that John Gudenus, after all only a representative in Vienna’s federal assembly, attracted so much attention? In an interview for the ORF programme “Report” on 26 April 2005, entitled “Die Welt des Grafen” [The world of the count],17 reporter Klaus Dutzler asked John Gudenus about a statement he had made in 1995, in which he described the existence of gas chambers as something that was dogmatically prescribed and that one could not oppose.18

Text 1 DUTZLER: What is your view of this debate today? GUDENUS: I believe I did not react the wrong way. And I believe Charles Popper once said that one should not set up taboos, but rather study and test using physical and scientific means. DUTZLER: But the underlying question is: Did gas chambers exist in the Third Reich or is their existence dogmatically prescribed. . . . GUDENUS: I believe we should debate this topic in all earnestness and not be forced to answer a question with yes or no. And if we should, then let us test this [assumption]. I am of the opinion . . . I keep calling for an examination.19 In his 1995 statement, Gudenus affirmed the existence of gas chambers but at the same time called it into question as a “prescribed dogma”—thus using different claims for different audiences at the same time—a good example of “calculated ambivalence”. In 2005, he explicitly used the topos of legitimate doubt; in doing so, he did not deny the existence of gas chambers outright but nonetheless called it into question (a warrant of the form “if we find proof for gas chambers, then they really exist” and also “if gas chambers

“Calculated Ambivalence” and Holocaust Denial in Austria 81 really exist, then we will also find proof for this”). With his call for a careful verification (which, according to Gudenus, Charles Popper would call for as well [topos of authority], though no context or source is provided for the reference to Popper), Gudenus implied both that all earlier “verifications” and proofs were insufficient and that (solely) a further verification “using scientific means” would clarify the issue for him. In this context, Gudenus emphasised a view of science that he presumed would allow him to question the existence of gas chambers anew. He thus seemed interested in a deliberate and, indeed, pointed provocation, as the call for a re-“examination” of a generally accepted fact implies that the matter might be different and that such a re-examination might lead to different results. Thus, Gudenus’s statement obviously implied the potential nonexistence of the gas chambers and, thus, also of the Holocaust. Reactions to the published interview with Gudenus were not long in coming. Norbert Darabos, Federal Manager of the SPÖ, was quick to point out that Gudenus’s statements constituted an “unbelievable lapse” and that Gudenus “in his position of Bundesrat had damaged Austria’s reputation abroad”.20 The ÖVP, represented by its Federal Manager, Reinhold Lopatka, also responded quickly by stating that Gudenus’s resignation from office “was long overdue”.21 On the same day, Gudenus resigned his position as FPÖ party member.22 The FPÖ’s chairman, Heinz-Christian Strache, immediately indicated that Gudenus was not in any way related to his party “and hence the matter did not call for any further comment or action.”23 He did, however, proceed to point out that this was not the case for BZÖ, as Kampl, who had recently made his controversial comments about deserters of the Wehrmacht, had not left the party. This feud, initiated by the split between the BZÖ and the FPÖ shortly before, as well as subsequent attempts to ensure the continued support from right-wing-nationalist voters (who now had two right-wing parliamentary parties to choose from), while at the same time keeping a safe distance to the extreme right (in order to not alienate more moderate voters), can be seen as a primary motivation behind the reaction of these two parties to Gudenus’s statements.

Gudenus and the Verbotsgesetz On the day following his interview, John Gudenus emphasised:

Text 2 I hereby clarify that I never denied or intended to deny the enormous crimes against humanity that were committed during the time of the Third Reich. It was and has never been my intention to downplay the mass-murder of hecatombs of defenceless people.24

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Coming after Gudenus’s statement in the ORF interview, which above all conveyed sarcasm and an effort at deliberate provocation, the subsequent statement has to be seen as an attempt to mitigate the fallout. Once again, however, Gudenus qualified and restricted his clarification in the sense of the aforementioned calculated ambivalence by not directly referring to the Holocaust but including all “enormous crimes against humanity that were committed during the time of the Third Reich”. This could, of course, include other crimes committed during World War II, as well; Gudenus allowed for multiple interpretations. He furthermore subsumed the Holocaust into “the mass-murder of hecatombs of defenceless people”, which is factually correct but—apart from the semantic fact that his formulations are somewhat old-fashioned—indicates that Gudenus seemed to be trying to limit the damage without taking back or distancing himself from his earlier statement. This not only constitutes a further example of calculated ambivalence but is indicative of Gudenus’s attempt to address multiple audiences simultaneously. After this public statement and the onset of investigations by the public prosecutor’s office in Vienna, Gudenus did not comment on his infamous remarks for more than a month. On 29 April 2005, the Viennese SPÖ brought a motion in the local Landtag (legislative assembly for each of Austria’s nine provinces) calling for John Gudenus to “immediately resign from office as delegate”. Gudenus did, however, not comply with this request. Legally, as already elaborated, efforts to prosecute Gudenus focused primarily on Article 1, §3g and §3h of the Verbotsgesetz. The deliberate and premeditated violation of this law is punishable by imprisonment for one to ten years. However, it was initially decided not to prosecute Gudenus in a criminal court.25 The investigation was halted on 2 June on the grounds, given by the public prosecutor’s office, that, while Gudenus had “voiced doubts” and “called things into question”, a “denial or glorified” National Socialist ideology was not recognisable in his statements. However, the amended Verbotsgesetz clearly states that “the mass-murder of Jews, committed in the concentration camps during the Second World War [is] an evident historical fact”. Hence, any kind of re-examination or verification was seen as “superfluous”. According to this definition, Gudenus’s statements in the interview conducted by the ORF—his “call for a scientific and physical verification”—do provide considerable scope for prosecution according to the Verbotsgesetz. This led to a renewed debate among politicians across the political spectrum, as well as in the media, about the Verbotsgesetz itself. For instance, Johannes Jarolim, spokesperson on legal affairs for the SPÖ, deemed the end of the investigations against Gudenus “grotesque”. After all, he went on to say, no one could assume that “Gudenus does not know exactly what he is talking about.”26 Only four days after the investigation was stopped, however, Gudenus raised the stakes in an interview published by the newspaper Der

“Calculated Ambivalence” and Holocaust Denial in Austria 83 Standard, saying it was “good that doubts are permitted”. He went on to elaborate:

Text 3 Gas chambers did exist, but not in the Third Reich. Just in Poland. That’s how it’s written in the schoolbooks, too. I never said that I doubt the existence of gas chambers in principle. . . . Why should I apologise for something I never said? The ÖVP wants me to apologise to them while they still idolise Leopold Kunschak, one of the greatest anti semites? What should I apologise for? And now the public prosecutor’s office has conceded that one is permitted/it is perfectly legal to have doubts.27 Apparently under the impression that he had been given carte blanche by the public prosecutor’s office, Gudenus again tried to test the legal boundaries of the Verbotsgesetz while at the same time comparing his views with those of other infamous antisemites (Leopold Kunschak was an MP and a high-ranking official for the ÖVP in the interwar period and a very outspoken antisemite). Gudenus did distance himself from his earlier claim that the existence of gas chambers had to be (re)confirmed and now conceded that there had, indeed, been gas chambers. At the same time, he erroneously claimed these did “not exist in the Third Reich”. The initial statement was thus gradually weakened but never completely abandoned. While Gudenus had presented himself in the initial interview broadcast by the ORF as an objectivist sceptic, he took a clear stance in the later interview published by Der Standard, saying he doubted neither the existence of gas chambers nor where they could be found—namely “not inside the Third Reich”. On the factual level, that assertion is simply false: either Gudenus did not know better, in which case he was uneducated, or he did know better, in which case his statement constituted a denial of historical facts. In any case, Gudenus attempted to shift the blame on to the “schoolbooks” used metonymically for state education; hence, he implied, he was not to blame—his knowledge as a normal Austrian school child stemmed from the hegemonic, official historical canon as taught in schools. The historian Oliver Rathkolb provided the following assessment of Gudenus’s statements:

Text 4 The differentiation made by the member of the Bundesrat is plainly absurd and in no way even remotely comprehensible. It would imply blaming the then non-existent Polish state as being responsible for Auschwitz.28 However, Gudenus’s attempt to justify his statements by pointing out that the ÖVP still honours Leopold Kunschak is notable. According to Gudenus’s line of reasoning, antisemitism had not discredited the Chancellor’s

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party, and he should thus be also free to claim whatever he wanted (thereby implying that his own statements were likewise antisemitic but that he was being treated unfairly). This most recent statement again caused a storm of outrage among both politicians of the other parties and the media, leading to another extensive debate about the Verbotsgesetz itself. Karl Öllinger, an MP representing the Green Party, demanded not only the resumption of the criminal investigations against Gudenus but also that the Verbotsgesetz be changed to make it more precise. This demand, however, was rejected by all leading politicians, including President Fischer, on the grounds that it would gain nothing in quality “if we made the doubts that some people have a criminal offence. We can deal with this problem without amending the law.”29 On 13 June, the public prosecutor’s office in Vienna requested that Gudenus be extradited, and two days later the Wiener Landtag moved to suspend Gudenus’s immunity as a delegate.

Aftermath of the Gudenus Affair The Gudenus affair (and also the scandal caused by Kampl’s remarks) is indicative of the division of the traditionally united far right in Austria created by attempts made by FPÖ and BZÖ to reposition themselves. While the BZÖ initially distanced itself from Kampl and tried to move him to resign, he was eventually defended by the party’s leader, the late Jörg Haider (who was at the time governor of the province Carinthia). Kampl tried to present himself as the victim and was largely successful in this, especially in Carinthia.30 These discursive strategies of justification are far from new and are, indeed, being used continually by right-wing populist politicians, as has been shown in great detail in multiple studies (see, for instance, Krzyz˙anowski & Wodak 2009); John Gudenus’s behaviour and statements, however, lay far outside the mainstream and the general consensus with respect to Austria’s recent history. Gudenus continuously strayed into the grey areas of the Verbotsgesetz so that virtually no politician could and would address his remarks in any way other than outright rejection. His remarks appeared to play into a long history of questioning the proven historical consensus pertaining to the Holocaust, with the apparent aim of decriminalising German history (Benz 1995) Gudenus anticipated a trial and did not make any public comments after his interviews with the ORF and Der Standard. One can thus assume that he was prepared for the legal consequences. It is, of course, not known whether he also anticipated his conviction. However, his performance in court, where he apologised and barely tried to defend himself in historical terms, does indicate that the threat of imprisonment may have curbed the enthusiasm with which he expressed his convictions. Rather, during his trial he tried to make meticulous semantic distinctions between the “Third Reich” and “Great Germanic Reich” but maintained that he “had never called into question the existence of gas chambers”.31

“Calculated Ambivalence” and Holocaust Denial in Austria 85 FPÖ chairman Strache declared the matter as “settled and cleared” when Gudenus resigned his party membership immediately after the interview was broadcast. Nevertheless, the FPÖ’s half-hearted denunciation of Gudenus was no more than lip service for the benefit of the public. Even after his trial and the imposition of a conditional sentence of one year of imprisonment on 18 July 2006 (confirmed on 2 August 2006) and after having lost his position as MP, John Gudenus was still frequently seen at events hosted by the FPÖ.32 Gudenus moreover continued to be defended in FPÖ’s MEP Andreas Mölzer’s weekly newspaper Zur Zeit. Ewald Stadler, then a public ombudsman (“Volksanwalt”) for the FPÖ, condemned the verdict against Gudenus as “politically motivated” at a party convention on 8 May 2006, at which Gudenus himself not only was present but also was greeted with roaring applause by the audience.33 THE “ROSENKRANZ AFFAIR” On 28 February 2010, the leader of the FPÖ, Heinz-Christian Strache, announced publicly that the FPÖ would nominate Barbara Rosenkranz as its presidential candidate34—even before the federal executive board had actually approved her. The rationale behind nominating a national-conservative candidate was, according to Strache, to thematize the so-called unresolved question of immigration (“ungelöste Zuwanderungsfrage”).35 Barbara Rosenkranz was elected to the parliament of Lower Austria in 1993; she also became deputy chair of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) in the state of Lower Austria in 1996 and chaired her party group from 2000 on. The mother of ten had studied history and philosophy and was secretary general of the state party from 1998 to 1999. In 2003, she was elected chair of the state party. She was her party’s top candidate in Lower Austria in the 2008 election, and she served as Minister of Construction Law and Animal Protection of the State of Lower Austria. Between 2002 and 2008, she was a member of the Austrian Parliament. In 2007, Rosenkranz was awarded the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria (Ehrenzeichen für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich).36 Her husband, Horst Rosenkranz, is a publisher of far-right books and pamphlets and a former member of the now-banned right-wing extremist National Democratic Party (NDP). She herself is the author of a book that criticises feminism and efforts towards gender mainstreaming.37 She opposes civil partnerships for homosexual couples because—she argues—the legal definition of marriage also addresses the assumed intention to produce and raise children.38 Moreover, Rosenkranz has associated questions of migration policy largely with criminality. During the 2008 election campaign for the Lower Austria provincial legislature, she spoke of “unbridled mass immigration” and “imported criminality” and demanded a moratorium on naturalisation

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(Zur Zeit, “Die Einbürgerung stoppen”, February 2008). During her candidacy for president, one of the main issues she raised was the question “to what extent immigration into the country should be possible” and whether “the Austrians even want that” (Die Presse, 2.3.2010). Rosenkranz finally became publicly known in the course of her candidacy for the Austrian presidential election in 2010. She also received significant support from the far right.39 Most importantly, however, on 1 March 2010, Hans Dichand, owner and chief-editor of the Neue Kronen Zeitung, announced in his paper, on page 3, under his pseudonym CATO, his proRosenkranz campaign, stressing primarily her “motherhood”. Hence, it seems that being a good mother to her children implies that she would also be a “good mother” to the “Austrian family”; on the other hand, the praising of motherhood certainly relates to conservative and Christian family values:

Text 5 A brave mother. . . . A new federal president is up for election. A mother of ten children, who already demonstrated what she is capable of in her political career, is in the running for a very high position. Let us vote for her; she will be a good president for Austria. On 2 March 2010, she was officially presented as candidate for the federal presidency by the FPÖ. On the same day, in the evening news, as well as on 3 March 2010, in a radio interview (Ö1 Morgenjournal), and on 4 March 2010, in the Neue Kronen Zeitung, Rosenkranz challenged the Verbotsgesetz (she had already done so in 2006 when commenting on the Gudenus affair). Similar to Gudenus, she claimed that challenging the existence of gas chambers should fall under “freedom of expression”.40

Text 6 KRONEN ZEITUNG: You have, however, repeatedly demanded that the Verbotsgesetz should be repealed? ROSENKRANZ: This is a question of freedom of speech: if one is in favour of this, one has to allow opinions to be voiced that one finds wrong, absurd or repulsive. KRONEN ZEITUNG: Should Holocaust denial be permitted? ROSENKRANZ: I have repeatedly taken a stand on this issue. Laws against defamation and libel exist, and these of course keep freedom of speech within the bounds of civilised cooperation. In this way, Rosenkranz draws on the topos of freedom of speech just as Gudenus had done in 2005 (“if freedom of speech exists, then also wrong

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opinions can be voiced”). When asked specifically about Holocaust denial, she redefined this offence implicitly (she did not mention Holocaust denial explicitly but labeled this vaguely as “this issue”) as libel or defamation. Thus, she avoided further discussion about the Holocaust and Nazi crimes. On 3 March 2010, when asked in an interview with the Ö1 Mittagsjournal whether she actually believed in the existence of gas chambers in the concentration camps during World War II, she replied that she had the knowledge of an Austrian “who attended Austrian schools between 1964 and 1976—this is the extent of my knowledge of history and I do not intend to change this.” As stated in a dossier collected by the Green Party on Barbara Rosenkranz (2010, p. 15), this utterance seems to be part of a coded language amongst radical right-wing party members indicating a revisionist perspective of contemporary history and, most specifically, a positive view of National Socialism. Also, Gudenus, as noted, had blamed the “history schoolbooks” for his infamous version of contemporary history. Blaming the schoolbooks is obviously regarded as a suitable defence strategy; both Rosenkranz and Gudenus assumed (rightly) that nobody would check the schoolbooks which they might have used many decades ago; it is also common knowledge that many Austrian schoolbooks in the 1960s and 1970s did not elaborate on World War II and the Nazi crimes. This period was frequently summarised very briefly; war crimes were reported but only if they had happened far away (see Loitfellner 2003). Finally, both politicians emphasised an unchallenged and unchallengeable “authority of schoolbooks”. All these meanings were coded in this statement, which thus clearly established its calculated ambivalence. Of course, superficially, the statement did not breach any norms of political correctness. One might wonder, though, why she declared explicitly that she would never change her views or be open to new insights (particularly during her studies of history and philosophy at the University of Vienna during the late 1970s and early 1980s). This clause served, as is stated in the dossier mentioned earlier, as a salient indicator of revisionist ideology. Following this remark, on 4 March 2010, Vienna’s archbishop, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, labelled Rosenkranz as ineligible for the presidency, a most unusual move for a representative of the Church in a secular state.“When someone is running for a high office in this country and simultaneously leaves room for ambiguity in the question of the Verbotsgesetz or in the question of the Shoah, then they are unelectable for me.” This remark indicates that Rosenkranz’s repeated statements had been well understood in spite of the use of calculated ambivalence. On the same day, the current leader of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and then-Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger (a devout Catholic), supported the Cardinal’s move: “For me someone who has this kind of relationship to questions that affect our past is unelectable.” Through her strategy of provocation, Rosenkranz’s nomination monopolised the agenda; thus, the media and most public debates revolved around her utterances.

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However, on 6 March 2010, Hans Dichand, again under his pseudonym CATO, demanded a serious and honest declaration of distance from National Socialist beliefs and ideology. Text 7 (CATO’s Demand) As an independent newspaper, the “Kronen Zeitung” has always attempted to give outsiders a fair chance and to not exclude them. This is also the case in the ongoing presidential campaign, where we have provided Barbara Rosenkranz with the opportunity to present her ideas and views. Among these, there were also some that led to doubts. Therefore it is currently necessary that Barbara Rosenkranz distances herself under oath from all National Socialist ideas. Anything else would disqualify her as a presidential candidate. The same day, under obvious pressure, in an interview with Die Presse, Rosenkranz was asked “Do you believe there is such a thing as an Austrian nation?” This question is linked to a similar question once posed to Jörg Haider many years ago, to which he responded that Austria was an “ideological miscarriage” (ideologische Missgeburt); of course, Haider triggered a huge scandal with such a negative predication (Wodak et al. 2009). Rosenkranz responded by stating, “Of course the Austrian nation-state exists.”41 Again, we are confronted with a factually and politically correct statement; however, she avoids answering the question of whether she actually “believes” in the Austrian nation. This move is another example of calculated ambivalence. Finally, on 8 March 2010, at a public press conference, Rosenkranz felt compelled to sign a declaration distancing herself from National Socialism, as demanded by CATO (http://newsv1.orf.at/100308–48803/index.html), which, however, had no legal significance.42 Thus, paradoxically, the eligibility of Rosenkranz’s candidacy was re-established in the eyes of the most widely read Austrian populist tabloid, which exerted and manifested more power than any court, law or politician. On 9 March 2010, this declaration was reprinted in the Kronen Zeitung, along with a personal letter from Rosenkranz to Dichand. In this letter, she stated, inter alia, “I condemn the crimes of National-socialism out of conviction and distance myself vehemently from the ideology of National-socialism”.43 On 18 March 2010, Rosenkranz, for the first time, explicitly acknowledged the existence of the gas chambers: “Of course gas chambers existed. Of course, awful crimes took place. No reasonable person questions this.”44 This utterance, if compared with Gudenus’s utterances, is direct and seems not to contain any indicators of calculated ambivalence. However, her statement does not mention any perpetrators (actually, no human beings are mentioned); nor does it mention any specific territory or historical period. Hence, this statement could have been employed for any period of time

“Calculated Ambivalence” and Holocaust Denial in Austria 89 and for any similar event in the entire world. In this way, abstraction and vagueness reinforce calculated ambivalence. On 25 April 2010, Rosenkranz received 15.62 per cent (voter turnout: 49.2 per cent). Strache had initially hoped that she would reach 35 per cent of the votes cast.45 CONCLUSION The two cases examined in this chapter illustrate the complex and highly ambivalent relationship of the media, mainstream politicians, the legal system and even the Catholic Church when it comes to confronting expressions of sympathy by elected public officials for Austria’s Nazi past. Both Rosenkranz and Gudenus progressively and almost methodically tested the limits of revisionist thought that was tolerable among the key institutions of the state. Gudenus’s intention seems to have been to spread his revisionist theories in public and, at the same time, to try to test the boundaries of the Verbotsgesetz through provocation. The celebrations of the commemorative year served as the perfect time to seize a maximum of attention and, in part, also to mock those celebrations, especially in light of the already ongoing heated debate about Kampl’s earlier statement. Gudenus seemed less interested in reviving the so-called victim thesis (i.e. that Austria was the first victim of National Socialism). Rather, he explicitly challenged historical facts in order to indirectly downplay the crimes of the National Socialist regime and to signal with calculated ambivalence that he and thus also the FPÖ were still tolerating, if not supporting, the ideas and mind-set of the extreme right. In this way, this case dominated the media and celebrations; Gudenus thus set the agenda (Wodak 2011b). Rosenkranz’s relatively brazen xenophobia had been acceptable to the mainstream media and to politicians. She had, as mentioned above, even received an important decoration from the Austrian state. However, her coy attempts to question historically established facts about the history of the Third Reich went too far for her supporters in the tabloid media, and she was required to distance herself publically—via a legally irrelevant oath—from National Socialist ideology in order to be accepted again in the mainstream of right-of-centre Austrian politics. However, this was relevant only because she was a candidate for the presidency; otherwise, she presumably would have not attracted the level of attention she did. In this way, one could speculate that the scandal she provoked had the intended or unintended benefit of allowing her to set the agenda in the ongoing election campaign, in which she predictably had little chance to win against the incumbent, popular president running for his second term. Likewise, Gudenus’s comments, within the context of highly ritualised commemorative events with international participation, were seen as an embarrassment among Austria’s elites. However, neither event led to any

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serious engagement with the complicity of numerous Austrians in the crimes of the Third Reich, and Austria’s role in World War II. In this regard, the recourse to the Verbotsgesetz in Gudenus’s case (and, arguably, to Rosenkranz’s oath) served as a substitute, rather than any kind of complement, for a serious and concerted strategy to address the substance of these revisionist claims. APPENDIX Text 1 DUTZLER: Wie sehen Sie diese Debatte heute? GUDENUS: Ich glaube, ich habe damals nicht falsch reagiert. Und ich glaube Charles Popper hat gesagt man soll nicht Tabus aufstellen, sondern man soll physikalisch und wissenschaftlich prüfen. DUTZLER: Aber die Grundfrage ist: Hat es Gaskammern im Dritten Reich gegeben, oder ist es dogmatisch vorgeschrieben diese Existenz zu. . . . . GUDENUS: Ich glaube man sollte dieses Thema ernsthaft debattieren und nicht auf eine Frage du musst es ja oder nein beantworten. Sollen wir, prüfen wir das. Ich bin der Meinung, ich fordere immer wiederum eine Prüfung.46 Text 2 „Ich stelle hiermit klar, dass ich nie die großen Menschheitsverbrechen, welche in der Zeit des Dritten Reichs stattfanden, geleugnet habe oder leugnen wollte. Es war und ist nie mein Interesse gewesen, den Massenmord an Hekatomben wehrloser Menschen zu bagatellisieren.“47 Text 3 „Es gab Gaskammern, aber nicht im Dritten Reich. Sondern in Polen. So steht das auch in Schulbüchern. Ich habe nie gesagt, dass ich prinzipiell Gaskammern anzweifele. . . . Warum soll ich mich für etwas entschuldigen, das ich nicht gesagt habe? Ich soll mich der ÖVP gegenüber entschuldigen, die selbst einen der größten Antisemiten noch immer als einen ihrer Säulenheiligen im Parlament hat, den Leopold Kunschak? Für was soll ich mich entschuldigen? Mir wurde ja jetzt von der Staatsanwaltschaft zugestanden, dass man Zweifel haben kann.“48 Text 4 „Die Differenzierung, die der Herr Bundesratsabgeordnete getroffen hat, ist schlichtweg absurd und in keiner Form auch nur ansatzweise

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nachvollziehbar. Sie würde bedeuten, dass man die Verantwortung für Auschwitz dem damals nicht existierenden polnischen Staat überantwortet.“ Text 5 “Eine mutige Mutter. . . . Ein neuer Bundespräsident steht zur Wahl. Eine Mutter von zehn Kindern, die schon in der Politik gezeigt hat, was sie kann, bewirbt sich um diese sehr hohe Position. Wählen wir sie, sie wird eine gute Bundespräsidentin für Österreich sein!”

NOTES 1. The original declaration reads: “The governments of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States of America are agreed that Austria, the first free country to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression, shall be liberated from German domination. They regard the annexation imposed on Austria by Germany on March 15, 1938, as null and void. They consider themselves as in no way bound by any charges effected in Austria since that date. They declare that they wish to see re-established a free and independent Austria and thereby to open the way for the Austrian people themselves, as well as those neighbouring States which will be faced with similar problems, to find that political and economic security which is the only basis for lasting peace. Austria is reminded, however, that she has a responsibility, which she cannot evade, for participation in the war at the side of Hitlerite Germany, and that in the final settlement account will inevitably be taken of her own contribution to her liberation.” 2. See also Engel and Wodak (2009); Köhler and Wodak (2011); Wodak (2011b). 3. For further political and historical information about the FPÖ as successor party to the former NSDAP, see Bailer-Galanda and Neugebauer (1997); Wodak and Pelinka (2002). 4. See Krzyz˙anowski and Wodak (2009) for more details specifically related to the various election campaigns since 1986. 5. Benz (1995) defines revisionism in the narrow sense as “the denial of the proven historical fact that in the course of the Second World War millions of European Jews were murdered in gas chambers.” 6. See, for example, Lipstadt (1993) or Kahn (2005) for an overview of comparative legislation and controversies pertaining to Holocaust denial. Lipstadt’s Denying the Holocaust is particularly notable not only for its thorough treatment of the subject but also for the suit filed by David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, in which he alleged that Lipstadt had libeled him in her book. Irving lost at trial, and the judge, in his 333-page opinion in favour of the defendant, detailed Irving’s systematic distortion of the historical record of World War II. 7. Cited at http://www.menschenrechte.ac.at/orgi/98_5/Nachtmann.pdf (accessed August 15 2006). 8. Considerable international attention was attracted by the sentencing of the (since released) British Holocaust denier David Irving to three years of prison on 21 February 2006 (the verdict was confirmed on 4 September 2006). Controversies around Irving’s conviction led to a number of editorials in leading Austrian conservative newspapers objecting to the law for its limitations on the freedom of speech and for its allegedly ineffective preventive effect.

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9. See the Four-Level Context Model proposed by the DHA (Wodak 2001). 10. See Wodak 2011c; Reisigl and Wodak (2001, 2009), for details. 11. All these strategies are illustrated by numerous categories and examples in Reisigl and Wodak (2001: 31–90). It is impossible to present all these linguistic devices in this chapter because of space restrictions. 12. For more details, see Van Eemeren (2010). 13. See the pragma-dialectical approach of van Eeemeren and Grootendorst (1992). 14. The years 1988 and 1995 marked the 50th anniversary of Austria’s annexation or “Anschluss” by Germany, as well as both the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II and the 40th anniversary of the Second Austrian Republic. 15. The broader public and political significance of these incidents stems from the following circumstances. First, the statements were made by two high representatives of the Republic (Kampl was to be president of the Bundesrat for the second half of 2005); second, they triggered an extended debate among leading politicians, in the media and among the general public; and third, Kampl and Gudenus both made their statements only weeks or days, respectively, ahead of the official commemorative services held by the Republic and thus forced every leading politician, including the president, to take a stand condemning Kampl’s and Gudenus’ statements during these highly staged events. Kampl and Gudenus thus caused—deliberately or not—a massive disturbance of the carefully planned commemoration and celebration on the part of representatives of the government and the Republic, thereby co-opting public debates (strategy of provocation). They were made the focus of public debate by the media and thus set the agenda. 16. For a more extensive discussion of the Kampl affair, see Engel and Wodak (2009). 17. During the Austro-Hungarian Empire, men in the Gudenus family had the title of count. 18. Specifically, Gudenus had stated: “Gas chambers? I stay out of such matters! I believe everything that is dogmatically prescribed”. Gudenus thereby presented himself passively, as obeying an “order”, as if he were not allowed to voice his own (apparently quite different) opinion on the matter. Following a public uproar, Gudenus resigned from his role as MP. 19. John Gudenus and Klaus Dutzler in “Sachverhaltsdarstellung wegen §§ 3g, 3h VerbotsG” (David Ellensohn), 27 May 2005, http://wien.gruene.at/uploads/ media/sachverhaltsdarstellung_gudenus.pdf. 20. See Norbert Darabos in “Gudenus relativiert NS-Gaskammern”, http://www. diepresse.com/Artikel.aspx?channel=p&ressort=i&id=478690 (accessed August 16 2006). 21. See Reinhold Lopatka in “Gudenus relativiert NS-Gaskammern”, http:// www.diepresse.com/Artikel.aspx?channel=p&ressort=i&id=478690 (accessed August 16 2006). 22. Siehe Heinz-Christian Strache, in “Causa Gudenus—Rücktritt gefordert”, http://wien.orf.at/oesterreich.orf?read=detail&channel=1&id=377886 (accessed August 16 2006). 23. See Heinz-Christian Strache in “Causa Gudenus—Rücktritt gefordert”, http:// wien.orf.at/oesterreich.orf?read=detail&channel=1&id=377886 (accessed August 16 2006). 24. See John Gudenus in “Gudenus stellt die Gaskammern infrage”, Der Standard, 27 April 2007, S. 7. 25. This is likely due to a 1996 elaboration of the term “denial”. Edwin N., who in December 1993 had commented on the existence of gas chambers in Germany

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26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

38. 39.

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in an interview conducted on Austrian public television, saying “I don’t know anything of this, . . . and several examinations that have taken place there have come to the conclusion that none existed there”, was found guilty in his first trial. The verdict was later revoked by the Austria’s highest court on the grounds that it “constitutes a claim of ignorance, but not a denial of the existence of annihilation camps per se or of specific facilities of this kind.” See http://www.ris.bka.gv.at, Geschäftszahl 1StR193/93, 16 November 1996. See Hannes Jarolim in “Ermittlungen gegen Gudenus eingestellt”, http:/ wien.orf.at/oesterreich.orf?read=detail&channel=1&id383978 (accessed August 17 2006). See John Gudenus in “Gudenus: ‘Es gab Gaskammern, aber nicht im Dritten Reich’ ”, http://derstandard.at/?id=2071354 (accessed August 16 2006). Siehe Oliver Rathkolb in “Einserfrage: Keine Gaskammern im ‘Dritten Reich’ ”, http://derstandard.at/?id=2071975 (accessed August 16 2006). See Heinz Fischer in “Bereit, etwas weniger Populäres zu sagen” (Michael Völker), Der Standard, S. 13 (accessed August 16 2006). In a radio interview broadcast by the local station “Radio Kärnten”, for instance, he declared: “So I was a Nazi-victim. I have to maintain I was, regrettably. What do you say to this: The father of my neighbour was shot. He had twelve children.” The colloquial German form “halt” in “Dann war ich halt ein Nazi-Opfer”, which is not fully conveyed by the English “So I was a Nazivictim”, is another evident instance of calculated ambivalence and implicit double message. See Siegfried Kampl in “Naziverfolgung und Kamaradenmörder”, http://kaernten.orf.at/oesterreich.orf?read=detail&channel=9& id=384050 (accessed August 16 2006). “Staatsanwalt will höhere Strafe für Gudenus”, http://oesterreich.orf.at/wien/ stories/105572/ (accessed August 16 2006). See “Neues von ganz rechts—Mai 2006: Mölzer und Stadler für Gudenus”, http://www.doew.at/projekte/rechts/chronik/2006_05/zurzeit.html (accessed August 16 2006). See “Neues von ganz rechts: Mölzer und Stadler für Gudenus”, http://www.doew. at/projekte/rechts/chronik/2006_05/zurzeit.html (accessed August 16 2006). See http://www.krone.at/Oesterreich/Strache_schickt_Rosenkranz_ins_Rennen_ um_Hofburg-Seite_an_Seite-Story-187536 (accessed 8 September 2011). See http://derstandard.at/1267131932485/Rosenkranz-wird-fuer-FPOe-kandidieren. Incidentally, on 13 November 2003, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg had decided that the journalist Hans-Henning Scharsach (News) was not in contravention of the libel laws for calling Rosenkranz a “Kellernazi” (the term, literally “cellar Nazi”, describes a person who supported National Socialist or antidemocratic ideas through clandestine activities). MenschInnen. Gender Mainstreaming—Auf dem Weg zum geschlechtslosen Menschen (2008): “Es ist klar, dass der Rang der Frau in unserer Gesellschaft ein gänzlich gleichberechtigter sein muss, da kann es keine Abstriche geben. Ebenso aber ist es eine Tatsache, dass erfolgreiche Weiblichkeit und Mütterlichkeit nicht auseinanderfallen dürfen, wenn wir im Gesamten eine Zukunft haben wollen” (ibid.). Rosenkranz argues that such partnerships contravene the contract between generations to ensure that the state has sufficient revenue to provide social services. She also opposes the right of homosexual couples to adopt children. See http://derstandard.at/1267132251749/Kandidatur-Rechtsextreme-NVPunterstuetzt-Rosenkranz, http://derstandard.at/1268700952546/Rosenkranzist-eine-nationale-Sozialistin; see also http://www.kleinezeitung.at/nachrichten/ politik/bundespraesident/2307151/zwei-gesichter-kandidatin.story (both accessed 10 September 2011).

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40. See http://www.vol.at/news/politik/artikel/bundespraesident—-rosenkranzstehtweiterhin-zu-umstrittenen-aussagen/cn/news-20100303–12292321, http://www.krone.at/Oesterreich/FPOe-Kandidatin_Rosenkranz_gegen_NSVerbotsgesetz-Meinungsfreiheit-Story-188096 (accessed 8 September 2011). 41. See http://diepresse.com/home/politik/hofburgwahl/544630/Rosenkranz_KeinZweifel-an-Gaskammern?_vl_backlink=/home/politik/hofburgwahl/544587/ index.do&direct=544587 (accessed 8 September 2011). 42. See http://derstandard.at/1268402692605/Kommentar-der-anderen-DieNullnummer-des-Onkel-Hans (accessed 8 September 2011). 43. See http://newsv1.orf.at/100308–48803/index.html for the precise wording of the letter (accessed 10 September 2011). 44. See http://diepresse.com/home/politik/hofburgwahl/547110/Rosenkranz_ Selbstverstaendlich-gab-es-Gaskammern (accessed 10 September 2011). 45. See http://diepresse.com/home/politik/hofburgwahl/543588/Rosenkranz_UeberIdentitaet-des-Landes-diskutieren?direct=543061&_vl_backlink=/home/politik/ index.do&selChannel=101 (accessed 8 September 2011). 46. John Gudenus und Klaus Dutzler in “Sachverhaltsdarstellung wegen §§ 3g, 3h VerbotsG” (David Ellensohn), 27. 5. 2005. Siehe http://wien.gruene.at/uploads/ media/sachverhaltsdarstellung_gudenus.pdf (accessed August 16 2006). 47. Siehe John Gudenus in “Gudenus stellt die Gaskammern infrage”, Der Standard, 27 April 2005, S. 7. 48. Siehe John Gudenus in “Gudenus: ‘Es gab Gaskammern, aber nicht im Dritten Reich’ ”, http://derstandard.at/?id=2071354 (accessed August 16 2006).

REFERENCES Bailer-Galander, Brigitte, & Wolfgang Neugebauer (1996). Handbuch des österreichischer Rechtsextremismus. Vienna: DÖW. ——— (1997). Haider und die Freiheitlichen in Österrei. Berlin: Elefanten Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1982). The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Benz, Wolfgang (1995). Realitätsverweigerung als antisemitisches Prinzip: Die Leugnung des Völkermords. In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.), Antisemitismus in Deutschland. Zur Aktualität eines Vorurteils. Stuttgart: Dtv, 121–139. De Cillia, Rudolf, & Ruth Wodak (Eds.) (2009). Gedenken im „Gedankenjahr“: Zur diskursiven Konstruktion österreichischer Identitäten im Jubiläumsjahr. Innsbruck: Studienverlag. Distelberger, Teresa, Rudolf De Cillia & Ruth Wodak (2009). ‚Österreichische Identitäten in politischen Gedenkreden des Jubiläumsjahres 2005‘. In: Rudolf De Cillia & Ruth Wodak (Eds.), Gedenken im „Gedankenjahr“: Zur diskursiven Konstruktion österreichischer Identitäten im Jubiläumsjahr. Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 29–71. Engel, Jakob, & Ruth Wodak (2009). Kalkulierte Ambivalenz, „Störungen“ und das „Gedankenjahr“: Die Causen Siegfried Kampl und John Gudenus. In: Rudolf De Cillia & Ruth Wodak (Eds.), Gedenken im „Gedankenjahr“: Zur diskursiven Konstruktion österreichischer Identitäten im Jubiläumsjahr. Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 79–100. Heer, Hannes, Walter Manoschek, Alexander Pollak & Ruth Wodak (Eds.) (2008). The Discursive Construction of History: Remembering the Wehrmachts War of Annihilation. Basingstoke: Palgrave (translated from the 2003 German version). Kahn, Robert A. (2005). Holocaust Denial and the Law: A Comparative Study. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

“Calculated Ambivalence” and Holocaust Denial in Austria 95 Kienpointner, Manfred (1996). Vernunftig argumentieren: Regeln und Techniken der Diskussion. Hamburg: Rowohlt. Knight, Robert (1988). ‘ “Ich bin dafür, die Sache in die Länge zu ziehen” ’. Die Wortprotokolle der österreichischen Bundesregierung von 1945–1952 über die Entschädigung der Juden. Frankfurt: Fischer. Köhler, Katharina, & Ruth Wodak (2011). „Mitbürger, Fremde und, echte Wiener’ ”—Ein- und Ausgrenzungen über Sprache. Diskursive Konstruktion von. Macht und Ungleichheit am Beispiel des Wiener Wahlkampfes 2010. Deutschunterricht 6/2011: 64–73. Krzyz˙anowski, Michal, & Ruth Wodak (2009). Politics of Exclusion: Institutional and Everyday Discrimination in Austria. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press. Lipstadt, Deborah (1993). Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New York: Free Press. Loitfellner, Sabine (2003). „Furchtbar war der Blutzoll, den Österreich entrichten musste. . . .“ Die Wehrmacht und ihre Soldaten in österreichischen Schulbüchern. In: Hannes Heer et al. (Eds.), Wie Geschichte gemacht wird. Zur Konstruktion von Erinnerungen an Wehrmacht und Zweiten Weltkrieg. Vienna: Czernin, 171–191. Manoschek, Walter (2002). FPÖ, ÖVP and Austria’s Nazi Past. In: Ruth Wodak & Anton Pelinka (Eds.), The Haider Phenomenon in Austria. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 3–17. Mitten, Richard (1992). The Politics of Antisemitic Prejudice. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. ——— (2000). Guilt and Responsibility in Germany and Austria’, Paper presented at Conference ‘Dilemmas of East Central Europe: Nationalism, Totalitarianism, and the Search for Identity. A Symposium Honoring István Déak’, Columbia University, 24–25/3/2000. Möhring, Rubina (Ed.) (2001). ‘Österreich allein zuhause’: Politik, Medien und Justiz nach der politischen Wende. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Pelinka, Anton, & Ruth Wodak (Eds.) (2002). ‘Dreck am Stecken’. Politik der Ausgrenzung. Vienna: Czernin Verlag. Rathkolb, Oliver (1988). ‘Die Wiedererrichtung des Auswärtigen Dienstes nach 1945. Project Report, Ministry of Science and Education.Vienna. ——— (2009). The Paradoxical Republic: Austria 1945–2005. New York: Berghahn Books (translated by Otmar Binder from the 2005 German version). Reisigl, Martin (2007). Nationale Rhetorik in Fest- und Gedenkreden. Eine diskursanalytische Studie zum „österreichischen Millennium“ in den Jahren 1946 und 1996. Tübingen: Stauffenberg. Reisigl, Martin, & Ruth Wodak (2000). “Austria First”: A Discourse-historical Analysis of the Austrian “Anti-foreigner Petition” in 1992 and 1993. In: Martin Reisigl & Ruth Wodak (Eds.), The Semiotics of Racism: Approaches in Critical Discourse Analysis. Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 269–303. ——— (2001). Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge. ——— (2009). The Discourse-historical Approach (DHA). In: Ruth Wodak & Michael Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, 2nd edn. London: Sage, 87–121. Richardson, John, & Ruth Wodak (2009a). Recontextualising Fascist Ideologies of the Past: Rightwing Discourses on Employment and Nativism in Austria and the United Kingdom. Critical Discourse Studies 6(4), 251–267. ——— (2009b). The Impact of Visual Racism: Visual Arguments in Political Leaflets of Austrian and British Far-right Parties. Controversia 2, 45–77. Rosenkranz, Barbara (2010). Dossier published by the Green Party [Die Grünen]. Vienna.

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Schiedel, Herbert, & Wolfgang Neugebauer (2002). Jörg Haider, die FPÖ und der Antisemitismus. In: Anaton Pelinka & Ruth Wodak (Eds.), ‘Dreck am Stecken’. Politik der Ausgrenzung. Vienna: Czernin Verlag, 11–32. Stern, Frank (1991). Im Anfang war Auschwitz. Gerlingen: Bleicher. Van Dijk, Teun A. (1998). Ideology. London: Sage. Van Eemeren, Frans H. (2010). Strategic Manoeuvering. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Van Eemeren, Frans H., & Rob Grootendorst (1992). Argumentation, Communication and Fallacies: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Wodak, Ruth (2001). The Discourse-Historical Approach. In: Ruth Wodak & Michael Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage, 63–95. ——— (2003). Discourses of Silence: Anti-Semitic Discourse in Postwar Austria. In: Lynne Thiesmeyer (Ed.), Discourse and Silencing. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 179–209. ——— (2007). Pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis. Pragmatics and Cogntion 15(1), 203–225. ——— (2011a). Suppression of the Nazi Past, Coded Languages, and Discourses of Silence: Applying the Discourse-Historical Approach to Postwar Anti-Semitism in Austria. In: Willibald Steinmetz (Ed.), Political Languages in the Age of Extremes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 351–379. ——— (2011b). Old and New Demagoguery: The Rhetoric of Exclusion, http:// www.opendemocracy.net/ruth-wodak/old-and-new-demagoguery-rhetoric-ofexclusion, published May 5. ——— (2011c [2009]). The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. Basingstoke: Palgrave. ——— & Rudolf De Cillia (2007). Commemorating the Past: The Discursive Construction of Official Narratives about the ‘Rebirth of the Second Austrian Republic’. Discourse & Communication 1(3), 337–363. ———, Rudolf De Cillia, Martin Reisigl & Karin Liebhart (2009). The Discursive Construction of National Identity. 2nd rev. edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ——— & Norman Fairclough (2010). Recontextualizing European Higher Education Policies: The Cases of Austria and Romania. Critical Discourse Studies 7(1), 19–40. ——— & Walter Kissling (1990). „Die meisten KZler zeigten sich für jede Hilfeleistung sehr dankbar“. Schulbuch und Schulbuchdiskussion als Paradigma politischer Kommunikation in Österreich. Austriaca 31, 87–104. ———, Florian Menz, Richard Mitten & Frank Stern (1994). Die Sprachen der Vergangenheiten. Öffentliches Gedenken in österreichischen und deutschen Medien. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ——— & Michael Meyer (Eds.) (2009). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. 2nd rev. edn. London: Sage. ———, Peter Nowak, Johanna Pelikan, Helmut Gruber, Rudolf De Cillia & Richard Mitten (1990). „Wir sind alle unschuldige Täter!“ Diskurshistorische Studien zum Nachkriegsantisemitismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ——— & Anton Pelinka (Eds.) (2002). The Haider Phenomenon in Austria. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press.

6

German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist Right Claudia Posch, Maria Stopfner and Manfred Kienpointner

Analysing the postwar discourse of the extreme and populist right in German-speaking countries involves the notoriously difficult problem of defining “fascism”. It is frequently argued that there is not even a conceptual minimum which covers all historical varieties of interwar and postwar fascism or is acceptable for all relevant scholarly frameworks (cf. Neugebauer 2010: 5ff.; Priester 2010: 38 on similar problems defining “right-wing extremism”). Nevertheless, a brief survey of a few classical definitions of “fascism”, mainly based on the reader published by Griffin (1998a), allows both a critical comparison of some similarities and differences of these frameworks and the establishment of a starting point for the analysis of German right-wing postwar discourse. Although the Marxist perspective on fascism has become more diverse over the past decades (Poulantzas 1970; Griffin 1998b: 3ff.; Griffin 2011: 305), its basic assumption still is that fascism has to be understood as the effect of the crisis of the capitalist state. According to the Comintern definition from 1933, “[f]ascism is the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital” (Griffin 1998: 59; cf. Trotsky 1940: 72: “Fascism is the continuation of capitalism”). While this is a realistic critique of the opportunistic arrangements usually met by fascist leaders with powerful capitalist groups, it cannot capture those properties of fascism which justify seeing it as a distinct ideology and neglects the revolutionary aspects of certain parts of fascist ideology and movements (Mosse 1979: 141). Among the non-Marxist definitions of fascism, Payne (1998: 147ff.) characterizes fascism as an ideology on a par with other ideologies such as liberalism, socialism and anarchism. Payne describes fascism by dealing with its goals and with the “fascist negations”, that is, the thoroughly negative attitude of fascism towards other ideologies (“antiliberalism”, “anticommunism”, “anticonservatism”) and with its style. Ultimately, he defines fascism as “a form of revolutionary ultra-nationalism for national rebirth that is based on a primarily vitalist philosophy, structured on extreme elitism, mass mobilization, and the Führerprinzip, positively valuing violence as end as well as means and tending to normatize war and/or the military virtues” (Payne 1998: 155).

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Within the past twenty years or so, a certain convergence concerning a generic definition of “fascism” has evolved. Griffin (1998b: 13) started out from Payne’s definition but not without criticizing its lack of a more extensive socioeconomic dimension. Griffin tried to condense his own definition in a three-word-formula, “palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism”, and gave the following extended version: “fascism is a genus of modern, revolutionary, ‘mass’ politics which, while extremely heterogeneous in its social support and in the specific ideology promoted by its many permutations, draws its internal cohesion and driving force from a core myth that a period of perceived national decline and decadence is giving way to one of rebirth and renewal in a post-liberal order” (Griffin 1998b: 14). Griffin’s definition has become the core of a “new consensus” concerning a generic definition of “fascism”, however without being universally accepted (Griffin 2011: 301–302). The strengths of Griffin’s definition are its positive characterization of the “mythical core” of fascism and its definition of what prototypical fascism means; it does not pretend to cover all properties of specific historical varieties of fascism, such as the interwar and postwar fascist movements in Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary or Romania. It has been criticized, however, exactly for being too general. For example, the elements of violence and racism, which are typical for most varieties of fascism (Reichardt 2007), are not explicitly included. Although this selection of definitions of fascism is far from being representative, let alone exhaustive, it already shows the enormous difficulty in finding a universally acceptable definition. However, while today it might still be impossible to provide a list of universally accepted, necessary and sufficient criteria for a generic definition of “fascism”, the definitions mentioned here at least provide a general background from which more specific varieties of fascism (or closely related right-wing extremist ideologies and movements) in the German postwar discourse of the extreme right can be critically analysed. Far from being useless, such a general background can serve as a heuristic tool for collecting relevant empirical data and for roughly categorizing concrete utterances as instances of fascist thought and propaganda. Needless to say, the following critical analysis has to take into account the contextsensitive peculiarities and modifications of contemporary (neo-)fascist and right-wing extremist discourse in the German-speaking countries, because recent varieties of fascist discourse and political agitation have developed new styles and strategies which sometimes differ considerably from classical Nazism (Schedler 2010; Priester 2010). In order to be of practical use for the defence of pluralism and democracy against the danger of neo-fascist and extreme right-wing parties and movements, careful context-sensitive analysis is indispensable because these parties and movements have developed several strategies to vest their interests and to gain new followers (see later in this chapter and Griffin 2011: 310–311).

German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist Right 99 HISTORY OF EXTREME RIGHT-WING PARTIES IN GERMAN-SPEAKING COUNTRIES AFTER 1945 Neo-fascist movements in Austria and Germany are not free to propagate their ideas because they are confronted by a strong opponent called wehrhafte/streitbare Demokratie, that is, a democratic system on its guard. Because of the lessons learnt from the Weimar Republic and the National Socialist regime, this Defensive Democracy has the constitutionally granted right to defend itself against forces which do not adhere to the basic democratic values by using all possible means to destroy the democratic system (Adamovich, Funk and Holzinger 2011: 156–157). The Austrian Verbotsgesetz (Prohibition Act) and the German Grundgesetz (Constitution) both make neo-fascist propaganda such as Holocaust denial unlawful and bar political organisations from reengaging in National Socialism (Hartleb 2011: 265; Jesse 2011: 83–85). Because of these legal constraints, the extreme right is forced to operate in secret and/or veil its ideology in ambiguous, yet legal language. This two-faced behaviour is all the more necessary for political parties of the far right, which yearn to attain power through the democratic electoral system and therefore have to maintain a less extreme and more eligible outward appearance while kowtowing to the radical fringes behind the scene. One of the most successful political parties of the far right in Western Europe is the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), the Austrian Freedom Party. Founded in 1956 out of the former Verband der Unabhängigen (VdU), a political melting pot of National Socialists as well as exiles and homecomers after the war (Decker 2000: 109–110), the party has always maintained close contact with the extreme right. Most of its members and activists are drawn from schlagenden Verbindungen, fraternities infamous for their duelling rituals and for their far-right, even extreme-right ideology; a number of party members have written articles and given interviews in right-extremist media such as Aula, and some party functionaries are or have been actively involved in right-extremist groups such as the Bund freier Jugend (Pelinka 2002; Hartleb 2011; Muzicant 2011). From an ideological point of view, Pelinka (2002) characterizes the Freedom Party as being populist, far/extreme right and—most importantly—rooted in the pan-German nationalist camp. The degree to which this dedication to the German national tradition can run free within the party has always been closely linked to the respective party leader and his ideological outlook. While firmly suppressed during the more liberal era under Norbert Steger in the early 1980s, pan-German nationalism was re-invoked by the late Jörg Haider, whose charisma and right-wing populism initiated the unparalleled ascent of the FPÖ within the Austrian political system (Pelinka 2002; Luther 2006; Hartleb 2011). The ample use Haider made of more or less outspoken allusions to the

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Third Reich is continued under the current party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, for example in campaign slogans such as Mehr Mut für unser Wiener Blut (“More courage for our Viennese blood”) during the local elections in Vienna in 2010. Interestingly enough, the Austrian Freedom Party recently reintroduced the dedication to “Germanness” into its party programme (2011), hinting at a further swing to the right which is at the same time strongly denied by party officials (Pink and Prior 2011). As the Austrian Freedom Party veers towards the extreme right, the Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ), launched in 2005 as a splinter group with which Haider reacted to unpopular decisions and subsequent election defeats of the FPÖ as party in power (Luther 2006), is slowly redirecting itself towards more liberalist ideas while still deeply indebted to its founding father, as explicitly stated in its party programme (2010) (for more on the Austrian far right, see Chapter 5, this volume). In Germany, the far-right and extreme-right electorate, which for sociodemographic reasons is more significant in eastern Germany (Jesse 2011: 97), is distributed among three different official parties: Die Republikaner (REP), Deutsche Volksunion (DVU) and Nationalistische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) (Jesse 2011; Steglich 2010; Kailitz 2005). The REP dates back to 1983 and made headlines in 1989 when it received 7.5 per cent of the votes in the local elections in Berlin and was elected into the European Parliament with 7.1 per cent of the votes (Jesse 2011: 88). Under its party leader, Franz Schönhuber, the party was put under surveillance by the Verfassungsschutz because it was considered to be right-extremist. In the meantime and because of the re-orientation initiated by its long-term leader Rolf Schlierer, the REP is no longer seen as a threat to democracy. The party has gradually lost most of its influence and is on the brink of political annihilation (Jesse 2011; Steglich 2010). The REP places itself in opposition to the political establishment and takes a fierce stand against migration, trying to establish itself as the one and only democratic right-wing party, therefore maintaining its distance from more extremist parties such as DVU and NPD (Steglich 2010). The origins of the Deutsche Volksunion (DVU) date back to a nonpartisan German national movement that was founded by the editor of the National-Zeitung/Deutsche Wochenzeitung, Gerhard Frey, in 1971 and that was turned into an official party in 1987 (Kailitz 2005: 22–23). The DVU claims to be loyal to the constitution while propagating ethnic separation by means of simplistic propaganda tailored to the respective election at hand (Steglich 2010). Since the party has always relied heavily on its founder, who provided for campaign material as well as financial support, Frey’s retreat brought turmoil to the DVU; facing personnel shortcomings and a practically nonexistent organisation, the party’s only hope was a highly controversial fusion with the NPD arranged and proclaimed by the DVU’s party leader, Matthias Faust, and his counterpart, Udo Voigt, which fostered a legal dispute that is still ongoing (Jesse 2011; Steglich 2010; Verfassungsschutzbericht 2010; Kailitz 2005).

German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist Right 101 The Nationalistische Partei Deutschland (NPD), founded in 1964 (Jesse 2011: 87), is at present the most influential right-extremist party in Germany (Verfassungsschutzbericht 2010). The party’s radicalisation under its leader, Udo Voigt, was followed by a political upturn which was intensified by the harsh social welfare motion by the German government, Hartz IV. As part of its strategic re-orientation, the NPD deliberately opened itself to the radical and extreme right, embracing both skinheads and neo-Nazis as party members and activists (Jesse 2011). Key features of the NPD are its concept of a national and social system, a vehement stance against the established democratic system, globalisation and capitalism and, probably most significant, the propagation of ethnic segregation in order to establish a homogenous German Volksgemeinschaft (“national community”) (Jesse 2011; Steglich 2010; NPD 2010; Kailitz 2005). The radical and extreme-right subculture in Germany has changed significantly in recent years (Verfassungsschutzbericht 2010). As nationwide organisations such as Blood & Honour are brought down by the security forces and while the number of violent skinheads decreases, local activist groups and the right-extremist music scene have gained ground. Ideological fragments of nationalism, racism, antisemitism and anticapitalism come together to varying degrees and density to form a (group)-specific concept of the world which can be shared face to face as well as online. Group activities such as demonstrations and music festivals become more and more important, whereas ideological debates, long-term political engagement and organisational involvement are more and more rejected. On a local level, though, ideological as well as personnel interconnections between the radical-right subculture and extreme-right party organisation are more than common: on the one hand, neo-Nazis help with campaigns, distribute propaganda material and continue to wear boots; on the other hand, the official far-right parties provide rooms and organise political functions and financial aid. Still, the relationship between the neo-fascist subculture and official far-right parties remains ambiguous, as radical neo-Nazis consider the NPD, DVU and REP as part of a system they despise (Verfassungschutzbericht 2010; Jesse 2011). In Switzerland the “presence of the radical right in the Swiss party system is characterized by remarkable continuity” (Skenderovic 2007:164), which is shown by the fact that, since the 1960s, seven radical-right parties have been represented in the national parliament at some point. The Swiss radical right shares its strong focus on immigration issues and what they call Überfremdung (“overforeignization”). Skenderovic observes three development stages of the radical right in Switzerland. In phase one (from the 1960s to 1980s), four small political parties emerged with “overforeignization” as their core issue: Nationale Aktion (NA), Vigilance, Schweizerische Republikanische Bewegung (SRB) and Eidgenössisch-Demokratische Union (EDU) (Skenderovic 2007: 165). In the 1970s, the importance of immigration issues declined, as did the relative success of these parties.

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Also, conflicts within the parties prevented their greater success. As a second phase, Skenderovic pinpoints the time between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s. In this time, the NA was renamed Schweizer Demokraten (SD) and continued its politics against “overforeignization”, with little but relatively stable successes. At this stage, two new far-right parties emerged. The Autopartei der Schweiz (APS) “represented a new type of radicalright party in Switzerland, since it vigorously opposed ecological policies and state interventions, and propagated both a neo-liberal economic programme and a fierce anti-asylum agenda“ (Skenderovic 2007: 164). The Lega di Ticinesi (LDT), on the other hand, was based in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino and focussed on preserving the canton’s regional cultural identity and on gaining political autonomy. This party also holds radical opinions on integration and the asylum policy. In 1991 the APS (=FPS) and the LDT were able to double their number of votes in the national council elections from their totals in 1987, but they still remained fringe parties. In the third phase (since the 1990s), the status of radical-right ideas in Switzerland has changed significantly from being a fringe phenomenon to becoming mainstream. The Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP), in contrast to the previously small far-right parties, was already a well-established right-wing party which had developed since 1929. It is this continuous previous history that makes the rise of the SVP similar to that of the FPÖ in Austria. Also, in the SVP, one man has been at the forefront of its “political and ideological radicalization”, the billionaire Christoph Blocher, who has been responsible for the party’s success since the 1990s. Populist rhetoric and campaigning very similar to those of the German NPD and the Austrian FPÖ have been used in order to reach different groupings of the electorate, mostly the “lower classes” (Greven & Grumke 2006: 91). The SVP made asylum politics one of its main concerns in the 1990s and has ever since launched numerous referendums (the Swiss instrument of direct democracy) to support its goals. The SVP has thus been able to significantly influence legislation, even if several of the party initiatives have been defeated. With its programme, the SVP was able to become the strongest party in 2003. Because of pressure from the media, the party is eager to distance itself from the “extreme right” or “fascism”. This is achieved mainly by drawing a picture of World War II–era-Switzerland as wehrhaft (“defensive”) and as a state surrounded and threatened by totalitarian regimes. The so-called Aktivdienstgeneration is created discursively as the defender of the country against Nazism and Fascism (Udris 2011: 140). This position stands in strong opposition to the views of other political players, especially the parties on the left, who view the Aktivdienstgeneration rather critically. One of the SVPs most recent political initiatives has been the Volksinitiative gegen Masseneinwanderung, with its openly racist campaign poster, Kosovaren schlitzen Schweizer auf (“Kosovars are slitting the throats of the Swiss”: http://www.svp.ch).

German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist Right 103 THE PERSUASIVE STRATEGIES OF GERMAN NEO-FASCIST AND POPULIST DISCOURSE OF THE EXTREME RIGHT

General Remarks In this section, we are going to analyse a corpus consisting of a variety of text genres in order to reconstruct and criticize persuasive strategies which are typical of contemporary German neo-fascist and populist discourse of the extreme right. We will focus on texts produced within the past few years, but occasionally passages from older sources will be taken into account in order to highlight continuities and changes. Our theoretical background is constituted by a combination of frameworks such as Habermas’s theory of Argumentation (Habermas 1981, 1991), New Rhetoric (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1983; Kienpointner 1992), Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough 2001, Wodak et al. 1998; Reisigl & Wodak 2001; Wodak 2011) and Pragma-Dialectics (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004; van Eemeren & Houtlosser 2006; van Eemeren 2010). More specifically, we proceed from the following basic assumptions: First, it is not possible to distinguish between “mere ideology” and “objective truth” because all standpoints and positions are based on an ideology of some kind (Mannheim 1929: 32). Following van Dijk, ideologies can, on a very general level, be defined as follows: “Ideologies are the foundation of the social beliefs shared by a social group” (van Dijk 1998, 49). However, this does not mean that there are no cross-ideological or almost universal principles from which political ideologies and arguments supporting these ideologies can be criticized. Among such principles are human rights and the procedural definitions of rationality, which are based on normative models of argumentation. Second, although the line between rational argumentation and fallacies of reasoning is hard to draw, this does not mean that it is impossible to make plausible judgments about the (im)plausibility of specific arguments. Such judgments, however, must be based on a rich collection of empirical data and a careful reconstruction of the structures underlying political arguments, as well as of the rhetorical means of formulation employed by the speaker or writer. Third, we agree with the combination of both a descriptive and a normative perspective as postulated and implemented by CDA and Pragma-Dialectics. Finally, we would like to take up the concept of “strategic manoeuvring” as conceived in Pragma-Dialectics. For example, van Eemeren characterizes strategic manoeuvring as “the continual efforts made in all moves that are carried out in argumentative discourse to keep the balance between reasonableness and effectiveness” (2010: 40). As we will try to show, quite often the strategic manoeuvring of neo-fascist and extreme right-wing politicians fails to keep this balance and “derails”, that is, becomes fallacious.

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Before we begin our analysis on the basis of the theoretical and methodological principles we have drawn up, our corpus will be described in some more detail. It consists of the following items: articles from newspapers and magazines, totalling approximately 40 texts, mostly editorials, comments and interviews, taken both from the right-wing press (Germany: Deutsche Stimme, National-Zeitung, Junge Freiheit; Austria: Zur Zeit) and from newspapers with other ideological backgrounds, such as the Austrian newspapers Der Standard, Die Presse and the German magazine Der Spiegel; the party programmes of six right-conservative or neo-fascist/extreme right-wing parties in German-speaking areas (Germany: NPD, REP, DVU; Austria: FPÖ, BZÖ; Switzerland: SVP); a few extracts from TV and radio interviews; a few hundred party and user contributions to official party Facebook sites (NPD, FPÖ and SVP); a dozen campaign posters; and a few excerpts from the lyrics of right-wing (rock) songs and two satirical comics produced for propaganda purposes. Obviously, this corpus is too small to allow far-reaching generalizations, but we at least try to base our analyses and conclusions as much as possible on typical instances of extremist right-wing discourse. In this context, we also have to deal with the fact that contemporary neo-fascist and (extreme) right-wing populist discourse is far from being homogeneous. At least four layers are distinguishable, although precise borderlines are hard to draw (for a more detailed typology see Engelstädter & Seiffert, 1990; on comparable layers of antisemitic discourse see Wodak et al. 1990: 215ff.): 1. Within texts which belong to the most radical products of extreme right-wing discourse, (neo-)Nazi points of view are openly declared. In our corpus, such texts are most explicitly and aggressively formulated in Facebook wall postings. 2. Less radical right-wing positions explicitly distance themselves from Nazism in the narrow sense. For example, in the German newspaper Junge Freiheit, a kind of non-Nazi nationalism and right-wing conservatism are defended by appealing to historical figures such as Claus von Stauffenberg, who tried but failed to kill Hitler in the July 20, 1944, plot (e.g. the article 20. Juli 1944. Das deutsche Schlüsseldatum by Dieter Stein in Junge Freiheit, July 15, 2011). However, texts from this layer still often support positions which largely overlap with Nazi ideology, for example, ultra-nationalism, antiliberalism and racism (especially antisemitism). Some extremist right-wing parties seem to have shifted from neo-Nazi origins into this slightly less radical layer, including the Swiss Partei National Orientierter Schweizer (PNOS, founded in 2000). 3. Still more moderate positions are defended by populist right-wing parties. In their official texts (party programmes, policy papers), they identify with parliamentary democracy. Moreover, they take care not to openly express standpoints forbidden by various laws

German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist Right 105 in the German-speaking countries—in Germany (Strafgesetzbuch 1985, Art. 130), in Austria (Verbotsgesetz 1947, Art. 3g-h) and in Switzerland (Strafgesetzbuch 1995, Art. 261), which sanction revisionist activities such as attempts to revive the NSDAP, incitement of the masses and denial of the holocaust. There is, however, a notorious record of prominent members of these parties, who have frequently formulated messages with (neo-)fascist undertones or connotations and thus tried to extend the realm of what can be said without legal repercussions. Among these politicians, the Austrian politician and former FPÖ leader Jörg Haider (1950–2008) deserves a special mention. The arguably most infamous example (cf. Kienpointner 2002; Wodak & Reisigl 2002; Wodak & Pelinka 2002 for further examples) concerns Haider’s praise of the employment policy of the Third Reich in the Carinthian Regional Parliament on June 13, 1991. Haider had to step down as governor of Carinthia after this statement, which was directed at Gerhard Hausenblas, a Social Democrat member of the Regional Parliament, who had previously criticized Haider’s position concerning stricter unemployment policies by comparing them with the severe unemployment policies in the Third Reich. Haider responded to this provocation as follows: (1) Im Dritten Reich haben sie ordentliche Beschäftigungspolitik gemacht was nicht einmal Ihre Regierung in Wien zusammenbringt. Das muß man auch einmal sagen. (“In the Third Reich, they had a decent employment policy, not even your government in Vienna manages to do that. This really needs to be said”. H. Czernin [ed.]. 2000. Der Westentaschen-Haider. Wien: Czernin Verlag, p. 35) 4. Finally, there are parties such as the Swiss right-conservative SVP, which are firmly based within right-conservative democratic principles but which defend racist positions on immigration by formulating texts which do not differ essentially from those produced by the (neo-)fascist groups and right-wing populist parties mentioned earlier. The short-lived German right-conservative party Partei Rechtsstaatliche Offensive (founded in Hamburg, Germany, by the former judge Ronald Schill (*1958) in 2000 and disbanded in 2007) might also be categorized in this way (Kienpointner 2005: 222ff.). The protagonists of these layers of neo-fascist and/or extreme right-wing discourse adapt their political strategies to achieve their respective political goals. Neo-Nazi activists more or less ignore legal restrictions and prohibitions and also use street violence, brutal attacks on minority groups and

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other types of criminal acts as means to further their “politics”. Those who identify with Nazism and/or deny the Holocaust in public are also willing to take the risk of being brought to justice or even put into jail, for example, Horst Mahler (*1936), Ernst Zündel (*1939) and Michael Kühnen (1955–1991) in Germany; Gottfried Küssel (*1958) and John Gudenus (*1940) in Austria; and Jürgen Graf (*1951) and Bernhard Schaub (*1954) in Switzerland. Less radical groups and especially the right-wing populist parties try to abide by the law, while still holding some (or even most) of the fascist ideological positions described in the introductory section. In the recent past, this has led to the exclusion of especially radical members of these parties following revisionist statements made in public. For example, this was the case with John Gudenus, the former FPÖ politician and former member of the Second Chamber of the Austrian parliament, who was forced to quit the party in 2005 after denying the existence of gas chambers in the concentration camps of the Third Reich. Gudenus was put on probation (Kienpointner 2009: 65ff.). Another radical right-wing politician, Werner Königshofer, a member of the First Chamber of the Austrian parliament (until he resigned on October 12, 2011, for health reasons), tolerated neo-Nazi postings on his Facebook site and was expelled from the FPÖ in 2011 after he relativized the killing of 77 victims by the Norwegian right-wing activist Anders Breivik (on July 22, 2011, in and near Oslo) by comparing the number of Breivik’s victims with the number of victims of Islamist terror and abortion (see the quotations in the following report by the Austrian newspaper Die Presse): (2) Auf seiner Facebook-Seite stellte Königshofer in einem Posting die Attentate in Norwegen in Relation zur “islamistischen Gefahr”. Diese habe “in Europa schon tausendmal öfter zugeschlagen”, verharmloste er den Mord an 78 (sic!) Menschen. . . . Doch allen Rüffeln zum Trotz setzte Königshofer noch eins drauf: Er nahm die Anschläge in Norwegen zum Anlass, um die Fristenlösung zu hinterfragen. “Im Angesicht dieser schrecklichen Ereignisse in Norwegen sollte man in ganz Europa einmal tiefgehender über den Wert des menschlichen Lebens nachdenken—auch darüber, dass “. . . jedes Jahr Millionen ungeborener Kinder schon im Mutterleib getötet werden”, schrieb er nach dem Gespräch mit Hofer auf seiner Homepage. (“In a posting on his Facebook page Königshofer compared the attacks in Norway with the “Islamist danger”. This danger has “struck in Europe a thousand times more often”, he downplayed the murder of 78 (sic!) people. . . . But, despite all rebukes, Königshofer went one better. He used the Norwegian attacks to question the legitimacy of abortion. “In the face of the terrible events in Norway, one should seriously think about the

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value of human life everywhere in Europe—also about the fact that “. . . every year millions of unborn children are killed while still in the womb”, he wrote after the talk with Hofer on his homepage”. http:// diepresse.com/home/politik/innenpolitik/681796, 18.9.2011) Given the political and legal constraints, right-wing populist parties and newspapers have developed a series of persuasive strategies in order to express their standpoints and positions in public without risking legal prosecution. In this way, leaving “political action on the street” to openly militant neo-Nazi groups, who are euphemistically called Freie Kräfte (“free forces”), politicians of the extreme right try to undermine the anti-fascist consensus, to win seats in regional and national parliaments and, eventually, to achieve a new ideological hegemony (Gramsci 1999: 12). Within the limits of this essay, we cannot deal with all the persuasive strategies employed by right-wing politicians, print media and social networks. So we will focus on the following three phenomena, which can also illustrate aspects of the three subtypes of strategic manoeuvring distinguished within Pragma-Dialectics (van Eemeren & Houtlosser 2006: 383; van Eemeren 2010: 93f.): the choice of the topical potential (strategic selection of central issues and argument types), the adaptation to various audience demands (e.g. the emotions, beliefs and expectations of the audience) and the suitable presentational devices (stylistic strategies of efficient formulation, such as figures of speech): 1. The strategic use of indirectness: Indirect (vague, ironic, hyperbolic, ambiguous) messages (= conversational implicatures in the sense of Grice 1975) are a strategic device which is very common in persuasive political discourse in general, but there are specific indirectness strategies which are typical for (extreme) right-wing populist discourse (cf. Wodak et al. 1990: 179ff., 246ff.). 2. The strategic use of metaphor: Metaphors are a powerful means of political propaganda (Lakoff 2005). Although metaphors are also classified by Grice as conversational implicatures, we would like to deal with them separately because of their outstanding strategic importance in political discourse. While there are metaphors which are commonly used in any political discourse, some metaphors are typical for extreme right-wing discourse. 3. The strategic use of argument schemes: Argument schemes are constellations of premises and conclusions that follow certain semantic patterns (e.g. causal schemes, comparison schemes) (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1983; Kienpointner 1992; Walton et al. 2008). Among the dozens of argument schemes available for political discourse, some causal schemes are typical for and extremely frequent in extreme right-wing discourse.

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The Strategic Use of Indirectness We would like to begin our analysis of strategic indirectness with a selection of those Gricean maxims of conversation which are especially relevant for our analysis. In order to avoid legal sanctions, which is a constant problem for (extreme) right-wing populist parties in the German-speaking countries, their politicians often produce utterances which are less informative than required for a full understanding of what has been communicated, thus violating the first sub-maxim of quantity: “Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purpose of the exchange” (Grice 1975: 45). This, however, triggers an implicature for those sections of the audience who know what is meant and are able to add the respective (fascist) information. The less-informative literal meaning of the utterance thus often amounts to a euphemism. For example, the security force (Ordnungsdienst) of the German NPD has a long record of violent attacks on political enemies. In the following passage, an NPD candidate for the regional parliamentary elections in Berlin in September 2011, Hans-Ulrich Pieper, portrays the NPD security force as a purely defensive institution, which undertakes the protection (“Schutz”) of NPD activists and supporters (after a series of violent attacks on NPD activists by members of “left-autonomous” militant groups during the 2011 Berlin election campaign) and does its best (“ihr Bestes”). However, in the light of information on NPD Ordnungsdienst violence, well documented by the print media and TV, its description as a purely defensive force is a euphemism: (3) Frage: Über die Grenzen der Hauptstadt hinaus machten die Mordanschläge gegen die drei Kandidaten der NPD Schlagzeilen. Ist unter solchen Vorzeichen überhaupt noch Wahlkampf möglich? Pieper: . . . der Schutz unserer Aktivisten und Anhänger erfordert besondere Maßnahmen. So hat der Parteivorsitzende eine bewährte Mannschaft aus dem Ordnungsdienst der Partei zusammengestellt, die sicher ihr Bestes tun wird. (“Question: The murderous attacks against three candidates of the NPD made the headlines well beyond the capital Berlin. Is campaigning in such conditions still possible? Pieper: . . . protecting our activists requires special measures. Therefore, the party chairman has put together a reliable team taken from the security force of the party, which will certainly do its best”. HansUlrich Pieper, NPD. Interview with reference to the Berlin election 2011. Deutsche Stimme, 1.8.2011) A similar example is taken from an interview with a prominent NPD politician, Patrick Schröder, who assigns an important role in the political

German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist Right 109 struggle to the “Free Forces” (Freie Kräfte), a euphemistic way of talking about militant neo-Nazi groups, whose members may act in ways that are impossible for leading politicians of the NPD. Of course, in this context, the expression Freie Kräfte is euphemistic, and also the metaphor kämpfen is misleading, as the allusion here is to real fighting, not to political arguments: (4) Vor allem wird aber auch abgesteckt, wer auf welcher Ebene zu kämpfen hat. Im Jugendbereich haben hier die Freien Kräfte natürlich deutlich mehr Möglichkeiten, während der Durchschnittswähler natürlich von der NPD angesprochen werden muß. (“Above all, it is made clear who needs to fight at what level. In the youth sector the Free Forces clearly have more opportunities here, whereas the average voter, of course has to be addressed by the NPD”. Patrick Schröder, NPD. Interview on the new Internet-Radio FSN. Deutsche Stimme, 6.6.2011) As far as the first sub-maxim of quality is concerned (“Do not say what you believe to be false”: Grice 1975: 46), irony is an efficient means of indirectly formulating verbal attacks which could be less effective if expressed boldly, “on the record” (Brown & Levinson 1987). And, as with all conversational implicatures, it is always possible to insist that one did not want to imply anything beyond the literal meaning. In the following passage, Thorsten Hinz ironically appeals to the reader to rescue the (mainstream consensus about the) main or even exclusive guilt of Adolf Hitler’s Germany for World War II (more specifically, Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941). This consensus is, according to Hinz, fundamentally questioned by recent historical research. Of course, given his ideological background, Hinz does not really want the consensus about the exclusive or main responsibility of Germany to remain unchallenged, but the ironic exhortation (“Save the exclusive guilt!”) allows him to avoid a formulation which would come closer to a revisionist view of Hitler’s responsibility for attacking the Soviet Union: (5) Rettet die Alleinschuld! Das Thema ist so brisant, weil das Bekenntnis zur deutschen Alleinschuld am Zweiten Weltkrieg—neben der permanenten Vergegenwärtigung des Holocaust—den einzigen Identitätsanker in diesem sonst identitätslosen Land darstellt. (“Save the exclusive guilt! This issue is so controversial because the commitment to Germany’s sole responsibility for World War II is— apart from the permanent representation of the Holocaust—the only basis for identity in this country which otherwise lacks any identity”. Comment by Thorsten Hinz. Junge Freiheit, 18.4.2011)

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Another figure of speech that violates the first sub-maxim of quality is hyperbole. A patently obvious exaggeration cannot be rejected so easily because the speaker can always say that political discourse sometimes forces strongly committed persons to exaggerate, as in the following example taken from the 2010 NPD party programme: (6) Ein grundlegender politischer Wandel muß die sowohl kostspielige als auch menschenfeindliche Integrationspolitik beenden und auf die Erhaltung der deutschen Volkssubstanz abzielen. Integration ist gleichbedeutend mit Völkermord. (“A fundamental political change must stop the both expensive and misanthropic integration policy and try to preserve the German ethnic substance. Integration is equivalent to genocide”. NPD 2010: 13) Among the persuasive strategies which are very commonly used by extreme right-wing politicians and journalists, one also finds the following sub-maxims of Grice’s Maxim of Manner: “Avoid obscurity of expression” and “Avoid ambiguity” (Grice 1975: 46). Precisely the violation of these sub-maxims allows making vague and obscure accusations against political enemies or antisemitic allusions. Moreover, German lexical items which were already in use before the Nazi regime but which were afterwards used by Nazi propaganda are “contaminated” with a Nazi connotation. The use of these ambiguous lexical items can be defended by referring to the earlier, “innocent” use while at the same time the user sends an indirect “empathic” message to fascist/ extreme right-wing audiences. A few examples illustrate these strategies: (7) Die bundesdeutsche Justiz spielt eine beschämende Rolle. Sie läßt sich von einflußreichen politischen Kreisen steuern und hat so an einer einzigartigen Erosion des Rechtsstaates mitgewirkt. Die gleichen einflußreichen Kräfte haben auch bewirkt, daß der US-Bürger und mutmaßliche frühere KZ-Wächter John Demjanjuk nach München deportiert wurde. (“Federal German justice plays an embarrassing role. It allows itself to be controlled by influential political circles and thus contributed to a unique erosion of the state of law. The same influential forces have also accomplished that the U.S. citizen and alleged former concentration camp guard John Demjanuk was brought to Munich”. Comment by Roland Wuttke. Deutsche Stimme, 2.7.2010) In this passage, Roland Wuttke criticizes the detention of Horst Mahler, a Holocaust denier. Wuttke does not make clear whom he means with “influential political forces” which, according to him, are responsible for the “deplorable condition” of German justice. Thus, he can avoid being accused

German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist Right 111 of explicit antisemitism or racist incitement of the masses, while, at the same time, he is sending signals to right-wing readers who can process the relevant conversational implicature triggered by the violation of the sub-maxim “Avoid obscurity of expression”. Similarly, in the following example taken from the party programme of the vague noun phrase, im Dienst fremder Finanzinteressen (“in the service of foreign financial interests”) cannot refer to a specific group of people in a precise way. But this obscure reference can be strategically used to trigger an interpretation according to which a Jewish and/or international conspiracy of foreign nations produces feelings of guilt in Germany in order to raise money: (8) Deutschland braucht um seiner Zukunft willen ein nationales Geschichtsbild, das die Kontinuität im Leben unseres Volkes in den Mittelpunkt stellt. Wir Nationaldemokraten erteilen dem staatlich verordneten Schuldkult, der nicht zuletzt im Dienst fremder Finanzinteressen steht und deutschen Selbsthaß, vor allem bei der Jugend, fördert, eine Absage. (“For the sake of its future Germany needs a national view of history, which places the continuity in the life of our people at its centre. We National Democrats reject the state-mandated cult of guilt which if nothing else serves foreign financial interests and reject German self-hatred particularly prevalent in our young people”. NPD 2010: 14) The success of this vagueness strategy manifests itself in the results of lawsuits. On March 9, 2011, a probation sentence against leading NPD politicians including Udo Voigt (*1952) was successfully overturned by an appeals court in Berlin. The NPD was accused of racist incitement of the masses for the following reason: on an NPD flyer that included the programme of the soccer world championships 2006, a photo with the slogan Weiß. Nicht nur eine Trikot-Farbe! Für eine echte NATIONALmannschaft! (“White. Not only a football shirt colour! For a true NATIONAL team!”) was paired with the partially visible number 25. In 2006, the number 25 was worn by Patrick Owomoyela, a black member of the German national soccer team. This allusion was interpreted as an incitement of the masses in the first court’s verdict. However, according to the appeals court, the meaning of the slogan, strictly speaking, implied only the proposition “White is also a skin colour”. The second sub-maxim of the Maxim of Manner mentioned earlier, “Avoid ambiguity”, is frequently employed by right-wing extremists when they use German lexical items such as Volksaufklärung (“public enlightenment”, also used by Joseph Goebbels for his Nazi propaganda) and (linke) Volksverräter (literally “(left) traitor of the people”, normally used for those who commit high treason but also used by the Nazis to refer to all political enemies). These lexical items were used by the Nazis but were already in general use when the Nazis came to power.

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In this way, a double message can be created: one can always argue that these words are used in their original meaning, but, at the same time, people who sympathize with extreme right-wing positions can infer the more specific Nazi meaning. In example (9), the use of the German adjective großdeutsch (“greater German”) is justified in this way by the right-wing publisher, editor and journalist Gerhard Frey (*1933), a founder of the DVU: (9) Was heißt “großdeutsch”? Weniger Bösartigkeit als Bildungsarmut verleitet manche Zeitgenossen dazu, das Wort “großdeutsch“ als Kennzeichen aggressiver und gegen andere Völker gerichteter Absichten zu brandmarken. Bei “Großbritannien“ kommt niemand auf ähnliche Ideen, obgleich London bis zu einem Drittel der Welt unterworfen hatte. Der Geschichtskundige weiß, dass mit “großdeutsch“ die ganze in Mitteleuropa beheimatete deutsche Nation gemeint ist—im Unterschied zur kleindeutschen Lösung, die Bismarck durchsetzte. (“What does “pan-German” mean? Not so much malevolence but a lack of education misleads some contemporaries to stigmatize the word “pan-German” as a sign of aggressive intentions directed against other peoples. No-one would come to the same conclusion in the case of Great Britain even though London subjugated up to one third of the world. Those who are historically versed will know that with „pan-German“ one means the entire German nation living in Central Europe—as opposed to the smaller German solution carried through by Bismarck.” Comment by Gerhard Frey. National Zeitung, 7.1.2011) Finally, we would like to point out that such ambiguity strategies are also used in visual messages. In the propaganda comic Der blaue Planet (“The Blue Planet”), published by the FPÖ in 2009 (p. 20), party leader HeinzChristian Strache is portrayed ordering three beers at a party by holding up his right arm and stretching out three fingers. While this is a quite common way of ordering drinks in Austria, it is also a potentially ambiguous gesture because the neo-Nazi Michael Kühnen (1955–1991) introduced it as a modified renewal of the Hitler salute in order to avoid legal sanctions. The picture is also an instance of provocative sarcastic irony, because, in 2007, Strache defended himself against accusations of doing this “Kühnen salute” in a photo dating from 1989 by claiming that what he was doing was simply ordering three beers.

The Strategic Use of Metaphor The outstanding importance of metaphor as a strategy in political rhetoric justifies its separate treatment in this section. Metaphors are used as powerful instruments to shape the cognitive perspectives of voters and to transport ideologies (Lakoff 2005). Although metaphor is used by all political parties

German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist Right 113 and movements, some source domains are more typical for neo-fascist and (extreme) right-wing populist discourse. In order to stir aggressive emotions in their supporters and in the broader public, to promote clear-cut black-and-white portraits of the political landscape, to describe their political enemies as criminals, as insane or even as beasts, extreme right-wing politicians and journalists do not hold back from using drastic metaphors. For example, the metaphor “Politics is war” plays an important role in extreme right-wing discourse. Of course, this metaphor is also frequently used within left-wing and liberal discourse. However, neo-fascists and (extreme) right-wing populists often differ both quantitatively and qualitatively from other politicians, first by using this metaphor more frequently within one and the same text, second by creating an astonishing variety of new specific instances of the metaphor, and third by blurring the difference between metaphorical “fighting” and real violence carried out by the militant neo-Nazi groups called “Free Forces” (see ex. 4 and ex. 10). The following passages from an interview with the prominent NPD politician Patrick Schröder are typical instances: (10) Durch die Möglichkeiten, die dieses Netzwerk bietet, können nahezu alle Bereiche des politischen Kampfes effektiv unterstützt werden. . . . Wahlkampf . . . Zusätzlich bekamen wir Interna aus den Reihen des »Chaos Computer Clubs« zugespielt, der in der letzten Dezemberwoche einen Hack-Großangriff auf unser Projekt plante. Dieser Angriff fand tatsächlich statt, konnte aber ohne Verluste auf unserer Seite abgewehrt werden . . . Einzelkämpfer. . . . In erster Linie soll FSN der nationalen Bewegung zur Kontaktaufnahme und Einbindung von potentiellen Mitstreitern dienen. . . . Vor allem wird aber auch abgesteckt, wer auf welcher Ebene zu kämpfen hat. Im Jugendbereich haben hier die Freien Kräfte natürlich deutlich mehr Möglichkeiten, während der Durchschnittswähler natürlich von der NPD angesprochen werden muß. . . . Ich bin allerdings zuversichtlich, daß wir . . . mit dieser Sache einen wichtigen Teil zur »Reconquista« unserer Heimat beitragen können. (“Through the possibilities offered by this medium, all areas of the political fight can be supported efficiently . . . campaign (literally: “election fight”). . . . Additionally we got internal information from the members of the “Chaos Computer Club”, which planned a large-scale hacking attack on our project. This attack really happened, but it could be fought off without casualties on our side . . . lone fighter . . . FSN should primarily serve as a means of contact and the integration of potential allies for the national movement. . . . Most importantly, it is made clear who needs to fight at which level. In the youth sector the Free Forces clearly have more opportunities here, whereas the average voter of course has to be addressed by the NPD. . . . However, I am confident that we . . .

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In a similarly aggressive way, the political enemies, the government or the entire democratic system is portrayed as insane (”Democracy is insanity”): (11) Politik im Wahn. Nur noch irr: »Unsere« Politiker machen mit uns, was sie wollen—und keiner muckt auf. Im Englischen kennt man den Ausdruck seit Jahrzehnten: »German Angst«. Aber auch das Deutsche ist reich genug an Begriffen, um auf den Punkt zu bringen, was unser Land umtreibt: purer Irrsinn. Hysterie. . . . Und kein Ende des Irrsinns. (“Political madness. Simply crazy: »Our« politicians do what they want with us—and nobody protests. In English they have known the expression for decades: »German Angst«. But German, too, is rich enough in expressions to state concisely what is driving our country: pure madness. Hysteria. . . . And there is no end to this madness”. Comment by Karl Richter. Deutsche Stimme, 28.6.2011) Many comments from Facebook users contain even more aggressive metaphors. This is comparable to the findings of Wodak et al. (1990: 256ff.), who observed the following in their audio recordings of a solemn vigil for the victims of World War II at the Stefansplatz in Vienna in June 1987: the informal discussions that took place with bystanders at this vigil often contained aggressive antisemitic (metaphorical) utterances. Likewise, in rightwing social media pages, extremely aggressive metaphors are used, which sometimes leads populist right-wing parties to distance themselves from such postings. Since the NPD is less restrictive in these respects, a majority of the aggressive user comments can be found on their site, for example: “Opponents/migrants/foreigners are despicable animals”: Parasiten (“parasites”; NPD user 52); Vieh/Viecher (“cattle”/“animals”; NPD user 50); 68er pack (literally “pack of the 1968ies”; FPÖ user 32); Use mit däm Pack!!! (“Get rid of the scum”; SVP user 8); Demoratte (literally “Demo-rat” i.e. “democrats are rats”); linke Zecke (“left vermine”) NPDuser 5, FPÖ user 56); Deine Mutter musste schon einen Ausländer zur Paarung suchen, weil sie kein deutscher Mann wollte (“Your mother had to look for a foreigner to mate with her because no German man wanted her”; NPD user 3).

The Strategic Use of Argument Schemes Among the argument schemes commonly employed in everyday argumentation and political discourse, we wish to focus on some patterns of causal arguments. Again, these schemes are used in a specific way by representatives of the extreme right, although they are omnipresent and extremely important within any kind of political discourse.

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Without being able to deal with all the complexities of the concept of causality (for one recent detailed philosophical treatment see Meixner 2001), we would like to consider the following features as collectively defining the everyday concept of causality (also Kienpointner 1992: 328ff.; Kienpointner 2003): Definition of Causality: Event A is the cause of event B if and only if 1. 2. 3. 4.

B regularly follows A A occurs earlier than (or at the same time as) B A is changeable/could be changed If A did not occur, B would not occur (ceteris paribus)

If an event A fulfils criteria 1–4, it can be called the “cause” of event B, which in turn can be characterized as the “effect” of A. This definition has to be supplemented with further concepts in order to prevent a reductionist view of causality, which is very widespread in political argumentation. Together, these concepts could also be presented as a list of critical questions concerning causal argumentation. Most frequently, there is not one and only one “cause A” leading to one “effect B”, so you have to take into account that single causes are rarely necessary and sufficient conditions for single effects (Meixner 2000: 219ff.). Moreover, if we analyse argumentative discourse, we often have to take into account not only the immediate cause A of effect B but also the indirect causes A1 . . . n of B and the indirect effects B1 . . . n of A as elements of a longer sequence of causes and effects. Furthermore, the actions of human agents cannot be reduced to causal sequences of events (Meixner 2001: 320ff.). Even in cases in which the actions of human agents cause certain reactions by other human beings quite regularly or in which human actions are motivated by similar ends quite regularly (see criterion 1), important differences between human actions and “natural” causes and effects remain. People can always choose to react in different ways following differing cultural patterns of conscious and purposeful behaviour. Moreover, they can also refrain from acting (Meixner 2001: 331ff.). It is true that these choices can be severely limited by physical, psychological and/or socioeconomic constraints, but human actions are almost never strictly determined in the way (in-)organic matter is determined by the laws of nature (von Wright 1974). As far as discourse of the extreme right and of populist right-wing parties is concerned, these complexities of the causal relation are often reduced in order to present simple causal patterns that allow the hearer to draw conclusions that support the right-wing worldview, for example, that nations and cultures are homogeneous entities that cause certain political effects or that there is a unique responsibility for political problems.

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The strategic manoeuvring with (elements of) causal argument schemes that allow such conclusions is, most of the time, in danger of becoming fallacious. Some of these causal fallacies are illustrated later in this chapter. They could be summarized as “the scapegoat strategy” and “the strategy of exchanging cause and effect” (or, more specifically, the exchange of perpetrator and victim), respectively. They correspond to more plausible causal argument schemes such as the “pragmatic argument”, according to which one argues for or against certain actions by evaluating their positive and negative effects and tries to take into account all or most of these effects (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1983: 357ff.). The scapegoat strategy is based on the assumption that one and only one ethnic, social or political group is responsible for certain large-scale political problems and dangers. This monocausal reductionism is explicitly racist (antisemitic) in the case of neo-Nazi discourse and is directed against politicians, parties and governments in the case of right-wing populist discourse. In the following examples, leading EU politicians and migration (i.e. migrants) are criticized by Andreas Mölzer (* 1952, FPÖ), the right-wing member of the EU Parliament, and in the party programme of the SVP, as constituting the main or sole cause of political problems. Governing parties and politicians are generally portrayed as solely responsible for causing just about all serious contemporary political and economic problems, such as the world-wide financial crisis, unemployment, bureaucracy, biased media and environmental problems. This is, however, causal reductionism; as pointed out earlier, single causes are rarely necessary and sufficient conditions for single effects. Most of the time, complex historical developments have a variety of causes, and political decisions have not only negative but also positive effects. These arguments, therefore, can be plausibly criticized as fallacious “monocausal” argumentation of the “scapegoat” type. More specifically, the “monocausal” reductionism becomes manifest by the following facts: the leading EU politicians, whatever they have contributed to the global financial crisis, for better or worse, are certainly not its main, let alone its sole, cause (cf. later in this essay: Sie, die . . . zentral . . . schuld sind (“They, who . . . are mainly guilty”); Schuld sind einzig die Politiker . . . (Guilty are only the politicians”); likewise, the migrants not only cause social and economic problems but also contribute to their solution, for example, by paying taxes and thereby supporting the welfare state. Nevertheless, in the following example, migration (i.e. migrants) is criticized in the party programme of the SVP as the main or sole cause of political problems: (12) Die Spitzen-Eurokraten versuchen gegenwärtig fleißig, den Teufel mit dem Beelzebub auszutreiben. Sie, die durch vorschnelle Vereinheitlichung und Zentralisierung der europäischen Währungen zentral an der gegenwärtigen Finanz- und Staatsschuldenkrise schuld sind, versuchen nunmehr mit eben weiterer und verschärfter Zentralisierung, die Krise zu lösen.

German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist Right 117 (“At the moment the top “Eurocrats” are trying doggedly to replace one evil with another. They, who through the hasty unification and centralisation of the European currencies are mainly guilty for the present financial and debt crisis, now try to solve the crisis exactly with further and stricter centralisation”. Comment by Andreas Mölzer. Zur Zeit, 3.-9.6.2011) (13) Schuld sind weder die Wirtschaft noch die Finanzmärkte noch böse Spekulanten. Schuld sind einzig die Politiker und die Bürokraten, die ein solch monströses Gebilde konstruierten und jetzt bestens davon leben. (“Guilty are not the economy nor the financial markets nor evil speculators. Guilty are only the politicians and the bureaucrats, who have constructed such a monstrous entity and are living from it very well”. SVP 2011, p. 124) (14) Der Zuwanderungsdruck schafft gewaltige Probleme: bei Arbeitsplätzen, Sozialwerken, Integration, Sicherheit, Bildungs- und Gesundheitswesen, Infrastrukturen, Verkehr, Raumplanung und Umwelt. (“The pressure of immigration creates huge problems: with employment, social benefits, integration, security, education and public health, infrastructure, traffic, regional development planning and environment”. SVP 2011: 53) As far as the strategic exchange of cause and effect is concerned, the most notorious example of its more specific variety of exchanging perpetrator and victim is antisemitic discourse, where the Jewish victims of pogroms and the Holocaust are fallaciously blamed for having caused their own cruel persecution throughout the centuries (Wodak et al. 1990: 266f., 304f.). CONCLUSION Given the challenge of identifying and defining the concept of fascism in general and more specifically in different types of discourse, it has proven useful to look at a number of definitions as a starting point for our analysis of persuasive strategies of extreme right-wing and (neo)fascist discourse in German-speaking countries. Three main persuasive strategies which are frequently (but not exclusively) found in such discourses have emerged as prevalent: (1) the strategic use of indirectness, (2) the strategic use of metaphor and (3) the strategic use of argument schemes, especially causal arguments. Indirect utterances are a means used by (extreme) right-wing populist parties in order to avoid legal sanctions. Violations of the Gricean maxims of conversation appeared most relevant as vagueness strategies here

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and occurred in a variety of corpus items, as our examples indicate. In our section on the use of metaphor, we suggest that three domains are particularly common in (extremist) right-wing discourse. We argue that (extremist) right-wing populists use the war metaphor more frequently than other politicians and that they create many new specific instances of this metaphor. Another typical right-wing variation of this metaphor is to make no clear distinction between real war (=violence by the neo-Nazi groups called “Free Forces”) and metaphorical “war” (e.g. a political argument). Also, the discoursal comparison of democracy with mental illness and the use of aggressive animal metaphors in order to describe political opponents, migrants or foreigners were frequently found in our corpus. Our analysis of the strategic use of argument schemes has shown that the exchange of cause and effect and causal reductionism are the most striking patterns used in right-wing discourse. The focus of this essay was to look at case studies with a qualitative approach rather than a quantitative evaluation, which would have required a much larger corpus. It would be interesting for future research to look at a larger dataset, possibly allowing for a refinement and extension of the analysis categories applied here. Broadening the scope of investigation would also add a temporal dimension and allow for an assessment whether there has been a considerable change in right-wing discourse over time and/or whether the use of certain discourse strategies has increased in frequency. It would be interesting, for example, to see whether the tone of those discourses has become more aggressive over the past decade. Looking at extreme right activities in Germany and Austria, we get the alarming feeling that it has. REFERENCES Party Programmes Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ), 2010. Zehn rechtsliberale Grundsatzpositionen. http://bzoe.at/assets/files/BZOE-Grundsatzprogramm.pdf [29 Aug 2011]. Deutsche Volksunion (DVU), (n.d.). Landesverband Brandenburg. Parteiprogramm der Deutschen Volksunion (DVU). http://www.dvu-brandenburg.de/partei/partei programm/ [29 Aug 2011]. Die Republikaner (REP), 2002. Die Republikaner. Sozial—patriotisch—ökologisch. Erste Festschreibung des “Parteiprogramm 2002 der Republikaner”. http://www. rep.de/upload/CMS/rep.de/Daten/Partei/Parteiprogramm/programm_pdf_neu. pdf [29 Aug 2011]. Freiheitliche Partei Österreich (FPÖ), 2011. Parteiprogramm der Freiheitlichen Partei Österreichs (FPÖ). Beschlossen vom Bundesparteitag der Freiheitlichen Partei Österreichs am 18. Juni 2011 in Graz. Österreich zuerst. http://www.fpoe.at/ dafuer-stehen-wir/ [29 Aug 2011]. Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD), 2010. Das Parteiprogramm. Arbeit. Familie. Vaterland. Das Parteiprogramm der Nationaldemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (NPD). Beschlossen auf dem Bundesparteitag am 4./5.6.2010

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in Bamberg. http://www.npd.de/inhalte/daten/dateiablage/br_parteiprogramm_ a4.pdf/ [29 Aug 2011]. Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP), 2011. SVP—Die Partei für die Schweiz. Parteiprogramm 2011–2015. http://www.svp.ch/display.cfm/id/101396/ [29 Aug 2011].

Newspapers and Magazines Deutsche Stimme. Monatszeitung für Politik und Kultur. http://www.deutschstimme.de [18 Sep 2011]) Junge Freiheit. Wochenzeitung aus Berlin. http://www.jungefreiheit.de [18 Sep 2011] National Zeitung. Deutsche Wochenzeitung. https://www.national-zeitung.de [18 Sep 2011] Wochenzeitung für Österreich “Zur Zeit”. http://www.zurzeit.at [18 Sep 2011]

Facebook H. C. Strache. http://de-de.facebook.com/HCStrache [2 Sep 2011] NDP—die soziale Heimatpartei. http://de-de.facebook.com/npd.de [2 Sep 2011] “Volksinitiative gegen Masseneinwanderung”. http://de-de.facebook.com/pages/ Volksinitiative-gegen-Masseneinwanderung/167541646652657 [2 Sep 2011]

Scientific Literature Adamovich, L. K., Funk, B.-C., & Holzinger, G. 2011. Österreichisches Staatsrecht. Band 1: Grundlagen. 2nd ed. Wien, New York: Springer. Brown, P. & Levinson, S. C. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Decker, F. 2000. Parteien unter Druck. Der neue Rechtspopulismus in den westlichen Demokratien. Opladen: Leske und Budrich. Engelstädter, H., & Seiffert, O. 1990. Die schleichende Gefahr. Europa, die Deutschen, Nationalismus und Neofaschismus. Berlin: Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus. Fairclough, N. 2001. Language and Power. Harlow: Pearson Education. Gramsci, A. 1999. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers. Greven, T., & Grumke, T. 2006. Globalisierter Rechtsextremismus? VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften (GWV). http://ebooks.ciando.com/book/index.cfm/bok_ id/16942 [2 Sep 2011]. Grice, P. 1975. Logic and Conversation. In: Cole, P., & Morgan, J. (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, pp. 41–58. Griffin, R. (ed.). 1998a. International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus. London: Arnold. Griffin, R. 1998b. Introduction. In: Griffin, R. [ed.] 1998a. International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus. London: Arnold, pp. 1–39. Griffin, R. 2011. Rechtsextremismusforschung in Europa: „From new consensus to new wave?“ In: Globisch, C., et al. [eds.], Die Dynamik der europäischen Rechten. Wiesbaden: Springer, pp. 295–314. Habermas, J. 1981. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Habermas, J. 1991. Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hartleb, F. 2011. Extremismus in Österreich. In: Jesse, E., and Thieme, T. (eds.), Extremismus in den EU-Staaten. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, pp. 265–281.

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Jesse, E. 2011. Extremismus in Deutschland. In: Jesse, E., and Thieme, T. (eds.), Extremismus in den EU-Staaten. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, pp. 83–98. Kailitz, S. 2005. Rechtsextremismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Auf dem Weg zur “Volksfront”? Zukunftsforum Politik 65. http://www.kas.de/wf/ de/33.6368/ [29 Aug 2011]. Kienpointner, M. 1992. Alltagslogik. Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog. Kienpointner, M. 2002. Populistische Topik. Zu einigen rhetorischen Strategien von Jörg Haider. Jahrbuch Rhetorik 21, pp. 119–140. Kienpointner, M. 2003. Perelman on Causal Arguments: The Argument of Waste. In: Eemeren, F. H. van, et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Argumentation. Amsterdam: SicSat, pp. 611–616. Kienpointner, M. 2005. Racist Manipulation within Austrian, German, Dutch, French and Italian Right-Wing Populism. In: de Saussure, L., and Schulz, P. (eds.), Manipulation and Ideologies in the Twentieth Century. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 213–235. Kienpointner, M. 2009. Plausible and Fallacious Strategies of Silencing One’s Opponent. In: Eemeren, F. H. van (ed.), Examining Argumentation in Context: Fifteen Studies on Strategic Maneuvering. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 61–75. Lakoff, G. 2005. Don’t Think of an Elephant! White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Luther, K. R. 2006. Die Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) und das Bündnis Zukunft Österreichs (BZÖ). In: Dachs, H., et al. (eds.), Politik in Österreich. Wien: Manz, pp. 364–388. Mannheim, K. 1929. Ideologie und Utopie. Bonn: Cohen. Meixner, U. 2001. Theorie der Kausalität. Paderborn: Mentis. Mosse, G. L. 1979. A Politico-Cultural Revolution. In: Griffin, R. (ed.), 1998a. International Fascism. Theories, Causes and the New Consensus. London: Arnold, pp. 137–147. Muzicant, A. 2011. Kellernazis in der FPÖ. Funktionäre, Mitarbeiter und Aktivisten der FPÖ und ihres Umfeldes. http://www.kellernazisinderfpoe.at/ [29 Aug 2011]. Neugebauer, G. 2010. Einfach war gestern. Zur Strukturierung der politischen Realität. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 44, pp. 3–9. Payne, S. 1998. A Form of Revolutionary Ultra-Nationalism. In: Griffin, R. (ed.), 1998a. International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus. London: Arnold, pp. 147–155. Pelinka, A. 2002. Die FPÖ in der vergleichenden Parteienforschung. Zur typologischen Einordnung der Freiheitlichen Partei Österreichs. Österreichische Zeitung für Politikwissenschaft 31(3), pp. 281–290. http://www.renner-institut.at/ download/texte/pelinka.pdf [29 Aug 2011]. Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. 1983. Traité de l’argumentation. Bruxelles: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles. Pink, O., & Prior, T. 2011. FPÖ bekennt sich wieder zum Deutschtum. DiePresse.com. 17 June. http://diepresse.com/home/politik/innenpolitik/671080/FPOe-bekenntsich-wieder-zum-Deutschtum [29 Sep 2011]. Poulantzas, N. 1970. An Exceptional Form of the Capitalist State. In: Griffin, R. (ed.), 1998a. International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus. London: Arnold, pp. 86–97. Priester, K. 2010. Rechtsextremismus und Rechtspopulismus in Europa. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 44, pp. 33–39. Reichardt, S. 2007. Neue Wege der vergleichenden Faschismusforschung. Mittelweg 36, 16(1), pp. 9–25. Reisigl, M., & Wodak, R. 2001. Discourse and Discrimination. London: Routledge. Schedler, J. 2010. “Autonome Nationalisten”. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 44, pp. 20–26.

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Skenderovic, D. 2007. Immigration and the Radical Right in Switzerland: Ideology, Discourse and Opportunities. Patterns of Prejudice 41(2), pp. 155–176. Steglich, H. 2010. Rechtsaußenparteien in Deutschland. Bedingungen ihres Erfolges und Scheiterns. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Trotzky, L. 1940. The Counter-Revolution of Imperialist Capitalism. In: Griffin, R. (ed.), 1998a. International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus. London: Arnold, pp. 67–75. Udris, L. 2011. Politischer Extremismus und Radikalismus: Problematisierung und diskursive Gelegenheitsstrukturen in der öffentlichen Kommunikation der Deutschschweiz. Wiesbaden. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978–3-531–92772–5. Van Dijk, T. A. 1998. Ideology. London: Sage. Van Eemeren, F. H. 2010. Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Discourse: Extending the Pragma-dialectical Theory of Argumentation. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. 2004. A Systematic Theory of Argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vam Eemeren, F. H., and Houtlosser, P. 2006. Strategic Maneuvering: A Synthetic Recapitulation. In: Eemeren, F. H. van & Houtlosser, P. [eds.]. Special Issue: Perspectives on Strategic Maneuvering. Argumentation 20(4), pp. 381–392. Verfassungsschutzbericht. 2010. http://www.verfassungsschutz.de/download/ SHOW/vsbericht_2010.pdf [29 Aug 2011]. Walton, D. N., Reed, C., & Macagno, F. 2008. Argumentation Schemes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wodak, R. 2011. Critical Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. In: Zienkowski, J., Östman, J. O., & Verschueren, J. (eds.), Discoursive Pragmatics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 50–70. Wodak, R., & Pelinka, A. (eds.) 2002. The Haider Phenomenon in Austria. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Wodak, R., & Reisigl, M. 2002. “. . . Wenn einer Ariel heißt . . .”. Ein linguistisches Gutachten zur politischen Funktionalisierung antisemitischer Ressentiments in Österreich. In: Pelinka, A., & Wodak, R. (eds.), “Dreck am Stecken”. Politik der Ausgrenzung. Wien: Czernin Verlag, pp. 134–172. Wodak, R., et al. 1990. “Wir sind alle unschuldige Täter”. Diskurshistorische Studien zum Nachkriegsantisemitismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Wodak, R., et al. 1998. Zur diskursiven Konstruktion nationaler Identität. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Wright, H. von. 1974. Explanation and Understanding. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

7

Education and Etiquette Behaviour Formation in Fascist Spain Derrin Pinto

During the Francoist period in Spain (1939–1975), teaching the norms for etiquette was a curricular component at both the primary and the secondary-school levels. This desire to shape the behaviour of children and young adults from an early age is reflected in the great number of school textbooks that contain sections dedicated to courtesy or neighbouring concepts such as urbanity, ethics, kindness and good manners. As such, teaching norms of behaviour, which took place within a strict Catholic framework, was a significant part of the socialization of the children of the so-called New State. One of the key functions carried out by this formative component of the curriculum was the compartmentalization of society into distinct categories, especially with regard to class, power and gender, with the purpose of assigning restricted social roles to all members. From an ideological perspective, the first objective of this chapter is to examine how the teaching of manners attempts to contribute to the Formation of the National Spirit, the name given to the curricular component under Franco that entailed instilling in the young students of this period a sense of national group identity. For this phase of the analysis, van Dijk’s (1998) criteria are applied in order to study the fundamental configuration of the ideology underlying the discourse. Van Dijk’s framework entails issues related to group membership and groups’ social practices, goals, values and norms. The second stage of the analysis focuses more specifically on the mechanisms that are employed to legitimize the discourse and to exert control over the conduct of the young readers. The corpus is made up of the pertinent sections of 33 textbooks, published between 1943 and 1973. Although the texts are from various levels, the majority of them were published for use in primary schools. Studies of etiquette books for children and adults have examined different aspects of the construction of ideologies in a variety of cultures (see, for example, Arditi, 1996, 1999; Aresty, 1970; Corbett, 2009; Smith, 2006). While the majority of books that make up the corpus of the present study are not the archetypal etiquette manual that these aforementioned authors explore, primarily because they are framed in what we would consider a pedagogical Civics discourse, they still dedicate a varying amount of attention to manners or politeness.

Education and Etiquette 123 Social science textbooks from different countries have been the object of analysis in numerous studies covering a range of topics and theoretical perspectives. Within the realm of history textbooks, many studies apply a Systemic Functional approach to identify the role that linguistic phenomena such as naturalization, nominalization and causation play in the narration of historical events (Barnard, 2000, 2001, 2003; Coffin, 1997, 2002, 2006; Cullip, 2007; Martin, 1991, 1997; Oteíza, 2006; Oteíza and Pinto, 2008; Schleppegrell et al., 2004). Other investigators working within a framework of Critical Discourse Analysis have examined issues related to ideology, national identity, racism, abuse of power, linguistic strategies of persuasion and manipulation, among other topics (Atienza Cerezo, 2011; Atienza Cerezo and van Dijk, 2010; de los Heros, 2009; Ebadollahi Chanzanagh et al., 2011; Pinto, 2004; Van Dijk, 2004; van Dijk and Atienza Cerezo, 2011). Another trend in the study of pedagogical discourse involves ethnographic and sociological approaches that expand their scope of enquiry beyond the textbooks in order to consider how different contexts of interaction and social relations, especially the classroom environment and the family setting, influence the students’ learning (Cairney and Ashton, 2002; Chamorro and Moss, 2011; Faulstich Orellana, 1996; Martin et al., 2010; Montanero et al., 2008; Moss, 2010; Sunderland et al., 2000). HISTORICAL CONTEXT: THE FRANCO DICTATORSHIP In historical accounts, Franco’s regime is generally represented in different stages, the first commencing with the close of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, commonly referred to as the Postwar Era. Accordingly, the first ten years of the military dictatorship were characterized by the isolation of Spain in the international sphere, sparse economic production, dismal living conditions for the general population and ruthless political and ideological repression, the results of which (e.g. the incarceration and assassination of dissidents) are largely absent from official versions of history. Among the activities prohibited by Franco was the organization of political parties and labour unions, as well as any public manifestation of regional identity, including the use of Basque or Catalan. Many intellectuals and artists fled the country, and those who remained were confined by the parameters of a system of strict censorship. The regime was able to maintain such tight control over society by delegating power to both the military and the Church. Furthermore, this first phase of the dictatorship was also notable for its Fascist propaganda that revolved around the cult of personality of the Caudillo, military strength, the image of a unified Spain, the greatness of the Fatherland and the deep-rooted traditional values of Catholicism, family and order (Pinto, 2004). Although much of this early postwar discourse borrowed heavily from Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, the Fascist influences that made up la Falange Española did not become a long-standing

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political force but instead were relegated to carrying out bureaucratic and propagandistic functions. The decade of the fifties is considered a period in which Spain begins to gradually open up to the outside world, both politically and economically, although signs of change dated as far back as the mid-forties. Especially given the outcome of the Second World War, it became apparent that the Franco regime would not benefit from being associated with Fascism if Spain was going to seek international recognition and foreign aid. Consequently, by toning down the Fascist imagery surrounding the dictatorship, largely through superficial modifications such as eliminating the Fascist salute, the regime began to accomplish the desired objectives with regard to international acceptance. The preliminary makeovers eventually led to concrete results in the fifties, among them the often-cited agreements with the United States, in 1953, that permitted the installation of military bases in Spanish territory and Spain’s acceptance into the United Nations, in 1955. History texts portray the sixties as a period of economic growth and modernization, underscored by substantial increases in exports and imports, foreign investment, tourism and urbanization. Similarly, social change is evidenced by the growing access to information, through the press, radio and television, as well as to cultural commodities such as movies, magazines and more affordable paperback books. Due to technical advances and reduced reliance on manual labour, unemployment was high, causing more than 1.3 million Spaniards to emigrate, many of them to France and Germany (Sánchez et al., 2007). Politically, by this time, the regime had become largely technocratic, headed by a group of ministers who sought to apply a corporate approach for managing the affairs of the country. Also during the sixties, the illegal activity of opposition groups, ranging from the radical terrorist group ETA to the Communist Party, became more and more common. The last five years of Franco’s dictatorship before his death, in 1975, were marked by increasing opposition, Franco’s declining health, and, in December 1973, the assassination by ETA of Luis Carrero Blanco, who Franco had assigned as prime minister just six months earlier with the idea that Carrero Blanco would be Franco’s successor. A combination of internal conflicts among members of the regime and pressure from opposing pro-democracy groups produced a political crisis that lasted until well after Franco’s death, and it was not until 1977 that the first democratic elections took place, followed by the creation of a new constitution in 1978. EDUCATION, MANNERS AND IDEOLOGY In accordance with the model of education developed during el franquismo, teaching manners involved both religious and sociopolitical components. For the Catholic Church, social etiquette not only served as a means for religious indoctrination based on morality (de Miguel, 1991) but also provided an outlet for teaching the proper conduct for other activities of religious life,

Education and Etiquette 125 such as how to behave in church. Embedding politeness within a dogmatic Catholic framework was advantageous to the Fascist regime given that both institutions shared ‘the love of discipline, authority and hierarchy’ (Navarro García, 1993: 60–61). This symbiosis of Catholic and sociopolitical elements, under the rubric of National Catholicism, clouded the distinction between secular and nonsecular objectives and, as will be illustrated later, facilitated the indoctrination of the youth into the oppressive system. From this perspective, the link between politeness and sociopolitical ideology is evident. As can be seen in the Official Mandate from August 19, 1936, even before the end of the Civil War, education reforms began to be applied by imposing the ‘re-establishment of a new Catholic school that is essentially Catholic, patriotic and nationalistic’ in order to re-create Christian values among the Spanish people (Capitán Díaz, 1994: 683). Once the war was over, the absolute power that the Church exerted over education was unquestionable; Catholic doctrine shaped and inspired the totality of the Spanish education system. This point is documented in the first agreement established between the regime and the Vatican, on June 7, 1941, where one of the central issues was establishing complete harmony between all levels of education and Catholic doctrine, and this was formally sanctioned in the Concordat of August 27, 1953 (Navarro García, 1993: 68–69). In order to assist in the task of indoctrinating the youth in the teachings of the New State, the Youth Front (el Frente de Juventudes) was created in December 1940. As a whole, the front never fully developed into a mass organization on the national level as originally planned, and the result was a somewhat watered-down establishment that never managed to enlist more than 13 per cent of the youth population before being dissolved in 1960 (Payne 1961, 2011). Sáez Marin (1988) documents the shortfalls of the group, highlighting the enormous gap between the desired objectives of the leaders and the reality that the organization faced. The first years were plagued with bureaucratic and logistical complications, and, once the directors recognized their inability to recruit and prepare the large number of missionaries that would be needed, they settled on training pre-existing teachers. Overall, according to Sáez Marin (1988), the Youth Front ended up targeting predominantly young children in primary and middle school, those who were too young to have political commitments, while the majority of older boys and girls were busy working. Thus, as an organization for premilitary training, it was never able to prosper, and the group’s disintegration in 1960 was ultimately due to the conflicting forces at work. One constant obstacle was the fact that Spanish society had begun to slowly evolve, increasingly influenced by the outside world, while the leadership of the group continued to be anchored in the Fascist ideals of the past. Regarding the Youth Front’s role in shaping the curriculum, the organization was never an autonomous entity, and, whatever the amount of guidance it managed to impose in the process of disseminating ideology in the classroom, its

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didactic goals were in sync with those of the funding body, the Ministry of Education. Returning specifically to the topic of teaching manners, it is clear that this practice not only serves as a pretext for ideological indoctrination, but it also involves a direct instrument for human conditioning; namely, imparting a series of behavioural norms that members of the society must learn from the time they are children (Elias, 1978). These norms end up appearing logical or ordinary to the point that, through their practice, their usage becomes of a common-sense nature, a phenomenon that often confirms a successful ideological acquisition (Fairclough, 2001). Another ideological function of establishing politeness norms is that, historically in the Western world, they have contributed to the formation and preservation of social classes. For example, Watts (2003) affirms that politeness in 18th-century England was part of an ideological discourse that moulded the country into classes. Once the existence of a class system is in place, politeness can also contribute to perpetuating this system in that it guarantees a class consciousness among the members of a society. As Amando de Miguel (1991: 143) attests, ‘the norms of good manners are there to remind us that there are social classes, categories [and] divisions’. Given that education was conceived more as a tool for ideological indoctrination than as a pedagogical practice, young children were inundated with strong doses of patriotism, religious dogma and social discipline. The following words of Franco from 1942 unambiguously express this conceptualization of children as an ideal target of indoctrination: ‘We must, from the very beginning, instil in the soul of our young children simple concepts, the truths of our doctrine and the firm idea of sacrifice for our unity, built on the eternal principles of our History and the teachings of the Gospel’ (Moreno de Guerra Arozarena, 1951: 7). This goal of shaping the minds of children shows that Franco understood that children are especially vulnerable to the process of indoctrination because of their age, their innocence and their lack of exposure to other modes of influence (van Dijk, 1993). In addition, since children occupy the bottom rung of a hierarchical ladder, the dynamics that facilitate manipulation are fully in place. Under Franco, teaching manners was incorporated primarily into the curricular component called Civics, although this does not mean that it did not come under other topics as well, such as Philosophy and Ethics or, for girls, Home Economics. Both the curricular programs published by the Ministry of Education, often referred to as ‘cuestionarios’, and the school textbooks of the period include topics such as politeness, urbanity or good manners as mandatory subjects. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that the textbooks of this era often encompass a variety of subjects, ranging from math to history, in one single book; thus it is not always clear what the corresponding course would be for some of the lessons on courtesy. The curricular programs from different primary and secondary levels list concepts related to politeness as obligatory topics under categories such as Civics, Social and Political Formation and the Formation of the National Spirit.

Education and Etiquette 127 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Ideology With the goal of investigating how politeness formed part of the ideological discourse of the textbooks used under Franco’s regime, the analysis is divided into two parts; the first focuses on the content and the thematic construction of ideology, while the second is geared toward some of the linguistic resources that are key mechanisms for persuasion in school discourse. For the first phase, the components formulated by van Dijk (1998) are applied to study the ideas and beliefs that the authors attempt to transmit through the texts. Van Dijk establishes a set of criteria for the organization of ideological representations which facilitates the understanding of the ideological stances in the discourse. Here, ideology refers to a system that prioritizes ideas, opinions and beliefs for a given social group, and legitimizes certain ones as true, proper, natural and correct (van Dijk, 2006; de Beaugrande, 1997). The analytical framework proposed encompasses the following questions: who belongs and does not belong to the in-group that the nation is attempting to establish and/or maintain? What is it that one should and should not do? Why do X and for what purpose? And, finally, what are the main values? By addressing these questions, we will be able to explore some of the recurring ideological components in the corpus.

Legitimacy and Control The persuasive element in the discourse of social practices includes two fundamental objectives: to legitimize those practices (van Leeuwen, 2007, 2008) and to establish control in order to influence the reader’s behaviour (Brennenstuhl, 1982; van Dijk, 1998). Legitimation is relevant for the discourse of politeness since it provides validity and normative respectability for the behaviour that is being prescribed and proscribed (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). Van Leeuwen (2008) presents an analytical framework that demonstrates the characteristic strategies for legitimation in the discourse of social practices. According to this perspective, the discourse contains references to why the reader should carry out certain actions and why he or she should do it in the way that is specified. Van Leeuwen proposes various strategies for the process of legitimation; from these, we will consider here authorization, moral evaluation and mythopoesis. Authorization involves any reference to traditions, customs or laws or to anybody that represents some type of institutional or personal authority. Moral evaluation consists of references, direct or indirect, to value systems. Finally, mythopoesis is the use of narratives that reward legitimate actions and punish those that are illegitimate. With regard to teaching manners and persuasion, the element of control comes into play when the author not only attempts to convince the reader that the norms of politeness being put forth are legitimate but, in addition,

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wants the readers to adapt these norms as part of their habitual conduct. This last element of control is explained by Brennenstuhl (1982). According to the author, ‘the social system presses the agent into habits, habits of acting in conformity with roles, conventions and duties as well as habits of thinking and feeling in conformity with ideology and religion’ (66). The author who wants to control the reader tries to influence the decision-making process and the ensuing actions. In general terms, controllers attempt to restrict the alternatives that exist by describing some actions as desirable and others as not desirable. These strategies of control convey to the readers a sense of moral obligation and duty. Among the linguistic resources that incite the agent to internalize the sense of duty and react in the desired way is the use of deontic modality, the modal system of obligation (Simpson, 1993). As some of the examples later in this essay highlight, legitimation and control work in conjunction within the discourse. It could be argued that legitimation is the author’s first step in trying to convince the reader that certain social practices are valid, while control implies one additional step—the desire to influence the norms of behaviour that the members of a group assimilate. In accordance with this perspective, the objective of legitimation is to induce the reader to think a certain way, while control involves persuading the reader not only to think but also to act in a certain way. It might also be reasonable to assume that control is contingent on legitimation, since the reader will want to believe that a given social practice is legitimate before carrying it out, except perhaps in situations of coercion.

Data Corpus The 33 school textbooks that were chosen for this study were published in Spain between 1943 and 1973. The selection of the material was the result of extensive research at the National Library in Madrid. Through a careful examination of numerous textbooks written during this period, we found 33 primary and secondary-school textbooks that contained sections or chapters related to politeness. Hence, the selection process was based on this simple criterion: school textbooks from any level that were published in Spain within this timeframe and that contained at least one section on courtesy or a related topic, as mentioned earlier. A list of the texts can be found at the end of this chapter. In cases in which no specific author is included in the book, which is often the case, the text is listed by the date of publication. ANALYSIS

The Components of Ideology (van Dijk) Membership ( Who Belongs?) Ideological discourses rely on the process of inclusion and exclusion to establish that not all of the members of a society are equal; consequently, they

Education and Etiquette 129 do not have the same rights, opportunities or access to resources. This factor is crucial for politeness since, as previously emphasized, one of the functions it performs is marking distinctions between social groups. The texts analysed for this study overwhelmingly presuppose and propose an ideal young reader who not only is Catholic and patriotic but who also belongs to a high-class urban family that is close-knit, caring and supportive. It is important to add that the membership of girls and young women in this group is questionable since they are often portrayed as second-class citizens, as discussed later. Concerning the adoration of the upper class and the representation of this group as the norm, such a view contrasts sharply with the harsh reality, especially perceptible in the texts published during the postwar period, when the average family experienced widespread hunger, rationing of food and supplies and inflation. In fact, according to de Miguel (1991), the exaggerated elitist image in these texts was meant to help students forget the miseries of real life, a phenomenon of escapism that the author likens to the Spanish movies produced in the fifties. One discursive manifestation of the predilection for high society is the recurring mention of proper conduct for treating servants, as the following two fragments demonstrate: (1) We designate house servants and maids as inferiors; with them we will be respectful without submission, friendly and generous. . . . Often an expression of thanks or a gesture of satisfaction is enough for servants to feel valuable after carrying out an order that has pleased their master. (Enciclopedia, 1964: 143) (2) Our relationships with maids and house servants must be kind [but] without improper familiarity, [we must] give them orders in the correct way, treat them with due consideration and follow their instructions when our parents put them in charge of looking after us. (González Villanueva, 1961: 158) Besides references to servants, the texts include elements and situations that are typical of the upper class, such as the ‘noble’ tastes in (3) and the extreme situation in (4) which assumes that addressing important people like the ‘Head of State’ or the ‘high dignitaries of the government’ is commonplace: (3) The school student must have simple and noble tastes. (Algunas normas, 1959: 9) (4) When we address the Head of State, the high dignitaries of the Government, the Church or the Army, etc., we must exaggerate even more the rules of etiquette, and they will serve as a sign of the respect and veneration that we feel for such great people. (Enciclopedia escolar ‘Estudio’, 1966: 746)

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As a side note, the fondness for the upper class is also perceivable in the illustrations, which often depict wealthy families wearing elegant clothes, engaging in social activities associated with an upscale lifestyle and residing in mansions, complete with servants and luxurious interiors. Since a separate study would be needed to do justice to the amount of sexual discrimination in the corpus, here we will mention only a few observations. As Navarro Garcia (1993: 75) has pointed out, the discourse in the texts of this era exhibits a distinctive ‘derogatory feeling toward women’, a quality that is particularly evident in the realm of politeness. Various texts written for both boys and girls include different sections for each gender. For example, the Nueva Enciclopedia escolar (1962) includes a unit for boys, called ‘Political-Social Formation’, that is devoid of content on manners, while the corresponding unit for girls, ‘Social and Family Formation’, has two sections related to courtesy. This assumption that girls need to be trained in manners, while boys are formed in sociopolitical issues, is in itself an ideological decision. In cases in which texts include content on politeness for both genders, there are at least two sexist aspects that can be observed. On one hand, women must intensify their behaviour (more so than men) and engage in unique practices (different from men) in order to be polite and please others, as in (5). On the other hand, women receive special treatment from men, similar to the treatment that the sickly and elderly receive, which is stressed in the norms directed toward boys (6): (5) Also girls will try to intensify their kindness and sweetness in their relations with others. Know that sweetness is one of the characteristics that ennobles women. (Enciclopedia escolar ‘Estudio’, 1966: 748) (6) [Men] will treat women, the weak and the elderly in a gentleman-like manner and will always act in a delicately correct and reserved way. (Algunas normas, 1959: 7) One can also observe another kind of social discrimination in these textbooks, this time related to place of residence. The discourse of the texts favours the urban way of life over rural living, resulting in the marginalization of country life. Not only would children from rural areas not see themselves reflected in the texts, but their way of life is even scorned. Just to cite one clear-cut example, in (10) it is claimed that rustic men ‘cause disgust and repugnance’: (7) Rustic men, uncivilized and badly raised, cause disgust and repugnance, and good and dignified people keep away from them; one could say, therefore, that urbanity opens the doors to our future. (Enciclopedia, 1967: 201–202) As it has been pointed out previously, beyond moral issues, everyday religious activities are integrated under norms of politeness. One of the

Education and Etiquette 131 consequences of presenting Catholic practices under the rubric of politeness and of using religion as a defining characteristic of courteous behaviour, as in (8), is that religion and politeness become inseparable. The resulting implication, which is both restricted and discriminatory, is that non-Catholics, whether they represent other religions or are nonbelievers, are impolite. Here are two examples of how politeness extends to religious conduct: (8) What is the first obligation of courtesy? To give God the veneration that we owe him as the creatures and servers that we are of His Supreme Majesty. (Roig, 1948: 7) (9) Invoke God whenever it is appropriate. For example, say: Thank God! May God protect you! Praise God!, etc., and always, upon entering the School grounds or any home, invoke the Virgin by saying: Hail Mary, the purest of all! (Enciclopedia escolar ‘Estudio’, 1961: 233) Similarly, some texts include under ‘politeness’ a lesson about the correct behaviour to observe in church. For example, Villanueva (1961) contains rules that indicate how to enter and exit the church, take the holy water, sit down and listen to mass.

Activities and Norms ( What Should, and Shouldn’t, Be Done?) The school texts dedicate much attention to the mundane aspects of good manners such as the proper norms for greeting, introducing people to others, visiting and having guests. At first glance, these activities do not seem to carry out an ideological function; however, while the children learn to perform these everyday tasks, they assimilate the rules of an authoritarian society, namely the importance of obedience, respect for authority and the acceptance of a strict hierarchical system. For example, through the teaching of greetings (10) and introductions (11), students are given a consciousness of hierarchy: (10) Greetings must be attentive with superiors, kind with equals, and affable with inferiors. . . . Never forget that inferiors do not offer their hand to superiors. (Valverde, 1966: 45) (11) For introductions, the one who acts as an intermediary first introduces the inferior to the superior, the youngest to the oldest, [and] men to women. (Algunas normas, 1959: 22) This connection between inculcating children with seemingly insignificant norms and ideological conditioning is also expressed explicitly in some of the texts, as in example (12) and even (13): (12) The rules of good manners established by customs have a great formative value on their own, given that they mould from the outside

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in. . . . So that when a small child is required to stand up and give his seat to an older person, this exercise deeply ingrains in him respect for superiors. (Enciclopedia elemental, 1954: 456) (13) We must always respect formalities because they contain the essence of the deed and they facilitate the habit of discipline, indispensable in the development of all activities, for the good of society. They entail attitudes of authority and respect toward those who are around us. (Algunas normas, 1959: 44) In addition to the ideological objectives behind the instruction of everyday social conventions, teaching manners also reduces the element of spontaneity in interpersonal relationships (de Miguel, 1991). In fact, routine behaviour regulates the problematic side of human interaction because it limits potential interruptions and unexpected occurrences (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). In contrast, spontaneity can lead to questioning the status quo. As naturally curious creatures, children have the tendency to ask arbitrary questions about what they observe around them, and such a habit must be repressed in an authoritative society. For example, in Enciclopedia elemental (1954: 471), among the answers to the question ‘Who is considered a polite person?’ is this response: ‘Someone who does not ask questions without rhyme or reason’.

Goals ( Why Be Polite?) The textbooks include what we might consider personal goals and social goals. The personal goals that are the most prevalent revolve around two aspects: that being polite serves to earn the acceptance and admiration of others and that courtesy helps a person achieve what he or she wants. Ultimately the two goals are intertwined in the sense that receiving acceptance and admiration from others is a key step to obtaining what one desires. The following examples demonstrate both of these goals: (14) Kindness and politeness will help us earn the sympathy of all the people with whom we interact. (Arias, 1967: 181) (15) One could say that without making ourselves kind to others we cannot expect any admiration and without it man is very miserable because he cannot expect anything from others. (Enciclopedia, 1967: 201–202) (16) Let’s not forget that showing ourselves as kind can help us avoid many difficulties in our future. (Enciclopedia escolar ‘Estudio’, 1966: 747) The social goals can also be separated into two main objectives. First and foremost, politeness facilitates social interaction; additionally, it contributes to the common good or well-being of the Fatherland. When this last aspect is involved, one can distinguish between varying degrees of ideological

Education and Etiquette 133 intervention; although to talk about a society’s well-being or the ‘well-being of nations’ (17) implies an ideological stance, it is noticeably inferior to the idea of the ‘aggrandizement of the Fatherland’ or the ‘honour of the Fatherland’ in (18) and (19): (17) The wellbeing of the nation depends on the social character, morality, culture and work ethic of the citizens. (Gerada Sebastian, 1951: 112) (18) However, most importantly there must be solidarity among all the inhabitants of a single nation. We all must contribute our effort and our sacrifice for the common good by seeking the aggrandizement of the Fatherland. (Nueva enciclopedia escolar, 1962: 860) (19) . . . everyone that meets well-spoken children wants to protect them because they are seen as the ideal model of goodness, the honour of the family, of the society and the fatherland. (Enciclopedia, 1967: 212)

Values ( What Are the Main Values?) Palacios and Ruiz Rodrigo (1993: 23), in their book about education under Franco, state that ‘From textbooks to norms of behaviour, everything— planned out in the smallest detail—induced children to a glorified acceptance of the traditional values, patriotic and Christian, in what had come to be called National Catholicism’. Within this framework of traditional values, those that are repeated the most frequently throughout the corpus, often overlapping in scope, are obedience, solidarity, respect (especially for one’s superiors, the elderly and women), patriotism, self-control, moderation, modesty, sincerity, honesty, order, altruism and morality. Some of these attributes, particularly obedience and patriotism, extend beyond the realm of an ethically based value system and enter the terrain of sociopolitical ideology. These ideals can be observed in the numerous excerpts that are included throughout this chapter.

Legitimacy and Control Strategies of legitimation and control are abundant in the corpus, and in many cases these two processes operate in tandem. For topics related to politeness, van Leeuwen’s (2008) category of the authority of tradition is a logical technique for attempting to legitimize discourse and to explain why one must be courteous. In the corpus there are constant allusions to customs, norms and habits, and these references co-occur with other types of legitimization and control, especially deontic modality, to emphasize obligation. Tradition and obligation, two pillars of Francoist doctrine, are a discursive manifestation of the regime’s ideology. In the following examples, expressions of legitimization are marked in bold type, while mechanisms of control are underlined. In (20), we see the authority of tradition (‘uses and

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customs’) and deontic modality (‘must be practiced’) in the same utterance, as often is the case: (20) The word etiquette indicates the uses and customs that must be practiced in certain situations in our interaction with others. (Nueva enciclopedia escolar, 1962: 864) In (21), references to the authority of tradition (‘customs’) and moral evaluations (‘respect toward others’, ‘act in the correct way’ and ‘not bothering them’) are combined with deontic modality (‘we must respect’ and ‘we must learn’): (21) In every society there are customs that we must respect because they show respect toward others, a way of not bothering them. And we must learn these customs, these forms of behaving, in each situation, with each person, in order to act in the correct way. (Educación fundamental, 1965: 187) In some instances, the reference to tradition is more implicit, as in (22). In this fragment, tradition is suggested by the present perfect (‘have received’) and by the adverb ‘always’, implying that it has always been and will always be like this. Impersonal obligation (‘must always be different’) is also employed: (22) Women also have received special consideration, a heightened attention from males, thus the way men treat women must always be different from the way men treat other men. (Educación fundamental, 1965: 188) In (23), given that the use of ‘norms’ can reflect both impersonal authority and tradition, the distinction that van Leeuwen (2007, 2008) makes between these two categories is difficult to see: (23) The norms of etiquette and politeness have the virtue of creating in us a more refined and attractive personality, and, for this motive, we must put them into practice. (Alvarez Pérez, 1966: 609) In other instances, it is more recognizable that authority is expressed through an impersonal reference to rules, as in (24), a fragment that attests to the existence of a ‘group of rules’ that ‘we have to observe’: (24) Urbanity is the group of rules that we have to observe to demonstrate our formation, in its multiple aspects. (Valverde, 1966: 10) The use of proverbs, which appear frequently in the corpus, is another strategy that implies the authority of tradition; even these contain expressions

Education and Etiquette 135 of control embedded within them, through the use of commands (‘treat’) or words like ‘obligation’: (25) Treat your parents lovingly if you don’t want to have children who are out for their grandparents’ revenge. (Enciclopedia, 1964: 141) (26) First comes obligation, then devotion. (Valverde, 1966: 30) Role model authority, which encourages people to follow the example of a role model (van Leeuwen 2007), surfaces in different contexts. On one hand, there are religious role models that are used continuously. For instance, in (27) the Holy Family is used as the superlative family, reinforced with an expression of control (‘Let’s imitate them’). Another religious role model is Jesus (28), who taught people that they ‘must’ (obligation) love others as they love themselves. (27) There has been no exemplary family more perfect than the one consisting of the Holy Virgin Saint Joseph and Baby Jesus. Let’s imitate them. (Gerada Sebastian, 1951: 95) (28) Jesus Christ taught us that we must love our neighbours like we love ourselves. (Enciclopedia escolar ‘Estudio’, 1961: 231) Another subcategory of van Leeuwen’s system of authorization is personal authorization, which receives its legitimacy through social status or via its institutional role, as is the case with teachers and parents. Their presence in the texts also entails discipline and obligations, as can be observed in (29): (29) Teachers and professors dedicate the major part of their day to you. They share their knowledge with you, they give you their wisdom. You must love them, respect them and obey them; they are your friends. (Apto, 1962: 5) Expert authority achieves its legitimacy through its expertise. In Formación político-social (1969), Dr. López Ibor and Menéndez Pidal are quoted in a lengthy explanation about the Spanish character. Other texts include quotes from the Bible and from historic or literary figures that serve as role models or experts. The Enciclopedia de la enseñanza primaria (1964), for example, include quotes from Alexander the Great, Cicero and Cervantes. A representative example of how these strategies of legitimation and control work in tandem can be observed in (30). In this fragment, personal authorities (‘parents’, ‘teachers’, ‘the boss’ and ‘authorities’) not only are presented as those in charge but also always ‘look out for the common good’ or ‘the well-being of everybody’(moral evaluations), implying that they are endowed with a superior ability that allows them to know what is best for society. Here we also find the authority of tradition (‘norms’) and various expressions of control and obligation (‘order us’, ‘we obey’, ‘we

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have to work’, ‘we have the obligation to obey them’, ‘obey them better’ and ‘let’s keep in mind that’): (30) In our houses we do what our parents order us to do. In school we obey our teachers. In the workplace we have to work according to the norms established by our boss. . . . The authority dictates norms. And we have the obligation to obey them. . . . And to obey them better, let’s keep in mind that the norms or laws that the authorities establish always seek the common good, that is, the wellbeing of everybody. (Nueva enciclopedia escolar, 1962: 861) Another type of legitimation is the use of analogies to suggest that the reader must do something because ‘it is like another activity which is associated with positive values’ (van Leeuwen, 2008: 111). In (31), a link between family and school is made to legitimize and emphasize the family-like treatment that teachers and classmates deserve. In this fragment, it is also noteworthy how control is implied through an ellipsis that eliminates the verbs in the last two sentences. In each case, the idea of obligation is understood (e.g. We owe them the utmost love, respect. . .; pay attention to their explanations). (31) School is a prolongation of the family. We will think of the teacher as a loving father, and classmates as brothers. The utmost love, respect and obedience for parents and teachers; attention to their explanations. For our classmates and brothers, affection, friendship, compassion. (Enciclopedia escolar, 1954: 771) In (32), another example of analogy, politeness is likened to the composure of the Marquis Spinola in the famous painting by Velazquez, a comparison in which courtesy is related to images of honour, nationality and militarism: (32) Courtesy is the composure of the Marquis Spinola and his men in the painting ‘The Lances’. (Enciclopedia elemental, 1954: 471) Yet another type of legitimation present in the corpus is mythopoesis (van Leeuwen, 2008). It consists of moral stories in which the protagonists are rewarded for having participated in legitimate social practices and cautionary tales, which warn what will happen if the character does not conform to the social norms. Pinto (2004) displays how analogy in school textbooks from the Franco era is a resource for indoctrination that has its origins in the didactic discourse of the Middle Ages, especially in the use of exempla, short illustrative stories that serve to teach moral lessons. The following fragment (33), which appeared in a textbook for girls, mythicizes the character of Marie Antoinette by portraying her extreme politeness as she meets her death at the guillotine. For girls, the implicit moral message is that women must be polite even in the face of the direst of circumstances:

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(33) They say that Marie Antoinette was so polite that she did not even lose her composure during the final moments, and, among other details, they say that when she climbed up the guillotine and accidently stepped on the executioner, she turned around and said kindly: ‘Pardon me, monsieur’. (Enciclopedia elemental, 1954: 470) In the brief story in (34), we see a lesson on the virtues of the polite man, personified by the governor of Virginia. Submerged in a racist tone typical of the period, the idea of being courteous with blacks is framed as an opportunity to demonstrate the extent of one’s elegance: (34) The governor of Virginia, Gools, was conversing one day with a merchant in the street. When he saw a black man walk by and greet him, he returned the greeting without hesitating. ‘How could that be! You greeted a black man?’ the merchant said, surprised. ‘Without a doubt’, replied the governor, ‘could I let a black man show me up in elegance and courtesy?’ (Enciclopedia, 1964: 136) Although this study does not include quantitative measures, the sheer repetition of mechanisms of legitimation and control contributes to a persuasively dense discourse. While this style of rhetoric might be expected for texts whose fundamental objective is to shape students’ behaviour, the compulsory nature of the prescriptive norms blurs the distinction between politeness and obedience, between manners and obligation. Ultimately, as discussed in the final section, it is the authoritative context of the dictatorship which suppresses opportunities for making real choices, including the possibility of noncompliance. THEN AND NOW: CIVICS IN CONTEMPORARY SPANISH TEXTBOOKS While an exhaustive comparative perspective falls outside the scope of this study, some preliminary observations of contemporary Spanish textbooks could be useful for drawing conclusions and stimulating future avenues of investigation. The two texts considered here, with their titles translated into English, are Ethical-Civic Education (Alfaro et al. 2008) and Education for Citizenship (Mateos et al. 2009), henceforth referred to as ECE and EFC for convenience. It goes without saying that these two contemporary texts come from an entirely different sociohistoric context; that is, they were published during a relatively progressive government at the outset of the 21st century, whereas the Franco corpus analysed in this study was published during a conservative dictatorship during the middle of the 20th century. In 2006, the Spanish government passed a controversial law (la Ley Orgánica 2/2006), requiring obligatory courses, Education for Citizenship

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and Civics (Buletín Oficial del Estado, www.boe.es). The objectives proposed in this document cover an array of topics, such as learning to develop work habits, respect equal rights between men and women, reject violence, solve conflicts peacefully and respect human sexuality in all its diversity. To begin with, one of the ideological components covered in the earlier analysis was the idea of membership. Both of the contemporary texts make a noticeable effort to present an all-inclusive membership, emphasizing equal rights, respect and tolerance, while acknowledging that situations of discrimination still exist that are based on sex, race, religion, culture and economic status. It is somewhat ironic, perhaps, that the first chapter of EFC begins with a lesson on personal identity that includes a short reading on passenger control and customs at the airport. The passage stresses the fact that everybody must show an identification card or passport, then states ‘Thanks to these documents, each person can justify who he or she is’ (Mateos et al., 2009). It is difficult to read this text and to look at the accompanying illustration without seeing how it emerges from and simultaneously incites the modern-day paranoia surrounding immigration (see Atienza Cerezo, 2011, for a recent study on the portrayal of immigrants in recent Spanish textbooks). One of the consequences of stressing legal documentation at the outset is that it sets the stage for subsequent chapters on human rights by establishing citizenship as a precondition. Hence, this introductory chapter not only frames membership in society in legal terms but also normalizes the process of government control. ECE, a more advanced-level text than EFC, includes a more nuanced explanation of the multifaceted nature of identity. While membership here is obviously much more inclusive than what was found in the Franco-era texts, with topics like feminism and global citizenship in ECE, the underlying ideology favouring Western cultures is still prevalent. Just to cite one example within the sphere of manners, the section on eating in EFC stresses the importance of knowing how to use utensils appropriately at the table, which inevitably has an excluding effect for those cultures that do not regularly employ utensils. A detailed analysis would likely reveal further oversights that undermine the assumed objective to foster all-inclusive membership. The values put forth in the two contemporary texts are obviously not anchored in the same National-Catholic discourse that permeated the Franco corpus. As such, patriotism, obedience and discipline are not emphasized in the same way. Moreover, other values take on a different meaning outside the context of the dictatorship. For example, although order and respect for elders are mentioned, they are framed in a more transparent manner in which the ultimate objective is not so overtly one of social control and the internalization of hierarchy. Among the values that are unique to the present-day texts are equality, mutual respect, freedom and tolerance. Interestingly, it is worth pointing out that, while tolerance often appears in progressive discourses, a person can tolerate others without accepting them as equals; thus, ironically, promoting tolerance is at odds with the idea of

Education and Etiquette 139 equality. In fact, ECE affirms that tolerance ‘requires the effort of living with what we do not like’ (27). The modern texts, more than the Franco corpus, seem to emphasize civic responsibility rather than actual obligations, even though the notion of obligation and duty are not entirely absent. For instance, EFC states that having rights in society also implies that one has obligations; hence, the right to receive an education implies the duty to take advantage of it. EFC also highlights the obligation that all citizens have to obey the laws. With regard to the activities that one should and should not do, besides issues such as voting and protesting, which were logically absent in the Franco texts, most of what is included within the realm of manners is standard etiquette behaviour and not unlike that which was highlighted in the older textbooks. To cite some examples, EFC contains short sections on how to behave outside the classroom, such as during school excursions and on public transportation, as well as one section on manners in society that concentrates on the appropriate behaviour for social visits. The text also covers brief sections on cell phone etiquette and use of the Internet. Among the actions to be avoided according to EFC are cursing and shouting in public. ECE includes only one very short segment explaining why good manners are important, while other sections on moral duty, responsibility, public virtues and so on may implicate politeness indirectly. One unique characteristic of the ECE text is that it provides a critical perspective, often through the humour of comic strips, which was entirely absent in the Franco corpus. The following is an example that entails a cynical take on contemporary society: ‘I am free. . . . I can choose the government that manipulates and uses me, the television that deceives me, the newspaper that indoctrinates me, the food that poisons me, the bank that ruins me, the school that. . .’ (Alfaro et al., 2008: 20). In addition, many of the topics covered show a critical view of society, such as ethnocentrism, the influence of the media, sexism, racism and domestic violence. Finally, the two contemporary books appear to employ many of the same linguistic devices with regard to the discourse structure and the mechanisms of legitimation and control that were found to be recurring in the Franco texts: legitimizing the discourse through references to the different types of authority, moral evaluations and mythopoesis. Similarly, linguistic mechanisms of control are also found in the recent texts (e.g. we must, you must, one has to). Regardless of these apparent resemblances between the Franco corpus and the recent textbooks, before convincing conclusions could be drawn, one would have to apply in-depth quantitative and qualitative measures to determine whether the linguistic resources are used similarly and with a comparable frequency. Contrary to how it may seem, comparing contemporary texts with those of the dictatorship is not just an academic exercise; a number of editorial articles and comments posted on the Internet also equate the recent curriculum of the Education for Citizenship program with that of the Formation

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of the National Spirit. Objectively speaking, the Civics texts from both eras are equally ideological, born out of specific political agendas, each from a different end of the political spectrum but each aiming to influence the way in which young people think and act. Perhaps the key distinctions between the two periods are due to the modern sensibilities of contemporary society, which require the rhetoric of equality; meanwhile, imbalanced relations of power, similar to those of the past, continue to exist and operate covertly in a more nuanced form. Nevertheless, there are still some essential differences, discussed in the next section, between teaching civic behaviour in a totalitarian system and doing so in a democracy. CONCLUSION The first phase of the analysis involved some of the ways in which politeness is ideologically loaded. As indicated earlier, by designating what is proper behaviour, society can separate itself into unequal groups according to social classes, hierarchical distinctions and gender biases. Similarly, the values that are associated with politeness—order, obedience, self-control, moderation and so on—enable the preservation of unequal power relationships, since each member is assigned a restricted mode of behaviour that contributes to the stability of the authoritarian regime. Since teaching politeness allowed the incorporation of ideological notions that supported the dictatorial system, it could be considered that ‘being polite’ was basically equivalent to acting according to the rules and norms established by both the totalitarian regime and the Church. According to this view, perhaps politeness and all the analogous terms, such as urbanity and good manners, functioned as euphemisms for what amounted to civil obedience. Within this context, the analysis of the behaviour highlighted in this study reveals some of the strategies that were employed to indoctrinate children under the guise of teaching manners. It is possible to expose the defects of this totalitarian view of politeness and of civic behaviour in general if we contrast this model with that of a democratic system. To accomplish this objective, we turn to the Manual de civismo by Camps and Giner (2008), a book that provides a detailed explanation of how one should understand citizenship and politeness in a democratic society. To begin with, it is essential to establish the difference between authority and authoritarianism. According to Camps and Giner (2008), authority ‘is founded on legitimacy and enforces the regard for freedom, giving it meaning’, while authoritarianism, characterized by a questionable legitimacy, represses freedom. In light of this important distinction, the authoritarian nature of Francoism undermines by its very existence any attempt by the regime to institute civic behaviour. As we have observed, what is taught in these textbooks is nothing more than a simulacrum of civic life because the

Education and Etiquette 141 government itself is founded on actions and practices that are the epitome of noncivic behaviour. All the lessons about being disciplined, respecting authority and so on conceal a desire to instil in children specific beliefs and conduct that serve to perpetuate the dictatorship. As such, the well-being of society, emphasized in the corpus as one of the goals of polite behaviour, is secondary, perhaps even irrelevant, to the well-being of the regime. This brings us to the second discrepancy that concerns the imposition of virtues. For Camps and Giner (2008: 107), ‘whoever attempts to forcefully impose solidarity, liberty or any other virtue, actually destroys them’. In addition, an essential part of good citizenship requires that citizens have the freedom to ‘dissent, disagree and voice opposition in a manner that is both civilized and efficient’ (105). Thus, the effort to impose values and abolish rights reduces the prescriptive norms in these texts to nothing more than tools for social control. Last, we have seen that politeness discourse frequently draws on traditions and customs to justify its legitimacy. Nevertheless, traditions and customs are not necessarily ethical or deserving of imitation given that they can hide behaviour that runs contrary to civic-mindedness, such as sexist practices that encourage the submission of women. In these instances, basing legitimacy on the authority of tradition is a deceiving strategy. According to Camps and Giner (2008), in cases where this type of unethical conduct is imposed or promoted by authority, dissent is the only option; however, as mentioned, this ideal alternative is not possible in a dictatorship. One could argue that prescriptive politeness always implies social control; however, in a true democratic system, the norms of courtesy contribute to a society that is more or less just. In a totalitarian society, where the democratic and egalitarian values are replaced by the system’s interest in perpetuating itself, good manners ultimately contribute to maintaining the status quo. Thus, the extent to which politeness fulfils a function of social control may ultimately be a matter of degrees. If we consider politeness within the curriculum framework of Civics, it is clear that it lends itself to ideological indoctrination, similar to the teaching of history. While history discourse can contribute to distorting the way in which children perceive the past, Civics lessons attempt to have a direct influence on their behaviour; therefore, both subjects are useful tools for those dictatorships that perceive education as a propagandistic practice. Both areas of study serve to cultivate in the naive young citizens what was often called in the Francoist curriculum the Formation of the National Spirit. NOTE A Spanish version of this study appears in the volume En (re)construcción: Discurso, identidad y nación en los manuales escolares de historia y de ciencias sociales, edited by Teresa Oteíza and Derrin Pinto (2011) and published by Editorial Cuarto Propio (Santiago, Chile).

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CORPUS (1943) Enciclopedia escolar: Grado primero, Barcelona: Editorial Ruiz Romero. (1943) Formación del espíritu nacional: Primer curso, Almería: Frente de Juventudes. (1949) Apuntes de formación del espíritu nacional, Pamplona: Garayoa. (1954) Enciclopedia elemental, Madrid: Sección Femenina de F.E.T y J.O.N.S. (1954) Enciclopedia escolar (Grado tercero), Plasencia: Editorial Sánchez Rodrigo. (1959) Algunas normas de comportamiento para los señores alumnos, Puertollano: Ministerio de Educación Nacional. (1961) Enciclopedia escolar ‘Estudio’: Libro amarillo (correspondiente al primer ciclo de enseñanza elemental), Gerona/Madrid: Dalmau Carles Pla. (1962) Apto: Introducción al bachillerato, Barcelona: Teide, S. A. (1962) Enciclopedia escolar: Grado primero, Plasencia: Editorial Sánchez Rodrigo. (1962) Nueva enciclopedia escolar H. S. R. (Iniciación profesional), Burgos: Hijos de Santiago Rodríguez. (1964) Enciclopedia (intuitiva—sintética—práctica): Primer grado, Valladolid: Miñon, S. A. (1964) Enciclopedia de la enseñanza primaria: Grado quinto, Madrid: Compañía Bibliográfica Española, S. A. (1965) Educación fundamental: La raíz y la espiga, Madrid: Santillana. (1965) Formación cívica y social, Plasencia: Editorial Sánchez Rodrigo. (1966) Enciclopedia escolar ‘Estudio’: Libro azul (correspondiente al ciclo de perfeccionamiento), Gerona/Madrid: Dalmau Carles Pla. (1966) Nueva enciclopedia escolar H. S. R. (Grado segundo), Burgos: Hijos de Santiago Rodríguez. (1967) Enciclopedia: Grado preparatorio, Gerona/Madrid: Dalmau Carles Pla. (1969) Formación político-social, Madrid: Editorial Almena. Alvarez-Pérez, A. (1966) Enciclopedia: Tercer grado, Valladolid: Miñon S. A. Arias, M. (1966) Enciclopedia escolar: Grado primero, Burgos: Hijos de Santiago Rodríguez. Arias, M. (1967) Mis segundos pasos, Burgos: Hijos de Santiago Rodríguez. Blanco Hernando, Q. (1962). Faro (Enciclopedia Escolar): Periodo de perfeccionamiento, Plasencia: Editorial Sánchez Rodrigo. Gerada Sebastian, C. y A. Zoido Díaz (1951) Enciclopedia escolar de disciplinas morales (Libro I), Badajoz: Arqueros. González Villanueva, E. (1961) Enciclopedia escolar moderna, Zaragoza: Hijo de Ricardo González. Mendoza Guinea, J. M. (1955) Formación del espíritu nacional: Sexto curso, Madrid: Editorial Xalco. Pozo Pardo, A. y Muñoz, M. C. (1970) Vivimos (Unidades didácticas globalizadas): Primer curso, Burgos: Hijos de Santiago Rodríguez. Rocamora, M. L. (1973) El libro de los buenos modales, Barcelona: Varepsa. Roig, A. (1948) Urbanidad: Reglas y consejos para escolares, Barcelona: Casa Provincial de Caridad. Rotger, A. (1961) Enciclopedia estudio y vida: Tercer grado, Palma de Mallorca: Mossén Alcover. Ruiz Conejo, J. M. (1947) Cartilla de urbanidad pública para uso de las escuelas, Madrid: Ministerio de Educación Nacional. Ruiz García, M. (1957) La mujer y su hogar, Burgos: Hijos de Santiago Rodríguez. Sancho, M. T. (1964) Un chico ideal: Libro de lectura sobre temas de cortesía, Valladolid: Publisher unknown. Valverde, J. (1966) Manual de moral y urbanidad, Madrid: Susaeta, S. A.

Education and Etiquette 143 REFERENCES Alfaro, C., Baldó, A., Fernández, F., Herrero, M. L., Medina, D., and Moix, R. (2008) Educación ético-cívica, Barcelona: Ediciones del Serbal. Artidi, J. (1996) ‘The feminization of etiquette literature: Foucault, mechanisms of social change, and the paradoxes of empowerment’, Sociological Perspectives, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 417–434. Arditi, J. (1999) ‘Etiquette books, discourse and the deployment of an order of things’, Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 25–48. Aresty, E. (1970) The best behavior: The courtesy of good manners—from antiquity to the present—as seen through courtesy and etiquette books, New York: Simon and Schuster. Atienza Cerezo, E. (2011) ‘La construcción de las identidades colectivas en libros de Ciencias Sociales en España’, in Oteíza, T., and Pinto, D. (eds.), En (re)construcción: Discurso, identidad y nación en los manuales escolares de historia y de ciencias sociales, Santiago, Chile: Editorial Cuarto Propio. Atienza Cerezo, E., and van Dijk, T. (2010) ‘Social identity and ideology in Spanish social science textbooks’, Revista de Educación, no. 353, pp. 67–106. Barnard, C. (2000) ‘Protecting the face of the state: Japanese high school history textbooks and 1945’, Functions of Language, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 1–35. Barnard, C. (2001) ‘Isolating knowledge of the unpleasant: The rape of Nanking in Japanese high-school textbooks’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 519–530. Barnard, C. (2003) ‘Pearl Harbor in Japanese high school history textbooks: The grammar and semantics of responsibility’, in Martin, J. R., and Wodak, R. (eds.), Re/reading the past, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Berger, P., and Luckmann, T. (1966) The social construction of reality, London: Penguin University Books. Brennenstuhl, W. (1982) Control and ability, Amsterdam: Benjamins. Brown, P., and Levinson, S. (1987) Politeness, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cairney, T., and Ashton, J. (2002) ‘Three families, multiple discourses: Parental roles, constructions of literacy and diversity of pedagogic practice’, Linguistics and Education, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 300–345. Camps, V., and Giner, S. (2008) Manual de civismo, Barcelona: Ariel. Capitán Díaz, A. (1994) Historia de la educación en España II: Pedagogía contemporánea, Madrid: Editorial Dykinson. Chamorro, D., and Moss, G. (2011) ‘La pedagogía de la simplificación: El estudio de la historia por medio de la pista y pesca’, in Oteíza, T., and Pinto, D. (eds.), En (re)construcción: Discurso, identidad y nación en los manuales escolares de historia y de ciencias sociales, Santiago, Chile: Editorial Cuarto Propio. Coffin, C. (1997) ‘Constructing and giving value to the past: An investigation into secondary school history’, in Christie, F., and Martin, J. R. (eds.), Genre and institutions: Social processes in the work place and school, London: Continuum. Coffin, C. (2002) ‘The voices of history: Theorizing the interpersonal semantics of historical discourses’, Text, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 503–528. Coffin, C. (2006) Historical discourse: The language of time, cause and evaluation, London, New York: Continuum. Corbett, R. (2009) ‘Learning to be graceful: Tea in early modern guides for women’s edification’, Japanese Studies, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 81–94. Cuestionarios nacionales de enseñanza primaria (1968), Cuarta edición, Madrid: Editorial Magisterio Español, S. A.

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Cuestionarios nacionales para la enseñanza primaria (1953), Madrid: Servicios de Publicaciones del Ministerio de Educación. Cullip, P. (2007) ‘Making history in Malaysian schools: How the pedagogic discourse of history functions in Malaysian classrooms’, Journal of Curriculum Studies, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 195–218. de Beaugrande, R. (1997) New foundations for a science of text and discourse: Cognition, communication, and the freedom of access to knowledge and society, Norwood, NJ: Ablex. de los Heros, S. (2009) ‘Linguistic pluralism or prescriptivism? A CDA of language ideologies in Talento, Peru’s official textbook for the first-year of high school’, Linguistics and Education, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 172–199. de Miguel, A. (1991) Cien años de urbanidad, Barcelona: Editorial Planeta. Deyermond, A. D. (1992) Historia de la literatura española 1: La edad media, Barcelona: Editorial Ariel. Ebadollahi Chanzanagh, H., Mansoori, F., and Zarsazkar, M. (2011) ‘Citizenship values in school subjects: A case-study on Iran’s elementary and secondary education school subjects’, Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 15, pp. 3018–3023. Elias, N. (1978) The civilizing process, New York: Urizen Books. Fairclough, N. (2001) Language and power, Harlow, England: Pearson Education. Faulstich Orellana, M. (1996) ‘Negotiating power through language in classroom meetings’, Linguistics and Education, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 335–365. Langellier, K. M., and Peterson, E. E. (1993) ‘Family storytelling as a strategy of social control’, in Mumby, D. (ed.), Narrative and social control, Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Martin, J., Maton, K., and Matruglio, E. (2010) ‘Historical cosmologies: Epistemology and axiology in Australian secondary school history discourse’, Revista Signos, vol. 43, no. 74, pp. 433–463. Martin, J. R. (1991) ‘Nominalization in science and humanities: Distilling knowledge and scaffolding text’, in Ventola, E. (ed.), Functional and systemic linguistics, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Martin, J. R. (1997) ‘Analysing genre: Functional parameters’, in Christie, F., and Martin, J. R. (eds.), Genre and institutions: Social processes in the work place and school, London: Continuum. Mateos, J. M., Pardos, P., and Vicén, C. (2009) Educación para la ciudadanía, Madrid: Anaya. Misión de la escuela en la formación del espíritu nacional y en la educación física (1965), Zaragoza: Delegación de Juventudes. Montanero, M., Lucero, M., and Mendez, J. M. (2008) ‘Historical causality in secondary school teachers’ explanations’, Cultura y Educación, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 161–179. Moreno de Guerra Arozarena, G. (1951) Brevario nacionsindicalista: Formación del espíritu nacional, Pamplona: Publisher unknown. Moss, G. (2010) ‘Textbook language, ideology and citizenship: The case of a history textbook in Colombia’, Functions of Language, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 71–93. Navarro García, C. (1993) La educación y el nacional-catolicismo, Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. Oteíza, T. (2006) El discurso pedagógico de la historia, Santiago, Chile: Frasis. Oteíza, T., and Pinto, D. (2008) ‘Agency, responsibility and silence in the construction of contemporary history in Chile and Spain’, Discourse and Society, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 333–358. Palacios, I., and Cándido Ruiz, R. (1993) De Infancia, pobreza y educación en el primer franquismo, Valencia: Universidad de Valencia.

Education and Etiquette 145 Payne, S. (1961) A history of Spanish fascism, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Payne, S. (2011) The Franco regime, 1936–1975, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Pinto, D. (2004) ‘Indoctrinating the youth of post-war Spain: A discourse analysis of a fascist civics textbook’, Discourse and Society, vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 649–667. Sáez Marín, J. (1988) El frente de juventudes, Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. Sánchez, Aróstegui, J., García Sebastián, M., Gatell Arimont, C., Palafox Gamir, J., and Risques Corbella, M. (2007) Crisol: Historia (Bachillerato, Segundo Curso), Barcelona: Vicens Vives. Schleppegrell, M., Achugar, M., and Oteíza, T. (2004) ‘The grammar of history: Enhancing content-based instruction through a functional focus on language’, Tesol Quarterly, vol. 38, pp. 67–93. Simpson, P. (1993) Language, ideology and point of view, London: Routledge. Smith, K. (2006) ‘Childhood, the body, and race performance: Early 20th-century etiquette books for black children’, African American Review, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 795–811. Sunderland, J., Cowley, M., Rahim, F., Leontzakou, C., and Shattuck, J. (2000) ‘From bias “in the text” to “teacher talk around the text”: An exploration of teacher discourse and gendered foreign language textbook texts’, Linguistics and Education, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 251–286. Van Dijk, T. (1993) Elite discourse and racism, Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Van Dijk, T. (1998) Ideology, London: Sage. Van Dijk, T. (2004) ‘Racism, discourse and textbooks’, Paper presented at a symposium on human rights in textbooks, organized by the History Foundation, Istanbul, April 2004. Van Dijk, T. (2006) ‘Ideology and discourse analysis’, Journal of Political Ideologies, vol. 11, pp. 115–140. Van Dijk, T., and Atienza Cerezo, E. (2011) ‘Knowledge and discourse in secondary school social science textbooks’, Discourse Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 93–118. Van Leeuwen, T. (1996) ‘The representation of social actors’, in Caldas-Coulthard, C. R., and Coulthard, M. (eds.), Texts and practices: Readings in critical discourse analysis, London: Routledge. Van Leeuwen, T. (2007) ‘Legitimation in discourse and communication’, Discourse and Communication, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 91–112. Van Leeuwen, T. (2008) Discourse and practice: New tools for critical discourse analysis, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Watts, R. (2003) Politeness, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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The CDS-PP and the Portuguese Parliament’s Annual Celebration of the 1974 Revolution Ambivalence and Avoidance in the Construction of the Fascist Past Cristina Marinho and Michael Billig

John Richardson has written that the discourse of those contemporary fascist parties that seek mass support is ‘inherently duplicitous’ (2011, p. 38). The reason is simple. In seeking mass support, such parties need to present themselves today as more democratic and less racist than they actually are. Across Europe, the far right has engaged in a strategy of ‘modernization’ (Macklin, 2011). In order not to frighten away potential supporters who have become disenchanted with mainstream parties, such parties present themselves as being ‘anti-immigrant’ and ‘nationalist’, while downplaying but not completely disavowing their fascist links and heritage. Hence, as Richardson claims, their discourse is typically not straightforward. Often, there is a gap between the rhetorical surface and the ideological depth: democratic phrases are used to attract new supporters, while at the same time rhetorical nudges and winks are given to long-term adherents to show that the party has not forgotten its past (Billig, 1978). The result is that the outward meaning of the discourse may not match its inner meaning. In consequence, analysts of the far right must learn to look for coded signals. For example, Ruth Wodak has investigated the rhetoric of Jörg Haider, the former leader of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), and she has exposed how he coded some of his messages about ideologically sensitive matters (e.g. Wodak, 2011). The metaphor of surface/depth is, at least at first glance, a synchronic one. It says, in effect, that the party’s present rhetorical surface is out of line with its present ideological depth, for its present leaders continue to hold fast to their ideological beliefs. The metaphor suggests that such parties have not actually modernised themselves. Only the surface has changed, but, underneath, the past ideological heritage persists. There is also an inherently historical or diachronic element. These far-right parties are posing as modernizers, as if they are distinctly new parties, but, beneath the surface, the links with the fascist past are preserved. Such parties cannot present their own histories simply, for they can neither celebrate their hidden history nor disavow it without internal conflicts. This means that the far right’s constructions of the past—and particularly its own past—is a topic that needs close investigation if analysts are

The CDS-PP and the Portuguese Parliament’s Annual Celebration 147 to expose the extent of the duplicity that is inherent in this form of politics. The present chapter concentrates on the Centro Democrático e Social— Partido Popular (Social and Democratic Centre—Popular Party, or CDS-PP). This Portuguese party of the far right not merely seeks to attract a mass support but has attained some measure of success. Like the FPÖ in Austria, it has actually been part of right-wing governing coalitions. In order to take part in government, the party needs to be perceived as a normal democratic party. In fact, the problem is wider for the party. It presents itself as a democratic party even when it is not part of a governing coalition. This means outwardly disavowing connections with the pre-democratic totalitarian regimes of Salazar and Caetano. But, as we shall examine in this chapter, the party’s public constructions of history are by no means straightforward, for speakers use a complex and essentially duplicitous rhetoric as they seek to promote an appearance of apparent political respectability, whilst not actually disavowing their totalitarian, Salazarist past. BACKGROUND OF THE CDS-PP The CDS was founded in July 1974, shortly after the April Revolution, which overthrew the long-standing totalitarian, fascist regime. Led first by Antonio Salazar and then by his successor, Marcelo Caetano, this regime had dominated Portuguese politics for more than forty years. Salazar had been Minister of Finance in the right-wing military dictatorship which, in 1926, had abolished the liberal Republic. The military government was replaced by Salazar, who, in March 1933, declared his New State (Estado Novo). Salazar designed his ‘new state’ along nationalist, antidemocratic and corporatist principles similar to those that Mussolini had used for his fascist regime in Italy. The Salazarist regime suppressed political opposition, free speech and individual freedoms. Salazar particularly appealed to conservative Catholics and the rural right wing. In some respects, this distinguished his regime from Hitler’s National Socialism and Mussolini’s fascist regime, both of which were more willing to use a more radical-sounding rhetoric. Like Franco in Spain, Salazar kept Portugal neutral during the Second World War, resisting inducements from Germany to join in the war against liberal democracies. Salazar continued in power until 1968, when he suffered a stroke and was replaced by Marcello Caetano, whose regime continued until April 1974. Political scientists have debated whether the Salazarist regime should be properly called ‘fascist’ (e.g. Gallagher, 1983; Schmitter, 1979; Raby, 1988). Certainly, there are some differences between Salazar’s politics and those of the paradigmatically fascist regimes of Hitler and Mussolini. Salazar did not embrace the monomaniacal antisemitism of Hitler, but, then, neither did Mussolini. Also, the Salazarist regime often but not always presented itself as protecting traditional authoritarian virtues, rather than

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instituting a new form of so-called radical politics. However, we should be cautious about attempts to deny that the regime might be fascist. There is no single agreed-upon definition of fascism. In common with most political concepts, ‘fascism’ is an essentially contested concept (Gallie, 1964). Leftwing analysts often stress the anticommunist, totalitarian and antidemocratic nature of fascism, while right-wingers sometimes define ‘fascism’ in ways that suggest parallels or similarities with socialism. Certainly, Portuguese historians and political scientists have debated heatedly whether Salazarism is fascist (e.g. Cruz, 1982; Lucena, 1979; Pinto; 1999; Rosas, 1989). The issue of whether Salazarism should or should not be categorized as fascist cannot be divorced from political considerations. As we will see, left-wingers in the context of Portuguese politics have had no hesitation in calling the Salazarist regime ‘fascist’, especially as they celebrate its overthrow. Generally, Critical Discourse analysts need to be aware that the choice of definition for fascism can itself be political. If analysts use too restricted a definition, they risk siding with the supporters of extreme right-wing parties, who wish to present their parties as non-fascist. For present purposes, we will follow the sort of wider definition used by Billig (1978, pp. 6–7), who claimed that fascism contains four features: (1) nationalism and/or racism; (2) anti-Marxism and anticommunism; (3) statism and the maintenance of capitalism; and (4) expression of the previous three ideological elements in ways that threaten democracy and personal freedom. According to this definition, Salazar’s Estado Novo would certainly meet the criteria for being ‘fascist’. We might accept that Salazarism differed in some respects from the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler but that it was nevertheless still fascist. In the words of one Portuguese political scientist, Salazarism represented ‘a form of fascism without a fascist movement’ (Lucena, 1979, p. 48). The April Revolution heralded the establishment of parliamentary democracy in Portugal. The pretensions of the CDS were clear in its very choice of name: it was aiming to present itself as both democratic and centrist. The ‘Partido Popular’ was added later, in 1993. The party took part in the general election of 1975 for the Constituent Assembly, which had the task of formulating and agreeing upon the new constitution, and it won 16 seats. In the general election in 1976, which was the first under the new constitution, the party won 42 seats. After a very early coalition with the centre left, it has pursued alliances with the centre right. It has continued to be represented in the Portuguese Parliament and entered government as junior partners in right-wing coalitions in 1979 and also between 2002 and 2005. Since June 2011, it has also been part of a right-wing coalition. At first sight, the CDS-PP might resemble a normal European right-wing conservative party. In the European Parliament, its members have sat with other conservative and Christian Democrat parties, rather than with the far-right parties. Certainly, many academic commentators on Portuguese politics have classified the CDS-PP as a democratic conservative party

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(e.g. Bruneau and Macleod, 1986; Freire, 2005; Gallagher, 1992; Jalali, 2007; Robinson, 1996). However, there is another aspect to the CDS-PP, which contradicts its choice of name and its claims to be a centrist and democratic party. When the party was formed, it had clear links with the previous regime. The first leader of the CDS, Diogo Freitas do Amaral, was a disciple of Caetano (Robinson, 1996). Although Freitas do Amaral declined to serve as Caetano’s Minister for Justice, he nevertheless worked as a solicitor for the Chamber of the Corporations, which was the key organization of the Portuguese corporatist state (for details see Jalali, 2007; Pinto, 1995). The party drew much of its support from supporters of the previous regime (Pinto, 1995, 1998). According to Marchi (2010), between 1975 and 1976, a number of ex-Salazarists who, following the Revolution, were leaders of clandestine, extreme right-wing organizations decided to join the CDS; their support contributed to the success of the right-wing coalition, to which the CDS belonged. The new party even drew on supporters who had been to the right of the Salazarists. One of its founders was Francisco Lucas Pires, who had been involved in militant, overtly fascist groups during the Salazar era (Marchi, 2000). When, in 1985, the CDS appointed a new leader, it picked Adriano Moreira, who had been Minister of the Overseas Territories during the Salazar regime (Gallagher, 1992, Pinto, 2008). It is not just that the CDS, in its early days, attracted individual supporters of the old regime and that some of its leaders were compromised in this respect. The politics of the new party also showed connections with the old politics. The party distanced itself from the de-colonization policies of the leaders of the Revolution and, more generally, from the revolutionary process (Robinson, 1966). In 1976, the Portuguese Parliament voted on a new constitution, enshrining democratic rights and personal freedoms. The CDS was the only party in Parliament to vote against the new constitution. Since its foundation, the party has been in an ambivalent situation. It has clear personal, political and ideological links with the previous regime, but it cannot proclaim such links. If it did so, it would lose credibility as a democratic, conservative party. On the other hand, if it openly denied such links, it would risk losing some of its key supporters. Because the party has a compromised history, one might suppose that it would have difficulty in constructing its own history publicly and in depicting the history of the previous regime. If the party were truly a product of the post-fascist era and genuinely possessed a democratic heritage, it would have little problem in constructing its history. By contrast, if the party has its roots within a discredited politics, then it cannot be open about its past, for it has much to conceal. Therefore, the way that the party presents its history becomes a test of its nature. Here, then, might be a variant of the inherently duplicitous discourse which Richardson was discussing. The CDS-PP’s problem might not reflect a contradiction between surface and depth, but it would reflect the ambiguity

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of a right-wing party that can neither disavow nor proclaim its fascist past. In this case, one might expect avoidance, especially in the party’s construction of history and in the way it relates its present politics to the past. A clue to such avoidance can be found on the party’s own website, which contains a page on the history of the party.1 Interestingly, the page describes very briefly the founding of the party. It says that the party was founded on July 19, 1974, ‘corresponding to the call of broad currents of public opinion, opening up to all of the Democratic centre-left and centre-right’. This rather vague phrasing does not mention anything about the overthrow of the previous regime just three months previously or about the party’s position regarding those momentous events. Instead, it implies that the party just happened to emerge in a broad current of centrist opinion. In this way, the party implies that its own origins are centrist, whilst not actually saying this. What is omitted is just as significant as what is implied. A similar pattern of avoidance can be found in the English-language Wikipedia entry on the CDS-PP.2 The entry contains signs of being written by a sympathiser. For example, in describing the fall of the coalition government of 2002–2005, in which the CDS-PP participated, it is written that in 2004 the government ‘unfortunately’ lost popularity. It is not just the presence of words such as ‘unfortunately’ that is significant. The absences are even more so. The entry fails to mention possible links between the CDS-PP and the previous regime. In this respect, the rhetorical dilemma is ‘solved’ by a significant absence (see Billig, 1997, 1999, for examples of significant absences). This chapter explores the ambivalent rhetoric and the significant absences that official CDS-PP speakers use when they are in a situation which requires that they talk about the past, particularly the overthrow of the fascist regime. As we will see, the ambiguous and duplicitous rhetoric which present CDS-PP speakers use indicates that the party, despite its formal protestations, has not outgrown the ideological heritage that it has difficulty in openly admitting. ANNUAL PARLIAMENTARY CELEBRATIONS OF APRIL 1974 On April 25, 1977, three years after the Revolution, the Portuguese Parliament held a formal ceremony of celebration. The ceremony brought together in an act of national union all the parties which were represented in the Parliament. Each party nominated a deputy to deliver a speech on their behalf. The President of the Republic and the President of the Parliament also delivered formal speeches of commemoration. Other important figures were invited to attend, including the military leaders who had led the Revolution. Since then, the commemoration of April 1974 has developed into an annual ritual, which has been marked in Parliament every year except when it conflicted with a period in which a general election was taking place. In

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the celebration, it has become the custom that normal political business is suspended and the speakers from the different parties come together in a display of national union, as they celebrate the past (for discursive analyses of analogous ceremonies, see Ensink and Sauer, 2003; Tileaga˘, 2008; Wodak and De Cillia, 2007). These events present a particular difficulty for the CDS-PP. If the party were to decline to participate in the celebration, then it would be revealed as being opposed to the democratic movement. It would lay itself open to the charge that it wished to reinstate the old totalitarian regime, whose overthrow it seemed to be unable to celebrate. Therefore, the CDS-PP has always participated in these annual parliamentary celebrations. However, it is not sufficient for the party merely to be present during the ceremony; the ritual dictates that it must actively participate. Every year, each party is required to nominate a member of Parliament to speak on the party’s behalf. Typically, the parliamentary representatives, when delivering their speeches of celebration, recall the past, praising the event that they are marking. However, this represents a rhetorical dilemma for CDS-PP speakers. They must speak about the Revolution. However, at best, the party is ambivalent about the April Revolution and the ending of the previous regime. Many of the CDS-PP supporters actually were sympathetic towards the previous regime. However, even if they supported Salazar and Caetano years ago, they cannot praise the dictators openly today, and they certainly cannot do so during the annual celebration. By the same token, the party from its foundation opposed the revolutionary process; in addition, the party struggled to be recognized as a properly democratic party in the first year of its existence because the leaders of the Revolution distrusted its links with the previous regime (Pinto, 2008). So, we can see the dilemma that faces CDS-PP speakers. They must talk about the past, but they cannot do so easily. Unlike most other members of Parliament, they cannot pay uninhibited tribute to the event that the occasion is celebrating. On the other hand, they cannot abstain from participating in the event without appearing to celebrate fascism and totalitarianism. For this reason, the Annual Celebration of April 25, 1974, provides an opportunity for observing the ambivalence of the CDS-PP. All the speeches delivered during the ceremony are recorded in the official parliamentary reports. The official transcripts of all commemorative speeches, together with indications of applause, laughter, interruptions and so on, can be found on Parliament’s website.3 The speeches given by CDS-PP representatives provide a means for documenting the ambivalence that the party often avoids expressing. The party’s website and official propaganda might avoid mentioning the past, but it is more difficult for their speakers to do so when they are actually participating in the celebration of that same past. This means that we must examine closely not just what the CDS-PP speakers say on these occasions but, even more important, what they do not say. We might also suppose that their ambivalence will be all the greater and more

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restrictive when the party is participating in a governing coalition. In these circumstances, there will be even more things that the party cannot say for fear of upsetting its coalition partners and of losing whatever power it might have. CDS-PP AND FIRST ANNUAL CELEBRATION, 1977 The responses in that first celebration of 1977—before the event had matured into an annual ritual with expected, customary behaviour—are instructive. The leader of the centre-left Socialist Party in Parliament, Salgado Zenha, a notable anti-fascist, offered typically direct rhetoric. After the initial greetings, he began his speech unambiguously: ‘During almost a halfcentury, Portugal lived oppressed by tyranny; 1974 is the year of liberation that we are commemorating right now. The Revolution of April 25 arose as an antifascist movement.’ The sentiment is politically unambiguous. The speaker directly classifies the April Revolution as ‘anti-fascist’. In so doing, he classifies the previous regime as ‘fascist’. In this way, his present stance is also an interpretation of the past: the Revolution overthrew a fascist past in which the people were oppressed by tyranny. Liberty begins with the end of fascism. The speaker is clearly not concealing anything in this formulation; the fascist past was ended by the good, anti-fascist Revolution, which the speaker is celebrating. The start of the very first CDS speech was very different. The speech was delivered by Sá Machado, the parliamentary leader of the CDS and the vice president of Parliament. It was not a statement about the past or the Revolution. It was a statement about the party and the speaker: As a Centrist Deputy, I mount this rostrum to celebrate on behalf of my party the April Revolution. I do so, we do so, with the clear [tranquila] conscience which knows itself to be legitimate. . . . The statement might be thought to be rhetorically unnecessary. By the fact of speaking on this occasion, the speaker and his party were engaging in the act of celebrating the event. In this sense, the words that he was delivering were performative: he was performing the celebration because he was speaking at that moment (see Austin, 1961, for a discussion of performative utterances). However, the nature of his words was rhetorically less than performative. Why would a speaker or party declare their participation in an event in which they were visibly participating? The clue is in the second sentence: they (or, rather, he and they) were doing so with a clear (or calm) conscience. One might draw attention to one’s participation if it had been questioned or had been in doubt. In this way, the speaker draws attention to the party’s participation and to the questions about that participation. His statement is implicitly answering a question: could the CDS participate

The CDS-PP and the Portuguese Parliament’s Annual Celebration 153 with a clear conscience? A speaker who participates without question—like the speaker from the Socialist Party—does not draw attention to the fact of his participation, as if it might not have happened. He just participates; he celebrates the Revolution and damns the previous regime, both equally unhesitatingly. This the CDS speaker cannot and does not do. In fact, the whole speech revealed some curious themes. The bulk of the speech was concerned not with the suffering brought about by the previous regime but with the suffering that the party had endured at the hands of the revolutionaries in the first year of the Revolution. The speaker went on at length about the antidemocratic nature of the Revolution. He claimed that democracy was not properly established until November 1975. Instead of fully celebrating April 25, the speaker seems to be undermining the whole point of the celebration by pointing to an alternative date as appropriate for celebration—namely November 25 1975. In this light, we can understand his claim to participate with a clear conscience. After claiming this, the speaker asserts that his party can claim ‘to have contributed, with courage and also with suffering, to preserve of the Revolution its democratic dimension and, in this way, its popular and patriotic essence’. It sounds impressive—and it sounds, at first hearing, suitably revolutionary. The acceptable value terms are in place—‘democratic’, ‘popular’, ‘patriotic’. But there is a subtle emphasis. He claims that he and his party participate because they participated to ‘preserve’ the Revolution. He does not say that they participated to create the Revolution—a significant absence. What he means by ‘preserving’ the Revolution becomes clear as he speaks of his party’s troubles. The CDS struggled to be legitimately accepted after it was founded in 1974. In the view of the CDS, the struggle for its own legitimacy was a struggle for democracy, which supposedly the Revolution had sought to initiate. So, in the party’s view, its struggle for acceptance was a struggle to preserve the ideals of the Revolution—a revolution which most of the CDS members had not supported. Perhaps most significant of all was an absence in his speech. This first CDS speaker hardly referred to the previous regime at all. When he did, it was not in the same critical tones that he used to describe the forces of the Revolution. His comments were much more muted and ambivalent. For example, at one point, the speaker mentioned that the Revolution sought ‘a rupture, ultimately, that would uproot what was rotten, unjust or violent’, thereby apparently conceding that the previous regime may have had elements that were rotten, unjust or violent but not that it was entirely rotten, unjust or violent. A typically ambivalent reference came when he claimed that it was legitimate to talk of the achievements of the Revolution and to remember them. The first achievement that he noted was ‘the return of sovereignty to people who had got used to [se habituara] seeing their fate being decided without participation or consultation’. The original Portuguese phrasing is revealing. It is not so much that the people ‘had got used’ to not deciding issues but that they had ‘habituated themselves’ to it. By using

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the reflexive verb, the speaker need not indicate that any other actor was responsible for the people’s lack of freedom. Grammatically, it is the people who had done this to themselves. In this regard, the reflexive verb functions like a passive and can be used to avoid indicating who performed the action that the speaker is describing (e.g. Fairclough, 2003; Fowler, 1991; Lemke, 1995; Billig, 2008, 2011). It was as if the regime had not been to blame for the people’s lack of freedom. It was the people who had got used to not deciding things for themselves. In this construction of the past, the people were not being presented as if they were the victims of an unjust regime. Certainly, the CDS speaker, unlike the PS speaker, was not using critical terminology such as ‘fascism’ or ‘tyranny’ to describe the former regime. In fact, by using the reflexive verb, the speaker could refer to the time of the previous regime without specifically mentioning the regime and certainly without criticising it. Thus, it is a strange celebration that the speaker was performing—a celebration that was at right angles to that of the other participants. At best, the speaker seemed to criticise totalitarianism in general terms at the end of his speech, when he contrasted the way that millions of people in the world were creating democracy, bearing ‘a profoundly Christian and liberating message’ and ‘freeing themselves from the totalitarian yokes of contrasting characteristics’. The passage is grandly imprecise. The speaker is not specifically calling the previous regime of Caetano ‘totalitarian’. His remark could be interpreted in this way but need not be. That is the advantage of using value-laden general terms, especially in a speech’s stirring final phrases. In fact, since the earliest celebration, the rhetoric of the CDS-PP has been out of line with that of the other parties. Marinho (2012) has examined the distribution of key political words in these speeches over time and across parties. She found that the speakers from the CDS-PP differed substantially from the speakers of other parties in their choice of terms. In particular, the speakers were less likely to use critical words such as ‘fascist’ or ‘totalitarian’ in relation to the previous regime. On the other hand, they were more likely to use those terms in relation to the revolutionary movement. To understand the rhetoric of the CDS-PP—and to explore its duplicitous rhetoric—it is necessary to go deeper than merely counting the number of times that particular terminology is used. We need to see how themes are being used rhetorically. The 1977 speech suggests three themes in the way that a CDS speaker might ‘celebrate’ the April Revolution: (1) ignoring the previous regime or downgrading its dictatorial nature; (2) claiming to support democracy because it was a victim of post-revolutionary forces; (3) seeking to shift the object of the celebration from April 1974 to a later date. We will try to show how these three themes reoccur. It will be necessary to look closely and critically at how CDS speakers use language, what sort of claims they are making and, above all, how they are seeking to manipulate their audience by changing and avoiding particular themes. In doing this, analysts need to examine particular examples in rhetorical depth, using

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what Wodak has called a discourse historical approach (e.g. Reisigl and Wodak, 2009). These analysts must be triply aware of historical matters: they must be aware of the historical nature of these parliamentary celebrations in general; they must be aware of the ambivalent history of the CDS-PP; and they must be aware that CDS-PP speakers may be constructing their own partial and often duplicitous historical versions of the past as they participate in these ceremonies. CDS-PP SPEAKING ON BEHALF OF PARLIAMENT, 2004 Here, we examine aspects of the speech which the CDS-PP representative gave in 2004. There are good reasons for looking closely at that year’s celebration. Unlike in 1977, the CDS-PP was in government, as the junior party in a coalition with the centre-right Partido Social Democrata (Democratic Social Party, PSD). Second, the ceremony that year had been preceded by controversy. The government had supported a campaign to change the focus of the remembrance from ‘revolution’ to ‘evolution’, under the slogan ‘April is evolution’. This provoked fierce opposition from the left, which wished to preserve ‘April as revolution’. As would be expected, the CDS-PP strongly supported the government’s campaign, for it diluted the revolutionary nature of the event (for discussion of the way that the Portuguese media presented the evolution/revolution debate, see Ribeiro, 2011). The speaker for the CDS-PP that year was Anacoreta Correia, a former vice president of the party and an experienced, accomplished parliamentary performer. Despite the change of emphasis from ‘revolution’ to ‘evolution’, he still faced the customary dilemma for a speaker from his party: how to join in the celebration without appearing to sacrifice the ideological history of his party. As we shall see, Correia appeared, at one level, to be joining in enthusiastically, even orchestrating Parliament’s collective applause for an old opponent of colonial Portugal, while at the same time subtly continuing the old ambiguous rhetoric and obscuring the meaning of key dates. It was a virtuoso performance of ambiguity and avoidance. Correia started his speech by welcoming one of the invited guests, President Xanana Gusmão: ‘I begin by greeting the President of the Republic of East Timor, who wanted to honour us with his presence at this commemoration of the thirtieth Anniversary of April 25’. Correia is doing more than personally greeting the President. In this sentence, he switches from firstperson singular to the first-person plural: I am greeting, and the President is honouring us. Correia is positioning himself as speaking on behalf of the whole Parliament, all of us, who are being honoured. He continues: It is always with the greatest pleasure that we see you in this House of the Portuguese democracy, Mr. President Xanana Gusmão (Applause from CDS-PP, PSD, PS and BE)

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In this way, Correia orchestrates applause, which comes from all parties, with the exception of the Greens and the Communist Party. What Correia has done is to produce what Heritage and Greatbatch (1986) refer to as a ‘clap-trap’ (see also Atkinson, 1984a 1984b; Bull, 2006). He has used conventional rhetorical means of intonation and gesture to indicate that he is leaving a slot for the audience to display through applause their appreciation of the honoured guest (for more details, see Marinho, 2012). Had the audience not responded, there would have been an embarrassing silence that could have been interpreted as a failure to greet the honoured guest. Correia went on to praise Gusmão in a way that Kenneth Burke (1969) would have recognized as ‘identification’: I confess that I feel an enormous emotion for having present today at this celebration the man whom for more than 20 years I have admired, then as commander of the struggle for freedom and today as the head of the friend nation that is East Timor. Rhetorically, the speaker seems to be putting himself, the guest and ‘we’, the audience, into rhetorical alignment, as if all three were in harmony. Moreover, by using the phrase ‘the struggle for freedom’, he seems to be associating himself with the sort of anticolonial rhetoric that Gusmão and left-wingers have traditionally used (see Wodak, 1989). Here seems to be a strange situation. The spokesman for a party that resisted decolonization and is ambivalent about celebrating the April Revolution seems to be celebrating the latter event by identifying with a noted anticolonialist. But, as always when the CDS-PP appears to joining national celebrations which run counter to its ideological heritage, the small rhetorical details, which can be easily overlooked in the emotions of the occasion, are crucial. In this case, note how Correia aligns himself with the guest. He says that he is welcoming someone ‘whom for more than 20 years I have admired’. Why 20 years? Why not 30 years? 2004, after all, was the 30th anniversary of the April Revolution. The shorter time period is vital for Correia’s purposes. It does not take participants back to the anticolonial struggle against Portugal and certainly not to the struggle against the Caetano regime. Twenty years takes East Timor and Gusmão back only to the anticolonial struggle against Indonesia. Correia’s admiration stops there. In this way, Correia seems to be orchestrating Parliament in a celebratory mood of anticolonialism; he is using appropriate rhetorical phrases. He appears to be participating in the celebration, even putting himself at its head in welcoming Gusmão. However, while the audience is distracted, the speaker switches his dates, like a conjurer switching his coloured balls. By the time Correia has finished his trick, he has not said anything about the colonial policies of the old regime.

The CDS-PP and the Portuguese Parliament’s Annual Celebration 157 CELEBRATING AND DENYING THE APRIL REVOLUTION As Correia continued his 2004 speech, he displayed some of the key elements that the CDS speaker had shown in that first speech of 1977: minimizing the nature of the previous regime if mentioning it at all and emphasising the importance of November 25, 1975, rather than April 25, 1974. We will present brief examples of these themes. First, Correia hardly mentioned the Caetano regime at all. He argued for a new way to celebrate the occasion, suggesting that an immobile ritual would render ‘a very bad service to the true spirit of April 25’ because it would ‘overcome a situation of immobilization by replacing it with another immobilization’. The statement is extraordinary. In making it, the speaker seemed to be laying claim to ‘the true spirit of April 25’ and thereby rhetorically placing himself right at the heart of the celebration. However, it is his implicit comparison between an immobile or ritualized celebration and the previous regime that removed the speaker from the so-called spirit of the celebration. He seemed to suggest that the problem with the previous regime was merely that it represented ‘a situation of immobilization’ as he went on to claim, using a reflexive verb, that ‘April 25 made itself precisely to exceed a situation of impasse’. In downgrading the nature of the regime (‘immobilization’ or ‘a situation of impasse’, not ‘totalitarianism’ or ‘tyranny’), he simultaneously downgraded the Revolution: it merely overcame a situation of immobilization or impasse. As such, it could not have been a revolution. And that matched the official government policy of changing ‘revolution’ to ‘evolution’. As Correia put it, April 25, in exceeding the ‘situation of impasse’, granted ‘the country a sense of true evolution’. As Correia continued his speech, so he constructed a version of the events of 1974–75. This was not a version in which fascism was defeated and democracy established by the people. Correia’s version starts with the ‘impasse’ of the previous regime. He explained the occurrence of revolution by claiming that, when countries reach situations of impasse ‘because they do not have instruments of change, which only the democracy supplies’, then the only way ‘to exceed those situations is the Revolution’. So, in this regard the Revolution ‘had a democratic dimension’. However, in the CDS-PP’s version of the past, any praise for the April Revolution is countered, not balanced, by stronger criticism. Thus, Correia declared that the Revolution had ‘another dimension of perversion and totalitarian temptations, which only ended on November 25’. Again, the CDS-PP was being more specific in their criticisms of the revolutionary period. The speaker did not use the word ‘totalitarian’ to describe the years of Salazar and Caetano. Instead, he used it to describe the months of the intervening period. In this way, he was continuing in the path of the speaker at the first celebration: downgrading the crimes of the previous regime while emphasising those of the Revolution.

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In delivering this utterance, Correia used the sort of rising intonation that he used when he introduced Gusmão (for details, see Marinho, 2012). He was leaving a slot for the audience to applaud after the date ‘November 25’. The official parliamentary record reveals that this time he received applause only from members of his own party and from the centre-right PSD. The parties of the left sat in silence at this point. Again, this all amounts to rhetorical ambivalence. When it comes to presenting its version of the past, the CDS-PP speaker was glossing over the previous regime. References were not more specific than ‘situation of impasse’ or ‘immobilization’. More critical terminology was used to describe the Revolution, even as the speaker claimed that the Revolution was not really a revolution but an ‘evolution’. And the date offered to the audience for applause was not April 25 but November 25. All the while, the speaker was claiming to celebrate ‘the true spirit’ of April 25. It was a strange way to celebrate the April Revolution by claiming that the event to be celebrated neither was a revolution nor occurred in April. Anyway, the importance of the whole occasion was reduced by claiming that it had defeated nothing more serious than a situation of impasse. In this sense, the underlying meaning of the speaker’s words was moving in a direction opposite from that of his outward conventional display of parliamentary celebration. CHANGE AND CONTINUING AMBIVALENCE When Anacoreta Correia was delivering his 2004 speech, the CDS-PP was experiencing the discipline of being in government. Even though Correia did not personally hold an official government position, he needed to choose his words carefully to avoid embarrassing his party and its coalition partners. Correia was nevertheless able to include some of the same themes as the 1977 speaker, who spoke without the constraints of government position. Correia’s speech may have contained a number of ambiguous meanings, but one aspect seems clear. So long as he appeared outwardly to participate in the ceremony, conducting himself appropriately for the occasion, he could deliver utterances whose underlying meaning seemed to undermine the ceremony. Thus, he followed the tradition of the ritual by uttering phrases about ‘the true spirit of April’, as if he were in the process saying something that was in the celebratory spirit of the occasion. However, anyone paying close attention to the semantic drift of his speech—rather than to the rhetoric of his general commonplaces (e.g. Billig, 1988, 1996)—would have noted how he was praising November, not April, and downgrading, as well as criticising, the revolutionary moment itself. We can ask what happened at the next parliamentary celebration, when the CDS-PP was no longer in government. In 2005, the party’s speaker ‘solved’ the traditional dilemma of his party by not referring to the past at all. He neither presented an account of the Revolution nor mentioned the

The CDS-PP and the Portuguese Parliament’s Annual Celebration 159 previous regime. Instead, his speech was, in effect, a catalogue of nonspecific platitudes about ‘freedom’, ‘human rights’, ‘development’, ‘individual responsibility’, ‘democracy’, ‘justice’ and other value words or political commonplaces. The CDS-PP speech for 2006 was much more interesting. It can be mentioned only briefly, although the rhetoric of the whole speech well merits an in-depth critical analysis. It is easy to say what the speaker, Telmo Correia, then holding the position of Vice President of Parliament, did not say. He did not openly criticise the Revolution while ambiguously praising the Caetano regime. It was not as if loosening the constraints of government allowed for more support for or less muffled criticism of the previous regime. Instead, something more interesting occurred. In this speech, Telmo Correia delivered more direct criticism of the Salazar regime. He said that the right was paying homage ‘to the end of an arthritic regime which had no future’, as well as paying tribute to ‘the determination of the militaries’; he further paid homage to those who had been ‘persecuted, imprisoned or exiled during the authoritarian regime’. Here was a CDS-PP speaker saying things that previous speakers had not said. He was paying tribute to the military leaders of the Revolution, as well as criticising the previous regime directly for its authoritarianism and for its crimes. However, Telmo Correia did not entirely abandon the rhetorical ambivalences of his predecessors. He may have paid homage to the ‘militaries’, but he did not specifically pay homage to the Revolution that those militaries directed. In fact, like his predecessors, he spoke lengthily and critically about the postrevolutionary period. He referred to it as ‘totalitarian’, which is arguably a stronger term than ‘authoritarian’. Perhaps most significant of all, Telmo Correia argued for a point that would not have been uttered when the party belonged to the governing coalition. He suggested that celebration should openly and officially ‘evoke the historical date of November 25’. Two years later, in 2008, the CDS-PP speaker, Mota Soares, the president of the parliamentary group of the CDS-PP, went even further. He proposed that the nature of the ceremony be substantially changed so that it would not be celebrating and remembering particular past events. Instead, the nation should have a national day, like other modern European nations, and on the national day the nation would come together in a general mood of celebration. Unlike Telmo Correia, Soares did not criticise the previous regime. It thus seems that the position of the CDS-PP is currently in some sort of flux. In 2009, the CDS-PP speaker also did not criticise the previous regime; in 2010, the speaker did so but without proposing an alternative day of celebration. The general pattern suggests something curious. It indicates that there might be behind-the-scenes disagreements and arguments within the party. At long last, some speakers from the CDS-PP seem prepared to criticise the previous regime and to recognize its crimes. However, this change

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significantly coincides with the open support of some in the party for a policy to change officially the celebration of the April Revolution. It is as if the party is saying ‘so long as the Portuguese celebrate the April Revolution, we have difficulties in criticising the previous regime and withholding our criticism from the April Revolution, but if we were freed from the obligation to celebrate the April Revolution, we might be able to be more open in our criticisms of the regimes of Caetano and Salazar’. Of course, the request to drop the celebration of April 25—or to turn it into a celebration of November 25—was not accepted. The ceremony continues to be held annually. The CDS-PP continues to participate, and their participation continues to be ambivalent, with more being left unsaid than is spoken.

NOTES The authors are grateful to the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) (Grant: SFRH/BD/22573/2005), which supported the research described in this chapter. 1. See http://www.cds.pt (accessed January 9, 2012). 2. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DemocraticandSocialCentre%E2%80%93P eople’sParty (accessed January 9, 2012). 3. See http://debates.parlamento.pt/?pid=r3 (accessed January 9, 2012).

REFERENCES Atkinson, J. M. (1984a) Our Masters’ Voices, London, Methuen. Atkinson, J. M. (1984b) ‘Public speaking and audience responses: Some techniques for inviting applauses’, in Atkinson, J. M., and Heritage, J. (ed.), Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Austin, J. L. (1961) How to Do Things with Words, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Billig, M. (1978) Fascists: A Social Psychological View of the National Front, London, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Billig, M. (1988) ‘Common-places of the British Royal Family: A rhetorical analysis of plain and argumentative sense’, Text, vol. 8, pp. 191–217. Billig, M. (1996) Arguing and Thinking, 2nd edition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Billig, M. (1997) ‘Keeping the White Queen in Play’, in Fine, M., Weis, L., Powell, L. C., and Wong, L. M. (eds.), Off White: Reading on Society, Race, and Culture, London, Routledge. Billig, M. (1999) Freudian Repression, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Billig, M. (2008) ‘The language of critical discourse analysis: the case of nominalization’, Discourse and Society, vol. 19, pp. 783–800. Billig, M. (2011) ‘Writing social psychology: Fictional things and unpopulated texts’, British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 50, pp. 4–20. Bruneau, T. C., and Macleod, A. (1986) Politics in Contemporary Portugal, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner. Bull, P. (2006) ‘Invited and uninvited applause in Political speeches’, British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 46, pp. 563–578.

The CDS-PP and the Portuguese Parliament’s Annual Celebration

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Burke, K. (1969) A Rhetoric of Motives, Berkeley, University of California Press. Cruz, M. B. da (1982) ‘Notas para uma caracterização política do salazarismo’, Análise Social, vol. 23, pp. 773–794. Ensink, T., and Sauer, C. (2003) The Art of Commemoration—Fifty Years after the Warsaw Uprising, Amsterdam, John Benjamins. Fairclough, N. (2003) Analyzing Discourse, London, Routledge. Fowler, R. (1991) Language in the News, London, Routledge. Freire, A. (2005) ‘Party system change in Portugal, 1974–2005: The role of social, political and ideological factors’, Portuguese Journal of Social Sciences, vol. 4, pp. 81–100. Gallagher, T. (1983) Portugal: A twentieth-century interpretation, Manchester, Manchester University Press. Gallagher, T. (1992) ‘Portugal: The marginalization of the extreme right’, in Hainsworth, P. (ed.), The Extreme Right in Europe and the USA, London, Pinter. Gallie, W. B. (1964) Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, London, Chatto and Windus. Heritage, J., and Greatbatch, D. (1986) ‘Generating applauses: A study of rhetoric and response at party political conferences’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 92, pp. 110–157. Jalali, C. (2007) Partidos e Democracia em Portugal 1974–2005, Lisboa, Imprensa de Ciências Sociais. Lemke, J. L. (1995) Textual Politics, London, Taylor and Francis. Lucena, M. de (1979) ‘The evolution of Portuguese corporatism under Salazar and Caetano’, in Graham, L. S., and Makler, H. M. (eds.), Contemporary Portugal: The Revolution and Its Antecedents, Austin, University of Texas Press. Macklin, G. (2011) ‘Modernizing the past for the future’, in Copsey, N., and Macklin G. (eds.), British National Party, London, Routledge. Marchi, R. (2000) ‘A direita radical na Universidade de Coimbra (1945–1974)’, Análise Social, vol. 43, pp. 551–576. Marchi, R. (2010) ‘At the roots of the new right-wing extremism in Portugal: The National Action Movement (1985–1991)’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, vol. 11, pp. 47–66. Marinho, C. (2012) ‘Celebrating the April Revolution in the Portuguese Parliament: Discursive habits, constructing the past and rhetorical manipulation’, PhD dissertation, Loughborough University. Pinto, A. C. (1995) ‘The radical right in contemporary Portugal’, in Cheles, L., Ferguson, R., and Vaughan, M. (eds.), The Far Right in Western and Eastern Europe, 2nd edition, London, Longman. Pinto, A. C. (1998) ‘A Revolução e a questão política. Que Democracia?’, I Curso Livre de História Contemporâneo—Portugal e a Transição para a Democracia (1974–1976), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, http://www.fmsoares.pt/aeb/curso_ especifico?curso=I (accessed January 9, 2012). Pinto, A. C. (1999) ‘Le Salazarisme et le fascisme européen’, Vingtième siècle. Revue d’ histoire, 62, pp. 15–25. Pinto, A. C. (2008) ‘Political purges and state crisis in Portugal’s transition to democracy’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 43, pp. 305–332. Raby, D. L. (1988) Fascism and Resistance in Portugal: Communists, Liberals and Military Dissidents in the Opposition to Salazar, 1941–1974, Manchester, Manchester University Press. Reisigl, M., and Wodak, R. (2009) ‘The Discourse-Historical approach’, in Wodak, R., and Meyer, M. (eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, London, Sage. Ribeiro, F. P. (2011) ‘Uma revolução democrática é sempre uma revolução inacabada’—or—‘A democratic revolution must always remain unfinished’: Commemorating the Portuguese 1974 revolution in newspaper opinion texts’, Journal of Language and Politics, vol. 10, pp. 372–395.

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Richardson, J. E. (2011) ‘Race and racial difference: the surface and depth of BNP ideology’, in Copsey, N., and Macklin, G. (eds.), British National Party: Contemporary Perspectives, London, Routledge. Robinson, R. A. H. (1996) ‘Do CDS ao CDS-PP: o partido do Centro Democrático Social e o seu papel na política portuguesa’, Análise Social, vol. 31, pp. 951–973. Rosas, F. (1989) ‘Cinco pontos em torno do estudo comparado do fascismo’, Vértice, II série, 13, pp. 21–29. Schmitter, P. C. (1979) ‘The ‘Régime d’ Exception’ that became the rule: Forty-eight years of authoritarian domination in Portugal’, in Graham, L. S., and Makler, H. M. (eds.), Contemporary Portugal: The Revolution and Its Antecedents, Austin, University of Texas Press. Tileaga˘, C. (2008) ‘What is a ‘revolution’?: National commemoration, collective memory and managing authenticity in the representation of a political event’, Discourse and Society, vol. 19, pp. 359–382. Wodak, R. (ed.) (1989) ‘1968: The power of political jargon—a “Club 2” discussion’, in Wodak, R. (ed.), Language, Power and Ideology: Studies in Political Discourse, John Benjamins. Wodak, R. (2011) ‘Suppression of the Nazi past, coded languages, and discourses of silence: Applying the Discourse-Historical Approach to post-war anti-Semitism in Austria’, in Steinmetz, W. (ed.), Political Languages in the Age of Extremes, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Wodak, R., and De Cillia, R. (2007) ‘Commemorating the past: The discursive construction of official narratives about the “rebirth of the Second Austrian Republic” ’, Discourse and Communication, vol. 1, pp. 315–341.

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Continuities of Fascist Discourses, Discontinuities of Extreme-Right Political Actors? Overt and Covert Antisemitism in the Contemporary French Radical Right Brigitte Beauzamy

INTRODUCTION

Challenging the Discontinuity Theory in Contemporary Accounts of French Antisemitism Antisemitism is certainly one of the elements of the French radical-right discourses which has undergone the most dramatic reshaping since World War II. It is widely acknowledged that it has receded from being a mainstream political argument prominent at the end of the 19th century and during the Vichyist era to a form of prejudice today that is vigorously combated by public policies and civil society organizations. A central dimension of prewar fascist discourses, it was gradually banned from public discourses following the delegitimization of racialized fascist discourses after the war and the increased legal prohibition of antisemitic and negationist discourses.1 Because of these transformations in the political and legal environment of the radical right, blaming the Jews shifted from being the main explanation of the problems experienced by French society to a peripheral element of discourses usually formulated in a covert fashion, from exoteric to esoteric. Yet, despite this marked shift in the acceptability of antisemitic discourses and attitudes and a long history of increasingly repressive policies intended to combat antisemitism, the dominant view is that antisemitism has not disappeared from the French landscape, and some depictions of the situation of French Jews even take an apocalyptic tone. The second half of the 2000s was marked by a series of events which reinforced this impression of a renewed threat: from the hideous abduction and murder in 2006 of a young Jew by a self-proclaimed “barbarian gang” led by a Black criminal, Youssouf Fofana,2 to the political breakthrough of the Afro-supremacist activist Kemi Seba thanks to the staging of an antisemitic attack in the heart of Jewish Paris the same year, it seemed that the kind of antisemitism traditionally associated with the extreme right had given way to new and more violent forms anchored in increased ethnic tensions. After examining the postulates of this thesis and how they obfuscate the legacy of fascist antisemitism in

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the French extreme right, we shall focus on the dynamics of radical-right antisemitic discourses. Lastly, we will conclude that the political uses of antisemitism have changed but that the new antisemites among Black supremacists are very much indebted to radical-right antisemitic traditions to whose rejuvenation they contribute.

A French “New Antisemitism”? As it seems, France offers a nearly perfect case exemplifying the theory of the “new antisemitism”, which has gained much currency lately both in academic circles and in media discourses in general. In the aftermath of the fall of fascist regimes, political antisemitism has receded in European countries. However, the founding of the state of Israel has encouraged a new and militant anti-Zionism that is particularly prevalent in Arab countries but which has been disseminated in European countries—for instance, one can read on the website of the American Anti-Defamation League: “The new anti-Jewish hatred has spread virulently from the Arab-Muslim world to Europe”. According to this theory, such antisemitism is new because it relies on a different set of prejudices from the fascist one: it has broken away from traditional religious judeophobia or from biologically racist antisemitism and concentrates on Israel. But it is also new because of the identity of the culprits, who are no longer necessarily connected to extreme-right movements or ideologies but who may be characterized as leftist defenders of the Palestinian cause or, going beyond the left-right cleavage, as Muslims—often with a migrant background—identifying with Palestinians (Taguieff 2002, 2008, 2010).3 While the focus on Muslims has become dominant, with such formulations as “Islamo-Nazism” being used by some journalists and public intellectuals after the March 2012 Toulouse killings,4 it is striking to note that a “Black antisemitism” has also been scrutinized in these debates. Even authors critical of the new-antisemitism thesis appear to share some of its premises concerning its discontinuity with the fascist past. In one of the few attempts to analyze in a common framework both antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, Matti Bunzl (2007) claims that antisemitism has lost political currency in Europe because no political party would overtly rely on antisemitic arguments—a debatable claim,5 yet one that sheds light on a key component of the discontinuity thesis: that the very nature of antisemitism has changed inasmuch as its underlying political project has shifted from “the exclusion of Jews from the national body” (p. 26) to a fight against colonialism. For Bunzl, this is linked to the newly acquired European nature of Jews: “In all the variants of this old anti-Semitism, Jews were construed as intrinsic outsiders to Europe’s nation-states, interlopers in a fantasy of ethnic purity. . . . As young Muslims target Jews as expatriates of a colonizing state, they confirm Zionism’s ultimate achievement: Europe’s Jews have finally become European” (pp. 26–27). The seemingly paradoxical nature of the argument—European Jews used to be perceived as alien,

Continuities of Fascist Discourses 165 but now that they are “expatriates” of Israel, this makes them European—is highlighted by stating that “in the Arab world, Israel . . . is understood first and foremost as a European colony”. Although Bunzl’s objective clearly differs from those of the new antisemitism thesis inasmuch as he wants to raise awareness of another prejudice, Islamophobia, he agrees with one point: considering “young Muslims” to be intrinsically foreign to European polities and thereby concluding that contemporary antisemitism in Europe is a threat coming from the outside, either because it is perpetuated by migrants or because it results from the importation of foreign conflicts in Europe. Debates on the new antisemitism have gained much currency in France as they spilled over from academic circles to policy discourses and to mainstream media in the wake of the publication of the Rufin report of 2004, commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior, on the broad theme of the fight against antisemitism.6 Most of the report’s analysis of contemporary French antisemitism mirrors closely the new antisemitism thesis: Rufin mentions (Rufin 2004, p. 15) the “stable diminution of the share of extremeright-led anti-Semitic violence and the rise of a ‘new’ anti-Semitism which would be characteristic of migrant youth, especially Maghrebans. Their acts appear tightly connected to events occurring in the Middle East”. However, he is careful not to limit his explanations to this thesis—and not to give in to obvious anti-Arab arguments—and proceeds to categorize antisemitic actions rather than motivations, distinguishing between “anti-Semitism as an impulse” (for the culprits of antisemitic violence) and antisemitism as a “strategy” (for those he calls the “manipulators”). His last, residual category is the most disputed: “anti-Semitism by proxy” committed by “facilitators whom through their opinions—or their silence—legitimize anti-Semitic actions while being wary of not committing them themselves” (ibid., emphasis added). These facilitators may be found in the ranks of antiracist activists themselves when they display extreme discursive violence against Israel, which, in the “Durban spirit”7 denounced by Taguieff, is a rather transparent cover for actual antisemitism. Most policy proposals formulated by the report were in direct line with already existing policies, which focused on punishing culprits while promoting color-blind integration, and incorporated suggestions by prominent antiracist NGOs. Yet one stood out and occasioned such turmoil that the whole report was quickly buried: that the Gayssot law defining the scope of the fight against antisemitism be revised so as to criminalize “those who would raise unfounded accusations of racism against groups, institutions or states and would use unjustified comparisons with apartheid or Nazism” (Rufin 2004, p. 30). While it is interesting to notice that contemporary French discourses on Jews are so much characterized by the presence of periphrases and metaphors that Israel is here not named but transparently alluded to, we see that the Rufin report pleads for an extension of the category of antisemitic discourse beyond attacks against Jews per se to “unfounded accusations of racism”—a reproach often made to supporters of the new

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antisemitism theory themselves—or even silence, in any case to the criminalization of discourses from which Jews are actually absent. The report led to an uproar on the part of numerous political actors and commentators in France who defended the right to side with the Palestinian struggle and to criticize Israeli policies vis-à-vis the conflict and who feared that a crime of opinion might be inscribed in the law.8 Yet, its main outcome was to contribute to the extension of the category of antisemitism beyond any reference to its fascist past; the report, which supposedly examines both racism and antisemitism, does not address fascism at all, and shows a very limited knowledge of the contemporary French extreme right. In its denunciation of a new antisemitism, the report contributed to popularizing the idea of a discontinuity in the forms of French antisemitism, thereby implying that France had departed for good from its fascist past.

The Continuity Thesis Examining the situation of contemporary French antisemitic political discourses through the lens of its continuities with the discourses of the fascist era allows us to glimpse a very different landscape. Usually the French extreme right after 1944 is presented as not antisemitic, whereas Birnbaum’s analysis of the “State Jews” (les Juifs d’Etat) (1992) shows that pre-war antisemitism was certainly alive in the 1950s. Therefore, the reasons that antisemitism lost its significance for the extreme right are not directly connected to the end of the Vichy regime and the public recognition of the Shoah. For Vinen (1994), the French extreme right came to look at Jews in a different light in the aftermath of the Algerian war, as Jews in Algeria strongly supported the French. This may seem paradoxical if one considers that antisemitic MPs at the end of the 19th century, including a prominent antisemite, Edouard Drumont, were sent from Algeria (Adamson 2006; see also Birnbaum 1998), a “haven for extreme anti-Semitism” (Vinen 1994, p. 381). However, the repatriation from Algeria brought Jews and French settlers closer, including in common expressions of anti-Arab racism. Subsequently, defenders of Algérie Française extended their support to Israel. After the creation of the State of Israel, a part of the French extreme right supported the project or expressed admiration for Israeli military power, thus beginning to find common ground with people whom they interpreted as enemies of Islam like them: “The OAS [Organisation de l’Armée Secrète, a paramilitary Algérie Française group] viewed Israel, which provided an example of European settlers defeating Arab resistance, with growing admiration” (Vinen 1994, p. 377). Common loathing of de Gaulle further reinforced this rapprochement. However, support for Israel was phrased in ways which suggested to the trained reader that antisemitism was not entirely absent from bold pro-Zionist declarations: “Israel remains in 1965 the only nation in the world living in an harmonious synthesis of nationalism, socialism and racism. This may seem paradoxical . . . certain values of the

Continuities of Fascist Discourses 167 execrated national socialism have found refuge on the banks of the Jordan river” (Rivarol, 1 June 1969, quoted in Vinen 1994, p. 378). The expressed admiration for Israel is mitigated by the markers of doubt (“this may seem paradoxical”), and the real point of the argument is the use of the word “racism” with its true fascist meaning—a political ideology based on the theory of race inequality. However, attitudes towards Israel created a cleavage within the French extreme right, and Vinen concludes that “in purely ideological terms the attitude of the Fascists to the Jews was quite separate to that from the rest of the extreme-right” (Vinen 1994, p. 386): it was marked by a strong hostility to Israel and the United States, as well as by support for Algerian nationalism, while other extreme-right trends focused on Arabs and Islam as the main enemy and, in promoting the theme of the “defence of the Western world”, included both France and Israel. For the remainder of this chapter, we are going to challenge the two main assumptions behind the “new antisemitism” thesis, on the basis of an examination of the French case: that the extreme right is no longer the main force behind antisemitism because it has actually distanced itself from old antisemitic arguments and that the new antisemites nurture their prejudice on new ones. We are going to examine how antisemitism has shifted from an overt to a covert argument in the discourses of the main Radical Right Party (RRP), the Front National. We will show that antisemitism has not disappeared but that its function has changed, alongside an ideological shift in sources of inspiration such as the New Right, which has not suppressed the internal pluralism characteristic of RRPs. We are then going to show that if antisemitism is still a valid political option, it is mostly the case for newcomers eager to attract media attention.

THE MUTATIONS OF ANTISEMITISM IN EXTREME-RIGHT DISCOURSES: THE IMPACT OF LEPENISM

Antisemitism in Front National Discourses: A Strategy of Distance “The FN is not an anti-Semitic, racist or xenophobic party. I want this to be clear”, declared the new FN leader Marine Le Pen to the Israeli radio station Emtza Haderekh in March 2011 (quoted in Le Figaro, 03/30/2011) before stating that she disapproved of the boycott of Israeli commodities. This declaration followed the small turmoil caused by the cancellation of the leader’s participation in a show on a French Jewish radio station which had never invited her father and which led to the following press release on the FN’s website: Radio J just informed me that because of death threats, it decided to cancel its invitation that I participate to the next Sunday’s show. The

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The press release summarizes well the party’s official policy vis-à-vis the Jews: while it refers to antisemitism and fascism in pejorative terms, thereby distancing itself from both, it attacks “communitarian associations”— actually the main Jewish community organization and student association, respectively—the CRIF (Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France), and the UEJF (Union des Etudiants Juifs de France), the latter of which had repeatedly voiced its concern over the popularity of the extremeright party among the French electorate. Even though the excerpt portraits Marine Le Pen speaking to the Jews, it is actually very likely that she was really addressing her own constituency through her choice of the word “Israelite” as the only noun used to refer to Jews—a usage which, according to Chantal Bordes-Benayoum, is dated and is often perceived as an uneasy euphemism for “Jew” (http://www2.cnrs.fr/presse/thema/443.htm). The press release also draws on a recurring discursive trick used by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who repeatedly stated that “I am not a racist” and “I am not anti-Semitic” (Reisigl and Wodak 2001; Wodak 2000); such disclaimers are attempts to prevent problematic categorizations and damages to the speaker’s social identity (Hewitt and Stokes 1975) and may be seen as a legal protection against being labelled a racist (Billig 2001)—a label indeed likely to be attached when the speaker goes on with the remainder of the argument and adds “but”, thereby granting the not-so-well-hidden xenophobic nature of the claim the appearance of “realism”, “truth”, or “common sense” (van Dijk 1992, p. 111). The function of disclaimers is therefore not only to protect the speaker from possible negative consequences of his or her categorization in a vilified group such as antisemites: “the central feature of disclaimers is that they instate what they claim to be denying; they translate irony into performativity . . . disclaimers can be a clear sign of backsliding. But they are also claims—ironic claims, tactful claims, but claims nonetheless” (Strecker and Tyler 2009, p. 184). One such claims was the affirmation of the speaker himself: Jean-Marie Le Pen used them as part of a strategy to reinforce the presence of “I”, the leader—here replaced with a more collective “we”, indicating that Marine Le Pen has not yet seized the same personal leadership as her father did and still presents herself as a party spokeswoman.

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Pierre Milza (1987, 1994), examining the neo-fascist roots of the Front National, noted that the radical-right party had distanced itself from most of its ideology, as well as from the nostalgia for fascist and Nazi regimes which had characterized its beginnings. However, antisemitism did not disappear altogether from the party discourses, where it migrated, during the 1980s and 1990s, from the programme to the leader’s speeches and interviews.9 By and large, antisemitism ceased to be a theoretical element in the FN’s worldview and became instead the topic of jokes and of poorly dissimulated double entendres in Jean-Marie Le Pen’s public discourses. Puns, insinuations or blatant expressions of negationism were rare but regular features of the leader’s speeches, never failing to generate public debate, heated criticism or even insults on the part of political opponents, as well as lawsuits, which at the time only marginally affected the party or Le Pen himself, since both were wealthy enough to pay the fines. Empirical research on Front National activists showed that many rank-and-file members expressed overt antisemitic opinions as part of their fascist ideologies (Tristan 1987). They were comforted in their opinions by cultural elements used by the FN, for instance in its festive moments, which evoked the fascist past of the organization (Milza 1994, p. 43). Moments such as the annual Bleu-Blanc-Rouge (BBR) gathering organized by the party from 1981 to 2007 are here particularly interesting to examine, since they were punctuated by a speech by the party leader. In such speeches, the party’s official position on antisemitism was reasserted, for instance when Jean-Marie Le Pen quoted verbatim the party programme: “As far as we are concerned, I remind him that the article 3 of our status stipulates . . . equality before the law of all French citizen no matter their origins, their races or their religions.”10 References to Jews were rare and oblique (“We do not receive orders from any alien organisation such as the ‘B’nai Brith’ and we are proud not to be corrupted like some many politicians”, ibid.), easy to decipher for those knowledgeable in antisemitic arguments such as those who associated Jews with corruption and saw them as a conspiring alien power but never contradicting the official rejection of antisemitism reaffirmed by party leaders. Jews were also alluded to in metaphors or comparisons, as in Le Pen’s evocation of the exclusion of the FN from mainstream politics in his 1984 essay “Les Français d’abord”, in which he claimed that that the FN has such “anti-conformist” ideas that they are being silenced and must suffer from the same stigmata as the one against Jews (“Extreme-right and yellow star”). The distance between FN discourses and antisemitism is very often probed by the party’s speakers, allowing them to trespass into a forbidden and dangerous discursive territory. One should not deduce that the old topoi used by the French fascist extreme right against Jews have disappeared, such as the theme of Jewish conspiracy and dominance of the media, including against the FN (Quinn 2002, p. 185). Actually, they have been reshaped into a more covert form, while retaining their quintessential character so as to remain decipherable for those who know what to look for. Such is the case for the stereotype that

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Jews are “cosmopolitans” and therefore enemies to the Nation. While this theme of “cosmopolitanism” was prominent in the FN’s discourses until the 1990s (Lecoeur 2007, pp. 110–111), it gradually receded to give way to a more promising topic: the one of globalism (“mondialisme”). The neologism “globalism” actually predated the wide use of the word “globalization” (“mondialisation”) in French political discourses, but it benefited enormously from the popularity of globalization as a theme with largely negative connotations in political debate from the late 1990s on (Beauzamy 2005). This word is never defined, since it is supposed to be immediately understandable, and, like most FN lexical creations, it is pejorative; the fact that it remains undefined allows it to encompass a wide range of meanings, from anticapitalist and antiglobalisation arguments to nationalist arguments and antisemitic denunciations of global capitalism. The suffix “ism” suggests that there is an ideology behind the global interconnectedness characteristic of globalization, borne by invisible yet powerful actors: globalism, like other FN neologisms with which it is sometimes associated (“the FN is the only movement that proposes politics that totally break up with globalism, taxism, statis.”11), articulates a descriptive dimension (the reference to given policies, which may be explicit or implicit), an analytical dimension (why such aspects as taxes and the inflation of state intervention should be considered key points to be analysed in order to understand the current state of affairs) and an evaluative dimension (why these policies do no good to France and are actually detrimental to French people). If globalism is vilified, it is left up to the receiver to uncover who is really propagating it, although, as we shall see, such allusions become much more transparent as one leaves official FN discourses and turns to the extreme-right press and blogosphere.

The Theoretical Rejuvenation of Antisemitism and the Role of the “Nouvelle Droite” One should not deduce from these arguments, seemingly left open to gaping ideological holes, that they are entirely devoid of theoretical content. Not only have antisemitic arguments been pushed to the cultural background of the radical right, but their very content has changed alongside the reformulation of its racial theories, most particularly under the influence of the Nouvelle Droite (ND), which presents itself as a purveyor of new political arguments for the extreme right after the late 1960s, while paying tribute to its fascist roots. Seidel (1981), in her attempt at demonstrating the continuity between French fascism and the ND, notices that, while they recycle many fascist themes inspired by “racial science” (p. 49), the intellectual project borne by ND glossy journals clearly differs from populist fascist attempts at converting the masses. ND intellectuals, among them Alain de Benoist, an award-winning essayist, and members of his think tank, the GRECE (Research and Study Group on European Civilization), launched a

Continuities of Fascist Discourses 171 new approach which they deemed to be “metapolitical”: “after four decades of semi-clandestinity of the ideology of the right-wing, which asserted itself by negating ideology and was shy to expose its sources, the GRECE decides to respond the intellectual left and to pose as a valid interlocutor for everything that thinks and counts in the French political world, by multiplying philosophical, historical and scientific references, not only friendly ones but also opponents” (Bonnafous and Fiala 1986, p. 55). ND arguments present some similarities with what Stephen Reyna has called a “dazzling theory”: formulated at a high level of abstraction, they incorporate pompous formulations and a large variety of references, including to some extreme-left theory (“rightist Gramscism”) in order to produce a racial argument dressed in a highly complex fashion—a “high culture” version of fascist arguments. The ND discourse reactivates a fascist frame while adopting a pseudo-academic, explicative and intellectual tone. The relation to fascist references is complex: while openly fascist authors may be quoted (Seidel 1981), some other references may be missing. For Amossy (1999), what matters most is what is not included, that is, the obvious yet missing reference to fascist sources, especially when they concern the Jews. The ND created a new vocabulary to phrase antisemitic arguments, which leads McCulloch to conclude that “what was novel about ND anti-Semitism was the linguistic contortions with which it attempted to obfuscate the ideological essence” (2006, p. 170). New terms were substituted in order to avoid the association with fascism: “Indo-European” takes the place of Aryan, and “European” or “European culture” is used instead of “white” (Seidel 1981, p. 50). Controversial items are paraphrased: “Jews” are abstracted into the “world economic order” or called the “monstrous fruit of the European culture” (Seidel 1981, quoting Guillaume Faye, a prominent ND intellectual, p. 54); the ND actually reintegrated its antisemitic perspective into a more general neo-pagan critique of Judeo-Christianity (Duranton-Crabol 1988, p. 41). In her analysis of a chapter from Alain de Benoist’s famous essay Les Idées à l’endroit (“Thinking straight”—1979) entitled “The Uprooted”, Amossy opposes the use of scientific references to the use of metaphors, which refer to a thick ensemble of shared cultural references (1992, p. 37). Despite their often didactic tone, ND discourses provide no explanations but only assertions which are inherently polemic, although they pretend to stand above political strife. Hostility may be conveyed in seemingly neutral discursive strategies, such as through comparisons. For instance, in this chapter discussed by Amossy, the thesis of the “eternal return” is backed up by a variety of disciplines, including zoology, psychology and political science, and Jews, who are compared to salmon, exemplify the universal nature of the eternal return through the creation of the State of Israel and the Law of Return, symbolizing the end of nomadism (Amossy 1999, p. 40). A consequence of these discursive strategies is the elusive nature of hostility in ND texts, replaced with an appeal to objectivity, an element that

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de Benoist was quite blunt about: “A political movement is so to speak condemned to doublespeak (‘double discours’): the necessities of propaganda are here the whole of the law. A school of thought mustn’t give in doublespeak” (de Benoist in Elements, 1985, p.16, quoted in Amossy 1992, p. 35). This ambiguity, inherent to ND discourses, led to debates during the party’s breakthrough in 1979 around its antisemitic nature (DurantonCrabol 1988, p.45). In any case, for the ND, antisemitism is not populism: arguments can be very elaborate and adopt a pseudo-scientific form. Yet it can also draw on completely mythical analyses, including conspiracy theory, religious exegesis and magical considerations in an odd construction hardly suited for mass diffusion. This explains why, although the influence of ND theses on FN discourses was palpable and although echoes of ND texts could be found in more mainstream radical-right discursive productions of FN leaders, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Bruno Gollnisch, Bruno Mégret before his secession, and ND member Jean-Yves Le Gallou, party programs often lacked their theoretical subtlety. Le Gallou himself, running as a candidate in the European elections in the Ile-de-France in 1998, had to simplify his critique of globalism using Le Pen’s populist technique of sloganization, that is, the use of numerous exclamation marks in phrases without verbs that refer directly to the form of party slogans, which seem to have been directly included in the program: “Against globalism: the Brie before Mali!” Therefore, if Le Pen’s antisemitic outbursts (“Durafour crématoire”, “gas chambers as a mere detail of World War II history”) can be said to have undermined the party’s credibility which the ND was aiming to restore (Quinn 2002, p. 187), it was in fact the association between the renewed, elaborate and covert antisemitic analyses and overt expressions of antisemitism expressed through jokes or smart puns which delineated the discursive space of French extreme-right antisemitism since the 1990s.

Assessing the Role of Antisemitism in Contemporary Extreme-Right Discourses The heterogeneous nature of the French extreme right has been repeatedly noted (for instance by Milza 1987; Winock 1993; Lecoeur 2003), and it is plainly visible in the variety of publications reflecting these various trends, from ultra-Catholic to neo-pagans, from national-Bolsheviks to antitaxation activists. Yet one may agree with Amossy (1999) that extreme-right newspapers contribute to shaping a doxa and a series of implicit meanings contained in a more covert form in FN discourses, that is, political arguments formulated in a nonargumentative way as a set of shared beliefs. Examining the coverage of the first Gulf War in the radical-right press, she identifies antisemitism as part of “the doxic”, that is, the ensemble of shared significations in a given community, which allows one person to communicate with another through oblique references. Allusions create a shared understanding; yet, an inherent problem with implicit meanings is that they

Continuities of Fascist Discourses 173 may not be understood correctly by the untrained reader. Propagating antisemitic arguments in an esoteric fashion may not give them the largest resonance in the public sphere but gives those who understand them the feeling that they are part of a group, while deflecting potential criticism by opponents. For Amossy, the extreme-right press addresses three different publics: the converted, the external audience which it aims at convincing, and adversaries who watch over such discourses to uncover their problematic and/or illegal natures. She categorizes discursive strategies allowing for the formation of this doxa: some well-known key words, such as “lobby” and “cosmopolitan”, are recycled from a collectively shared antisemitic heritage (1999, p. 83) and function as regular proxies for “Jews”, while the theme of “globalism” appears to be an extreme-right specificity. Clichés, that is, expressions which are commonly used in a given system of representations, may also be used, such as the metaphor that describes the nation as an organism, allowing the labelling of Jews as alien and potentially toxic to it. Literary or historical allusions must be quite transparent, for instance, referring to fascist works or to well-known antisemitic pamphlets; the argument may receive an additional twist by relying on inversions, with, for example, Jews or Israel taking the place of fascists in these plays on words. Understanding of the general meaning of the text is guaranteed by the use of a stable system of connotation, which, for instance, may attribute a pejorative meaning to “Zionist” used loosely as a synonym for “Jew” but bearing the same antisemitic content, as in “For our crooks from [the mainstream TV channels], it’s out of question to compare [Gorby, a.k.a. Gorbatchev] to Hitler, a distinction our Honourable Zionists keep for Saddam Hussein!” (National Hebdo editorial, quoted in Amossy 1999, p. 87). However, other associations may prove to be much more volatile, such as when Saddam Hussein is compared to Hitler, which may be interpreted either pejoratively or melioratively. Meanwhile, it is implied that the war really benefits some other, occult interests, while the use of the passive form allows authors to remain imprecise about the identity of these hidden agents—the Jews, Israel, the media. Jews themselves are seldom named, but their presence and power are considered to be obvious. The presence of an antisemitic doxa underlying extreme-right arguments explains why many cryptic allusions phrased with incendiary hostility do not need further explanation or clarification. Antisemitism in radical-right discursive strategies here presents an homology with the Jewish power they claim to expose inasmuch as it is seemingly invisible, yet plays an important part as an explicandum. Through allusions, the meaning of texts is not completed and closed within them but is left open to the reader’s own deduction, through intertextuality and the mastery of a local doxa. For Amossy, this does not mean that such discourses are aimed solely at reaching already convinced people: rather, the newcomers are invited to decipher by themselves this esoteric discourse, to “patch the holes in the discourses, to fill the lacunae by activating doxic elements” (1999, p. 97). She suggests

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that this active behaviour expected from readers is part of the appeal of such discourses, which reward them with the satisfaction of understanding the implicit. Some allusions are obvious to untrained readers, while others are quite obscure: extreme-right discourses therefore rely on a hermetic approach to the understanding of texts, in which it is acceptable not to understand everything since it is a sign that there is more to it than meets the eyes and an invitation to deepen one’s knowledge of the political subculture in order to decipher more. There is a shared pleasure between the authors who craft these enigma in multilevel significations and the readers (including political opponents and researchers) who decipher these riddles. This pleasure element to antisemitic extreme-right discourses can also be assessed in the use of humour, puns and irony, which, as Billig (2001) notes, all offer the protection to the speaker of claiming that this is “just humour”. For Alice Krieg (1999, p. 11), extreme-right media discourses are surprising and unsettling for unsympathetic readers since their very form differs from those present in mainstream media: composite words abound, as well as injurious puns (“Ripoublique” [“Rotpublic”] or “Té-Lévi-Sion”). Similarly, her study of the uses of (sic) in the French press shows that extreme-right media are more prone to resorting to it than are mainstream or extreme-left ones, thereby indicating that readers are expected to be able to understand the double meaning or the pejorative evaluation implied by the use of (sic). For Krieg, this implicit is a mark of the pleasure of belonging to a community of thought. The contemporary French radical right appears to have distanced itself from its former antisemitism by expelling it to the margins of its discourse— alluding it to only through jokes, allusions or metaphors—where it plays the role of a cultural token. How about the much more blatant antisemitism displayed by political actors often associated with the “new antisemitism” thesis—“communitarian” groups of Black and Arab migrants? Using the example of the infamous Afrocentric activist Kemi Seba, we shall see that much of this new antisemitism is indeed borrowed from Front National frames and rhetorical patterns. A POSTCOLONIAL “NEW ANTISEMITISM”? LEPENISM IN THE DISCOURSES OF KEMI SEBA Inside debates concerned with contemporary French prejudices against Jews, discussions of Black antisemitism have emerged, most famously in relation to the widely publicized figure of Kemi Seba. A most remarkable feature of Seba’s activism is the central role played by antisemitism, not only in his discourses but also in his mobilizations. His first major media breakthrough was obtained in 2006 through the staging of a direct action in the heart of the historical Jewish neighborhood of Paris, the rue des Rosiers. A few dozen participants identified as activists from his group, the Tribu Ka,12

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publicly chanted antisemitic slogans, allegedly seeking confrontation with radical Zionist Jewish activists from the Ligue de la Défense Juive and the Bêtar. Since none were to be found, nothing happened, but the incident was met with shock by members of the Jewish community and largely reported in the media (François et al. 2008, p. 110). Kemi Seba thus gained global publicity as an antisemite13 and was, as a result, included in the Annual Report of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Racism and Antisemitism (2005–2009), which included a specific subsection dedicated to the scrutiny of antisemitism in the Afro-Caribbean community.14 Although today widely labeled as an Islamist, Kemi Seba actually displays a much more multifaceted political and religious identity, in which antisemitism plays a complex role. A French Afrocentric activist claiming to belong to the Nation of Islam, Kemi Seba initially presented himself as a radical neo-pagan. He argued that Abrahamic religions were intrinsically hostile to Black people and particularly referred to the biblical myth of the malediction of Cham, which he presents as a founding discourse that presents Blacks as inferior while depicting Whites and Jews as superior.15 He preached in favor of the conversion of French Blacks to an Egyptian Atonian cult before converting to Islam, while retaining most of his Egyptian mythology and references (see François et al. 2008 for an excellent analysis of the esoteric basis of his ideology). Seba’s ideological framework is detailed in his latest book, Ma’at Ikh-s Philosophie (2010), a pun that mixes references to ancient Egyptian concepts with the Matrix movies. It is characterized by the diversity of its themes and influences in a dazzling mixture of theological comments and pseudohistorical narratives of Black history. Through his infamous action in the rue des Rosiers, Kemi Seba contributed to demonstrating that antisemitic direct action was a potent means of action inasmuch as it was much more likely to draw attention than more esoteric and postcolonial Afrocentric discourse, even when mixed—as he chose to do later—with a dash of Islamism. The Tribu Ka was officially outlawed by the Council of Ministers a few months later, yet Kemi Seba pursued his multifaceted political career in several new movements; one of them, the Mouvement des Damnés de l’Impérialisme (Movement of the Wretched of Imperialism—MDI),16 marked a shift towards a rapprochement with other ethnonationalist groups, including Breton separatists and National Socialists, as part of what François et al. analyze as a “strategy of nativist identity-based convergence” (François et al. 2008, p. 113). Antisemitism plays a key role in this ideological construction, as Seba framed it in the conference that launched his book. The conference was held in the back room of a small African restaurant in the near suburbs of Paris, decorated with plastic reproductions of pharaonic memorabilia and set up in a way that would allow the small group of faithful to listen to their leader preaching. Seba’s rhetoric is characterized by the use of ancient secrets and perennial hidden truths to explain the poor situation of contemporary French Blacks. Jews (sometimes referred to in his speeches as

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the biblical “Hyksos”) occupy a mythical role: “The Freemasons know the origin of the world. The Jews are the guardians of secrets. There are secrets. The world was initially composed of four spheres, material spheres and celestial spheres” (Kemi Seba book launch conference, April 2010). Classically associated with the Freemasons, Jews are referred to as a powerful lobby involved in conspiracies, yet they are here more specifically opposed to Black people, with whom they supposedly compete for world dominance: “The lobby knows where it comes from, we are the first to forget about our identity. . . . The Temple of Solomon was less solid than the pyramids. The people who ruled yesterday are now enslaved” (ibid.). Negative references to Jews are, however, mixed with an appropriation of Jewishness as a positive attribute, which supposedly belonged to Black people before being stolen from them: “Who are the Jews? A people born completely black” (ibid). Seba’s homemade theological universe therefore mixes African supremacy with antisemitism in a way which transcends religious boundaries— characteristically, he claimed that being a Muslim should not prevent Africans and their descendants from acknowledging the truths conveyed by animist religions. A defining feature of Seba’s discursive strategies is his populism, which borrows from several sources of inspiration. Islamic populism can be traced back to anticorruption arguments or rants against the drug-trafficking youth from poor suburbs. He also interlaces his speeches with recurring exclamations in Arabic, a language he probably knows only superficially, since his interjections are always the same: in this way, he tries to appeal to an Arabic-speaking Muslim constituency, visible in the small audience through the presence of some hijab-clad women. However, his populism derives first and foremost from that of Jean-Marie Le Pen. His formulations borrow much from the historic FN leader, with a strong focus on injurious puns such as “The French Juif-stice [Jew-stice]” “Jerusalem Désir”.17 He goes as far as to openly pay homage to his mentor through a reference to Le Pen’s infamous claim that he liked his family better than his neighbors: “I want to revitalize nationalism. Jean-Marie Le Pen defends his family. You take back those who loot Africa, and we go back home”. Or, in a 2008 interview with Novopress: “I’m going to do whatever it takes to bring this racist, Zionist system to its knees and to leave France to those who deserve it, France to the French.”18 It is not clear from this quote where Black people fit into this definition of “those who deserve France”, as Kemi Seba himself advocated the migration of Black people to Africa, where their roots could be found.19 Black supremacist and ethnodifferentialist arguments take here the form of an apology for ethnic separation, with a program based on the repatriation of French Blacks to Africa. Seba himself relocated to Senegal in 2010; there, he is involved in several political activities, such as being the “francophone minister” of the US-based New Black Panther Party—an honor publicized on radical-right French websites.20 Beyond his appeal to the French identitarian fringe, he aims at portraying himself as the francophone voice of

Continuities of Fascist Discourses 177 Black supremacy, a project at odds with the very French Lepenist elements of his discourse. Antisemitism may here prove useful to overcome the local nature of his ideological references and to connect his rhetoric with other supremacist strands. CONCLUSION “France is not an anti-Semitic country. There is of course a residual antiSemitism at the extreme-right”, claimed Jean-Pierre Raffarin, when he was Prime Minister, speaking at the annual dinner of the CRIF in January 2004 (cited in Birnbaum 2004, p. 17). For Birnbaum, the longevity of extremeright antisemitism should not be obscured even if new forms of antisemitism emerge: “It is as if anti-Semitisms originating from different sources but with similar images could join, as if antagonistic political movements could for a while meet thanks to their common hatred of Jews” (2004, p. 23). Antisemitism appears to be a meeting ground for various generations of ethnodifferentialist activists and a means to rejuvenate fascist ideological contents outside the most institutionalized radical-right party—but still in close connexion with it. The Front National and its historical leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, appear to play a prominent role in these renewals. This conclusion contradicts contemporary accounts of the radical-right party that depict how it severed links with its antisemitic past to gain electoral prominence and even formed alliances with some segments of the French Jewish community, united by a common loathing of Muslims. Newcomers like Kemi Seba take inspiration from the populist leader’s discursive strategies, especially during the 1980s and 1990s, when he used antisemitic comments carefully to maintain his presence in the media, before Marine Le Pen chose to publicly distance herself from such a strategy. Kemi Seba’s attempt at providing his audience with elaborate theological and historical arguments while simultaneously relying on populist slogans and jokes may also echo the Front National’s appropriation for electoral purposes of the intricate theoretical constructs of the Nouvelle Droite. While there is no denying that anti-Zionism has become a most common frame used to covertly formulate antisemitic arguments, as the “new antisemitism” thesis underlines, elements of the “old” radicalright antisemitism have been salvaged from their current repudiation by the FN and circulated within new political circles. NOTES 1. A key turning point was the Gayssot law of 1990 (named after the Communist MP who drafted it), which reinforced the legal framework of the fight against xenophobic discourses and introduced for the first time the criminalization of denial of crime against humanity. Initially designed to target Holocaust denial, it

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2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

Brigitte Beauzamy met with great opposition from French historians who protested against “memory laws”. A narrative of the case and an analysis of its impact on the French Jewish community may be found in the 2006 report of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Racism and Anti-Semitism, Tel Aviv University, http://www.tau.ac.il/ Anti-Semitism/annual-report.htm. Taguieff speaks of a “new Judeophobia” and chooses to limit his use of the term “antisemitism” to qualify a historically situated ideology originating in the 1880s. We shall, however, stick to the most common denomination, “new antisemitism”. Mohammed Merah, a killer generally described as a “lone wolf”, killed French soldiers—including two Arabs and a Black man—and Jewish schoolchildren in drive-by shootings. He claimed to be motivated by jihadist objectives and to have direct ties to Al Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is contradicted by Camus (2005, p. 23), who identifies parties such as the German NPD and the Hungarian MIEP as relying directly on antisemitic discourses in their campaigns before the 2004 European elections. Trained in psychiatry, Jean-Christophe Rufin is well known for his career working with major hunger-relief NGOs and in diplomacy. At the time Dominique de Villepin (UMP), then Minister of the Interior, commissioned the report, Rufin had no previous experience of policymaking in the field of racism and antisemitism. This refers to the debates surrounding the UNESCO World Conference Against Racism in 2001 and the antisemitic content of arguments against Israeli occupation policies (see Taguieff 2010). The Rufin report was, however, appropriated as a tool for mobilizations by radical defenders of Israeli policies who wished to pursue the goal of criminalizing what they call “Israel bashing” and was discussed again seven years later, for instance, by the webradio site Jerusalemplus.tv when a similar report was produced in Belgium (http://www.jerusalemplus.tv/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=11753&Itemid=62). This analysis draws on the material of a deliverable from the EU-funded XENOPHOB project (Beauzamy and Naves 2005). BBR speech 1997, available online at data.bnf.fr/12013472/jean-marie_le_pen/. Ibid. It was later hypothesized that they had indeed been members of a private security company and that they had been paid to take part in the action (Emmanuel Kreis, personal communication). In a 2006 interview with the radical-right information website Novopress, Seba declared: “It is an honor [that the Tribu Ka was forbidden], a medal for us! When a country, a Zionist colony par excellence, just gave you a medal to combat it with all the required dedication and toughness, this is a proof of how dangerous and relevant your actions and your words are” (quoted on http://vuesdumonde. forumactif.com/t4176-kemi-seba-je-lance-un-appel-a-tous-les-damnes-du-sion isme). The other element supporting the existence of such category was the study of the humorist Dieudonné’s anti-Zionist speeches. French but of Cameroonian background, Dieudonné has become, since the late 1990s, increasingly associated with anti-Zionism and was a candidate of the Anti-Zionist Party in the European elections in 2009. He was often labelled as an antisemite after a number of widely publicized skits involving puns and jokes, including a sketch in which he impersonated an Israeli settler by shouting “Isra’Heil!” while mimicking a Nazi salute. While examining Dieudonné’s political biography goes beyond the scope of this essay, it is worth noticing that, after having

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15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

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been identified as a leftist anti-imperialist, he became associated with the radical right. His connections to Jean-Marie Le Pen himself were particularly apparent in 2008 when the latter became godfather of Dieudonné’s daughter at her baptism in a traditionalist church. Dieudonné later claimed that this event was a provocation. References to this malediction may be found in the Francophone Afrocentric blogosphere, where it is generally interpreted as a theological tool designed against Blacks, but not necessarily by Jews. However, the small religious group “Fraternité Judéo-Noire” (FNJ—Jewish Black Fraternity), led by a Black Jewish convert, Edouard Guershon Nduwa, engaged in a theological comment on the malediction of Cham, arguing that it had been misrepresented as antiBlack and pro-Jewish. This fitted within a more general advocacy addressed to French Jewish religious authorities and aimed at raising awareness of antiBlack racism in Jewish prayer books and congregations. At the time of the dissolution of the Tribu Ka, Seba had already declared that he “appealed to the wretched of Zionism”. This is a reference to Harlem Désir, the former leader of the prominent antiracist NGO SOS-Racisme who has been a Socialist MP in the European Parliament since 2004. See http://archives-fr.novopress.info/5598/kemi-seba-«-je-lance-un-appel-atous-les-damnes-du-sionisme-»/. Although this claim is debatable in the French case, since many French Blacks are actually of Antillean descent. See http://www.egaliteetreconciliation.fr/Kemi-Seba-Black-Panthers-NouvelOrdre-Mondial-et-le-New-Black-Panther-Party-11175.html.

REFERENCES Adamson, Kay (2006) “Issues of Culture and Identity in Contemporary France: The Problem of Reconciling a Colonial Past with a Present Reality”, Sociology, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 627–643. Amossy, Ruth (1992) “Sociocritique et argumentation: l’exemple du discours sur le ‘déracinement culturel’ dans la Nouvelle Droite”, in Claude Duchet (ed.), Politique du texte, Lille, Presses Universitaires de Lille. Amossy, Ruth (1999) “Israël et les juifs dans l’argumentation de l’extrême-droite: doxa et implicite”, Mots, no. 58, pp. 79–100. Attal, Sylvain (2004) La Plaie. Enquête sur le nouvel antisémitisme, Paris, Denoël. Beauzamy, Brigitte (2005) “Le problème de l’indexicalité idéologique des discours sur la mondialisation de la culture”, Horizons philosophiques, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 1–12. Beauzamy, Brigitte, and Naves Marie-Cécile (2005) “Extreme-right discourses in France”, (unpublished report, Deliverable 6 of the FP5 XENOPHOB project). Billig, Michael (2001), “Humour and Hatred: The Racist jokes of the Ku Klux Klan”, Discourse and Society, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 267–289. Birnbaum, Pierre (1992) Les fous de la République. Histoire politique des Juifs d’Etat, de Gambetta à Vichy, Paris, Fayard. Birnbaum, Pierre (1998) Le moment antisémite. Un tour de la France en 1898, Paris, Fayard. Birnbaum, Pierre (2004) “Le recul de l’Etat fort et la nouvelle mobilisation antisémite dans la France contemporaine”, Pôle Sud, no. 21, pp. 15–29. Bonnafous, Simone, and Pierre Fiala (1986) “Marques et fonction du texte de l’autre dans la presse de droite et d’extrême-droite (1973–1982),” Mots, no. 12, pp. 43–63.

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Bunzl, Matti (2007) Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Hatreds Old and New in Europe, Chicago, Prickly Paradigm Press. Camus Jean-Yves (2005) “Etude sur l’utilisation d’éléments racistes, antisémites et xénophobes dans le discours politique”, ECRI France country case report, pp. 19–53, http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/ecri/country-by-country/france/ FRA-CbC-IV-2010-016-FRE.pdf. Duranton-Crabol, Anne-Marie (1988) “La Nouvelle Droite entre printemps et automne”, Vingtième Siècle, no. 17, pp. 39–50. Durpaire, François (2006) France blanche, colère noire, Paris, Odile Jacob. François, Stéphane, Damien Guillaume and Emmanuel Kreis (2008) “La Weltanschauung de la tribu Ka: d’un antisémitisme égyptomaniaque à un islam guénonien”, Politica Hermetica, no. 22, pp. 107–125. Hewitt, John P., and Randall Stokes (1975) “Disclaimers”, American Sociological Review, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 1–11. Krieg, Alice (1999) “Vacance argumentative: l’usage de (sic) dans la presse d’extrêmedroite contemporaine”, Mots, no. 58, pp. 11–34. Lecoeur, Erwan (2003) Un néo-populisme à la française. Trente ans de Front national, Paris, La Découverte. Lecoeur, Erwan (ed.) (2007) Dictionnaire de l’extrême-droite, Paris, Larousse. McCulloch, Tom (2006) “The Nouvelle Droite in the 1980s and 1990s: Ideology and Entryism, the Relationship with the Front National”, French Politics, no. 4, pp. 158–178. Milza, Pierre (1987) Fascisme français passé et présent, Paris, Flammarion. Milza, Pierre (1994) “Le front national crée-t-il une culture politique?”, Vingtième Siècle, vol. 44, no. 44, pp. 39–44. Quinn, Adrian (2002) “Le Pen and Mégret’s Christmas Divorce: The Far Right and the Media in France”, International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 179–199. Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak (2001) Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism, London, Routledge. Reyna, Stephen (2002) “Empire: A dazzling performance according to a simpleton”, Anthropological Theory, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 489–497. Rufin, Jean-Claude (2004) Chantier sur la lutte contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme, Rapport présenté au Ministère de l’Intérieur, de la Sécurité Intérieure et des Libertés Locales, http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/var/storage/rapports-publics/ 044000500/0000.pdf. Seidel, Gillian (1981) “Le fascisme dans les textes de la Nouvelle Droite”, Mots, no. 3, pp. 47–62. Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Racism and Anti-Semitism, Annual Reports 2005–2009, http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2009/france.html. Strecker, Ivo A., and Stephen A. Tyler (2009) Culture and Rhetoric, Oxford: Berghahn Books. Taguieff, Pierre-André (2002) La Nouvelle Judéophobie, Paris, Mille et une Nuits. Taguieff, Pierre-André (2008) La Judéophobie des Modernes, Paris, Odile Jacob. Taguieff, Pierre-André (2010) La Nouvelle propagande antijuive. Du symbole alDura aux rumeurs de Gaza, Paris, PUF. Tristan, Anne (1987) Au Front. Paris, Gallimard. Van Dijk, Teun (1992). ‘Discourse and the denial of racism’, Discourse and Society, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 87–118. Vinen, Richard C. (1994) “The End of an Ideology? Right-Wing Anti-Semitism in France 1944–1970”, Historical Journal, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 365–388. Winock, Michel (ed.) (1993) Histoire de l’extrême-droite en France, Paris, Seuil. Wodak, Ruth (2000) “The rise of racism—an Austrian or a European phenomenon?”, Discourse and Society, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 5–6.

10 Racial Populism in British Fascist Discourse The Case of COMBAT and the British National Party (1960–1967) John E. Richardson

TEXT AND CONTEXT A constant dilemma for fascists since 1945, in Britain as elsewhere across Europe, has been the extent to which they should be open and honest in their propaganda about what they actually stand for. Understandably, the Nazi industrialization of mass murder during the Second World War meant that there was little electoral cache in labelling your party or movement ‘fascist’. This basic fact of political history has meant that there are two discursive strategies open to parties and movements of the far and the extreme right in Britain, as in other European countries: dissociation from, or the rehabilitation of, Nazism (Sykes, 2005: 95). Parties that opt for the former strategy go to considerable lengths to deny any link to fascism, utilising a range of nominal, predicative and argumentative tools to (re)define the terms of reference and to differentiate their movement from those considered beyond the pale. Such a discursive accommodation is also in evidence in countries that constituted the Axis powers during World War II, though usually for specific legal reasons in addition to pure political expediency (see chapters on Austria, France and Germany in this volume). Texts from credentialized outsiders, which can be co-opted in an attempt to gloss over ideological commitments, are a boon to such extremist parties. Take the following example about the British National Party: BNP HAS ‘GREATEST POTENTIAL’: Colin Cross Analysis of British Right Wing (COMBAT, Issue 34, July-August 1965, p. 3) By argument, by logic and by analysis of election results we have endeavoured to show COMBAT readers that of all the movements on the Right in Britain today, it is the BNP alone that has the potential of saving Britain from racial suicide and to lead a resulting national resurgence. Now comes confirmation from the pen of Mr Colin Cross who, in his book on the pre-war Fascist movements in Britain and by newspaper articles has become the accepted authority amongst establishment political commentators on Right-Wing politics.

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John E. Richardson In an article headed ‘Britain’s Racialists’, which appeared in the weekly magazine New Society of June 3rd, Mr Cross gave an analysis of the different approaches, strengths and potential growth of a number of Right-Wing movements. . . . After dealing with the hopes and failures of the other two movements, Mr Cross then said: ‘It is possible, however, that the true future of British racialist politics lies with the British National Party, which is the only organisation formally to have broken away from the Fascist tradition of the 1930s’. . . . After summarising the basic fundamentals of BNP policy, Mr Cross then says: ‘The break with pre-war Fascism is almost complete. The BNP has no Leader whom it puts forward as a potential dictator and it avowedly works within the Parliamentary framework, declaring that it seeks power in just the same way as the orthodox political parties seek power.’

This short article achieves a great deal, rhetorically. Here, the BNP draws upon the arguments of Mr Cross—described as ‘the accepted authority amongst establishment political commentators on Right-Wing politics’ and therefore as a man with acknowledged wisdom on the subject. In the opening paragraph of this article, the author claims not only a communion with Cross’s research findings but also greater insight than him, since the Party arrived at his conclusions (‘the BNP alone . . . has the potential of saving Britain from racial suicide’) before he did. Thus credentialized, the author quotes Cross and, in so doing, indirectly offers the definition of ‘a fascist political party’ that the BNP considers to be acceptable. Only two characteristics are listed, though a third is logically entailed: the BNP ‘has no Leader whom it puts forward as a potential dictator’—therefore, fascism is marked by the Führerprinzip—and the BNP ‘avowedly works within the Parliamentary framework’; therefore fascism is marked by non-parliamentary rule. Whether this is a truly minimal ‘fascist minimum’ or simply the two most important ideological features is unclear, but, in combination, they entail that fascism is characterized by an opposition to democracy, in turn implying some form of dictatorial government. On this basis, the BNP then stakes out its ‘non-fascist’ qualifications. It is impossible to gauge the accuracy of the claims in this article, specifically whether the BNP had indeed ‘broken away from the Fascist tradition of the 1930s’, through reference to the contents of the text alone.1 To make any judgment regarding the politics of the BNP, we need to adopt a wider purview, taking into account a range of intertextual and contextual factors. Indeed, I would go as far as to claim that critique of political discourse is impossible without embedding semiosis in social, political and historical contexts of production and use. The Discourse Historical Approach to CDA suggests four levels of context that are vital in this regard (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, 2009; Richardson and Wodak, 2009; Wodak, 2009). First is

Racial Populism in British Fascist Discourse 183 the immediate language, or text internal co-text, which take into account issues such as textual coherence, cohesion, and ‘the local interactive processes of negotiation’ (Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 41), such as turn-taking, citation of multiple voices and opinions and so on. With regard to multimodal materials, such as the BNP’s newspaper COMBAT, co-textual analysis can focus on the relations between words and images, particularly the ways that meanings can be worked up through joint processes of visual and linguistic discourse. Second, there are the intertextual and interdiscursive relationships among utterances, texts, genres and discourses, in which we consider the ways that a concept, event, argument, or person is mentioned or discussed in different texts and in different genres. Such intertextuality can be considered synchronically, examining texts published on the same page or same issue of a newspaper, or from an extended diachronic perspective. These intertextual and interdiscursive relationships can and should be examined in terms of continuities and discontinuities with the period under analysis. Third, there are the social/sociological variables and institutional frames of a specific ‘context of situation’. Accordingly, if the object of analysis is a party newspaper, this would need to be contextualized as a party newspaper—that is, as a text produced at a particular time and by a particular organization according to a particular set of discursive criteria. Again, a comparative frame of analysis that examines the relations among text, organization and discursive criteria and the ways that these shift over time is often an illuminating approach. Fourth, analysis should take into account the wider sociopolitical and historical contexts within which the discursive practices are embedded. This fourth level of context is ‘history’ as it is conventionally understood—the broad and complex interactions of people, organizations, institutions and ideas. These four layers and the ways that they overlay and intersect enable researchers to better deconstruct the meanings of discourse and how they relate to context. With this in mind, we can move on to discuss the history and development of the BNP and its relations to other British political parties. POLITICAL CONTEXT: A SYNOPTIC ACCOUNT OF BRITISH FASCISM, 1945–1967 Although hundreds of British fascists—including Oswald Mosley and Arnold Leese, the leaders of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and the Imperial Fascist League (IFL), respectively—were interned without trial under Defence Regulation 18b for much of the war, this by no means killed off the British fascist tradition. Indeed, the 20 years following the end of the Second World War were arguably among the busiest for Britain’s far right, providing a hinge between the old-style open antisemitism of the 1930s and the veiled fascism of the 1970s (Billig, 1978; Macklin, 2007; Renton, 2000).

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As early as 1945, several small competing fascist grouplets operated, run by supporters of Mosley, including the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women. With Mosley’s return to political activism in the winter of 1947– 1948, they were all amalgamated into his new political party, the Union Movement. Leese, the ex-leader of the IFL (1928–1940) and described by Thayer (1965) as the ‘high priest’ of British Nazism, continued to plough his antisemitic furrow unabated. Before World War II, he argued that all Jews in Britain ‘should be deported to Madagascar; to qualify for deportation, all one needed was one Jewish grandparent. Leese also believed that the extermination of the Jews was a worthy alternative to deportation, but he had a suspicion that few people would sanction such a move’ (Thayer, 1965: 15). After the war, Leese published the book The Jewish War of Survival, in which he argued that, although ‘the Jews and Freemasons had won a battle’ with the defeat of Hitler, ‘they could still be routed by a determined policy of anti-Semitism’ (Cross, 1963: 199). This argument, that Jews instigated World War II in order to cement political-economic superiority, has been a relatively constant feature of British fascist discourse ever since. Arthur K. Chesterton, possibly more than any other, personified the shift in style and approach of British fascism after World War II. In the 1930s he had been a prominent member of the BUF, rising to the role of director of publicity and propaganda and chief organiser for the Midlands and editor of Blackshirt, the party’s newspaper, before leaving the party in 1938. He then briefly joined an organization called the Nordic League—described as ‘the British branch of international Nazism’—before serving in the British army during the war. After the war, he worked as a journalist before forming the League of Empire Loyalists (LEL) in 1954. The politics of the LEL—and especially the antisemitism of its leader, Chesterton—eventually attracted three new recruits who would go on to shape the course of British fascism over the next 40 years. They were John Bean, ex-member of the Union Movement and publisher of the journal, National Unity; John Tyndall; and Colin Jordan. After joining, each of these three men came to the conclusion that the League was not extreme enough for them—it was not sufficiently active, engaged in childish stunts (like throwing flour or eggs on people) and essentially operated like a ginger group for the Conservative Party. Leaving the LEL allowed Colin Jordan free rein to dedicate himself to the racial fascist project of Arnold Leese. For Leese, Jordan represented the new generation of National Socialists who would carry on the work he had started 20 years before, and Leese’s influence on him was profound. Jordan was also very close to Leese’s wife, so much so that she let him use a house she owned in Notting Hill as a headquarters for his own party, the White Defence League (WDL), which he founded in 1958. Meanwhile, Bean and Tyndall set up a party called the National Labour Party (NLP) along with Andrew Fountaine, a wealthy Norfolk landowner and ex-Conservative Party member who had fought for Franco and the Falangists in the Spanish civil war. The party president was to be Fountaine, although Bean’s role as

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policy director gave him effective control. Both the WDL and the NLP were integral in stoking the white racism that led to the Notting Hill riots in the summer of 1958—so much so that several members of the NLP were arrested and charged with public order offences. In late 1959, Thayer (1965: 18) claims, the Labour Party obtained an injunction against the NLP to stop it using the name. John Bean would later dispute this, but regardless, in 1960, there resulted a kind of arranged marriage wherein the WDL merged with the NLP to form the British National Party. This uneasy coalition of Nazis and British racial fascists didn’t hold long, and, in 1962, Jordan and Tyndall split off again, forming the National Socialist Movement (NSM) on 20 April 1962—Hitler’s birthday. The BNP carried on, with Bean as leader, and used this parting of ways as an opportunity to rebrand the BNP, attempting to put clear blue water between his ‘racial nationalism’ and Jordan and Tyndall’s move towards violent subversion. Following a term in prison for organising a paramilitary force for political objectives, Tyndall and Jordan fell out, with Tyndall breaking off to form his own party, the Greater Britain Movement, dedicated to advancing the cause of British National Socialism. This extended period of party splits and mergers is represented in Figure 10.1. As Figure 10.1 demonstrates, by 1967 there were five principal organisations competing on Britain’s fascist fringe. Clearly, this was unsustainable, and so, in February 1967, the LEL, the BNP and members of the pressure group the Racial Preservation Society agreed on a merger, forming the

Chesterton

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National Labour Party 1958

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Yorkshire Campaign to Stop Immigration 1969–72 British Campaign to Stop Immigration 1972

New National Front 1980

British National Party 1982

Whole party incorporated Party only partly incorporated Members’ delayed incorporation (Adapted from Troyna, 1982)

Figure 10.1 Post-war development of British Fascist parties.

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National Front (NF). At the inaugural meeting of the NF, in 1967, Chesterton (the first chairman of the party) declared their aim to be ‘that the National Front is taken seriously as an acceptable challenge to the political parties that have brought the once proud name of Britain into the mire to be spat upon from one end of the world to the other’ (Spearhead, 17: 6). Throughout all this period, John Bean edited the newspaper COMBAT. Forty-two issues of COMBAT were published between the autumn of 1958 and November 1967, and across this time it aimed to represent the politics of the parties that John Bean variously was a member of; before 1967 the newspaper also acted as ‘The Official Organ’ for two of these parties, the NLP (1958–1960) and the BNP (1960–1967). The analysis presented over the remainder of this chapter aims to reflect the shifting ideological agenda of Bean during the 1960s, as represented in COMBAT. Specifically, the newspaper reflects the development of British fascist discourse from an explicit articulation of antisemitic conspiracy theories to a strategy in which such ideological commitments were subsumed behind a veneer of racial populism. I argue that, despite the explicit claims to have ameliorated their politics to ‘only’ racial nationalism via parliamentary democratic process, even at the end of its publication run, the arguments of the BNP as reflected in COMBAT remained rooted in the fascist ideology of Jewish conspiracy, racial myth, anti-egalitarianism and antidemocratic authoritarianism. Finally, since the newspaper was edited by John Bean, who until 2010 edited the current BNP’s magazine Identity, analysing the rhetorical strategies adopted in COMBAT may also provide insight into the electioneering of the current BNP. FROM THE NATIONAL LABOUR PARTY TO THE BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY On February 27, 1960, the WDL and the NLP merged to form the British National Party; COMBAT became its official newspaper, and immediately there started a period of increasing radicalization of Bean and his fellow activists. The clearest indication of their intensifying fanaticism comes from an examination of how the principles of this party developed in the two years preceding this merger. In 1958, the first two (and so, we can assume, the uppermost) principles of the NLP read: 1. The old British Empire has been thrown away to be replaced by a meaningless façade called the ‘Commonwealth’, which as an effective world power is non-existent. In its place we advocate a new Union of the white dominions, with whom we have common ties of blood. 2. The new Union of British nations, allied with our racial kinsmen of Western Europe, must become the world’s third stabilising force, independent of both the American money power and the tyranny of Communism. (‘Principles of the NLP,’ COMBAT, Issue 1, Autumn 1958, p. 8)

Racial Populism in British Fascist Discourse 187 The stress on the fading British Empire echoed, in part, the concerns of the LEL and indexed Bean’s historic links with that movement. However, here the implicit racial supremacist agenda of the LEL is pushed to the fore, emphasising the place that race held for the party in explaining social and political progress. The two principles also reveal an important synonym, central in understanding the coded and euphemistic language of British fascism: point 1 refers to a ‘Union of the white dominions’, but in point 2 this is named the ‘Union of British nations’. Thus, according to this Rosetta Stone, British means white. The formation of the BNP led to a step-change in vitriol, with code phrases like ‘money power’ and ‘Communism’ replaced by ‘Jew’ and ‘Jewish’ in the principles of the Party for the first time: 1. The foremost concern of the Party is the preservation of Northern European folk—predominantly Nordic in race—and thereby the preservation of Northern European civilization and the heritage of Britain. 2. The Party fights to free Britain from Jewish domination and the coloured influx, and to establish a Britain for the British wherein permanent residence and nationality are restricted to our Northern European folk. To this end the Party stands for the termination of all non-Northern European immigration, inclusive of Jews; and, wherever possible, the gradual and humane transference of all such racial aliens already here to lands of their own. (‘The British National Party—for Race and Nation’, COMBAT, Issue 6, May–June 1960, p. 5) The inclusion of several watchwords—notably ‘Nordic’, ‘folk’, ‘Jewish domination’—marks the politics of the BNP out as indelibly National Socialist. The first principle fully incorporates into Bean’s party, for the first time, the racial fascism of Arnold Leese. In more detail, such an ideology holds that race is the basis of politics; that all human civilization and development spring from the ‘spirit’ inherent, unchangeably, in one’s race; that different races have different capacities for ‘civilization’; that these races form a hierarchy in which some are ‘naturally’ more valuable and beneficial than others; and, consequently, that these higher races need protecting from the threats posed by the lower and competing races. Principle 2 sets up a chain of equivalences, in which to be British is to be a member of the ‘Northern European folk’ is to be ‘predominantly Nordic’—that is, white, in accordance with the prior commitments of the NLP. For the first time, however, the BNP explicitly declares that this idealised ‘folk’—the Nazi concept that invokes a pre-modern, agrarian notion of a people whose existence reaches back through time, simultaneously rooted ‘here’ and yet unrestricted to the modern, territorial state—excludes Jews. Jews are classified as ‘nonNorthern European’, as ‘racial aliens’, and as such will be deported along with ‘coloured’ immigrants. Orwell (1946) famously wrote of the ways that political language can be used to defend the indefensible. His ‘translation’ of

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the euphemism ‘transfer of population’—meaning that millions are robbed of their homes and land ‘and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry’—looks identical, in form and proposed function, to the BNP’s proposed ‘humane transference of all such racial aliens’. From this point, and for much of the next two years, almost every article published in COMBAT contained some variation on the theme of ‘money power’ and the undesirable power that Jews hold over Western political life, to the detriment of ‘the white race’. For example, the editorial of Issue 9 (December 1960, p. 2) argued that there was little point discussing the political differences between the US presidential hopefuls Nixon and Kennedy—‘both are the servants of the Jewish dominated New York money power, but Kennedy as his record shows, is the more eager and likely to be the more useful.’ In the same issue, we are informed that the BNP does not trust De Gaulle: ‘Above all, De Gaulle has too many Jewish advisors close to his ear, including the emissaries of the Rothschild’s banking family. His lieutenant is the Jew Debre, Prime Minister of France’ (‘The Tragedy of France’, COMBAT, Issue 9, December 1960, p. 3). In Issue 10 (January-February 1961), four whole pages (of the eight-page newspaper) were dedicated to conspiracy, Jewish power, Jewish atrocities against British soldiers in Palestine in 1946, the belief that World War II was a Jewish-orchestrated war fought for Jewish political-economic interests, the ‘great lie of the six million’, and the ongoing Eichmann trial. It was under the pen of Colin Jordan that the conspiracy was elaborated with the greatest force. For example, p. 4 of Issue 9 contained two articles written by Jordan. The upper portion of the page was taken by an article spelling out certain key differences among the BNP, the UM and the LEL (‘Union Movement and League of Empire Loyalists’, COMBAT, Issue 9, December 1960), concentrating, as ever, on ‘The Jewish Question’—printed in bold type for impact. Jordan argues that the UM, whilst led by the ‘outstanding’ Mosley, is nevertheless deficient since it ‘is not and never has been a genuine racialist organisation’. Specifically, the . . . Union Movement is inadequate and unreliable on the fundamental question of the Jews—fundamental because Jewish power over Britain is the greatest single explanation of Britain’s plight today. Union Movement does not include within its policy the one adequate fair and feasible remedy for that Jewish power, namely that the Jews should be transferred to a country of their own. . . . Mosley himself has repeatedly denied that he is anti-Jewish. A favourite statement of his is to the ewect [sic] that the Movement attacks some Jews for what they do and not all Jews for what they are. Yet Jews do what they do, inimical to British interests, precisely because of what they are, namely Jews by race, and thereby members of a foreign nation seeking world supremacy.

Racial Populism in British Fascist Discourse 189 . . . Those members of Union Movement who, though they are antiJewish themselves, are prepared to defend its attitude of avoiding appearing anti-Jewish and denying being anti-Jewish, declare that this is a necessary concession to public opinion and the forces of opposition. This voice of compromise on a fundamental principle is the voice of weakness. The LEL are similarly misguided, fighting as they are for a lost cause: ‘like it or not’, Jordan writes, again printed in bold for emphasis, ‘the age of the old empires is ending, and it is the Jewish ideological empire of Moscow and the Jewish shekel empire of Wall Street which are thriving’. Here, ‘Jewish shekel empire’ manages to condense the antisemitic stereotypes of Jewish greed and money and hence economic domination into a metonymic noun phrase. Jews, Jordan maintains, are ‘the single greatest explanation of Britain’s plight’ due, presumably, to their power (a power he doesn’t explain or itemize here). They ‘do what they do’, contrary to the interests of the Nation, by virtue of what they are—because of their race, their nature, and hence they cannot act in any other way. It is difficult to imagine a more straightforwardly racist and antisemitic statement of political ideology. Aside from differentiating the beliefs of the BNP from those of the UM and LEL, this article also functions as a recruitment advert—reaching out to the members of these two organisations who feel (like Jordan and his colleagues Bean, Tyndall and Fountaine before them) that their politics are weak and insufficiently radical. Given this inevitable and timeless conflict of interest between ‘Them’ and ‘Us’, the only solution is a pogrom, which, lower down the article, Jordan names ‘the second expulsion of Jews from Britain’. The specifics of this political aspiration are fleshed out in Jordan’s second article, on the lower half of this same page, which elaborates one of the 12 policies of the BNP (‘Liberation of Britain from the Coloured Invasion and Jewish Domination’, COMBAT, Issue 9, December 1960). The details are much as one would imagine—the inherent violence of the expulsion masked in the euphemistic gloss of adjectives such as ‘gradual, efficient and humane’. However, Jordan’s proposed solution to ‘The Jewish Question’ is riven with an inherent contradiction: if Jews, by virtue of ‘what they are, namely Jews by race’, are ineradicably ‘members of a foreign nation seeking world supremacy’, then surely they could pursue this fiendish aim from outside Britain’s borders? Indeed, this glaring ‘fact’ is indexed by the claim that the loci of Jewish International Power are identified as the ‘ideological empire of Moscow and the Jewish shekel empire of Wall Street’. The upshot, of course—which Jordan himself would later realise as his politics became ever more violent—is that (fascist) Britain will never be free of the malign influence of International Money Power whilst there are Jews on this Earth. The solution is therefore always, in the final analysis, a final solution of annihilation, of genocide.

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The ideological road of British racial fascism will always end at Auschwitz, and never was this clearer than during the period 1960–1962. DEVELOPMENTS: RACIAL POPULISM AS SURFACE Although the Spearhead paramilitary ‘elite corps’ had existed in the BNP since the summer of 1960—even holding a camp, where they practiced their military formations, on party president Andrew Fountaine’s land in Norfolk (Thayer, 1965: 19)—by the start of 1962, the seditious nature of their activities were worrying Bean. At an emergency meeting of the National Council in February 1962, Bean and Fountaine tried to eject Jordan as National Organiser. Although they achieved a 7-to-5 majority supporting their proposal, this being a fascist political party, the constitution stated that the leader could not be removed without his consent. The vote was therefore void, and Bean and Fountaine were left with no other choice than to walk out, taking the newspaper, the BNP name and the majority of party members with them. The next issue of COMBAT provided an opportunity to redraw the boundaries of party policy and to distance themselves from Jordan and his supporters, though in actuality it marked a change of strategy rather than ideology. First, Fountaine states that he wants to ‘re-emphasise in broad outline what our aims and purposes are’: 1. The BNP identifies itself with the Return of Authority in the British way of life in all its phases: political, cultural, economic and social. From this comes: (a) The restoration of our country’s National Sovereignty: this means the ability to run our own affairs without internal interference from Moscow-inspired Bolshevism or external interference from Washington finance capitalism. In these two manifestations we identify a common enemy. (b) A reversal of the present trend towards the biological extermination of our Race. (‘Changes in BNP Leadership and Tactics’, COMBAT, Issue 16, March-April 1962, p. 3) The verb ‘re-emphasise’, in Fountaine’s preface, presupposes that these aims and purposes must have been previously stated and so already acts to signal a sense of continuity rather than change in the direction of the party. However, the aims are now euphemized and recoded into more expedient political terminology: the ‘Return of Authority’ harks back to a more traditional political and, indeed, cultural system, perhaps one based on an aristocratic principle. However, given that this ‘Authority’ extends to all areas of ‘political, cultural, economic and social’ life in Britain, it would arguably be more apt to use the term ‘totalitarian’. A similar deceitfulness is detectable in the

Racial Populism in British Fascist Discourse 191 (coded) support for nationalism in the face of ‘a common enemy’, which incorporates a significant shift in referential strategy. Gone are the references to Jews and Jewish power; instead, those interfering in British politics are identified by geographical location and political-ideological commitment: ‘Moscow-inspired Bolshevism’ and ‘Washington finance capitalism’. Indeed, the argument might have appeared relatively innocuous were it not for the claim that both these disparate and seemingly antagonistic geopolitical forces, are in fact ‘manifestations’ of the same ‘common enemy’. The identity of this common enemy is not spelled out, and this non-naming is significant: to the untrained eye, the phrase is sufficiently imprecise to spare the BNP from being accused of antisemitism. For interested parties, the indefinite phrase leaves an explanatory absence: who is this enemy? If they were interested, they could then read on, either the rest of the newspaper or the texts on sale via the party’s bookshop, Kinsman Books. However, for the initiated, these noun phrases act to index the party’s continued devotion to a conspiracy explanation of politics. Given that the terms of reference are only a minor alteration from the previously explicitly identified ‘Jewish ideological empire of Moscow and the Jewish shekel empire of Wall Street’ (‘Liberation of Britain from the Coloured Invasion and Jewish Domination’, COMBAT, Issue 9, December 1960, p. 4), they could safely assume that this unspecified common enemy is still, eternally, ‘the Jew’. Clearly therefore, the ideological core of the party remains unchanged. How, then, to put clear blue water between the party and the activities of Spearhead? The success or failure of all or any part of our plan depends largely upon the tactical order in which we apply them. . . . We observe three paramount factors: A. Our Party is diminutive and the enemy in his many forms is vast. . . . B. Our only material resources in cash or in kind lie in these islands and from the racial stock which is indigenous to them: the British people. Thus every effort should be made to avoid giving unnecessary offence to a large uncommitted section, on whom we must ultimately rely for material support. C. . . . Those people who cannot maintain their dedication and fanaticism to the cause without resort to extrovert political exhibitionism in the spurious imitation of what they fondly imagine to have been the nexus of the NSDAP merely insult the past as they destroy the future. These ‘three paramount factors’ reveal a mismatch between the principles of the party, discussed earlier, and the tactics for furthering these aims. Starting from the final of these considerations: the party acknowledges that there

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are ‘people’ whose enthusiasm for ‘the cause’ is such that they give in ‘to extrovert political exhibitionism’ and ‘imitation’ of the Nazi Party. Given that this is included as part of a discussion of how the party and its members can move beyond the failures of ‘the past era’, one can assume that these unidentified ‘people’ are party members; otherwise, the inclusion of this term would be inchoate. Elsewhere, vagueness clouds the political project to which these ‘people’ dedicate themselves: noun phrases like ‘the cause’, ‘the past era’ and even ‘the nexus of the NSDAP’ (which may be a malapropism, since it doesn’t make any sense) stringently avoid referring to fascism. More important, however, factor ‘B’ in the extract presents, explicitly for the first time, the tactical advantage of core and surface for the BNP. For Fountaine, it is not members’ ‘dedication and fanaticism to the cause’, even to the NSDAP, which are of concern but rather the manifestation of such commitments as ‘extrovert political exhibitionism’. In essence, he argues that the outward face of the party should not reflect these inner enthusiasms—and for the pragmatic reasons outlined in points B and A: they give ‘offence to a large uncommitted section’ of the British public; the party relies on this public for financial support; and, because it is small in stature, especially when compared with ‘the enemy’, the party cannot afford to jeopardize this income and support. It is difficult to imagine a more straightforwardly barefaced statement of political opportunism. Two years later, in yet another statement of their principles, the reasons behind this discursive dishonesty were elaborated again: Almost without exception each new movement of the Right has resorted to playing the same old hackneyed tunes on the same 1933 vintage fiddle. . . . For too long we have been entrammelled by those who have learnt nothing since they first found that the Russian Revolution was backed by New York Jewish financial houses. Whilst this is essential background historical knowledge, the advent of the Second World War with its extermination of an unknown number of Jews has meant that the climate of sympathy created towards Jewish suffering destines [sic] those whose total preoccupation is with the ‘Jewish plot’ to the same political backwater in which they have always floundered. (Editorial, COMBAT, Issue 27, April-June 1964, p. 2) Although on initial examination the BNP here appears to be distancing itself from neo-fascism and parties that recycle ideas and arguments from 1933, in fact their position is more complex. First, the antisemitic canard of ‘New York Jewish financial houses’ funding the Russian Revolution—a key component in modern antisemitic conspiracy theories—is from the outset presupposed (being presented as a definite article noun phrase and ‘learnt’ by people); the myth is then evaluated positively as ‘essential background historical knowledge’. Second, although this editorial appears to acknowledge the existence of the Holocaust, in fact it presents a revisionist reading.

Racial Populism in British Fascist Discourse 193 The scale of the ‘Final Solution’ is moderated and thereby implicitly questioned by the claim that ‘an unknown number of Jews’ were killed. Further, by deleting the agent of these murders in the noun phrase ‘the advent of the Second World War with its extermination of an unknown number of Jews [by whom?]’, the editorial insinuates that the deaths were a general feature of the Second World War, rather than a specific and active policy of Nazis and their allies. These two observations taken together demonstrate that the BNP had neither recanted nor distanced itself from the antisemitic conspiracy tradition. Third, and most important, it is necessary to tease out the presupposed trail of cause and consequence in the extract. That is: the Second World War created a ‘the climate of sympathy . . . towards Jewish suffering’, which, in turn, meant that people ‘whose total preoccupation is with the “Jewish plot” ’ have been politically marginalised. A, or perhaps the, net result of World War II is therefore that ‘essential background historical knowledge’ of the international Jewish conspiracy is being denied to the public. And readers of COMBAT might have recalled the abundant articles previously published that explained the origins of World War II: ‘Exterminate Germans was Jewish Plan’, ‘Jewish Deceit at Dachau’, ‘The Great Lie of the Six Million’, ‘COMMUNIST EVIDENCE: Jewish Fake Photos’, among others (all from COMBAT, Issue 10, January-February 1961, pp.4–5). For those who were already convinced, the utterance as a whole may therefore have actually enforced the belief of BNP members in the veracity of the conspiracy, even whilst superficially belittling those totally preoccupied with it. Thus, the tragedy of the Holocaust was as grist to the mill for antisemitic conspiracy theorists, as indicated by the ways that the BNP focused on it, reframing both its status as historic fact and its broader political significance in postwar Europe. What the article does signal, however, is the BNP’s decision that such conspiracy theories would no longer be placed centrally in political campaigns. In this sense, the article represents another step change in strategy—essentially attempting to eradicate Fountaine’s aim and purpose 1(a), discussed earlier (‘Changes in BNP Leadership and Tactics’, COMBAT, Issue 16 March-April 1962, p. 3). In its place, the BNP elected to campaign more insistently on aim/purpose 1(b)—against ‘biological extermination of our Race’ through opposition to immigration and to the settlement of minority racial communities in Britain. In keeping with the high prominence given to ‘Race and Nation’ in successive statements of party principle, this was not a new argument for the party. From ‘House Britons—Not Blacks’ (COMBAT, Issue 8, October-November 1960, p. 1), ‘Unemployment Mounts—Yet Immigrants Still Pour In’ (COMBAT, Issue 20, January-February 1963) to fighting to keep immigration a lead issue of the 1964 General Election (front page articles: ‘A Labour Government Means BLACK FUTURE FOR BRITAIN’, COMBAT, Issue 23, July-August 1963; ‘IMMIGRATION: AN ELECTION ISSUE’, COMBAT, Issue 27, April-June 1964), the BNP was thoroughly and implacably opposed

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to nonwhite immigration. However, whereas previously immigration was presented as a symptom—with democracy the disease and ‘Jewish Power’ the pathogen—increasingly the BNP presented itself as a single-issue, antiimmigration party, arguing from a simplified position of racial populism: that the presence of black and brown faces in the United Kingdom was now the biggest political problem facing Britain. The article ‘Immigration Quiz’ (COMBAT, Issue 21, March-April 1963, p. 5) posed a series of 24 rhetorical questions which, in a remarkably short space, managed to include all the primary thematic markers of prejudiced discourse on minority ethnic communities that developed in the 1960s and exist to the present day—including fears of being ‘overrun’, of facing an existential threat to Us, of the threat of disorder, disease and crime (particularly street crime/‘mugging’, drugs and sexual crime), of facing a financial burden and of allowing in people who would take advantage of ‘our’ generosity. For example: 1. Is it right that coloured immigrants be allowed to pour into Britain at a time when we have one million unemployed? . . . 4. Is it right that wholesale immigration should be allowed to continue when the Local Health Officers say that it is largely responsible for the increase in TB, VD and other diseases? . . . 8. Is it right that we should allow the youth of our nation to be corrupted on an ever-increased scale by coloured dope-dealers, who take an apparent delight in debasing the white race? . . . 15. Is it right that the British taxpayer should be heavily burdened in order that large numbers of coloured immigrants be paid national assistance for doing nothing? . . . 21. Is it right that we should allow our white race to be mongrelized and our white civilization to be destroyed by interbreeding with more primitive peoples? Notably, none of these 24 questions referred to conspiratorial powers or interests that are behind, or benefit from, ‘coloured immigration’ in the United Kingdom. ‘If you have answered NO to most or all of these questions’, the article concluded at the bottom, ‘then your place is in the ranks of the British Nation Party’. The BNP were keen to impress that their campaign to ‘Keep Britain White’ didn’t mean that they hated other races. Repeatedly they stated that their fight was ‘Not against the coloured man but against the old party politicians who created the problem’ (‘Immigration: The National Awakening’, COMBAT, Issue 31, March 1965, p. 3). However, the differentiation they offered between racism and their professed ‘racialism’ at times looked like a dance on the head of a pin: . . . a person who joins our movement because he hates Negroes, Jews or Cypriots, cannot be a true racialist. The true racialist recognises the

Racial Populism in British Fascist Discourse 195 differing abilities and attributes of the races of mankind. . . . Therefore to hate the West Indian immigrant because his customs and reaction to life are so different from the native Briton shows a lack of understanding of the basic principles of race that are involved. Certainly, we racialists can grow to hate the presence of non-European immigrants in our homeland, but this is a hatred of the resultant mongrelisation of our stock and not hatred of the coloured immigrant in the abstract. (‘Preservation of Our British Stock’, COMBAT, Issue 20, January-February 1963, p. 4) Accordingly, ‘we’ belong here, and ‘they’ belong there, and it is this sense of being out place that the BNP objects to (in addition to the ‘mongrelisation of our stock’ that inexorably follows). It is doubtful whether a family recently migrated from the Commonwealth would have felt any less threatened by knowing that the BNP merely hated their ‘presence’ in Britain and not their existence ‘in the abstract’. Furthermore, this bond between blood and soil somehow didn’t translate to the BNP supporting the decolonisation of Britain’s Dominions nor to the repatriation of white Africans. Indeed they fought very hard in support of ‘the stand taken by Ian Smith and his people to defend civilisation in Rhodesia’ (‘BNP Spearheads Support for Rhodesia’, COMBAT, Issue 36, November-December 1965, p. 7), in addition to continued white-rule in apartheid South Africa. This inconsistency reveals the true commitment of the party, a commitment which has continued through to the BNP of the present day (Richardson, 2011): an unquestioned belief in the right of the white man (the gender-specific noun here is intentional) to rule wherever he sees fit, and the white fantasy (Hage, 1998: 85) that they have the right and the ability to regulate the ethnic parameters of British society, to tolerate or prohibit, to include or exclude, both physically and verbally. For this reason, they object in the strongest possible terms when this presupposed right to speak and act as they see fit is proscribed in any way. Their arguments in COMBAT sidestep the traditional debates regarding ‘hate speech’ and ‘free speech’ and how such communicative acts may be distinguished from each other. Instead, they argue that the apposite terms are ‘opinion’ and ‘insult’. Opinion and the free expression thereof should be unrestricted as a matter of political liberty; an opinion qua opinion should not (and perhaps cannot) be regarded as an insult; as such, it is their right as British (read: white) men to freely express their political opinions, even those viewed as racist/‘racialist’. Thus, we have the following front-page article on the subject of the Wilson Government’s Racial Relations Bill, which the party argued ‘is obviously designed not to protect coloured [sic] but to suppress discussion of immigration’—that is, the expression of opinions on this subject: . . . The Bill may prevent us from proclaiming: ‘Keep Britain White’— which is an expression of opinion and not meant as an insult. . . . However, it will not stop the BNP from continuing its struggle to see that all

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Here, they announce that even though they intend to adjust their language in accordance with the letter of the proposed law, they will continue to oppose nonwhite immigration and campaign to ‘Keep Britain White’. This they will achieve through adopting a new code word. Just as antisemitic referential strategies developed from ‘Jewish internationalists’ (and variants) through ‘international money power’ and finally to simply ‘money power’, so the BNP believe that explicitly racialized predicates are no longer necessary, and their opposition to nonwhite immigration can be recast as the ‘race-neutral’ opposition to ‘immigrants’ and ‘immigration’. This point is important—not only because it again demonstrates the ways that fascist political parties continually moderate their language whilst maintaining their political objectives but also because it indexes the extent to which immigration had become thoroughly racialized at this point in British history. As they claim: ‘British people will know’ that when the BNP refer to ‘immigrants’ they are not talking about ‘Frenchmen, Dutchmen or Australians . . . but Africans, West Indians and Asiatics’. Such a statement speaks not only to the growing subtlety and sophistication of British fascist propaganda but also to the extent to which their racist campaign to ‘Keep Britain White’ had infected mainstream British political discourse by shifting the presumed referents of political terminology. DEVELOPMENTS: ANTISEMITIC CONSPIRACIES AT CORE Thus, despite both the attempts to remove antisemitism from the pages of COMBAT and the explicit claims that the party had put the old ways behind it since the departure of Jordan and Tyndall, in 1962, a significant strain of antisemitism remained. This manifested itself in three main forms: first, as earlier, Jews were implicitly associated with disproportionate support for immigration or else with supporting the rights of minority ethnic communities, two things which the BNP obviously considered inherently malevolent. For example, towards the end of the article examined earlier (‘KEEP BRITAIN WHITE! And to Hell with Wilson’s Race Laws!’, COMBAT, Issue 32 May-June 1965, p. 1), the BNP rails against ‘a new organisation called CARD (Co-Ordinating Committee Against Racial Discrimination)’, the leader of which is not a coloured man, but is a Mr Maurice Ludmer—but from what we saw of him on TV recently, he is not an Englishman either!

Racial Populism in British Fascist Discourse 197 This extract, although presented as an aside, is clearly not an incidental comment. What was it about Mr Ludmer’s ‘race’ that the BNP thought important enough to draw our attention to it? First, he is described as neither ‘coloured’ nor an Englishman; logically, this entails a third category. On initial examination, the binary categories that the BNP use in establishing this anomalous third set appear mismatched: not two ‘racial’ predicates (white vs coloured) or two national/ethnic predicates (English vs foreign/ non-English) but a combination of both. The implication is that these alternatives, whilst not necessarily coterminous, nevertheless mapped onto each other, that there is something White about English and something coloured about foreign/non-English. A sense of this exists also in the way the BNP takes ‘immigrant’ to refer to non-White immigrants in this same article: to be foreign is to be ‘coloured’. This acknowledged, there is apparently something remarkable (in both senses of the word) about Mr Ludmer’s racial/ ethnic identity. Second, this ‘not-English’ quality was discerned when ‘we saw’ him on TV. We can therefore assume that it was his physical appearance that marked him out and not, for example, the way he spoke or his accent (otherwise, it would be more fitting to have written ‘from what we heard of him . . .’). And yet this identifier cannot be his skin and the way this is taken to index racial identity, otherwise, he could simply have been described/classified as being ‘coloured’. In sum, therefore: he is non-coloured but not-English; he is white but not White. Given the way the BNP repeatedly worked up the idea that Jews look different to ‘Us’ and through caricatured cartoons depicted the stereotypical features one can use to distinguish ‘Them’ from ‘Us’ (hooked noses, curly dark hair, round horn-rimmed spectacles), the implication is clear: Maurice Ludmer was Jewish. What’s more, he was a Jew working for racial integration; the ‘international conspiracy’ was still hard at work, at least for those who chose to see it. Second, there persisted stories of Jewish financial power and influence, indexing what one could call an abbreviated version of the international conspiracy—that Jews work together behind the scenes to ensure their economic domination. It was this ‘Jewish’ character of international finance that was at the heart of the pseudo-anticapitalist arguments of British fascism and their planned financial ‘solution’ in various forms of distributist, mercantile and autarkic capitalism. As one would expect of a complete worldview on how history operates, such texts frequently posited a basic continuity from past to present to (possible) future. Thus, in a review of A. K. Chesterton’s conspiracy classic, The New Unhappy Lords, Bean argues that, whilst the ‘internationalist empire . . . emanates from America, it is not, as Chesterton shows, controlled by any American party but rather the money power of New York. The same money power, as we are pointedly reminded, that financed the Bolshevik revolution in 1917’ (‘The Money Power Unveiled’, COMBAT, Issue 35, September-October 1965, p. 4). In the same issue, and with regard to the present, Fountaine asks, ‘What is more Jewish—in the Shakespearean sense—than the finance capitalism of the

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British stock exchange or the Usury of the Bank of England?’ (‘Politics, Impure and Simple’, p. 6). Finally, the future development of the European Common Market is described as ‘extending the domain of international finance’ whose chief backers are ‘the international finance houses based on Wall Street, New York’ (‘Beware Common Market Revival’, COMBAT, Issue 37, January-March 1966, p. 5). Although the referential strategies may have changed—no longer using a nominal like ‘the Jewish shekel empire of Wall Street’—the conspirators clearly remain the same. Third, even during this later phase of COMBAT, articles were printed that presented the expanded version of the international conspiracy—that Jews work together behind the scenes to ensure their total economic, political, cultural and racial domination over the ‘white race’ and hence over ‘the civilised world’. As ever, an intertextual reference was the chosen method wherein the British fascist could hide the conspiracy theory in plain view (Billig, 1978; Richardson, 2011). A review of ‘ “Racial Contours”, the new book on the factor of race in human survival, by H.B. Isherwood’, claims that the book is being ‘subject to hidden pressure to keep it off the bookstalls’. Should anyone have wondered who is applying this pressure, the article was headlined ‘Whose Hidden Hand?’ (COMBAT, Issue 37, January– March 1966, p. 3). The Hidden Hand was an alternative title for the viciously antisemitic magazine Jewry über alles, published in the 1920s by an organization called The Britons, and since has acted as an intertextual trope for the international conspiracy (see Copsey 2007). Readers are helpfully informed that copies of Racial Contours are available for purchase through the BNP’s bookshop, Kinsman Books, in addition to ‘other books on race, communism, international finance and general political interest’. Slightly earlier in COMBAT ’s publication run, though still within the period where Bean claimed the party had purged itself of fascism, they published the following article, wherein the BBC were incorporated in the international conspiracy: . . . the so-called ‘British’ Broadcasting Corporation [is] one of the largest, best organised and most blatant centres of Communist and antiWhite propaganda and subversion in this country. . . . In a recent Radio Newsreel, describing the richly deserved execution of the Spanish Communist torturer Julian Grimau appeared to be about to burst into tears as he eulogised Grimau. Great emphasis was also laid on the fact that it was 25 years since his crimes were committed. I do not recollect the BBC mentioning the time lag between Adolf Eichmann’s activities and his judicial murder in a country which, unlike Spain, did not even exist at the time of his alleged crimes. . . . The above are only a few examples, picked almost at random, from among the streams of Marxism, Zionist and pro-coloured propaganda which pour daily into millions of British homes by way of TV and radio. . . . One of the first tasks facing a BNP Government will be

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to ensure that the BBC News services really do become the representative voice of Britain and not of Tel Aviv as at present. (‘What’s British about the ‘B’BC?’, COMBAT, Issue 22, May-June 1963, pp. 6–7) The extract first explicitly celebrates the execution of Grimau by the Franco regime, before condemning Eichmann’s ‘judicial murder’ for his euphemistically named ‘activities’. The author therefore offers an explicit comparison between these two cases that draws on a topos of injustice: that it was unfair of the BBC to welcome the execution of Eichmann and not that of Grimau when the crimes of Grimau were worse. This, in turn, supports a higher-order symptomatic argument that this unbalanced treatment reveals a truth regarding the (Communist, ‘Zionist’) politics of the BBC and the direct claim that the BBC serves Tel Aviv (read: Jews), not Britain. It should go without saying that such argumentation is fallacious on at least three counts: unreasonable use of argument scheme (false comparison between the crimes of Eichmann and Grimau; false comparison between the trials of Eichmann and Grimau); hasty generalisation; and unreasonable equivocation of Eichmann’s active role in the Holocaust (contravening the languageuse rule; see van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004). This article also quotes directly from the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion on five separate occasions, detailing the ways that, through control over the mass media, news agencies and literature, the conspiracy has ‘fooled, bemused and corrupted . . . the goyim’. For readers of COMBAT unfamiliar with this text, the editor John Bean adds a note in parentheses at the end of the article: ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion were alleged to have been compiled at a gathering of Zionist Jews in Switzerland just before the turn of this century. Whether they were true or false—as is now contended—they were a remarkable prophesy of the political and social situation that exists in the Western countries today.’ This publication is therefore presented in the article as a form of documentary proof, verifying its symptomatic argument (that ‘the BBC serves Tel Aviv’) and hence its conspiratorial worldview. Again, however, the move is fallacious (unreasonable use of argument scheme, argument from authority; unreasonable starting point), as revealed by Bean’s paradoxical acceptance of their validity despite his acknowledgement of their inauthenticity. We do well to remember what Hitler wrote about the Protocols in Mein Kampf, not least because of its similarity to Bean’s position. After dismissing the question regarding their authenticity as unimportant, Hitler argued: ‘What matters is that they uncover, with really horrifying reliability, the nature and activity of the Jewish people, and expose them in their inner logic and their final aims’ (Mein Kampf, pp. 307–8). As Aaronovitch (2010: 40) points out, ‘The argument is undefeatable: the Protocols confirm what I believe and what I think I see around me, therefore they are true in the most important sense, even if they themselves are forgeries.’ That a forgery can be believed, even whilst being categorized as a forgery, reveals something of the

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conspiracy mind-set of Bean and other BNP members: the belief that there is a history taking place behind our backs and against our interests. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION At this stage, we can return to the text quoted in the introduction and ask: was the BNP a fascist party? In response, I would answer: ‘unquestionably yes’. For, although this chapter has concentrated on the prevalence and the seeming permanence of antisemitic conspiracy theories in the BNP, the extracts included index their adherence to the primary ideological markers of British fascist ideology: nationalism, autarkic capitalism, anticommunism and antidemocratic politics, both in principle and through paramilitary mobilisation. For, although some may regard the antisemitism of British fascism to be epiphenomenal or a distraction from the principle politicaleconomic aims of the fascist project or else a cynical means of attracting the support of racists, in fact political antisemitism of the kind we see in British fascist ideology allows for a ‘resolution of contradictions’ (Billig, 1978: 162). Opposition to ‘the Jew’ and Jewish political/economic/cultural influence is, according to fascist logic, the corollary of each of their core ideological commitments: who is a greater threat to the nation than the rootless, international cosmopolitan Jew? International finance capitalism and the mobilization of workers as a class for themselves are the twin politicaleconomic threats to unbridled autarkic ‘national’ capitalism—and who is apparently behind both? Such a ‘reconciliation of contradictions’ (Billig, 1978: 162) also brings a rhetorical benefit for fascist political campaigning: If both communism and capitalism are seen as common enemies in the same evil conspiracy then working-class support can be solicited with an anti-capitalist rhetoric and middle-class support can be solicited with an anti-communist rhetoric. The language of revolution can be used simultaneously with the language of tradition. Throughout, ‘the Jew’ is constructed as the mirror image of their political programme—as the anti-fascist par excellence. This chapter has demonstrated that, in the 1960s, the BNP shifted their discourse from explicit evocation of antisemitic conspiracy theories to one where such commitments were subsumed beneath a veneer of racial populism—of simple and straightforward opposition to immigration, using arguments and terms of reference similar to those in mainstream political discourse. Such a strategy was adopted for pragmatic reasons—partly to abide by restrictions on incitement racial hatred introduced in the Race Relations Act (1965) but predominantly to present a moderate face to the British public as an electorate and as a source of financial support. To contemporary eyes, this perhaps does not appear a radical departure. Indeed, it was a

Racial Populism in British Fascist Discourse 201 strategy also adopted by the NF in the 1970s (Billig, 1978) and by the BNP, under Tyndall and, later, Griffin, since 1982 (Copsey, 2007, 2008). Despite this, some academics have managed to conclude that both of these parties were not fascist and had in fact put a clear distance between themselves and fascist ideology (cf. Walker 1977 on the NF; Fella, 2008, Mastropaolo 2008 and Mudde 2007 on the BNP). To an extent, such errors are understandable; by adopting the methods of political science and basing analysis on predominantly contemporaneous accounts of party materials, too many studies of British fascism have stripped discourse from their historic contexts. Just as it is impossible to assess the veracity of a text’s truth claims using the text and the text alone, so it is extremely difficult to evaluate the fascist pedigree of a party (that claims to be other than fascist) through synchronic analysis. Only through a diachronic approach can we expose the continuities with the past and, most significant, the ways that historic discourses—referential, predicative and argumentation strategies—are rephrased, refigured and recontextualized into more palatable (i.e. coded and euphemised) forms for contemporary audiences. Though the words are different, once their genealogy is traced and reconstructed, it frequently becomes possible to argue that the tenor of such discourse and the underlying fascist logic remain the same.

NOTE 1. Following Billig (1978), I argue that fascism is characterised by a constellation of strong-to-extreme nationalism; support for a capitalist political economy (usually of an autarkic or protectionist nature); and opposition to communism (and any mobilisation of the working class as a class for itself). Crucially, these ideological commitments are pursued in such a way “that fascism will pose a direct threat to democracy and personal freedom” (p. 7). More specifically, fascism is a nationalist, reactionary, largely petty-bourgeois mass movement, which advocates, employs and/or tolerates violence against political opponents to further its goals. Fascism can rise to power as the ‘party of counterrevolutionary despair’ (Trotsky 1969) during periods of hegemonic crisis and working-class defeat.

REFERENCES Aaronovitch, David (2010) Voodoo Histories: How Conspiracy Theory Has Shaped Modern History. London: Vintage Books. Billig, Michael (1978) Fascists: A Social Psychological View of the National Front. London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Copsey, Nigel (2007) Changing course or changing clothes? Reflections on the ideological evolution of the British National Party 1999–2006, Patterns of Prejudice 41(1): 61–82. Copsey, Nigel (2008) Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy, 2nd edn. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Cross, Colin (1963) The Fascists in Britain. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

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Fella, Stefano (2008) Britain: Imperial Legacies, Institutional Constraints and New Political Opportunities, in Albertazzi, Daniele, & McDonnell, Duncan (eds.), Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy, pp. 181–197. Houndmills: Palgrave. Hage, Ghassan (1998) White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. Annandale, Australia: Pluto Press. Macklin, Graham (2007) Very Deeply Dyed in Black: Sir Oswald Mosley and the Resurrection of British Fascism after 1945. London: I. B. Tauris. Mastropaolo, Alfio (2008) Politics against Democracy: Party Withdrawal and Populist Breakthrough, in Albertazzi, Daniele, & McDonnell, Duncan (eds.), Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy, pp. 30–48. Houndmills: Palgrave. Mudde, Cas (2007) Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Orwell, George (1946 [2004]) Politics and the English Language, in G. Orwell, Why I Write, pp. 102–120. London: Penguin Books. Reisigl, Martin, and Wodak, Ruth (2001) Discourse and Discrimination. London: Routledge. Reisigl, Martin, and Wodak, Ruth (2009) The Discourse-Historical Approach, in Wodak, R., and Meyer, M. (eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, pp. 87–121. London: Sage. Renton, David (2000) Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Britain in the 1940s. London: Macmillan. Richardson, John E. (2011) Race and Racial Difference: The Surface and Depth of BNP Ideology, in Copsey, N., & Macklin, G. (eds.), British National Party: Contemporary Perspectives, pp. 38–61. London: Routledge. Richardson, John E., and Wodak, Ruth (2009) Recontextualising fascist ideologies of the past: Rightwing discourses on employment and nativism in Austria and the United Kingdom. Critical Discourse Studies 6(4): 251–267. Sykes, Alan (2005) The Radical Right in Britain. Houndmills: Palgrave. Thayer, George (1965) The British Political Fringe: A Profile. London: Anthony Blond. Trotsky, Leon (1969) Fascism: What It Is and How To Fight It. Available at http:// www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm. Accessed 27 August 2012. Troyna, Barry (1982) Reporting the National Front, in Husband, C. (e.), ‘Race’ in Britain: Continuity and Change, pp. 259–278. London: Hutchinson. Van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. (2004) A Systematic Theory of Argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walker, Martin (1977) The National Front. London: HarperCollins. Wodak, Ruth (2009) The Discourse of Politics in Action. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

11 Variations on a Theme The Jewish ‘Other’ in Old and New Antisemitic Media Discourses in Hungary in the 1940s and in 2011 András Kovács and Anna Szilágyi

Shortly after the electoral success of Haider’s Freedom Party in Austria, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Vienna with placards bearing the slogan ‘Only their faces change!’ And above the text there were pictures of Hitler, Haider and Milosevic. The message was clear: with the electoral success and increased parliamentary presence of the parties of the far right—political formations whose ideological base is rooted in extreme nationalism, racism, xenophobia, a loathing of democracy and a fanatical wish for a strong state—the spectre of fascism reappeared in Europe. Those who see a direct continuity between the past and the present argue that all political variants of the extreme right have something substantial in common. The concepts of ‘generic fascism’ or ‘primeval fascism’ (Ur-Fascism) and the idea of a continuity between pre-war fascism and the new extreme right have been widely debated among historians and political scientists (Griffin 1991, 1998; Payne 2000; Eco 1995). This discussion took a new turn after the emergence of dynamic radical-right political organisations in the European post-Communist countries. The core of the debate concerned whether the newly emerged extreme right was a direct descendant of the pre-war proto-fascist or fascist extremes or whether it was better understood as a sui generis product of the decades of communist rule which revived but also restructured and refunctionalized different components of the pre-war right (Bustikova and Kitschelt 2009; Minkenberg 2000, 2009). In the following we would like to deal only with one aspect of this debate in a Hungarian context. The pre-war and present-day Hungarian extreme right was/is openly antisemitic. Readers of the contemporary journals, websites and fanzines of the extreme right find so many similarities in the antisemitic labels, stereotypes and argumentation of the past and present antisemitic discourses that they may feel compelled to subscribe to the ‘deep-freeze’ theories, according to which the newly emerged schemes represent only a recurrence of pre-war antisemitism silenced but not liquidated during the years of communist dictatorship. But do the former Nazi and the contemporary member of the far right in Hungary truly share an identical code of antisemitism? This is the question we would like to deal with in this work.

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We compare and contrast structural characteristics of antisemitism in Hungary in the 1940s and in 2011 by identifying past and present patterns of antisemitic language use. The study focuses on press discourse, examining negative images of Jews constructed by ‘old’ and ‘new’ Hungarian media outlets, respectively. On the one hand, we study the language use of two Hungarian print newspapers, Egyedül vagyunk and Harc, that spread Nazi propaganda in the 1940s. On the other hand, we explore the discourse of two contemporary websites, Barikad.hu and Kuruc.info, that belong to the current Hungarian far right. Primarily, we focus on patterns of antisemitic discourses per se. Of the various discursive and linguistic strategies that can be studied in the context of discriminatory language use, we discuss three major discursive units, following the categorization of Reisigl and Wodak (2001). First, we examine referential strategies, that is, what references were/are made to Jews in the old and new texts. Second, we explore modes of stereotyping, analyzing what kind of personality character traits were/are assigned to Jews in the past and in present-day articles. Third, major argumentation schemes and topoi will be introduced; that is, we look at how antisemitism was/is justified by the media in the 1940s and in the 2010s. Finally, we shift our attention from the patterns to the functions of antisemitic discourses. In other words, we hypothesize what goal anti-Jewish labeling, stereotyping and argumentation can serve time and again.

DISCOURSE OF THE OLD MEDIA

The Context In this section we focus on two Hungarian newspapers published in the 1940s: Egyedül vagyunk and Harc. Although in terms of style there are some differences between these newspapers, both of them can be characterized as antisemitic propaganda outlets, cultivating hardcore political rhetoric. Egyedül vagyunk [We are alone] was a biweekly newspaper which operated between 1938 and 1944. In this period of the authoritarian Horthy regime (1919–1944), an ally of the Nazi Germany, anti-Jewish policy was part and parcel of governmental politics. Although the Hungarian governments refused the repeated German demand for deportation of the Jews— that started only after the German invasion in March 1944—the loud antisemitic propaganda created a threatening atmosphere by in the late 1930s. Additionally, as consequence of the antisemitic laws passed by the Hungarian parliament after 1938, Hungarian Jews were deprived of their rights and, often, of their property and livelihood. The periodical Egyedül vagyunk was launched in this context as a journal devoted to the ‘self-defense

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of Hungarians’ against the ‘Jewish intruders’ who had occupied the ‘living place’ of the true Hungarians. The outlet was primarily a literary paper, focusing mainly on cultural issues but also providing news of domestic and foreign politics. Harc [Fight] was established by Hungarian Nazis in May 1944 and operated exclusively when the ghettoization, internment and deportation of Hungarian Jews was taking place. The outlet functioned as an official public forum for the so-called Hungarian Research Institute for the Jewish Question. As such, Harc was notorious for its extreme antisemitism. Basically, all the articles of Harc were related to Jews, as its primary goal was to convince the Hungarian population of the absolute necessity of the anti-Jewish policies. The outlet can be typified as a tabloid, focusing on political issues but mainly on the ‘affluence’, ‘love-life’ and ‘criminal activity’ of Jews.

Major Topics As the distribution of articles concerning major topics may also illustrate, Egyedül vagyunk and Harc discussed ‘Jewishness’ mainly in the Hungarian context.1 In the 1942 volume of Egyedül vagyunk, out of the 48 articles we analyzed, 34 were related to Hungarian Jews and 14 to international Jewry (Table 11.1). Importantly, with a few exceptions, news about world Jewry was provided in the form of short articles, usually not exceeding one paragraph in length. Meanwhile, texts about Hungarian Jews often ran the length of a full newspaper page or at least of a -half page. In the international context, the articles of Egyedül vagyunk mainly stressed that ‘Jews have an exceptional influence on world politics’. In the Hungarian context, mirroring perhaps the ‘literary character’ of the journal, the ‘overwhelmingly dominant position of Jews’ was emphasized in connection with national cultural life. Additionally, in the Hungarian context, cases of ‘ritual murder’ and past antisemitic literary texts were also discussed from time to time. Harc focused almost exclusively on ‘Hungarian Jewry’. We looked at 118 articles published by the newspaper in May, June and July 1944 (Table 11.2). Of these, 100 were related to Hungarian Jews. The newspaper discussed the ‘activity’ of Jews in Hungary in various contexts, including politics, economy, culture and private life, implying that, until the implementation of anti-Jewish policies in all these spheres, ‘Hungarians were subject to terrible repression from Hungarian Jews’. Table 11.1 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Egyedül vagyunk (January– December 1942) Articles about Hungarian Jewry

34

Articles about world Jewry

14

Total

48

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Table 11.2 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Harc (May–July 1944) Articles about Hungarian Jewry Articles about world Jewry

100 6

Articles both about Hungarian and world Jewry

4

Articles about Jewry in general

8

Total

118

Only six articles of Harc were related to world Jewry, and these focused mainly on its ‘conspiracy activity’ and ‘overwhelmingly dominant position within global political life’. Four pieces discussed the activity of Hungarian Jews and world Jewry together, pointing to the dominance of Jews in both the international and national contexts. Finally, eight articles were related to Jews in general, without referring to a specific context. In such cases, typically the ‘weird religious habits’ and the ‘general character traits’ of Jews were discussed. ‘HUNGARIANS VERSUS JEWS’: THE STRATEGIES OF OTHERING

References The headlines and articles of both Egyedül vagyunk and Harc constructed a sharp ‘self-other’ division, setting Hungarians against Hungarian Jews. For this purpose, they most often used referential strategies (Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 45). In both the national and the international contexts, Egyedül vagyunk and Harc identified social actors not only by their names or status but also by their real or presumed Jewish ethnic origin. For instance, the texts referred to a ‘Jewish couple’ (‘zsidó házaspár’) rather than to a couple (‘Egy zsidó házaspár körútja a pesti sajtóban’, Egyedül vagyunk, July 31) or to a ‘Jewish actress’ (‘zsidó színészno˝’) rather than to an actress (‘Muzsikál a múlt,’ Harc, June 10). Similarly, in the international context, the Jewish ethnic background of social and political actors was always noted by the newspapers. To mention a few examples, references were made to the ‘Norwegian Prime Minister of Jewish origin’ (‘zsidószáramzású norvég miniszterelnök’) (‘A Nobel Alapítvány zsidó vonatkozásai’, Egyedül vagyunk, September 11), to the ‘halfJewish Kerensky’ (‘félzsidó Kerensky’) or to the ‘Jewish Trotsky’ (‘zsidó Trockij’) (‘A zsidóság útja’, Harc, July 8). In the international context, the referential mode in question served mainly to evoke the stereotype of the ‘world conspirator Jew’. The identification of key figures of foreign politics as Jews suggested that other parts of the globe were still ‘controlled by the hidden hands of Jews’. In the national context, a similar implication was made: the references created the

Variations on a Theme 207 impression that, before the implementation of anti-Jewish policies, Jews overwhelmingly dominated the various fields of public life in Hungary. The permanent references to the ethnic background of social actors also constructed a sharp ‘self-other’ division. In the particular national context, this division was further sharpened by additional referential strategies. First of all, alongside the discursive distinction of the two entities, references to the ‘Hungarian self’ and to the ‘Jewish other’ involved—to use the categorization of Reisigl and Wodak (2001: 48–50)—the opposition either of ‘nationyms’ and ‘ethnonyms’ (e.g. ‘Hungarians’ versus ‘Jews’ or ‘Jewry’) or of ‘collectives’ (e.g. such plural personal pronouns as ‘we’, ‘our’, ‘us’ versus ‘them’, ‘they’, ‘their’): ‘Call from Hungarians who live in mixed marriage: Save us from the Jewish spouse!’2 (‘Vegyesházasságban élo˝ magyarok kiáltása: Mentsenek meg minket a zsidó házastárstól!’, Harc, July 8). Second, speaking about individuals, the articles often referred to ‘the Jew’ or ‘a Jew’. The significance of the collective singular in the discourse of antisemitism has been highlighted in various contexts (Langmuir 1990: 333; Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 57). As the following headline also demonstrates, the collective singular may function as a tool of discriminatory labeling. In the usage adopted by Egyedül vagyunk and Harc, collective singulars implied that, unlike Hungarians, ‘Jews lack individuality’ and are ‘eternally evil’: ‘Even at the factory internment camp the incorrigible Jew sins’3 (‘Még a gyári internálótelepen is bu˝nözik a javíthatatlan zsidó’, Harc, June 17). Third, importantly, the impression of ‘Jewish homogeneity’ and ‘eternal evilness’ was also reinforced by referential strategies employing metaphors of illness, disease and infection. As generally in the rhetorics of the Nazis (Bauman 1989: 72), the ‘Jewish other’ was also regularly identified in the articles of Harc and Egyedül vagyunk as an ‘epidemic’, ‘bacteria’ or ‘contamination’. The following piece provides a good example of this referential strategy: ‘The poisoning substance [i.e. Hungarian Jews] should be removed from the nation’s body that—especially, in its upper, aristocratic layer— has been infected by it, so that the cured nation-organism could overcome this great historical time of testing’4 (‘Együtt az egész díszes társaság! Zsidó pénzfejedelmek és iparbárók az internálótáborban’, Harc, May 20). As we see, the ‘Hungarian self’ was metaphorically presented in the excerpt as a ‘human body’, while the ‘Jewish other’ was identified as a toxicant. These and other, similar metaphorical representations implied in a powerful way that the implementation of the anti-Jewish policies was inevitable and necessary. Metaphors of illness suggested that the ‘Jewish other’ was not simply a threatening ‘ethnic other’ or a ‘political other’ but a dangerous ‘biological other’ that must be defeated as a matter of life and death.

Stereotyping Our analysis reinforces the observation of Reisigl and Wodak that, in the context of discriminatory discourse, referential and predicational strategies

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cannot be entirely separated (2001: 45). Labeling strategies of Egyedül vagyunk and Harc often also evoked negative stereotypes. For instance, references were made to a ‘Jewish media tycoon’ (‘zsidó sajtófejedelem’) (‘Koncentrált támadás a Magyar film újjászületése ellen’, Egyedül vagyunk, November 6) or to ‘Jewish industry barons’ (‘zsidó iparbárók’) (‘Együtt a díszes társaság! Zsidó pénzfejedelmek és iparbárók az internálótáborban’, Harc, May 20), identifying Hungarian Jews simultaneously by their occupation and by their ethnic origin. In these particular cases, the naming strategies reinforced the stereotypes that ‘Jews are super-rich’ and ‘powerful’, invoking the image of the ‘dominant Jew’. Nonetheless, such and similar characteristics were assigned to Jews not only via referential strategies but also explicitly. It should be stressed that the negative other-presentation was usually accompanied by a dichotomizing self-presentation in the articles. For example, the ‘affluence of Hungarian Jews’ was regularly contrasted with the ‘poverty of Hungarians’, implying that the latter was the result of the former. Jewry was portrayed as the group that ‘stole from working Hungarians’ (‘kifosztotta a dolgozó magyarságot’) and as ‘seizer of a huge part of the national wealth’ (‘a nemzeti javak óriási hányadára rátette a kezét’) (‘Vádirat a zsidóság ellen’, Harc, June 10). The ‘luxurious lifestyle of Hungarian Jews’ and the ‘misery of Hungarians’ were also contrasted. For instance, in one excerpt the pre-war lifestyle of the Jewish residents of a village was described as follows: ‘Five Jewish families lived in Marosnyék [a village in Transylvania]. Among these the doctor and the pharmacist were subscribers to French journals, spent the summers in Sinaia [a holiday resort in Transylvania] and the winters, for the most part, in Bucharest’5 (‘Zsidók a székely hegyekben’, Harc, July 22). Besides evoking images of abundance, another important construction also emerges in the previous text. The stereotype of ‘Jewish intellectuality’ or ‘nonproductivity’, is evoked here: the article names only white-collar occupations as typical for Jews. This stereotype was often reinforced by another, the stereotype of ‘occupational parasitism’, suggesting that, unlike Hungarians, Jews generally avoid ‘hard work’: ‘Like all such carrier fields where with little work one can earn a lot, dance and acrobatics have been taken over by Jews’6 (‘Zsidók a pesti táncdzsungelben’, in Egyedül vagyunk, March 12). As one can see from the previous examples, the traditional ‘Shylock stereotypes’ were frequently applied by Egyedül vagyunk and Harc. The figure of the ‘greedy’ and ‘dishonest Jew’ who exploits his compatriots was constructed in various contexts, including private life. In the next piece, this conceptualization is contrasted with the image of the ‘naïve and honest Hungarian’: ‘Being young and inexperienced he [a Hungarian official] fell in love with a Jewish girl, who stunned him with her silky manner, so he married her at a registry’7 (‘Vegyesházasságban élo˝ magyarok kiáltása: Mentsenek meg minket a zsidó házastárstól!’, Harc, July 8).

Variations on a Theme 209 Jews were also often portrayed in a criminal context by Egyedül vagyunk and Harc, with the implication that they are ‘aberrant people’ who pose both an abstract and a concrete physical threat to Hungarians. In this context, most often the stereotype of the ‘threatening Jew’ in the guise of the ‘Jewish ritual murderer’ was evoked: ‘[Instead of saying a Jewish murderer] [I] could refer to the murderer Jew—but who of them is an exception? One [murders] with a ritual knife, the other with money, the third with lead letters . . .’8 (‘Tremmel Mátyás 17 sebe’, in Egyedül vagyunk, September 11). The implication that ‘Jews pose a physical threat to Hungarians’ emerged not only in a criminal context. In this regard’ the metaphors of illness discussed earlier played a prominent role. Negative constructions of Jewish ‘dominance’, ‘intellectualism’, ‘parasitism’, ‘dishonesty’, ‘threat’ and ‘aberration’ were often combined with metaphors of illness, disease and infection, suggesting in various contexts that Jews endanger Hungarians in a physical sense. For instance, in one article, the stereotypes of ‘Jewish intellectualism’ and ‘Jewish aberration’ are accompanied by such metaphors, giving rise to the impression that Jewish doctors inflict physical harm on their patients: ‘This mentally ill, in terms of habits and moral values so alien race, [the Jew] is still contaminating widespread parts of our nation in a white coat’9 (‘Orvoslevél a zsidó orvosokról’, in Egyedül vagyunk, May 8). Similarly to the referential strategies, stereotyping supported the construction of Hungarian Jews as the ‘biological other’ in the articles. The absolute necessity of ‘curing’ anti-Jewish policies was argued this way, as well. The simultaneous usage of negative stereotypes and metaphors of illness, disease and infection highlighted the assertion that the physical survival of Hungarians is at stake.

Argumentation Schemes As demonstrated by Reisigl and Wodak, various pragmatic fallacies (in other words, modes of argumentation that violate rational reasoning) may characterize discriminatory discourse (2001: 71–74). Of these, the most fundamental argumentation scheme that structured the articles of Egyedül vagyunk and Harc was the victim-victimizer reversal (‘trajcetio in alium’). Although these texts were published in a period when the persecution of Jews was in progress, the ‘self-other’ division—constructed in the articles mainly via stereotypes and metaphors—implied that the ‘real victims’ were Hungarians. On the one hand, negative conceptualizations suggested that through various means (including ‘manipulation’, ‘filthiness’ and ‘cynicism’), the ‘Jewish other’ victimized the ‘Hungarian self’. The following excerpt illustrates well how derogatory stereotypes contributed to the victimvictimizer reversal: ‘We accuse Jewry not only of unlimited rapaciousness, that through unprincipled conspiracy and inimitable trickiness it basically burglarized working Hungarians and seized a huge part of the national

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wealth, but also of smuggling into our political, societal, economic and cultural life such notions, such aspirations, such trends that created general anarchy, moral debauch, and racial decline, from which if we cannot cure our society then the consequences are unforeseeable’10 (‘Vádirat a zsidóság ellen’, Harc, June 10). On the other hand, metaphors of illness, disease and infection gave a specific context to ‘Hungarian victimhood’. Accordingly, the anti-Jewish policy was also described in the texts metaphorically as a ‘purification process’. For instance, regarding the 1944 regulation that prohibited Jews from visiting public swimming pools and baths, Harc concluded: ‘Our baths are finally clear!’11 (‘Mi történt eddig a zsidókérdés megoldása terén?’, Harc, May 20). The victim-victimizer reversal was usually embedded in another important argumentation scheme. Either implicitly or explicitly, this false setting was combined with the topos of threat and/or the topos of danger that were paraphrased by Reisigl and Wodak as follows: ‘(I)f there are specific dangers and threats, one should do something against them’ (2001: 77). The solution that the articles offered was the anti-Jewish policy of ‘cleansing’ and ‘purification’: the construction of Jews as the ‘biological other’ suggested that the implementation of these was inevitable. Metaphors of illness, disease and infection not only dehumanized discursively Hungarian Jews but also argued for the necessity of their extermination. In the words of Bauman: ‘Cancer, vermin or weed cannot repent. They have not sinned, they just lived according to their nature. There is nothing to punish them for. By the nature of their evil, they have to be exterminated’ (1989: 72). Since the articles emphasized the unavoidability of the anti-Jewish policies of biological nature, such policies were regularly described in the texts in terms of (biological) warfare. Metaphors of war emerged generally in the European context, in which the implementation of anti-Jewish policies was described as an ‘ongoing gigantic fight between the European nations and the Jewry’ (‘a zsidóságnak és az európai népeknek most folyó óriási harca’) (‘A zsidóság útja’, Harc, July 8). In the previous quotations, the military terminology implied that a real war was taking place between fighting entities. From the perspective of the self, this fight was described as one of self-defense: ‘The whole Hungarian public opinion should be aware of the real reason, sense and aim of the self-defensive struggle against the Jewry’12 (‘Végso˝ harc órájában’, Harc, May 20). As we see, by employing metaphors of war, the texts reinforced the victim-victimizer reversal as well as the topoi of danger and threat. Like the references and stereotypes, these argumentation schemes also implied that the biological survival of Hungarians was endangered.

Reflections The antisemitic discourse of both outlets transgressed the border that Shulamit Volkov (1989) identified as having distinguished Nazi antisemitism

Variations on a Theme 211 from its predecessors. It was an antisemitism ‘in which verbal aggression was not a substitute for action but a preparation for it’ (Volkov 1989: 52). Besides portraying Jews as the agent of destruction, Egyedül vagyunk and Harc also called for action. Via the same rhetorical tools and in accordance with the historical background, in 1942, Egyedül vagyunk campaigned for the implementation of the contemporary anti-Jewish laws, while, in 1944, Harc argued for the total exclusion and punishment of Jews. Especially in the articles in 1944, the line between words and actions became largely blurred. The authors appealed for physical force to be employed not only against Jews but also against those Hungarians who refused to support or were likely to oppose the discriminatory anti-Jewish policies. They applied the rhetorical tool of ‘argumentum ad baculum’ (i.e. ‘threatening with a stick’), an appeal to ‘physical or other forms of force’ against the antagonists (Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 71): ‘Even in recent days, we could hear remarks from some questioning whether the Jews’ crimes are truly so big that they should be punished so severely? . . . We know what we owe the Jews, moreover, we also know how to treat those who make such remarks’13 (‘Mikor a fo˝városból eltu˝nt az élelmiszer . . . Vért! Forradalmat!’, Harc, June 24). Thus, the antisemitic rhetoric of Egyedül vagyunk and Harc organized traditional antisemitic schemes in a system in which the ‘Jew’ could be presented as the factor to eradicate in order to save the health and purity of the national organism. This antisemitic discourse was directly connected to an antisemitic policy; indeed, it fulfilled a legitimating, apologetic and mobilizing function when the anti-Jewish measures were reaching their peak in 1944.

DISCOURSE OF THE NEW MEDIA

The Context This section introduces the discourse of two contemporary Hungarian news portals: Barikad.hu and Kuruc.info. Although the two outlets differ in their status, content and style, both of them are part of a far-right online media circle which recently has become quite powerful in Hungary (Mátay and Kaposi 2008; Barkóczi 2010). After the fall of Communism, overt antisemitism made an appearance in Hungary. The transformation of the political system did lead to a dismantling of the taboo that had previously surrounded public display of antisemitism. However, under the surface, antisemitism was constantly present in the pre-1990 decades. Indeed, the sudden reappearance of the ‘Jewish question’ and traditional antisemitism in the post-Communist countries was largely the consequence of the policy of the Communist parties, which systematically and permanently (re)constructed the boundaries between

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Jews and non-Jews by political means and, then, eagerly manipulated the self-constructed ‘Jewish question’ according their temporary political aims (Kovács 2004). Exploiting the possibilities offered by the new democratic order, the antisemitic extreme right appeared in Hungary in the form of overtly antisemitic Nazi and neo-Nazi groupings mostly established by the Hungarian Nazi emigration and its allies abroad and as a renewed version of ‘traditional’ Hungarian antisemitism. The second group considered antisemitism a reasonable reaction to specific socio-political problems. They considered the Communist system to have been introduced and led by Jews in the service of foreign powers and stated that, after the fall of the Communist system, this section of the Jewish community, supported by foreign powers like the United States and Israel, had preserved its dominance over the majority of the country. This continuity between the Communist system and the new democratic system, they believed, should be denounced and eliminated by the self-defensive struggle of the majority. These ideas represent the core of the antisemitic rhetoric of both far-right parties that managed to enter the Hungarian parliament: István Csurka’s Party of Hungarian Justice and Life (MIÉP) between 1998 and 2002 and Jobbik after the 2010 elections. The media outlets we will use for our analysis have been close associates of this political and ideological camp. Kuruc.info is an online-only outlet. The news site was launched after 2004. The name of the portal evokes a ‘Hungarians versus foreigners’ division: ‘Kuruc.info’ literally means ‘kuruc information’, referring to those rebels (the so-called kuruc fighters) who in the 17th and 18th centuries struggled against Habsburg rule in the country. Kuruc.info is clearly a nonmainstream outlet, using a harsh, insulting language close to that used by openly Nazi forums. It is edited and written by anonymous authors. Ethnic relations constitute the almost exclusive subject of the portal, which publishes mainly anti-Roma and anti-Jewish articles, offering content under such headings as ‘anti-Hungarianism’, ‘Roma criminality’ and ‘Jewish criminality’. In recent years, even official attempts were made to ban the otherwise popular news site. However, since it both operates under a domain name registered abroad and is housed on a server outside Hungary, such efforts have remained ineffective. Barikád [Barricade] was established in 2009. Initially, the newspaper was published monthly. Very soon, however, it became a weekly magazine supported by an already existing online portal. The latter—on which our analysis focuses—re-publishes and promotes print articles and provides up-to-date news about Hungarian and international politics. It is quite obvious that the newspaper and the online portal have close ties to the Hungarian far-right party Jobbik. During the 2010 Hungarian parliamentary election campaign, Barikád and Barikad.hu often promoted the party, thereby contributing to the electoral success of Jobbik, which attracted almost 17 per cent of the votes cast and received 47 seats (12 per cent of the total) in the

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213

Hungarian parliament. Barikád and Barikad.hu have since functioned as ‘unofficial’ forums for the party. Barikad.hu can be regarded as a ‘semimainstream’ outlet, popularizing Jobbik’s nationalistic, antiglobalization, anti-Roma, anti-Israel and antigay political agenda and rhetoric by using a semicoded language which differentiates it from Kuruc.info.

Major Topics Compared to the Hungarian print press in the 1940s, which, for the most part, discussed Jewishness in a national context, the new online media outlets Barikad.hu and Kuruc.info provide a more international perspective.14 As the distribution of articles concerning major topics shows, the attention of the new media has shifted from the ‘local Jew’ to the ‘global Jew’. (See Tables 11.3 and 11.4). Out of 83 articles published in March, April and May in 2011 on Barikad.hu, we found that 11 were related exclusively to the ‘activities of the Hungarian Jews’. The remaining 72 articles focused on ‘Jews’ and ‘Jewish communities’ outside the country. In the context of ‘Jews’, the most important topic of Barikad.hu was Israel: 50 articles and news items were

Table 11.3 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Barikád (March–May 2011) Articles about Hungarian Jewry

11

Articles about world Jewry in the international context

13

Articles about world Jewry in the Hungarian context Articles about Israel in the international context Articles about Israel in the Hungarian context Total

3 50 6 83

Table 11.4 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Kuruc.info ( June–August, 2011) Articles about Hungarian Jewry

44

Articles about world Jewry in the international context

46

Articles about world Jewry in the Hungarian context

11

Articles about Israel in the international context

53

Articles about Israel in the Hungarian context

17

Articles about the Holocaust

22

Tribute articles, archive material

69

Total

262

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related to the Jewish state, discussing mainly the ‘political, economic and military terror that Israel imposes on other countries’.Six additional articles detailed how ‘Israel shapes the specific Hungarian political and economic reality through various means’. Thirteen of Barikad.hu’s articles dealt with ‘world Jewry’, bringing up mainly contemporary international issues in connection either with ‘Zionism’ or with ‘antisemitism’. Finally, three articles talked about the ‘influence of Jews outside Hungary on Hungary’. A similar pattern characterizes Kuruc.info. Nonetheless, here, two additional topics should also be mentioned. On the one hand, between June and August 2011, Kuruc.info published 22 articles related to the Holocaust, in most of the cases either denying or relativizing genocide. On the other hand, in this period, articles paying tribute to former foreign and Hungarian Nazis, as well as old antisemitic writings, including Hungarian and foreign texts of literary antisemitism and Nazi propaganda material, were provided by the news site in 69 cases. The presence of these additional topics demonstrates that antisemitic utterances are implicit in the case of Barikad.hu and explicit in the case of Kuruc.info. Barikad.hu focuses mainly on contemporary issues, while avoiding direct references to the past and even to ‘Jews’ (who are replaced in the texts mainly by Israel) and refraining from an explicit denial of the Holocaust. Meanwhile, Kuruc.info tries to establish a link between present and past, refers boldly to Jews and openly denies and trivializes the genocide. Nonetheless, ‘Jews outside Hungary’ seem to be at the center of Kuruc. info’s attention, as well. Out of 262 articles, we found that 44 concerned the ‘activities of Hungarian Jews’ living in the country today. At the same time, Kuruc.info published more than 100 items about Jews living outside Hungary. Forty-six articles were written about ‘world Jewry’. ‘World Jewry’ was discussed in the context of international politics and economics, a field ‘subject to Jewish influence’ in which Jews were identified as key actors; ‘criminality’, ‘sexual aberration’ and ‘weird habits’ of Jews outside Hungary were also detailed. Eleven other articles discussed ‘how the Hungarian political and economic reality is shaped by Jews from abroad’. Fifty-three of the articles concerned Israel, whose influence on Hungary was discussed in an additional 17 articles (see Table 11.4).

‘HUNGARIANS VERSUS JEWS’: THE STRATEGIES OF OTHERING

References For Barikad.hu, the ‘Jewish other’ is embodied mostly by the state of Israel, while on Kuruc.info Hungarians are opposed to global economic institutions, which are identified as ‘Jewish’. Accentuating the self-other division, the references to the ‘Hungarian self’ once again include the use of nationyms and ethnonyms or plural personal pronouns. Meanwhile, the articles

Variations on a Theme 215 also refer to the International Monetary Fund as ‘the Jewish financial institution’ (‘zsidó pénzintézet’) (‘Üdvözli, de kevesli a kormány megszorításait a pénzügyi terrorszervezet’, Kuruc.info, June 15) and to banks as ‘Jewish banks’ (‘zsidó bankok’) (‘Hitelre van szüksége, nem bízik a zsidó bankokban?’, Kuruc.info, June 26). Similarly, the international credit rating agencies are identified by Kuruc. info as being Jewish. Here, mainstream news is also provided by the outlet, with reports originally published by mainstream news agencies. However, such news items are presented under new headlines. Regarding the racist discourse of contemporary print media, the otherwise general semantic, cognitive and ideological importance of headlines has been already highlighted (van Dijk 1988, 1991). For both Barikad.hu and Kuruc.info, the relevance of headlines should be especially emphasized, because they often constitute the only ‘original’ part of what is provided. Thus, in terms of the ideological implications, the headlines used by Barikad.hu and Kuruc.info have an exceptional significance: they bear the editorial message. For instance, news about the downgrading of Japan and Ireland by Moody’s Investors Service ran under the following headlines on Kuruc.info: ‘now Japan is challenged by the Jewish Credit Rating Agencies’15 (‘Most Japánt kóstolgatják a zsidó “mino˝síto˝k” ’, August 24) and ‘Ireland is again in the cross-heirs of Jewish speculators’16 (‘Újra zsidó spekulánsok célkeresztjében Írország’, July 13). Additionally, references are made to the supposed or real Jewish origin of global public figures. Occasionally, the name of the referent is replaced with a collective singular: ‘Although he will be released from house arrest, according to the prosecution the Jew [Dominique Strauss-Kahn, director of the International Monetary Fund between 2007 and 2011] is still not allowed to travel’17 (‘Még ma szabadon engedhetik Strauss-Kahnt’, Kuruc. info, July 1). More often, the name of the referent is replaced with his title and ethnic background: ‘France’s Jewish president [i.e. Nicolas Sarkozy]’ (‘Franciaország zsidó elnöke’) (‘Hiába mutatta meg Irán az atomlétesítményeit, Sarkozy “megelo˝zo˝ csapással” fenyegeti a perzsákat’, Kuruc.info, August 31). Besides the global political actors and economic institutions, it is the state of Israel that embodies the ‘Jewish other’ in the texts. As the referential strategies highlight, Israel is constructed by Barikad.hu and Kuruc.info as the representative of global Jewry. Instead of the Israeli state, government, population or military, the articles often refer to ‘Jews’ in general. In some cases this occurs quite concretely: ‘The Jews [i.e. the Israeli government] would reconcile with the Hezbollah’18 (‘Békülnének a Hezbollahhal a zsidók’, Kuruc.info, June 15) or ‘Berlusconi hurrahed the Jews [i.e. the state of Israel] again’19 (‘Berlusconi megint a zsidókat éltette’, Barikad.hu, May 12). In other cases, the replacement is accomplished in a less evident way; instead of the state units themselves being the subject of the criticism, their actions are characterized as being ‘Jewish’: ‘Jewish mindset [i.e. mindset

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of the Israeli defense minister]: Syria is responsible for the Israeli massacres of Arabs’20 (‘Zsidó logika: Szíria a hibás azért, hogy Izrael arabokat mészárol’, Kuruc.info, June 6); ‘Jerkwater Jewish method [i.e. method of the Israeli military]: the ship carrying aid to Gaza has been damaged’21 (‘Pitiáner zsidó módszer: megrongálták a Gázába készülo˝ segélyhajókat’, Kuruc.info, June 30). Both global economic and political actors and Israel are constructed in the texts as ‘political others’ opposed to various nations, including the Hungarian one. In the national context, Israel is constructed metaphorically as the present and/or future colonizer of Hungary in Barikad.hu’s articles. It is suggested that Israel’s financial investments in Hungary will lead to the colonization of the country: ‘Yes, we know that the Israelis have invested or would like to invest a lot of money in Hungary, since Shimon Peres [President of Israel] announced a few years ago that they will buy up Hungary’22 (‘Izraeli coming-out: Üzleti életünk szereplo˝i máris sok pénzt fektettek be Magyarországon’, Barikad.hu, March 4). Barikad.hu treats the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as analogous to the Hungarian-Israeli relationship, drawing regular parallels between Palestinians and Hungarians. ‘Many believe that in Hungary this [the Israeli aggression] would be impossible. Well, the Palestinian natives also believed this when, 80 year ago, they sold land to Jewish “property developers”, investors, kibbutzim’23 (‘Mi lesz földjeinkkel? Csak Izraelben mintegy 140 ezer magyar állampolgársággal is rendelkezo˝ lakos van’, in Barikad.hu, April 14). While the ‘threat that Israel poses to Hungary’ is an important topic for Kuruc.info as well, here, in the international and national context, the ‘general influence of world Jewry’ is a similarly significant issue. The impacts of economic globalization on Hungary are usually discussed in ethnic terms by the news site: ‘We could not even recover from the Jewish crisis [i.e., global economic crisis], and already a new recession threatens us’24 (‘Még ki sem lábaltunk a zsidó válságból máris újabb recesszió fenyeget, Kuruc. info, August 25). In the particular Hungarian context, Barikad.hu and Kuruc.info set Hungarians against Jews mainly in political and economic terms. For the most part, naming strategies evoke the stereotype of the ‘world conspirator Jew’, thereby implying that Hungarians are subject to the political and economic oppression of world Jewry.

Stereotyping Most of the negative stereotypes that emerge in the articles are connected with the theme of ‘Jewish political and economic dominance’ and ‘Jewish power’. The stereotypes of ‘super-rich’ and ‘super-powerful’ Jews are evoked in the articles, mainly via references. Additionally, as in the 1940s, these constructions are contrasted with the image of Hungarians as people who ‘work hard but live in modest circumstances’.

Variations on a Theme 217 In connection with the previous theme, Jews are often portrayed as ‘supranational conspirators’. The overlapping influence of Israel and world Jewry is frequently highlighted both in the context of foreign states and in the context of Hungary, thereby distinguishing between various ‘selves’ and the ‘Jewish other’. The newspapers regularly suggest that key world leaders act in accordance with the interests of Israel instead of representing their own nations: ‘But it is a fact, there are worrying signs that the Russian expresident and current prime minister Putin does not represent the national interest to the extent that many think he does. In our press review on January 17 we have already referred to the one-hour long program of Al-Jazeera television in which several Russian leaders were interviewed. Two of them said that Moscow did not supply Teheran with a missile defense system that could defeat a potential Israeli/American air strike, owing to pressure from the Russian Jewish lobby’25 (‘Az orosz rulett’, Barikad.hu, April 11, 2011). The anthropomorphic representation of Israel also evokes the figure of the ‘bloodthirsty’, ‘cruel Jew’, who is a ‘ritual murderer of innocents’: ‘Israel wants to slaughter Palestinians’26 (‘Izrael újra palesztinokat akar mészárolni’, Barikad.hu, March 25). And the impression of ‘Jewish cruelty and bloodthirstiness’ is created not only in the context of the PalestinianIsraeli conflict. For instance, citing foreign sources, Kuruc.info associated the Oslo massacre in July 2011 with Israel: ‘According to Iran Israel is behind the Norwegian killing’27 (‘Irán szerint Izrael áll a norvégiai merénylet mögött’, July 31). On Kuruc.info, stereotypes of ‘ritual murder’ and ‘aberration’ emerge in the context of world Jewry, as well. In such cases, the references are usually made via the collective singular. With an indefinite or definite article, term ‘Jew’ is often used in a criminal context when tabloid news is presented: ‘A Jew from Brooklyn has chopped up and put into the fridge his 8 years old race-mate’28 (‘Feldarabolta és berakta a hu˝to˝be nyolcéves fajtársát egy brooklyni zsidó,’ Kuruc.info, July 13). Additionally, the collective singular is applied in the particular context of sexual crime: ‘The orthodox Jew in Jerusalem pinched small boys’ penises with pincers’29 (‘Kisfiúk hímvesszo˝jét csipkedte harapófogóval az ortodox zsidó Jeruzsálemben’, Kuruc.info, August 2). However, stereotypes of ‘the political and economic influence of Jews’ dominate the texts. For the most part, the ‘Hungarians versus Jews division’ is described in political and economic terms by Barikad.hu and Kuruc.info. Most of the stereotypes imply that Jews pose a political and economic threat to Hungary.

Argumentation Schemes The victim-victimizer reversal emerges time and again in the texts: to the ‘Hungarian self’ the role of the victim is assigned, while the ‘Jewish other’ (i.e. Israel and ‘world Jewry’) is positioned as the victimizer by both outlets.

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Occasionally, this setting is supported by metaphors of illness, disease and infection in the new far-right media. For instance, in the following quotation published on Kuruc.info, Jews are identified as ‘parasites’ by a politician of the far-right Jobbik: ‘The core of the problem [the global economic crisis] is the system of compound interest that was invented by Jewish moneychangers in antiquity and which in the middle-ages was perfected by the Rothschilds, Fuggers and other bloodsucker parasites, to the extent that the fates of empires were in their hands; as those were dependent on their money they could decide freely about the issues of war and peace’30 (‘Lenhardt Balázs a görög válság kapcsán a közeledo˝ pénzügyi összeomlásról’, Kuruc.info, July 26). Similar to the newspapers of the 1940s, while creating a victimvictimizerreversal, the new media also apply the topos of danger or the topos of threat. For instance, Israel is constructed metaphorically as the present and/or future colonizer of Hungary in Barikad.hu’s articles. It is suggested that Israeli financial investments will lead to the colonization of the country: ‘What will happen to our lands? Only in Israel there are 140 thousand Hungarian passport holders’31 (‘Mi lesz a földjeinkkel? Csak Izraelben mintegy 140 ezer magyar állampolgársággal is rendelkezo˝ lakos van’, Barikad.hu, April 14). While the ‘threat that Israel poses to Hungary’ is an important topic for Kuruc.info as well, here, in the international and national context, the ‘general influence of world Jewry’ is a similarly significant issue. As an earlier quotation illustrates, Jews are presented by the news site as a ‘dangerous’ and ‘threatening other’ who, for example, brought the global economic crisis on Hungarians (‘Még ki sem lábaltunk a zsidó válságból, máris újabb recesszió fenyeget’, Kuruc.info, August 25). As we see, Barikad.hu and Kuruc.info set Hungarians against Jews, implying that the everyday lives of the former depend on the latter. Thus, the websites suggest that the Jewish state and world Jewry threaten other states, including Hungary, about which threat something should be done. Nonetheless, interestingly, in the new media, for the most part, the topic of selfdefense appears in the context of topoi that usually appear in the left and liberal discourse. On the one hand, the ‘topos of humanitarianism’ that is applied is paraphrased by Reisigl and Wodak as follows: ‘If a political action or decision does or does not conform with human rights or humanitarian convictions and values, one should or should not perform or make it’ (2001: 78). Using this topos, the news sites stress that the behavior of Israel, especially in the context of the Palestinians, contradicts generally accepted humanitarian principles and should be stopped. ‘Again truth-seeking innocents were killed by soldiers of the Jewish state’,32 reported Kuruc.info (‘Ismét igazságra vágyó ártatlanokat gyilkoltak a zsidó állam katonái’, June 5). Barikad.hu concluded its article with a quotation about ‘innocents who were killed in Avarta [a Palestinian village]’ that applied the anticolonialist topos: ‘It is as

Variations on a Theme 219 simple as that. The Jews should get the hell out of the West Bank’33 (‘Avarta és Itamar’, Barikad.hu, April). The topos of humanitarianism emerges in the economic context, too, with the behavior of global financial institutions and actors described as cynically cruel and damaging to ‘small debtors’: ‘[I]n fact the whole western world is ruled by a few super-rich and highly influential Jewish families, whose power has grown beyond measure in the course of centuries of persistent intrigue. Nobody should be deceived by the fact that there are many actors in the globalized world; backstage the “big ones” are making the decisions. And their interest is to have a continuous money flow from rate pressure, regardless of the state of debtors’34 (‘Lenhardt Balázs: Az egész nyugati világot néhány dúsgazdag zsidó család tartja uralma alatt’, Kuruc. info, June 20). On the other hand, the ‘topos of justice’ used by the news sites is based on the principle that everyone deserves equal treatment (Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 71). For instance, in the following quotation, besides reinforcing the aforementioned stereotype of ‘Jewish bloodthirstiness’, it is also suggested that double standards characterize the legal adjudication of Israeli and Palestinian soldiers: ‘Israeli soldiers regularly take shots at whoever they “find suspicious” and no investigation follows such incidents. When a Palestinian policeman did the same thing, he was sent to prison’35 (‘Lecsukták a gyanúsnak vélt zsidókra lo˝vo˝ palesztin rendo˝rt’, Barikad.hu, April 24).

Reflections Although Barikad.hu represents Israel in an unequivocally negative way, it often distinguishes between its view of the Jewish state and antisemitism: ‘Criticism of Israel does not mean antisemitism for a long time’36 (‘Izrael bírálata már régen nem antiszemitizmus’, March 17). As the previous headline also illustrates, the Israel topic serves two opposing functions simultaneously: through references to the Jewish state, antisemitic themes can be introduced and antisemitism can be denied at the same time. Because of its close ties to a parliamentary party, Jobbik, Barikad.hu participates in the construction of Hungarian ‘elite’ discourse about ethnic relations. Thus, as with elite speakers in other contexts (van Dijk 1992), it is important for Barikad.hu to compensate for its racist accusations with explicit denial. Additionally, the aim of positive self-presentation may also contribute to the less direct tone used by Barikad.hu in the context of Jews. As an ‘elite’ speaker, the outlet obviously avoids breaking some discursive taboos. Since it is a non-mainstream news site, edited by anonymous authors, antidiscriminatory discursive norms may be less important for Kuruc.info. This is not to suggest, however, that positive self-presentation does not matter for this news site. It obviously matters, and yet here the ‘face of the antisemite’ and not the ‘face of the non-antisemite’ is protected. In other

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words, Kuruc.info does not try to refute accusations of racism; instead, it puts forward explicitly racist arguments that justify and legitimize antisemitism. The website pays tribute to former Nazis and regularly regurgitates the old antisemitic writings that suggest that Jews have an ‘eternally evil character’ to which antisemitism was and is a ‘legitimate’ response. As a major source of cognitive dissonance in this process, the Holocaust functions as an important referential point. In the context of the genocide, Kuruc.info either belittles or denies the suffering of Jews, trying to deprive the real victims of their ‘victim status’ and to portray antisemites in a positive light. In the context of the Holocaust, several discursive strategies can be identified that serve this double function. First, references to scenes of the genocide are made in terms of show business and entertainment, identifying, for example, the extermination camps in Sobibor and in Auschwitz as the ‘Sobibor Disneyland’ (‘sobibóri Disneyland’) (‘Háborognak a zsidók: bezárták a sobibóri Disneylandet’, June 7) and ‘the Auschwitz holiday camp’ (‘auschwitzi üdülo˝ tábor’) (‘Az auschwitzi üdülo˝tábor emléktárgyait dézsmálta meg egy zsidó házaspár—felfüggesztettel megúszták’, June 25). Additionally, connected with this theme, the compensation of Jewish victims is presented on Kuruc.info as blackmail imposed on innocents: ‘37 million Euros “compensation” was gouged by the Holoparasites from the Lithuanians’37 (‘37 millió eurós “kárpótlást” zsaroltak ki a litvánoktól a holoparaziták’, June 21). The trivialization and/or denial of the Holocaust also occurs on Kuruc. info in the form of overt Holocaust denial. ‘[B]ased on the capacity of the crematoriums and coke usage (and of course for several other reasons too) the mass extermination in gas chambers was impossible’38 (‘Kinek higgyünk? A holokauszt-bizonyítás útveszto˝i’, June 12). Via such statements, the ‘absurdity of a belief in genocidal Nazism’ is propounded. Unlike Barikad.hu, Kuruc.info tries to establish an open link between the present and the past. Consequently, as it argues for the legitimacy of antisemitism, Kuruc.info can be distinguished from Barikad.hu by the different degree of directness of its antisemitic discourse. While the antisemitic language in Barikad.hu is implicit, it is quite extreme and explicit in the case of Kuruc.info. DISCUSSION As we see, there is a clear continuity between the antisemitic discourse of the pre-war and Nazi-era period and that of today’s far-right media. In both instances, in the construction of the self-other division and dichotomy, Jews are portrayed as the significant other and set against the Hungarian self. Moreover, the discursive strategies of this construction exhibit many similarities. A comparison of the stereotypes employed reveals a fundamental

Variations on a Theme 221 continuity: in both periods, there is an emphasis in the texts on the historical antisemitic stereotypes—even though such terms as ‘Jewish dominance’, ‘Jewish rootlessness’ and ‘Jewish idleness’ mean something different today than they did 70 years ago. The argumentation strategies that emerge from these stereotypes are also similar: the ‘threatening Jew’ and the ‘Jewish danger’ are constructed, and this gives rise to a recurring element of antisemitic discourses, namely the victim-victimizer reversal. Nevertheless, there are significant differences between the antisemitic discourses of the two periods. While, as our analysis shows, the self-other division was constructed mainly in a national context by the Hungarian press in the 1940s, the new media outlets Barikad.hu and Kuruc.info tend to set Hungarians against world Jewry. For Barikad.hu, the ‘Jewish other’ is embodied mostly by the state of Israel, while, alongside the Jewish state, Kuruc.info pays equal attention to global political and social actors. Another major difference can be highlighted between the old and the new media discourse: the frequent references that identified Jews via metaphors of illness, disease and infection in the old media emerge only occasionally in the discourse of the new outlets. While in the old discourse Jews appear as biological parasites, the bearers of ‘disease’, ‘infection’ and destructive ‘bacteria’, in the new discourse, instead of being constructed as a ‘biological other’, the Jews are rather represented as a ‘political other’. This difference is also visible in the construction of the topoi of threat and danger. In the first case, the threat is of a ‘hygienic’ nature, which appears in the form of a deadly infection, while, in the second, it is a political and economic one, appearing in the form of a colonizing power. The fight against the infection can only be a war of purification, with the goal of annihilating the lethal parasite. However, in the second case, fending off the danger implies a fight for emancipation and independence, for the realization of equal rights and the general humanitarian values against the Jewish state and its internal agents that endanger and threaten other states and peoples, including Hungary and the Hungarians. From a structural analytical perspective, all this would seem to confirm the assertions of Klaus Holz, according to which ‘(T)he stubborn constancy of antisemitism is rooted in the underlying semantic patterns of antisemitic ideology. They make it possible for the antisemitic semantic to reproduce itself in changing historical contexts. Of course, this leads to variations, but not to the transformation of the pattern itself’ (2005: 12). But do we find evidence for continuity if we examine not only the semantic patterns but also the function of the antisemitic discourse? Researchers on the functions of modern antisemitism agree that—alongside other functions—antisemitism plays a role in construction of group identities and, in a related manner, can function as a political ideology (Holz 2005; Volkov 1978). In the latter case, political actors express their political objectives in terms of the ‘Jewish question’. In order to achieve their goals, they attempt to mobilize people who are hostile toward Jews, doing so by presenting the

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removal of the harmful influences of Jews and, indeed, of the Jews themselves as a prerequisite for the realization of their political goals. The group-identity function of antisemitism is evident in both of the analyzed discourses, but it is a particularly prominent feature of the current discourse. This is succinctly expressed in texts authored by Krisztina Morvai, a representative of the Hungarian far-right Jobbik Party in the European Parliament, and published on Barikad.hu: Setting ‘our kind [of people]’ (the ingroup) against ‘your kind’—outsiders that malign the country—she wrote: ‘Decisions made by your kind [of people] are always dictated by whatever happens to “pay off” at a particular point in time, whatever is profitable for you, that is, whatever results in money or power. Common values are replaced by antifascist slogans and anti-Hungarian sentiment, and other ways of bringing “our kind” [of people] under control’39 (‘Két emberkép között folyik a harc’, August 27, 2008). In another article, she wrote: ‘Your kind [intend us to be] obedient subjects, servants and domestics, in an impoverished and maimed Hungary that has been turned into a third-world colony’40 (‘A Népszava megint Morvai Krisztinát gyalázza—Krisztina nyílt válaszlevele Várkonyi Tibornak’, December 5, 2008). The discourse leaves little doubt about the identity of the ‘other’: ‘If, after the fifty years of your communism, there had remained in us even a speck of the ancient Hungarian prowess, then after the so-called “change of regime” your kind would not have unpacked your legendary suitcases, which were supposedly on standby. No. You would have left promptly with your suitcases! You would have voluntarily moved out of your stolen . . . villas, and . . . you would not have been able to put your grubby hands on the Hungarian people’s property, our factories, our industrial plants, our hospitals. . . . We shall take back our homeland from those who have taken it hostage!’41 (‘A Magukfajták ideje lejárt: Morvai Krisztina reagál az Élet és Irodalom cikkére’, Barikad.hu, November 12, 2008). Likewise, the victim-victimizer reversal and a discourse that relativizes or denies the Holocaust in order to evade responsibility are means, in the current antisemitic discourse, for constructing a narcissistic national self-image and self-identity. Nevertheless, the present-day antisemitic discourse is not simply a Hungarian type of generic antisemitism in which the antisemitic semantic, having preserved its basic structures and functions, manifests itself in a new context. The functions of the current antisemitic discourse can be best understood by examining some features of today’s Hungarian far right. Research on the far-right Jobbik’s voters has shown that the party draws support from various social groups and that people vote for the party for various reasons (Kovács 2012). Indeed, Jobbik’s political success is a result of its ability to find a common denominator that unites various groups of voters in their support for the party. A strong anti-establishment attitude seems to be the element that binds the various groups together. The party correctly identified this factor and has based its program and election

Variations on a Theme 223 campaigns on this theme. In this way, Jobbik has portrayed itself as being on one side of the political divide with all the other mainstream parties on the other. In order to create this cleavage, Jobbik has striven to build up ‘ownership’ of certain themes which position the party unambiguously in opposition to all mainstream ‘establishment’ parties, whether on the left or on the right of politics, in government or part of the parliamentary opposition. This cleavage has been constructed by using such issues as the revision of the post–World War I peace treaties (the Trianon Treaty), the discrimination against and the exclusion of Roma, the revision of NATO and EU membership—and antisemitism. Antisemitism, however, differs in an important aspect from the other elements of the far-right discourse. Whereas each of the discourse elements underlying the anti-establishment identity was included in the party’s program after being converted into political ideology, antisemitism remained at the level of discourse. The demand for a revision of the postwar boundaries, the rejection of integration into the West and the facilitation of Roma segregation and the withdrawal of welfare from Roma were all part of Jobbik’s political program. In contrast, antisemitic political demands were absent both from the party’s program and from the antisemitic discourses under analysis. In the 1940s, the antisemitic discourses blurred the boundaries between words and action, but so far this has not been the case with the present-day antisemitic discourse. It seems that the present-day Hungarian far-right antisemitic discourse still has a group-identity function rather than a function of political mobilization for the realization of anti-Jewish political goals, appealing to those who, for whatever reason, belong to the anti-establishment camp and who speak its language. It is this language that makes members of the group recognizable to one another and which allows them to express their belonging to the group.42 In this regard, the function of antisemitism closely resembles what Shulamit Volkov (1989) wrote about the antisemitism of the 19th century: antisemitism functioned as a code for antimodernity, serving as a common denominator for feelings related to modernization and its various consequences. However, present-day antisemitism does not represent antimodernity but is rather a code for a political identity (Kovács 2011). The argumentation strategies created to legitimize this antisemitic discourse—the application of such topoi as equal rights, justice and humanitarianism—are designed to express the difference from the ‘old’ discourse and to achieve legitimacy within the current dominant paradigm. CONCLUSION Roger Griffin’s characterization of the ideological and political phenomenon that the current antisemitic discourse represents a part of is largely

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correct. Griffin referred to the radical far-right ideology as ‘the ethnocratic perversion of liberalism’ (Griffin 2000: 163), that is, as an ideology that purports to hold to liberal principles but whose liberality is restricted by ethnic borders. (Griffin 2000: 173). Those radical far-right parties that subscribe to this ideology cannot, on the one hand, be regarded as fascist parties because they ‘lack the core palingenetic vision of a “new order” totally replacing the liberal system’ (Griffin 2000: 173). On the other hand, however, ‘their axiomatic rejection of multiculturalism, their longing for purity, their nostalgia for a mythical world of racial homogeneity and clearly demarcated boundaries of cultural differentiation, their celebration of the ties of blood and history over reason and a common humanity, their rejection of ius soli for ius sanguinis, their solvent-like abuse of history represent a reformist version of the same basic myth’ (Griffin 2000: 174). Griffin’s description of modern radical far-right parties also applies to Jobbik. The significance and the function of antisemitism, however, are different in the case of the Hungarian far right. In Western countries, if antisemitism is present at all, it is manifested on the far right in the denial and relativization of the Holocaust, while its primary function is the ‘normalization and rehabilitation’ of fascism (Griffin 2000: 169) with a view to making those elements of far-right ideology that are associated with pre-war fascism more palatable to the population groups targeted by the right wing. As we have seen, this is not the case in Hungary. On the other hand, the continuity of and the differences between the old and new antisemitic discourses exhibit the same dialectic as that identified by Griffin in relation to other elements of modern far-right ideology: the new antisemitic discourse represents a reformist version of the old antisemitic myth. NOTES 1. In the case of Harc, we created a three-month sample. Ten accessible issues of the newspaper, published on May 20, May 27, June 3, June 10, June 17, June 24, July 1, July 8, July 22 and July 29, 1944, were studied. In the case of Egyedül vagyunk, we focused on an earlier period, examining articles that were published in 1942. Since this newspaper was a biweekly and articles relevant to our research appeared here less frequently than in Harc, we had to extend analyzed time period to a whole year in this case. Of the accessible issues of Egyedül vagyunk, we examined the ones that were published on January 29, February 12, February 26, March 12, March 26, May 8, April 10, April 26, May 22, June 5, June 19, July 3, July 17, July 31, August 14, August 28, September 11, October 9, October 23, November 6, November 20, December 4 and December 18, 1942. 2. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. 3. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. 4. ‘A mérgezo˝ anyagot ki kell vonni a nemzet testébo˝l, amelynek egy részét— fo˝ként a felso˝, arisztokratikus rétegét—megferto˝zte, hogy aztán a meggyógyított nemzetszervezet keményen állhassa meg helyét a nagy történelmi próbán’.

Variations on a Theme 225 5. ‘Marosnyéken öt zsidócsalád lakott. Közöttük az orvos és a gyógyszerész francia képeslapokat járatott és a nyarat Szinajában, a tél nagy részét pedig Bukarestben töltötte’. 6. ‘Mint minden teret, ahol kevés munkával sokat lehet keresni, az artista- és táncos-pályát is elözönlötték a zsidók’. 7. ‘Fiatal és tapasztalatlan fejjel beleszeretett egy zsidó lányba, aki behízelgo˝ modorával elszédítette, így polgári házasságot kötött vele’. 8. ‘[M]ondhatnám úgyis: a gyilkos zsidó–,de hát melyik nem az? Az egyik rituális késsel, a másik pénzzel, a harmadik ólombetu˝vel. . . ’ 9. ‘Ez az idegrendszerében beteg, szokásaiban és erkölcsében annyira idegen faj, ma még mindig fehér köppenyben ferto˝zi népünk széles rétegeit’. 10. ‘Mi nem csak azzal vádoljuk a zsidóságot, hogy határt nem ismero˝ telhetetlenségével, lelkiismeretlen üzelmekkel és utolérhetetlen raffinériával valósággal kifosztotta a dolgozó magyarságot és a nemzeti javak óriási hányadára rátette a kezét, hanem azzal is, politikai, gazdasági, társadalmi, kulturális életünkben olyan eszméket, olyan törekvéseket, olyan irányzatokat csempészett be, amely általános bomlást, erkölcsi züllést és faji hanyatlást idéztek elo˝, amelyekbo˝l, ha nem sikerül társadalmunkat kigyógyítanunk, úgy a következmények valósággal beláthatatlanok’. 11. ‘Tiszta már a fürdo˝vízünk!’ 12. ‘Az egész magyar közvéleménynek ismerni kell a zsidóság elleni önvédelmi harcnak igazi okát, értelmét és célját’. 13. ‘Még az utóbbi napokban is hallottunk megjegyzéseket egyesek részéro˝l, hogy voltaképpen olyan nagy bu˝nt követett-e el a zsidóság, hogy így kelljen lakolnia? . . . Hogy mivel tartozunk a zsidóságnak ezt mindannyian tudjuk, so˝t tudjuk azt is, hogy akik ilyen megjegyzéseket tesznek, azokkal szemben hogyan járjunk el’. 14. In the case of websites, we focused on the most recent content, examining all the accessible articles relevant to our research that were published in March, April and May 2011 on Barikad.hu and in June, July and August 2011 on Kuruc.info. 15. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. 16. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. 17. ‘Bár a ház o˝rizetbo˝l kiszabadul, az ügyészség álláspontja értelmében továbbra sem utazhat szabadon a zsidó’. 18. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. 19. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. 20. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text 21. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. 22. ‘Igen tudjuk, hogy izraeliek sok pénzt fektettek, vagy akarnak befektetni itt Magyarországon, hiszen Simon Peresz már néhány évvel ezelo˝tt bejelentette, hogy felvásárolják Magyarországot’. 23. ‘Ma sokan azt hiszik, hogy ez Magyarországon soha nem lesz lehetséges. Nos, a palesztin o˝slakosok is ezt hitték 80 évvel ezelo˝tt, amikor földet adtak el a zsidó “ingatlanfejleszto˝knek”, befekteto˝knek, kibucoknak. Lehet, hogy ma már másként cselekednének’. 24. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. 25. ‘Az viszont tény, hogy vannak aggasztó jelek arra nézve, Putyin volt orosz elnök és jelenlegi miniszterelnök nem is annyira keményen képviseli a nemzeti érdekeket, mint azt sokan gondolják. Január 17-i sajtószemlénkben idéztük az Al-Dzsazíra televízió egyórás mu˝sorát, amelyben több orosz vezeto˝ is megszólalt. Ketten azt mondták, az oroszországi zsidó lobbi nyomása miatt nem szállította le Moszkva Teheránnak az esetleges izraeli/amerikai légi támadást meghiúsítani képes orosz rakétavédelmi rendszert’.

226 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

42.

András Kovács and Anna Szilágyi For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. ‘A probléma lényege a kamatos kamat rendszere, amit a zsidó pénzváltók találtak ki az ókorban, majd a középkorban a Rotschildok, Fuggerek és más vérszívó paraziták olyan tökéletesre fejlesztettek, hogy birodalmak sorsa az o˝ kezükben volt, mert a pénzükto˝l függtek és szabadon dönthettek háború vagy béke kérdésében’. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. ‘Ilyen egyszeru˝. “A zsidóknak el kell menniük Ciszjordániából a francba!” ’ ‘[A]z egész nyugati világot végeredményben néhány dúsgazdag és rendkívül befolyásos zsidó család tartja uralma alatt, akiknek a hatalma évszázadok szívós cselszövésével szinte mértéktelenre no˝tt. Ne tévesszen meg senkit, hogy a globalizált világban rendkívül sok szereplo˝ van jelen, a háttérben mindig is a “nagyok” hozzák a döntéseket’. ‘Izraeli katonák rendszeresen lo˝nek mindenkire, akit “gyanúsnak találnak”, s ezt szinte soha nem követi semmilyen vizsgálat. Most egy palesztin rendo˝r tett így—le is csukták’. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. For the Hungarian original see headline in the text. ‘[A] krematóriumok kapacitása és a kokszfelhasználás alapján (és persze számos más okból), nem volt lehetséges a gázkamrákban zajló tömeges megsemmisítés’. ‘Döntéseiket mindig az diktálja, hogy akkor és ott aktuálisan mi az, ami éppen “bejön”, ami számukra hasznos, azaz pénzt vagy hatalmat hoz. A közös értékrendet pótolja tehát az ANTIFÁZÁS és a magyargyu˝lölet, a Magunkfajták rendszabályozásának egyéb formái’. ‘A Magukfajták szófogadó alattvalóknak, szolgáknak, cselédeknek (szánnak bennünket) az elszegényedett, megnyomorított, harmadik világbeli gyarmattá tett Magyarországon’. ‘Ha bennünk a Maguk ötven évnyi kommunizmusa után maradt volna egy szemernyi is az o˝si magyar virtusból, akkor az ún “rendszerváltás” után a Magukfajták nem csomagolták volna ki legendás bo˝röndjeiket, amik állítólag készenlétben álltak. Nem. Bo˝röndöstül távoztak volna, de izibe! Önként költöztek volna ki a lopott rózsadombi villáikból, s KISZ és párttitkárjaik nem tehették volna rá mocskos kezeiket a magyar nép vagyonára, gyárainkra, üzemeinkre, kórházainkra . . . . Visszavesszük a Hazánkat azoktól, akik túszul ejtették!’ Research trying to map the reasons why Facebook fans of Jobbik support the party has found that only 4 per cent of the surveyed group of supporters has mentioned antisemitism among the motives (Bartlett et al. 2012, p. 50).

REFERENCES Barkóczi B. (2010) A hazai radikális jobboldal térhódítása az interneten [The Domestic Far-Right’s Expansion on the Internet], Médiakutató, Winter, pp. 51–61. Retrieved from http://www.mediakutato.hu/cikk/2010_04_tel/04_radi kalis_jobboldal_internet/. Bartlett, J., Birdwell, J., Krekó P., Benfield, J., and Gyori, G. (2012) Populism in Europe: Hungary. London: Demos.

Variations on a Theme 227 Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Bustikova, L., and Kitschelt, H. (2009) The Radical Right in Post-Communist Europe. Comparative Perspectives on Legacies and Party Competition, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 42, pp. 459–483. Eco, U. (1995) Ur-Fascism, The New York Review of Books, 22 June. Griffin, R. (1991) The Nature of Fascism. London: Pinter. Griffin, R. (ed.) (1998) International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus. London: E. Arnold. Griffin, R. (2000) Interregnum or Endgame? The Radical Right in the ‘Post-Fascist’ Era, Journal of Political Ideologies, 5(2), pp. 163–178. Holz, K. (2005) Die Gegenwart des Antisemitismus. Islamistische, demokratische und antizionistische Judenfeindschaft. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition. Kovács, A. (2004) Hungarian Jewish Politics from the End of the Second World War until the Collapse of Communism. In: Ezra Mendelsohn (ed.), Jews and the State: Dangerous Alliances and the Perils of Privilege. Studies in Contemporary Jewry 19. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 124–156. Kovács, A. (2011) Stranger at Hand: Antisemitic Prejudices in Post-Communist Hungary. Boston and Leiden: Brill. Kovács, A. (2012) The Post-Communist Extreme Right: The Jobbik party in Hungary. In: R. Wodak (ed.), Confronting Rightwing Populist Movements in the European Union. London: Bloomsbury. Langmuir, G. I. (1990) Toward a Definition of Antisemitism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mátay, M., and Kaposi, I. (2008) Radicals Online: the Hungarian Street Protests of 2006 and the Internet. In: K. Jakubowicz and M. Sükösd (eds.), Finding the Right Place on the Map: Central and Eastern European Media Change in a Global Perspective. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect Books, pp. 277–296. Minkenberg, M. (2000) The adical Right in Postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe: Comparative Observations and Interpretations, East European Politics and Society, 16(2), pp. 335–362. Minkenberg, M. (ed.) (2009) Legacies and the Radical Right in Post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe. Special Issue of Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 42(4), pp. 445–572. Payne, S. G. (2000) Review Article: Historical Fascism and the Radical Right, Journal of Contemporary History, 35(1), pp. 109–118. Reisigl, M., and Wodak R. (2001) Discourse and Discrimination, Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London and New York: Routledge. van Dijk, T. A. (1988) How “They” Hit the Headlines: Ethnic Minorities in the Press. In: G. Smitherman-Donaldson and T. A. van Dijk (eds.), Discourse and Discrimination. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, pp. 221–262. van Dijk, T. A. (1991) Racism and the Press. London: Routledge. van Dijk, T. A. (1992) Discourse and the Denial of Racism, Discourse & Society, 3, pp. 87–118. Volkov, S. (1978) Antisemitism as a Cultural Code. Reflections on the History and Historiography of Antisemitism in Imperial Germany. In: Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, vol. 23, pp. 25–45. Volkov, S. (1989) The Written Matter and the Spoken Word. The Gap between Pre1914 and Nazi Anti-Semitism. In: Francois Furet (ed.), Unanswered Questions: Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews. New York: Schocken Books.

12 The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right The Case of VO Svoboda Per Anders Rudling

Ukraine, one of the youngest states in Europe, received its current borders between 1939 and 1954. The country remains divided between east and west, a division that is discernible in language, culture, religion and, not the least, historical memory. Whereas Ukrainian nationalism in the 1990s was described in terms of “a minority faith,” over the past half-decade there has been a significant upswing in far-right activity (Wilson, 1997: 117–146). The far-right tradition is particularly strong in western Ukraine. Today a significant ultra-nationalist party, the All-Ukrainian Association (Vseukrains’ke Ob’’iednanne, VO) Svoboda, appears to be on the verge of a political breakthrough at the national level. This article is a survey, not only of its ideology and the political tradition to which it belongs but also of the political climate which facilitated its growth. It contextualizes the current turn to the right in western Ukraine against the backdrop of instrumentalization of history and the official rehabilitation of the ultra-nationalists of the 1930s and 1940s. MEMORIES OF A VIOLENT 20TH CENTURY Swept to power by the Orange Revolution, the third president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko (2005–2010), put in substantial efforts into the production of historical myths. He tasked a set of nationalistically minded historians to produce and disseminate an edifying national history as well as a new set of national heroes. Given Yushchenko’s aim to unify the country around a new set of historical myths, his legitimizing historians ironically sought their heroes in the interwar period, during which the Ukrainian-speaking lands were divided, and had very different historical experiences. In Soviet Ukraine, a decade of intense promotion of Ukrainian language and culture was reversed with Stalin’s “revolution from above” and replaced by harsh repression of the Ukrainian intellectual elite. The political terror was accompanied by forced industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. Draconian enforcement of grain requisitions led to famine in many parts of the Soviet Union. The estimated 3.3 million excess deaths in the Ukrainian SSR in 1932–1933 constituted

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one of the worst atrocities in European history and Stalin’s greatest crime against his own citizens.1 The establishment of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), in 1929, brought together war veterans, student fraternities and far-right groups into the most significant Ukrainian ultra-nationalist movement (Shekhovtsov, 2007: 273). The former Marxist Dmytro Dontsov created an indigenous Ukrainian fascism based upon Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Sorel and Charles Maurras and translated the works of Hitler and Mussolini into Ukrainian (Shekhovtsov, 2011a: 208). OUN relied on terrorism, violence and assassinations, not least against other Ukrainians, to achieve its goal of a totalitarian and ethnically homogenous Ukrainian nation-state. The OUN was met with repression from the Polish state, something which further radicalized its positions (Bruder, 2007: 77–112). Strongly oriented towards the Axis powers, the OUN was committed to ethnic purity. OUN founder Evhen Konovalets’ (1891–1938) stated that his movement was “waging war against mixed marriages” with Poles, Russians and Jews, the latter of whom he described as “foes of our national rebirth”(Carynnyk, 2011: 315). After Konovalets’ was himself assassinated by the Soviet secret police, in 1938, the movement split into two wings, the followers of Andrii Melnyk (1890–1964) and Stepan Bandera (1909–1959), known as Melnykites, OUN(m), and Banderites, OUN(b). Both wings enthusiastically committed to the new fascist Europe. In June 1941, the OUN(b) made an attempt to establish a Ukrainian state as a loyal satellite of Nazi Germany (Rossolin´ski-Liebe, 2011: 99). Stepan Lenkavs’kyi (1904–1977), the chief propagandist of the 1941 OUN(b) “government,” advocated the physical destruction of Ukrainian Jewry. Yaroslav Stets’ko, the OUN(b) “Prime Minister,” and Bandera’s deputy, supported “the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine, barring their assimilation and the like” (Finder and Prusin, 2004: 102; Berkhoff and Carynnyk, 1999: 171). During the first days of the war, there were up to 140 pogroms in western Ukraine, claiming the lives of 13,000–35,000 people (Struve, 2012: 268). In 1943–1944, OUN(b) and its armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), carried out large-scale ethnic cleansing, resulting in the deaths of more than 90,000 Poles and thousands of Jews. After the war, the UPA continued a hopeless struggle against the Soviet authorities until 1953, in which they killed 20,000 Ukrainians. The Soviet authorities killed 153,000 people, arrested 134,000 and deported 203,000 UPA members, sympathizers and their families (Siemaszko, 2010: 93; Motyka, 2006: 649). IMPORTED HEROISM—REDISCOVERED HEROES The OUN was dominant among the Ukrainian Displaced Persons who settled in the West after the war. The OUN(b) went through yet another split in 1948, as a smaller group, which came to be known as OUN zakordonnyi, or OUN abroad, OUN(z), around Mykola Lebed,2 declared themselves to have

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accepted democratic principles. During the Cold War, US, West German, and British intelligence utilized various OUN wings in ideological warfare and covert actions against the Soviet Union (Breitman and Goda, 2010: 73– 98; Breitman, Goda, Naftali and Wolfe, 2005). Funded by the CIA, which sponsored Lebed’s immigration to the United States and protected him from prosecution for war crimes, OUN(z) activists formed the core of the Proloh Research and Publishing Association, a pro-nationalist semiacademic publisher. The United States was repelled by the radicalism of the OUN(b), by far the largest Ukrainian émigré political party, and did not support their aim of a violent, possibly nuclear, confrontation with the Soviet Union, aiming at its breakup into a galaxy of successor states. The aim of rolling back Soviet communism did not translate into US support for the establishment of an authoritarian, nuclear Ukraine under OUN rule. As committed totalitarians, the OUN(b) cooperated mostly with Franco’s Spain, Chiang KaiShek’s Taiwan and with other eastern European far-right émigré groups, including former ministers of Tiso’s Slovakia, the successors of the Ustasha, the Romanian Legionnaires, and former Nazis.3 The OUN wings disagreed on strategy and ideology but shared a commitment to the manufacture of a historical past based on victimization and heroism. The émigrés developed an entire literature that denied the OUN’s fascism, its collaboration with Nazi Germany, and its participation in atrocities, instead presenting the organization as composed of democrats and pluralists who had rescued Jews during the Holocaust. The diaspora narrative was contradictory, combining celebrations of the supposedly anti-Nazi resistance struggle of the OUN-UPA with celebrations of the Waffen-SS Galizien, a Ukrainian collaborationist formation established by Heinrich Himmler in 1943 (Rudling, 2011a, 2011c, 2012a). Thus, Ukrainian Waffen-SS veterans could celebrate the UPA as “anti-Nazi resistance fighters” while belonging to the same war veterans’ organizations (Bairak, 1978). Unlike their counterparts in some other post-Soviet states, Ukrainian “nationalizing” historians did not have to invent new nationalist myths but re-imported a narrative developed by the émigrés (Dietsch, 2006: 111–146; Rudling, 2011a: 751–753). This narrative was well received in western Ukraine but was received coldly or met open hostility in the eastern and southern parts of the country. YUSHCHENKOISM As president, Yushchenko initiated substantial government propaganda initiatives. In July 2005, he established an Institute of National Memory, assigned the archives of the former KGB (now the SBU, Sluzhba Bezpeki Ukrainy, the Ukrainian Security Service) formal propagandistic duties and supported the creation of a “Museum of Soviet Occupation” in Kyiv (Jilge, 2008: 174). Yushchenko appointed the young activist Volodymyr V’’iatrovych (b. 1977) director of the SBU archives. V’’iatrovych

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combined his position as government-appointed memory manager with ultranationalist activism; he was simultaneously director of an OUN(b) front organization, the Center for the Study for the Liberation Movement. State institutions disseminated a sanitized, edifyingly patriotic version of the history of the “Ukrainian national liberation movement,” the leaders of which were presented in iconographic form as heroic and saintly figures, martyrs of the nation (Rasevych, 2010; Rudling, 2011c: 26–33, 2012b). Yushchenko’s mythmaking had two central components. The first was the presentation of the 1932–1933 famine as “the genocide of the Ukrainian nation,” a deliberate attempt to exterminate the Ukrainians which, his mythmakers claimed, resulted in the death of 10 million people in the republic.4 The other component was a heroic cult of the OUN(b), the UPA and their leaders. The “memory managers” juxtaposed the genocidal Soviet rule with the self-sacrificial heroism of the OUN-UPA, producing a teleological narrative of suffering (the famine) and resistance (the OUN-UPA) leading to redemption (independence, 1991). Curiously, Yushchenko’s legitimizing historians presented their instrumentalized use of history as “truth,” which they juxtaposed to “Soviet myths.” Wilfried Jilge, a historian at the University of Leipzig, writes that “[i]t takes place by means of discourse, rituals, and symbols and uses the past to provide legitimization and to mobilize the population for political purposes. . . . A reconstructed historical memory is created as ‘true memory’ and then contrasted with ‘false Soviet history’ ”(Jilge, 2007: 104–105). Thus, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, SBU director under Yushchenko, described the task of his agency as being to disseminate “the historical truth of the past of the Ukrainian people,” to “liberate Ukrainian history from lies and falsifications and to work with truthful documents only” (Jilge, 2008: 179). Ignoring the OUN’s antisemitism, denying its participation in antiJewish violence, and overlooking its fascist ideology, Nalyvaichenko and his agency presented the OUN as democrats, pluralists, even righteous rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust (Rudling, 2011c: 26–33). NATIONAL ESSENTIALIZATION AND OTHERING The hegemonic nationalist narrative is reflected also in academia, where the line between “legitimate” scholarship and ultra-nationalist propaganda often is blurred. Mainstream bookstores often carry Holocaust denial and antisemitic literature, some of which finds its way into the academic mainstream (Rudling, 2006). So too, for instance, can academic works on World War II by reputable historians integrate the works of Holocaust deniers5 and cite the former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke as a “expert” on the “Jewish Question.”6 The institutionalized “nationalizing” is partly based on simplistic binaries, which sometimes take essentialist and biologist forms. V’’iatrovych asserts that “For Russians it is normal to subordinate to a leader, for Ukrainians it

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is not” (Vakula, 2011). The National Lviv Ivan Franko University, a partner of V’’iatrovych’s Center (“Partnery”), is explicitly committed to ethnicizing its student body and to producing a nationally conscious elite. In its mission statement, the university declares its commitment to install national consciousness, the forming of Ukrainian national selfconsciousness and national dignity, love for the native soil and Ukrainian traditions, the training of a conscious intelligentsia, and safeguarding the intellectual gene pool of the nation [zberezhennia intellektual’noho henofondu natsii]. It trains [its students] in love for the native land, her history, the renewal and retention of historical memory; the cultivation of the best character traits of Ukrainian mentality (love of labor, individual freedom, deep connection with nature, and so on). . . . Physical, spiritual and physical tempering. (“Kontseptsiia national’noho vykhovannia”, n.d.) The culmination of Yushchenko’s Geschichtspolitik was his designation, a few days before leaving office, of Bandera as a hero of Ukraine. Again, there was little protest from intellectuals who identify themselves as liberals. More concerned with the bad PR Yushchenko’s policies brought Ukraine, some disputed the OUN’s antisemitism and collaboration with the Nazis, instead emphasizing the OUN-UPA’s “patriotism, national solidarity, self-sacrifice, idealistic commitment to common goals and values” (Riabchuk, 2010). Others dismissed the OUN’s fascism as a “Soviet stereotype” (Ponomar’ov, 2010, but see also the review by Rossolin´ski-Liebe and Rudling, 2011), or that it simply did not matter. One leading liberal historian argued that, “In the case of Bandera, the issue is not whether he was a fascist, but whether the majority who celebrate him celebrate him as a such” (Hrytsak, 2010). Whereas the interpretations of Yushchenko’s legitimizing historians had seemingly unlimited access to the “national democratic” venues, alternative interpretations were often excluded (Amar, 2008; Katchanovski, 2011). ULTRA-NATIONALIST ENJOYMENT Slavoj Žižek argues that nationalism is about enjoyment: “A nation exists only as long as its specific enjoyment continues to be materialized in a set of social practices and transmitted through national myths that structure these practices. . . . Nationalism thus presents a privileged domain of the eruption of enjoyment into the social field. The national Cause is ultimately nothing but the way subjects of a given ethnic community organize their enjoyment through national myths” (Žižek, 1993: 202). Nationalism has dominated the political life in post-Soviet western Ukraine. Political rituals, processions, re-enactments and sacralization of memory are characteristic features of the intellectual life in contemporary Lviv. On June 30, 2011, the 70th anniversary of the German invasion and Stets’ko’s “renewal of

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Figure 12.1 “Bandera—Our Hero,” giant portrait of the OUN(b) leader displayed by far-right football fans, the “Banderstadt ultras,” during a game between Karpaty Lviv and Shakhtar Donetsk. Spring 2010. Image Copyright Lucyna Kulin´ska.

Ukrainian statehood” was re-enacted in Lviv as a popular festival, where parents with small children waved flags to re-enactors in SS uniforms (“U L’vovi vidtvoryly podii 1941-ho roku,” 2011). Extremist football supporters, so-called ultras, promote Lviv as Banderstadt at football games and other events. The enjoyment in the many nationalist rituals and processions in postSoviet Lviv is partly commercial. Ultra-nationalist ideologues have found both effective and lucrative ways to work with entrepreneurs to popularize and disseminate their narrative to the youth. The OUN-UPA theme restaurant Kryivka [Hideout or Lurking Hole] in Lviv is but one example of this. Its guests have a choice of dishes like “Cold boiled pork ‘Hände Hoch,’ ” “Kosher Haidamaky-style salo (pork lard),” and “Combat serenade” salo. Kryivka’s dining room walls are decorated with larger-than-life portraits of Bandera, the toilet with Russian and Jewish anecdotes. The same Lviv entrepreneur also runs the Jewish theme restaurant Pid Zolotoiu Rozoiu (Beneath the Golden Rose), where guests are offered black hats of the sort worn by Hasidim, along with payot. The menu lists no prices for the dishes; instead, one is required to haggle over highly inflated prices “in the Jewish fashion.” Behind these restaurants stands Iurii Nazaruk, a Lviv entrepreneur and a graduate of the Ivan Franko University. Nazaruk argues that “Our cafes confirm myths. People need this. . . . It is a transmission of

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a piece of history, . . . a piece of Lviv” (Nazaruk, 2008). Not everyone finds these theme restaurants equally pleasant. Efraim Zuroff, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, describes these restaurants as “only the tip of the racism and anti-Semitic iceberg in Lviv” and has called for a boycott of these restaurants (Zuroff, 2012).

Figure 12.2 “Territory: Banderstadt,” Ultra-nationalist event for adolescents, sponsored by the OUN(b) front organization the Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement and by the OUN(b)-affiliated Ukrainian Youth Movement, Kyiv, January 2012. A nationalist salute was required by the door, the dress code stipulated “folk costumes and UPA uniforms,” and the party featured anti-immigrant activities, OUN-UPA reenactments and games and the presentation of V’’iatrovych’s calendar UPA: People and Weapons. Top right, the OUN(m) symbol. Image Copyright Lucyna Kulin´ska.

The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right 235 Whereas Lviv is the undisputed centre of these activities, commercialized ultra-nationalist enjoyment is expanding into other parts of Ukraine. In a December 2011 event that targeted teenagers and adolescents, V’’iatrovych’s Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement declared a popular Kyiv nightclub, Territoriia Bandershtadtu, an ultra-nationalist event “in the spirit of the insurgents, with corresponding UPA attributes: UPA uniforms, shotguns, songs, historical photographs of UPA warriors on the walls . . . the intellectual game Kryivka, showcasing of the UPA calendar [UPA: People and Weapons], the display of authentic, historical UPA uniforms, and the presentation of the book UPA—the Army of the Undefeated by the Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement” (“21 hrudnia,” 2011). Ironically, the presentation of the OUN as resistance fighters against Nazi Germany coexists with an elaborate cult of the Waffen-SS Galizien (Rudling, 2012a). Lviv streets have been renamed after Nazi collaborators like Roman Shukhevych and Volodymyr Kubijovycˇ. In the Lviv city hall, Svoboda is currently working to have the Lviv airport renamed after Bandera. Svoboda deputy Iuryi Mykahl’chyshyn stated, “We should have the airport named after Stepan Bandera. I don’t want to point any fingers. . . . But we will have a Bandera airport, a Bandera stadium, and the entire city will be carrying Bandera’s name, because he is its most living symbol” (“U L’vovi budut’ stadion,” 2012). In the fall of 2011, Svoboda deputies in a municipality in the Lviv district renamed a street from the Soviet-era name Peace Street (Vulytsia Myru) to instead carry the name of the Nachtigall Battalion, a Ukrainian nationalist formation involved in the mass murder of Jews in 1941, arguing that “ ‘Peace’ is a holdover from Soviet stereotypes” (“Vulytsiu myru,” 2011). “SOCIAL-NATIONALISM” AND VO SVOBODA After 1991, the OUN faced considerable difficulties re-establishing itself in independent Ukraine. It split between the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN) in Ukraine and the émigré OUN(b), led by second-generation émigrés in Germany and Australia. Today, no fewer than four organizations claim to be the heirs to Stepan Bandera—KUN and the émigré OUN(b), the clandestine “Tryzub imeni Bandery” (“Trident”), and VO Svoboda (Kuzio, 2011). The latter was initially founded in Lviv in 1991 as the SocialNational Party of Ukraine through the merger of a number of ultranationalist organizations and student fraternities. Its ideology was inspired by Stets’ko’s ideology of “two revolutions,” one national and one social. As party symbol, it chose a mirror image of the so-called Wolfsangel, or Wolf’s hook, which was used by several SS divisions and, after the war, by neo-Nazi organizations. It organized a paramilitary guard and recruited skinheads and football hooligans into its ranks. Its appeal to Ukrainian voters was limited.

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Figures 12.3 and 12.4 Torchlight parade on the anniversary of the 1918 Battle of Kruty, Lviv, January 29, 2011, organized by Svoboda deputy Iuryi Mykhal’chyshyn and “autonomous nationalists.” The banner with the Wolfsangel reads “For the dead. For the living. And the unborn.” The red and black “revolutionary” banners of the OUN(b) and UPA represent Blut und Boden, blood and soil. Image Copyright Lucyna Kulin´ska.

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Following a few years of decline, in 2004 the movement chose as its leader Oleh Tiahnybok (b. 1968).7 He undertook significant efforts to remove the extremist image. Modelling itself after their Austrian Freedom Party, in 2004 the party changed its name to the All-Ukrainian Association Svoboda, or Freedom, replacing the Wolfsangel with an image, in the national colours, of a hand with three raised fingers. By recruiting Tiahnybok, who had run as an independent candidate, into the Nasha Ukraina faction of the Verkhovna Rada, Yushchenko provided Svoboda a certain legitimacy. A few months later, Tiahnybok gave an inflammatory speech in which he celebrated the OUN-UPA for having “fought against the Muscovite [moskali], Germans, Jews [zhydy] and other scum, who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state!” and asserted that Ukraine was ruled by a “Muscovite-Jewish [moskal’s’kozhydivs’ka] mafia.” Tiahnybok’s speech was used by political opponents to embarrass Yushchenko, who expelled Tiahnybok from the Nasha Ukraina parliamentary faction. As a member of the Rada, Tiahnybok petitioned Yushchenko to “stop the criminal activity of organized Jewry,” allegedly aiming at undermining Ukrainian sovereignty (Shekhovtsov, 2011a: 213–217; Umland and Shekhovtsov, 2010: 13). Svoboda also attempted to build up a popular base by addressing a variety of social issues, not all of which related to farright ideology. The strategy of addressing a variety of social issues unrelated to far-right ideology follows the strategy of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) on the state level in Germany. Svoboda’s claims to the OUN legacy are based upon ideological continuity, as well as organization and political culture (Shekhovtsov, 2011b: 13–14). Presenting Svoboda as the successor of Dontsov and the OUN, Tiahnybok regards Svoboda as “an Order-party which constitutes the true elite of the nation” (Tiahnybok, 2011). Like those of many other far-right movements, Svoboda’s official policy documents are relatively cautious and differ from its daily activities and internal jargon, which are much more radical and racist (Olszan´ski, 2011). Svoboda subscribes to the OUN tradition of national segregation and demands the re-introduction of the Soviet “nationality” category into Ukrainian passports. “We are not America, a mishmash of all sorts of people,” the Svoboda website states. “The Ukrainian needs to stay Ukrainian, the Pole— Polish, the Gagauz—Gagauz, the Uzbek—Uzbek” (“Hrafa ‘natsional’nost’ v pasporti,” 2005). Svoboda’s ultra-nationalism is supplemented with more traditional “white racism”(Shekhovtsov, 2011b: 15). ANTI-JEWISH, ANTI-POLISH ATTITUDES Conspiracy theory is integral to Svoboda Weltanschauung, particularly conspiracies with anti-Semitic undertones. In August 2011, in an apparent attempt to distance themselves from the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring

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Breivik, Svoboda claimed that he was a Jewish Mason (Redkolehiia chasopysu “Svoboda,” 2011). In September 2011, Svoboda activists mobilized from several parts of Ukraine to organize rallies against Hasidic pilgrims to Uman.8 Following violent clashes, the police detained more than 50 Svoboda activists, armed with gas canisters, smoke bombs and catapults. The Cherkasy branch of Svoboda criticized the police for their alleged failure “to stop and avert aggression by Hasidic Jews to Ukrainians” (“Uman: Rightwing activists detained,” 2011). Svoboda’s anti-Russian and anti-Jewish rhetoric is accompanied by an anti-Polish message. Svoboda maintains that Poland has played a negative historical role in Ukrainian lands. The party demands an official apology from Poland for five hundred years of Polonization, from the 15th to the 20th centuries, and indemnities for “the Polish terror and occupation of Ukrainian lands in the 20th century” (“Zaiava VO ‘Svoboda’ shchodo proiaviv ukrainofobii,” 2010). Focusing on divisive and sensitive issues, Svoboda provocatively denies any involvement of the Waffen-SS Galizien in atrocities against the Polish

Figure 12.5 Denial of war crimes: Bi-lingual Svoboda billboard on the site of the Polish village Huta Pieniacka, burnt along with more than 700 of its residents by the Fourth Police Regiment of the Waffen-SS Galizien and a detachment of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army on February 29, 1944. Svoboda categorically denies the conclusions of the Polish and Ukrainian historical commissions. Image Copyright Lucyna Kulin´ska.

The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right 239 minority in Galicia. For instance, on the site of Huta Pieniacka, Svoboda has placed a huge billboard denying the conclusion of both Polish and Ukrainian historical commissions that the fourth police regiment, which was later adjoined to the Waffen-SS Galizien, burnt this Polish village and slaughtered most of its residents on February 28, 1944.9 INTERNATIONAL CONTACTS Despite its anti-Polish and anti-Western ideology, Svoboda actively collaborates with Narodowego Odrodzenia Polski (NOP) and other European ultra-nationalist and neo-fascist movements (Pankowski, “Polsko-ukrain´ska współpraca neofaszystów,” 2011). Svoboda is a member of the so-called Alliance of European National Movements, a network which includes the British National Party, Nationaldemokraterna of Sweden, the Front National in France, Fiamma Tricolore in Italy, the Belgian National Front, and the Hungarian Jobbik (Umland, 2011). This seemingly unlikely cooperation is partly facilitated by a joint fascination with ethnic purity, inspired by Alain de Benoit, the ideologue of the French Nouvelle Droite. De Benoit fears the disappearance of pluralism and the reduction of all cultures into a world civilization and argues that each ethnos should be allowed to develop independently on its given territory, without the admixture of other cultures. Nationaldemokraterna, their Swedish sister party, advocates a form of ethnic segregation, which they refer to as “ethnopluralism” (Dahl, 1999: 68, 136). Svoboda has opened an office in Toronto, which has been visited by several of its leading figures (“Diial’nist Kanads’koho predstavnytstva ‘Svobody,’ ” 2009). In Canada, in May 2010, Tiahnybok received the golden cross “for his service to Ukraine” from the Brotherhood of the Veterans of the First Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army, as the veterans of the Waffen-SS Galizien call themselves (“Esesovtsy nagradil lidera ukrainskikh natsionalistov,” 2010). Following the conviction and sentencing of the death camp guard John Demjanjuk to five years of jail for his role as an accessory to the murder of 27,900 people at the Sobibór death camp, Tiahnybok traveled to Germany and met up with Demjanjuk’s lawyer, Ulrich Busch, presenting the death camp guard as a hero, a victim of persecution, who is “fighting for truth” (“Oleh Tiahnybok iz dvodennym vizytom vidvidav Nimechynu,” 2010).10 SVOBODA AND THE “AUTONOMOUS NATIONALISTS” Tiahnybok’s heroization of the Waffen-SS Galizien and other Nazi collaborators is accompanied by ideological claims that the OUN-UPA conducted an anti-Nazi resistance struggle against Hitler (Rudling, 2011c: 40).

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Yurii Mykhal’chyshyn (b. 1982), Tiahnybok’s adviser on ideological matters, Svoboda’s top name in the election to the Lviv city council and its candidate for mayor in 2010, represents a more radical current in the movement. Proudly confessing himself part of the fascist tradition, Mykhal’chyshyn relishes the harshness, extremism and uncompromising radicalism of his idols of the 1930s and 1940s. Constantly reiterating that “We consider tolerance a crime” and that “We value the truth of the spirit and blood overall success and wealth” (Nasha Vatra, n.d.), Mykhal’chyshyn takes pride in the label “extremist,” which he proudly shares with “Stepan Bandera, who created an underground terrorist-revolutionary army, the shadow of which still stirs up horrible fear in the hearts of the enemies of our Nation” (Mykhal’chyshyn, “Orientyry”, n.d.). Mykhal’chyshyn serves as a link between VO Svoboda and the so-called autonomous nationalists. Mirroring the “autonomous anarchists” of the extreme left, which they resemble in terms of dress code, lifestyle, aesthetics, symbolism and organization, the “autonomous nationalists” attract particularly militant and extremely violent “event-oriented” young fascists. Mykhal’chyshyn has combined the attributes of various stands of the extra-parliamentary extreme right: Doc Martens shoes, buzz cuts and bomber jackets are in the tradition of the skinheads, while the nightly torchlight parades under black banners with SS symbols resemble the political rituals

Figure 12.6 “We are Banderites!” Political propaganda of the autonomous nationalists, glorifying assaults on perceived enemies. Image Copyright Lucyna Kulin´ska.

The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right 241 and Aufmärsche in Nazi Germany. The glorification of street violence is a key component of this political subculture: in an extra session with the Lviv regional Rada in front of the Bandera memorial in Lviv, Mykhal’chyshyn boasted that “Our Banderite army will cross the Dnipro and throw that blue-ass gang, which today usurps the power, out of Ukraine. . . . That will make those Asiatic dogs shut their ugly mouths.”11 While hardly a typical man of the belles-lettres, Mykhal’chyshyn, is actually a student of fascism. In April 2009, VO Svoboda congratulated Mykhal’chyshyn on his successful defence of his kandidat nauk thesis, a post-Soviet academic degree, roughly equal to a PhD (“Vitaemo Iuryia Mykhal’chyshyna z zakhystom dysertatsii!,” 2009). Titled “Transformation of a Political Movement into a Mass Political Party of a New Type: The Case of NSDAP and PNF (Comparative Analysis),” it was written under the supervision of Mykola Polishchuk of the department of political science at the Ivan Franko University in 2009.12 Mykhal’chyshyn has published a handful of academic articles in the journals of the Ivan Franko National University, focused on the strategy of fascist “anti-system” movements (Mykhal’chyshyn, 2007, 2008). His interest is not exclusively academic; under the pseudonym Nachtigall88,13 Mykhal’chyshyn promotes fascist ideology with the purpose of promoting a fascist transformation of society in Web forums linked to Svoboda and “autonomous nationalists.” In 2005, he organized a political think tank, originally called “the Joseph Goebbels Political Research Center” but later re-named after the German conservative revolutionary Ernst Jünger14 (Olszan´ski, 2011). Explicitly endorsing Hamas, Mykhal’chyshyn regards the Holocaust as “a bright episode in European civilization” which “strongly warms the hearts of the Palestinian population. . . . They hope it will be all repeated” (“Mikhal’chyshyn schitaet Kholokost,” 2011; “Ukrainskii natsist,” 2011). The Ukrainian autonomous nationalists explicitly model themselves after the German example. Much like the NPD in Germany, the autonomous nationalists coordinate their activities with the extreme-right parties while retaining significant autonomy. Under the slogan “A healthy spirit in a healthy body,” it attracts young followers through sport activities, boxing, martial arts and football tournaments, conducted within the framework of a campaign “against degeneration.” Healthy young nationalists are to have healthy bodies and to reject TV watching, junk food, alcohol and cigarettes (“V zdorovomu tili—zdorovyi dukh!,” 2011). According to Mykhal’chyshyn’s journal Vatra, nationalists are to be driven by fanaticism and hatred of their enemies, live spartan lives and abstain from decadent clubbing, drinking and idleness (“Sotsial-natsionalizm i osobiste zhyttia,” 2010). The social-nationalists are convinced that Ukraine is involved in a spiritual and social war in which the Ukrainians are victims and need to fight back. The situation in the contemporary world causes degenerates to conduct a constant struggle for the destruction of all normal people, which

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Myhkal’chyshyn cultivates an idealized image of womanhood, based upon sexual purity, emphasizing that the prime duty of women is to produce new members of the nation. Reprinting the words of the OUN ideologue Iuryi Lypa (1900–1944), Vatra argues that women carry the “societal and racial morality. More so than the man, she is forming the race” (Lypa, 2010). “Marriage is the duty of the woman to her own gender. The duty of the state, in turn, is to assist her in this . . . the 300 ovulations of every Ukrainian woman, as well as the 1,500 ejaculations of every Ukrainian man are the same national treasures as, say, energy resources, or deposits of iron, coal, or oil” (Lypa, 2009). We recognize the heavy emphasis on heroes and heroism from the narrative of the émigré OUN and from Yushchenko’s legitimizing historians. The difference is that, unlike these two influences, Mykhal’chyshyn does not deny Bandera and Stets’ko’s fascism. On the contrary, their fascist ideology constitutes the basis for his admiration. Our banner carriers and heroes are Evhen’ Konovalets, Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych, Horst Wessel and Walter Stennes, Jose Antanio Primo de Rivera and Leon Degrelle, Corneliu Codreanu and Oswald Mosley. To these luminaries Mykhal’chyshyn adds traditional Ukrainian integral nationalism (Dmytro Dontsov, Iuryi Lypa, Mykola Stsibors’kyi, Dmytro Myron-Orlyk, Stepan Bandera) Ukrainian social-nationalism (Mykola Mikhnovs’kyi, Yaroslav Stets’ko, Stepan Rudnyts’kyi, the platform of the journal SNPU Orientyry in the late 1990s); the conceptual arsenal of the German conservative revolution

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(Ernst Jünger, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Oswald Spengler, Otto Strasser, Carl Schmitt); Italian integral corporativism (Giuseppe Bottai, Ugo Spirito, Sergio Panunzio). (Nasha Vatra, n.d.) In 2010, Mykhal’chyshyn published a volume titled Vatra 1.0, a collection of some of the key ideological texts of his movement, bringing together Italian, German, and Ukrainian fascist thinkers (Mikhal’chyshyn, 2010). Most of the texts originated with the “leftist” wing of National Socialism, purged in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, and with the intellectual fathers of Fascist corporativism in Italy and Spain but also with members of the Nazi leadership, who, like Alfred Rosenberg, were positively disposed to the idea of Ukrainian statehood. Vatra 1.0 contains Olez Olzhych’s musings about fascist culture (“Olez Olzhychstets,” 2010: 58–62); Stets’ko’s “Without a National Revolution There Is No Social Revolution” (Stets’ko, 2010: 76–84); Joseph Goebbels’s “The Little ABC of the National Socialist” (Goebbels, 2010: 124–127); Ernst Röhm’s “What Is the SA?” (R’om [Röhm], 2010: 151–162); the Bamberg program of the brothers Otto and Greger Strasser (Strasser, 2010: 263–272); Alfred Rosenberg’s “Nationalist Socialism or National Socialism?”(Rosenberg [Rozenberg], 2010: 261–262); the party programs of the National Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany and the National Fascist Party of Italy in Mykhal’chyshyn’s translation, accompanied by the Program of the Social-National Party of Ukraine (Mykhal’chyshyn 2010: 143–187). Mykhal’chyshyn complements these classical fascist ideological texts with antiuniversalism, cultural relativism, and general anti-Western strands.15 Vatra 1.0 thus also contains Ernst Jünger’s “The National Revolution” (Iunher, 2010: 97–100) and Oswald Spengler’s “Socialism as a Form of Life” (Spengler, 2010: 301–306). Not only the leader cult but also the condemnation of imagined intellectual enemies as wreckers and an academic fifth column are reminiscent of the 1930s. In highly charged language, Mykhal’chyshyn denounces Derrida and Habermas, Althusser and Marcuse, Gadamer and Buber, Fromm and Foucault, Adorno and Freud, Rawles and Nozick as canonical texts imposed on Ukrainian society by “Talmudist wreckers” (“dyversanty-talmudisty”) and the thinkers as “defective intellectual idols”(Mykhal’chyshyn, n.d.). The rise of Svoboda and Mykhal’chyshyn appears to have disoriented some “national liberals,” who fail to see how state promotion of the OUN heritage has legitimized the ideology of Svoboda and other intellectual heirs of Bandera and Stets’ko. One liberal commentator described Vatra 1.0 as a “manipulation” with Soviet undertones (Vozniak, 2011). This is symptomatic of the situation, as few people within the Lviv intellectual elite are ready to acknowledge the fact that Mykhal’chyshyn places the OUN ideology in a historically accurate context, in line not only with how both scholars of fascism and the OUN leadership perceived the OUN and their fascist contemporaries.

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THE DEMISE OF NASHA UKRAINA AND THE RISE OF SVOBODA During Yushchenko’s last year in office, Ukrainian mainstream media gave Svoboda disproportionate attention, particularly following Svoboda’s sensational performance in the elections for the Ternopil regional Rada in March 2009, where it received 34.69 per cent of votes cast. The most respected Ukrainian mass media, like TV Channel 5 and the popular talk shows, such as Evgenii Kiselev’s Velyka polityka and Savik Shuster’s Shuster Live, regularly featured not only Tiakhnybok but also Mykhal’chyshyn (Umland, 2011; Shekhovtsov, 2011b: 7, 12). Yushchenko went down for a disastrous defeat in 2010, receiving 5.5 per cent of the popular vote, a historical record for an incumbent president (Kompanets, 2010). While he is no longer a serious political player, Yushchenko left behind a legacy of myths which helped legitimized Svoboda’s ideology. Svoboda’s appropriation of many rituals in honour of “national heroes” from more moderate nationalists is but one expression of its increased political strength in post-Yushchenko Western Ukraine. Svoboda has long been well represented at the annual commemoration of the birthday of Stepan Bandera, complete with torchlight parades. On January 29, 2011,

Figure 12.7 Lviv, April 2009. Svoboda poster: “The pride of the nation: The Ukrainian Division “Galicia.” They defended Ukraine.” Image Copyright Lucyna Kulin´ska.

The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right 245 in commemoration of the 1918 Battle of Kruty, Svoboda, accompanied by a substantial number of so-called autonomous nationalists, organized a huge torchlight parade, rife with Nazi symbolism (“Video zi smoloskypnoho marshu,” 2011). On April 28, 2011, Svoboda celebrated the 68th anniversary of the establishment of the Waffen-SS Galizien. Octogenarian Waffen-SS veterans were treated as heroes in a mass rally, organized by Svoboda and the “autonomous nationalists.” Nearly 700 participants (the organizers claimed 2,000) marched down the streets of Lviv, from the massive socialist–realist style Bandera monument,16 to Prospekt Svobody, the main street, shouting slogans like “One race, one nation, one fatherland!,” “Melnyk, Bandera—Heroes of Ukraine, Shukhevych, Bandera—Heroes of Ukraine!” and “Galizien—Division of Heroes!” The demonstration was organized by Svoboda, since October 2010 the largest party in the Lviv city council, which had decorated the city with posters designating the unit as “the pride of the nation” and proudly declaring that “they defended Ukraine.” The procession was led by Mykhal’chyshyn, who declared that “Truly, in deed, not in word, we prove that Lviv is Banderstadt, the capital of Ukrainian nationalism.” (“U L’vovi proishov marsh,” 2011; “Marsh Velychy Dukhu,” 2011).

Figure 12.8 Lviv, April 28, 2011; March in commemoration of the 68th anniversary of the establishment of the Waffen-SS Galizien. Yurii Mykhal’chyshyn (far left) leads the procession. The black banners depict the Wolfsangel; the placards with the Galician lion and three crowns was the symbol of the Waffen-SS Galizien. Image Copyright Lucyna Kulin´ska.

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Figure 12.9 “March in honor of the Heroes of UPA,” Lviv, October 16, 2011, leaflet by the Autonomous Nationalists, featuring the OUN and UPA slogan Volia narodam, volia liudyny! (Freedom to nations! Freedom for man!), featuring the Wolfsangel, in a radiant wreath of oak leaves, the OUN symbol, a trident with a sword (from 1940 the symbol of OUN(m)), and the red and black OUN(b) and UPA banner, symbolizing Blut und Boden. Image Copyright Lucyna Kulin´ska.

Figure 12.10 “100 years since the birth of the ideologue of the social and national revolutions, Yaroslav Stets’ko,” 2012 Svoboda poster. Image Copyright Lucyna Kulin´ska.

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Similar demonstrations were held in October 2011 in the honour of the UPA. The Svoboda-dominated Lviv oblast’ council proclaimed the year 2012 the year of Stets’ko in honour of the centennial of his birth and also of the founding of UPA (“2012-i na L’vivshchyni,” 2011). The silence of the “liberals” turned criticism of the OUN heritage into a preserve of incumbent president Viktor Yanukovych’s (2010–) Party of Regions and his allies and deepened internal divisions within the country. By preventing Blok Yulii Tymoshenko (BYuT) from running in the Lviv local elections, and continuing the practice of granting Svoboda representatives disproportionate attention in the media, particularly TV, Yushchenko’s successor, Viktor Yanukovych, has indirectly aided Svoboda. Some analysts suggest even deeper connections: the political scientist Andreas Umland highlights the similarities of Svoboda and Yanukovych’s Party of Regions— the two parties share common authoritarian leanings and anti-Western attitudes—but points at “rumors that Tiahnybok’s association—evidently for reasons of political strategy—secretly received support from the Party of Regions, perhaps including financial infusions” (Umland, 2011).17 Similarly, Tadeusz Olszan´ski at the Polish Center for Eastern Studies suggests that Svoboda could be utilized as a sort of ultra-nationalist bogeyman to mobilize Yanukovych’s electorate (Olszan´ski, 2011). Tiahnybok, playing the role of Communist Party leader Symenenko in the 1998 elections in Ukraine or Le Pen in France in 2002, would help the political technologists of the Party of Regions to secure Yanukovych’s re-election in 2015 in the second round of the presidential elections. CONCLUSION Columbia University historian Tarik Cyril Amar describes the situation in western Ukraine as the “no-enemies-to-the-right syndrome.” The ultranationalist activism is silently accepted by much of the intellectual establishment: “Certainly, far from everybody agrees with the Bandera personality cult, torches and marches, the uninhibited selling of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the far too frequent ‘Jewish’ (here usually meaning antiSemitic) jokes, but nearly nobody speaks up and organizes against this disgrace” (Amar, 2011b; see also Amar 2011a). The frantic nationalizing activities under Yushchenko were partly carried out by ultra-nationalist activists, who denied the fascist ideology of the OUN(b), obfuscated atrocities and rehabilitated perpetrators of mass ethnic violence against national minorities. By glorifying Shukhevych, Bandera and Stets’ko as national heroes, Yushchenko and his legitimizing historians helped mobilizing the neo-fascist hard right. With few exceptions, democratic Ukrainian politicians and intellectuals failed to speak up or quietly went along with a cult of the OUN that celebrated Bandera and Stets’ko out of context and treated them as the persons they would have liked them to be, rather than the ideologues and political activists they actually were.

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Like the Hungarian Jobbik, Svoboda draws its powers from nationalist mythology of great heroes and self-vicitimization. As in the case of Svoboda’s Hungarian sister party, these sentiments have grown out of right-wing, revisionist history departments. From its base in the western part of the country, Svoboda is now making inroads also into other regions of Ukraine. If current opinion polls are correct, Svoboda’s breakthrough in the local elections will be followed by its entry into the Verkhovna Rada in 2012 (“U novii Radi,” 2011).

NOTES

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

The author wishes thank Tarik Cyril Amar, Delphine Bechtel, Franziska Bruder, Roman Dubasevych, Ivan Katchanovski, Taras Kuzio, and Andreas Umland for critical comments on previous drafts. A special thanks to Lucyna Kulin´ska for generously sharing the visual material used in this chapter. The usual disclaimers apply. On the historiography of the 1932–1933 famine, see Marples (2007: 35–77) and Snyder (2010: 53). Lebed had been one of the leaders of the UPA in 1943–1944 at the time of its mass murder of Poles and Jews (Snyder, 2003: 166–173; Breitman and Goda, 2010: 94). See, for instance, ABN Correspondence, 28 (2/3) (1977): 7; ABN Correspondence, 30(4) (1979): 14; ABN Correspondence, 18(1) (1967): 33. Yushchenko’s SBU director, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, even claimed to have an exact number of victims—10,063,000 Ukrainians in the Ukrainian SSR (“SBU nazvala ostatochnu kil’kist’ zhertv Holodomoru v Ukraini”, 2009). See Bolianovs’kyi, 2000: 230, citing The Journal for Historical Review; Landwehr, 1985; and Bolianovs’kyi, 2003: 10, 14, 152. On The Journal for Historical Review and Landwehr, see Lipstadt, 1994: 137–156. Patryliak, 2004: 326, citing Duke [Diuk], 2002: 39, for the claim that, “of the 384 first commissars of Soviet Russia, over 300 were Jews and only 13 Russians.” On the related phenomenon of mixing critical academic texts with far-right apologetics, see Bruder, 2011. Oleh Tiahnybok’s background during the last years of the Soviet Union is unclear. According to some reports, he may have been working as an agent for the KGB within the ultra-nationalist Varta Rukhu, a predecessor to the SocialNational Party, between 1989 and 1991 (Kuzio 2010). Since the late Soviet era, large numbers of followers of Rebbe Nachman from Uman, a charismatic strand of the Hasidic tradition, have organized annual pilgrimages to his grave, praying, dancing, and singing and clapping their hands (Novick, 2011). For an image of the billboard, with its full text, see Rudling (2012a: 368). During the trial, Busch equated the role of death camp guard Demjanjuk with that of the Jewish inmates of Sóbibor (Probst, 2011). On the Demjanjuk process, see Benz, 2011. “L’vovskii deputat prognoziruet”, 2011. Blue and white are the colors of Yanukovych’s ruling Party of Regions. Mykhal’chyshyn, 2009. PNF, Partido Nazionale Fascista, the National Fascist Party, was the political party of Benito Mussolini.

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13. Olszan´ski (2011): The number 88 is neo-Nazi code for the National Socialist salute Heil Hitler. Nachtigall was a OUN(b)-led Ukrainian battalion in German uniform which took part in mass shootings of Jews in the summer of 1941 (Rudling, 2011b: 191–212). 14. The elitist, self-defined Intelligentzaristokrat Ernst Jünger (1895–1998) is an unlikely role model for Mykhal’chyshyn’s think tank, not at least because he abhorred the sort of rowdy, aggressive far-right street fighters Mykhal’chyshyn represents. When Goebbels in 1927 tried to enlist Jünger for the National Socialist project, he was sharply rebuked and criticized from the right (Neaman, 1999: 39, 118; Heidegren 1997: 94). Jünger also rejected Goebbels’s 1927 offer to make him the Berlin member of the Reichtag for the NSDAP, arguing that “I rather write one single good poem than represent 60,000 idiots”(Hansegård, 1999). 15. On the conservative revolutionaries of 1920s and 1930s Weimar Germany, see Dahl, 1999: 56, 74–75; Heidegren, 1997. 16. On the Bandera monument, see Amar, 2011a; Rasevych, 2011. 17. There are also other indications of this. The pro-Yanukovych American Institute of Ukraine published two briefing papers condemning Party of Regions financial support for Svoboda (Jatras, 2011a, 2011b). Thanks to Taras Kuzio for these references.

REFERENCES “ABN Activities in 1966” (1967). ABN Correspondence, vol. 18, no. 1 (January– February): 33. “Aksiomy sotsial-natsionalizmu” (2011). Vatra: natsional-revoliutsiinyi chasopys, March 15, http://www.vatra.cc/sotsial-natsionalizm/aksiomy-sotsial-natsionalizmu. html (accessed January 7, 2012). Amar, T. C. (2008). “Roman Shukhevych. Fantaziia,” Zaxid.net, August 26, http://zaxid. net/home/showSingleNews.do?roman_shuhevich_fantaziya&objectId=1059559 (accessed August 29, 2012). Amar, T. C. (2011a). “Different but the Same or the Same but Different?: The Re-Making of Public Memory of the Second World War in Post-Soviet Lviv,” in Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Martin Kohlrausch and Manfred Hildermeier (eds.), Post-Catastrophic Cities, Journal of Modern European History, vol. 9, no. 3: 373–396. Amar, T. C. (2011b). “Pravoruch vorohiv nemae?” Zaxid.net, September 1, http://zaxid. net/home/showSingleNews.do?pravoruch_vorogiv_nemaye&objectId=1235060 (accessed October 19, 2011). Bairak, M. (1978). Ukrains’ka Strilets’ka Hromada Edmonton, 1928–1978 (Edmonton: Ukrainian War Veterans’ Organization). Benz, A. (2011). Der Henkersknecht: Der Prozess gegen John (Iwan) Demjanjuk in München. Berlin: Metropol Verlag. Berkhoff, K. C., and Carynnyk, M. (1999). “The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Its Attitude toward Germans and Jews: Iaroslav Stets’ko’s Zhyttiepys,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. 23, no. 3–4: 149–184. Bolianovs’kyi, A. (2000). Dyviziia “Halychyna”: Istoriia. Lviv: A. Bolianovs’kyi. Bolianovs’kyi, A. (2003). Ukrain’ski viis’kovi formuvannia v zbroinykh sylakh Nimechchyny (1939–1945). Lviv and Edmonton: L’vivs’kyi natsional’nyi universitet im. Ivana Franka and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Breitman, R., and Goda, N. J. W. (2010). Hitler’s Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, US Intelligence, and the Cold War. Washington, DC: National Archives.

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13 New Times, Old Ideologies? Recontextualizations of Radical Right Thought in Postcommunist Romania Irina Diana Ma˘droane The resurgence of the radical right throughout Europe and the prominence it has attained in recent years have been noted with growing alarm (Eatwell, 2000; Minkenberg, 2002). Notwithstanding its wide scope, networks and joint efforts in the face of self-designated enemies, the radical right also bears the imprint of local backgrounds and histories that give mould to specific manifestations. The postcommunist transformation of the Central and Eastern European states, placed under the aegis of the ‘return to Europe’ and catalysed by the European Union enlargement process, created fertile ground for the reappropriation of interwar radical myths and nationalist ideologies (Minkenberg, 2002; Tismăneanu, 1998). As integral parts of a (pre)communist past in the course of rediscovery, these became readily available instruments for coping with disquieting social change or even attempting to undo its effects (Mann, 2004). Against the backdrop of frail democracies, weak state institutions, abject poverty and corruption, radicalright worldviews were bestowed with an aura of salvation (Tismăneanu, 1998; see also Andreescu, 2003; Tismăneanu, 2007), which continues to confer legitimacy on them, in Romania and in other CEE countries. The endeavour undertaken here is justified by a perceived need to carefully contextualise and unravel the multifarious layers of signification embedded in the discourse(s) of contemporary radical-right movements in Romania. The underlying hypothesis is that the imagined Romanian nation they construe derives its appeal, albeit limited at the moment, from a past idealised in the collective memory which the fall of communism opened up for reconsideration and recontextualization. This engagement with the past is accompanied by inevitable but also strategic changes of meaning, traceable in sanitised versions of shameful events or selective highlights of ideologies and reinterpretations of facts, subsequently interwoven in alternative historical narratives and political imaginaries. A close examination of the ensuing discourses and visions of the future originating with radical-right formations could illuminate their agendas from unsuspected angles. I begin by sketching out the postcommunist context and its vulnerability to the ‘assaults’ of the radical right in Romania. I then introduce the ‘New Right’ organisation, which constitutes my case study; it openly declares its

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affiliation with the Iron Guard and the interwar Legionary Movement. I briefly discuss the theoretical and methodological approach employed; I then give an outline of the main features of Romanian interwar fascism, and proceed to the presentation of findings. THE POSTCOMMUNIST CONTEXT The present-day sociopolitical, economic and cultural circumstances are frequently (and controversially) likened to the interwar conditions that led to the rise of fascism. Building upon the rough equivalence between transition and modernisation,1 Williams (1999) adapts to contemporary Central and Eastern Europe Payne’s framework (1995) for the analysis of interwar fascism. In the postcommunist CEE states, the five explanatory variables initially proposed by Payne have the following characteristics: a cultural crisis triggered by the sudden advent of postindustrial capitalism and predominantly Western values; political challenges determined by the shift to liberal democracies and multiparty systems; economic instability (inflation, unemployment, pauperisation) correlated with (dysfunctional) free-market economies; social tensions manifest in the restructuring of the social classes, polarisation and ethnic strife; and the overall effects of globalisation (Williams, 1999: 37ff.). The gradual disenchantment with the promise of capitalism and democracy and the continuous struggle for survival have allowed radical-right ideologies to present themselves as viable options for the refashioning of national identities and transitional political projects. Regardless of identifiable similarities between the interwar period and contemporary modernisation with its multiple crises, no perfect match between the two contexts can or should be established. To take Romania’s case, the communist regime distorted interwar history and remained largely silent on the Holocaust. As a result, the collective memory of the pre-communist age was inevitably affected, while the previously existing social structures and practices were irreversibly altered (Cioflâncă 2004; Frusetta and Glont, 2009; Minkenberg, 2002, 2009; Pavel, 1998; Shafir, 1999, 2008; Tismăneanu, 1998). Not only does the interposing communist period prevent a return to any ‘pure’ radical interwar ideology and to the structures supporting it, but the process of modernisation itself is at present linked with postindustrialism, which brings forth a different set of problems than industrialism did in the nineteenth century. In light of these and other features, the question becomes one of recycling ‘a usable past’ (Shafir, 2008, adapting Rupnik’s notion; see also Frusetta and Glont, 2009) or ‘a reconstructed past’ (Ramet, 1999) that serves as a safety net and an endless reservoir of myths to be pitted against the present avalanche of disconcerting social changes. The ‘refurbished ideologies’ (Tismăneanu, 1998) reach us filtered through communism and reassessed during transition. Yet another layer of meaning arises from the ‘new clothes’ (Ramet, 1999) put on by the radical right, which now boasts

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a democratic façade, renounces open antisemitism, and replaces biological racism with ethnocentrism or cultural racism (see also Eatwell, 2004; Griffin, [2004] 2008; Mann, 2004; Minkenberg, 2002; Payne, 1995; Tismăneanu, 1998). Such overlapping strata and contexts need to be accounted for in any interpretation of contemporary radical manifestations. Not even movements that constitute ‘textbook-cases of far right-wing extremism’ (Andreescu, 2003: 14) are exempt. Arguably, the Romanian New Right (‘Noua Dreaptă’) under scrutiny in this chapter belongs to this category. The radical-right effervescence in Romania in the 1990s, when a number of political parties and extremist groups sprouted up, and the ethnic clashes at Târgu-Mureş, in March 1990, led Payne (1995: 518–19) to place Romania next to Serbia in its potential for neo-fascism, while Mann (2004: 370) concluded that ‘[p]redictably, it has the biggest neo-fascist movement’. The dominant features of Romanian right extremism are xenophobia, chauvinism, racism (less pronounced), ultra-nationalism mixed with religious beliefs, revisionism, self-victimisation, the (partial or total) denial of the Holocaust, the cult of ancestral heroes and martyrs, traditionalism, antisemitism without Jews (one of the paradoxes of the postcommunist radical right), anticapitalism, antiliberalism and anti-Westernism (Andreescu, 2003; Pavel, 1998; Shafir, 2008; Tismăneanu, 1998). According to analysts, the climax of the radical right’s ascent was registered in 2000, when the leader of the Greater Romania Party (‘Partidul România Mare’ or PRM) entered the second round of presidential elections (Frusetta and Glont, 2009; Shafir, 2008). As Minkenberg (2002) notes, however, radicalism in the CEE states was not significantly more widespread than in Western Europe and posed no imminent threat to democratisation. In Romania, a decline in popularity followed, and in 2008 none of the parties of radical orientation was able to secure parliamentary representation. At present, the radical right appears to be on the wane in terms of voting publics and audiences receptive to its message (Shafir, 2008). Nonetheless, the mounting xenophobia against Romanian migrants in the European Union, in particular Romanian Roma (Mădroane, 2012), and the ongoing financial and economic crisis might reattach new hopes to radical ideologies. After gathering 30,000 signatures in the course of a lengthy public campaign, on December 22, 2011, the New Right organisation applied for the official registration of the Nationalist Party, the political party it is attempting to set up. THE NEW RIGHT—A BRIEF PRESENTATION The New Right is one of the most visible but not (yet) mainstream radicalright movements in Romania. It was founded in 2000, its leader and outstanding members being young people in their twenties and thirties (a reminder, in that sense, of the Legion of the Archangel Michael in its early days). Unlike the political parties with radical-right affinities, the New Right

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openly embraces the Legionary doctrine, which it spreads through its site and publications, as well as through a number of commercial and populist activities (see Andreescu, 2003; Shafir, 2008). The New Right advertises several bands, in particular a ‘nationalist rock’ band, the ‘Assault Brigade’, and boasts the only ‘nationalist store’ in Romania, where DVDs and books about the Legionary Movement, T-shirts2 and other insignia can be purchased. Importantly, it excels at employing the new media for communication with the public at large and for publicising its fairly wide national and even European network. The New Right is classified under ‘self-exculpatory nostalgic antisemitism’ in Michael Shafir’s (2008) typology of Romanian antisemitic radicalright organisations and parties. The movement ‘looks upon the interwar authoritarian past as a model for solving the transitional problems of the present and constructing the country’s future’ (Shafir, 2008: 151), but this rewritten past subsumes the communist legacy next to the fascist one3 (see also Tismăneanu, 2007). While its backward nostalgic look and excessive focus on the rehabilitation of Legionary personalities and doctrine might deprive the movement of the popularity it aims for (Shafir, 2008), the New Right represents an interesting case for discourse analysis in at least two respects. As other researchers (Cioflâncă, 2004; Frusetta and Glont, 2009; Shafir, 2008) have pointed out, the communist interpretation of history and silence on the Holocaust opens up new avenues for the inclusion of Romanian radical-right ideology and mythology in the ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson, 1983) envisaged by such organisations. It also allows for the enhancement of the status of former Legionary leaders (staunch fighters against communism and martyrs) to that of contemporary role models. The return to the interwar radical doctrine is facilitated by the interposing communist years that either erased the terrible consequences and abuses of those days or endowed them with novel meanings. The other significant aspect is the welding of such worldviews with new discourses, centred round new enemies, in the postcommunist context, and aggravated by their penetration in mainstream politics, which detracts from the aggressiveness of their message. The main research question guiding my analysis of the New Right discourse pertains to the linguistic aspects of this movement’s use of historical past, interwar and communist, in order to refashion Romania’s future. RECONTEXTUALIZATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF HISTORY: THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS The focus of my analysis is recontextualization, linked with intertextuality and interdiscursivity, within the broad frame of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the specific one of the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA), particularly well suited for the purposes of this study. CDA defines discourse

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(oral, written and visual) or ‘semiosis’ as a form of social practice, dialectically related with the social structures, practices and events within which it is embedded; discourse is socially constituted and socially constitutive, participating both in the (re)production of social structures and power relations and in processes of social change (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997; Wodak and Meyer, 2009). The DHA has been applied in a vast array of studies concerned with unveiling and combating instances of prejudiced discourse and with the (re)construction of history and national identities under the impact of transformations in the European Union (Heer et al., 2008; Martin and Wodak, 2003; Reisigl and Wodak, 2001; Wodak, 2006; Wodak and de Cillia, 2007; Wodak and Richardson, 2009; Wodak et al., 2009). As a ‘context-sensitive’ approach, the DHA examines four layers of context: ‘the immediate language or text-internal co-text’; ‘the intertextual and interdiscursive relationship between utterances, genres and discourses’; ‘the extra-linguistic social/sociological variables and institutional frames of a specific “context of situation” ’; and ‘the broader socio-political and historical context which the discursive practices are embedded and related to’ (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 41). In accordance with this multilayered view, the categories of analysis range from establishing the contents or topics/themes of the discourse(s) under investigation, to an analysis of the discursive strategies and argumentation schemes employed and, finally, to the linguistic means or realisations at a micro-level (e.g. representations of social actors and actions, negative or positive evaluations). The interpretation of discourse in its institutional, sociopolitical, and historical contexts permits the unpacking of multifaceted meanings and the pinning down of ‘latent belief systems, ideologies and power relations as well as structures of dominance’ (Richardson and Wodak, 2009: 255). In the presentation of my findings I refer mostly to discursive practices at the macro- and meso-levels of analysis and less to specific linguistic realisations. ‘Recontextualization’ is the main linguistic concept I work with, but seen in relation to various discursive strategies (Wodak et al., 2009). It is a major locus of interest in CDA analyses of social transformation in the CEE countries (Fairclough, 2006; Krzyżanowski and Wodak, 2008) and holds a central place in the DHA. Recontextualization is a process of relocation of discourses, genres or styles from a discursive practice to another, normally accompanied by a change of meaning (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999; Fairclough, 2003). It is intimately bound up with intertextuality, understood as the presence of other ‘voices’ (in the Bakhtinian sense) and texts in a given text, and with interdiscursivity, viewed as the weaving together of discourses, genres and styles in texts (Fairclough, 2003; see also Krzyżanowski and Wodak, 2008). In the DHA, recontextualization looks into synchronic and diachronic discursive shifts and changes in ‘arguments, topics, narratives, events and appraisals’ when they are ‘transmitted from generation to generation, from one genre to another, from one public space to a different sphere and so on’ (Wodak and de Cillia, 2007: 345). It constitutes a useful tool in the analysis of history, which the DHA regards as constructed out

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of conflicting interpretations, narratives and myths; a particular construal gains legitimacy on the basis of a number of contextual factors (institutional, political, social, cultural). In my investigation of the New Right discourse, I situate recontextualization in relation to discursive macro-strategies deployed in the construction of collective, national identities: ‘construction’, ‘justification and relativization’, ‘transformation’, and ‘dismantling’ or ‘demontage’, as well as a number of sub-strategies (for a detailed presentation, see Wodak et al., 2009; see also Menz, 2003). The New Right brings into its political view of Romania’s present and future a narrative of the interwar past intended to garner support for the Legionary doctrine and its conceptualisation of the Romanian nation-state. It further links it with current trends in far-right politics and uses the myth of (ultra-)nationalist rebirth to legitimise its social and political agenda. Before presenting the corpus and discussing the main findings, I give an outline of the interwar context and history, which is necessary for gaining better insight into the data. INTERWAR FASCISM IN ROMANIA The short examination in this essay cannot do justice to the complex analyses of Romanian fascism or to the myriad (and occasionally controversial) viewpoints expressed by historians and political analysts. It is based on a number of classic and recent studies of the phenomenon, which provide insightful and fresh interpretations of numerous other aspects that are not included in my overview (Barbu, [1968] 1981; Fischer-Galaţi, 2006; Frusetta and Glont, 2009; Ioanid, 1990, 2004; Iordachi, 2010; Neumann, 1996; Ornea, [1995] 2008; Pavel, 1998; Turda, 2005; Weber, 1965; see also Mann, 2004; Payne, 1995). Leaving aside the debates around the differences among ‘radical right’, ‘extreme right’, ‘fascism’, ‘Nazism’, and other concepts in use (Eatwell, 2000, 2004; Payne, 1995; Ramet, 1999), many historians agree that ‘there was only one movement and one party in Rumania to which the term “fascist” can be applied’ (Barbu, 1981: 154), and this was the Legionary Movement.4 Its representative organisation, a hierarchically structured network of ‘nests’, functioned under various names, the best known being ‘The Legion of the Archangel Michael’ (founded in 1927), the ‘Iron Guard’ (1930), and ‘All for the Fatherland’ (political party, 1935). Ideologically fathered by the notoriously antisemitic A. C. Cuza, the movement grew around the charismatic figure of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the ‘Captain’, who was succeeded, after his assassination in prison at the orders of King Carol II (in 1938), by Horia Sima.5 The Legionary Movement attracted an impressive number of young people (it started as a student movement in the 1920s, demanding the introduction of numerus clausus for the admission of Jews) and intellectuals.6 Its doctrine and subsequent political platform addressed, however, other social strata: the Romanian middle class (as a reaction against the

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Jewish upper middle class); peasantry (the Legionary Movement was inspired by the authenticity and vitality of the Romanian agrarian life); and the working class, with a far lesser degree of success, as Legionaries were opposed to the idea of class struggle (see Ioanid, 1990, 2004). The Legionary doctrine7 is an original mixture of organic, Völkisch and metaphysical nationalism, imbued with notions from Christian eschatology and Orthodox dogma, mysticism, antisemitism and racism, the cult of the supreme leader and elitism (an outcome of its antidemocratic, antiparliamentary drive), anticommunism, and ‘social diversion’ (Ioanid, 1990, 2004; see also Barbu, 1981; Iordachi 2010; Fischer-Galaţi, 2006; Ornea, [1995] 2008; Pavel, 1998). It aspired to forge the ‘new man’, who, through a virtuous life and self-sacrifice, would save the Romanian nation from moral decline by restoring traditional values, rooted in the Romanian village and the historic past, and faith in God. The ‘palingenetic myth’ of the nation (see Griffin [2004] 2008) was the foundation of Legionary ideology, not in its widespread version of ‘secular millenarianism’ but within the less encountered frame of Christian salvation and Orthodoxy: A new man must come out of the Legionary school, a man with heroic features. A giant in the midst of our history, able to fight and triumph over all the enemies of the Motherland, his fight and victory extending into the other world, against unseen enemies, against the forces of evil. . . . A man in whom all the great human capabilities sown by God in the soul of our nation shall develop to their full capacity. (Codreanu, 1936: 307; my translation) Well trained in the Legion’s nests (pedagogy was assigned a fundamental role in the doctrine), the ‘new man’ personified the spirit of the nation and the virtues of ‘unconditional faith, unquestioning obedience and . . . the essential value of sacrifice, martyrdom and expiation’ (Fischer-Galaţi, 2006: 245). It was reserved to him or her to lead the ‘heroic crusade against materialism and atheism’ (Iordachi, 2010: 343) and to redeem the Romanian nation from the advanced decadence of the age. The nation was considered the historical embodiment of a transcendental soul that synthesised the individual souls of all Romanians and found its natural expression in a spiritual, organic collectivity (see also Iordachi’s interpretation, 2010). In worldly affairs, the thrust of Legionary ideology was geared against ‘speculative capitalism’, blamed on the ‘Jewish-Freemason bourgeoisie’ and the depraved Romanian political class (Moţa, 1937), and against Bolshevism, the essence of evil, paradoxically also blamed on the Jews. Devout religiosity was the distinctive characteristic of the Legionary doctrine; the movement was tolerated by the Romanian Orthodox Church and successfully recruited clergymen.8 The professed faith in God (‘God is a fascist!’ claimed a Legionary journalist, quoted in Ioanid, 2004: 435), entwined with mystical elements and the cult of death, gave the Legionaries strength to pursue their mission and lay down their lives for the cause. A major weakness in the Legionary doctrine remains the impossibility

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of reconciling the violence adherents believed necessary and the profoundly chauvinistic nationalism in which the movement was grounded with Christian love and mercy (see Ornea, [1995] 2008). In my discussion of the recontextualization of Legionary ideology by the New Right, I draw upon the secondary literature referred to earlier and on three primary sources: two founding books by Codreanu, Cărticica şefului de Cuib (‘The Booklet of the Nest Leader’, [1933] 2003) and Pentru Legionari (‘For My Legionaries’, 1936), as well as a collection of newspaper articles by Ion I. Moţa, another prominent Legionary leader and ideologue, Cranii de Lemn (‘Wooden Skulls’, 1937). These primary sources have gained wide currency as the basis of the Legionary doctrine and are generally referred to by other authors and by subsequent generations of Legionary ideologues. Horia Sima’s Doctrina Legionară (‘Legionary Doctrine’, 1980), from which the bulk of the New Right’s doctrine derives, extensively quotes and reinterprets them.

CORPUS My corpus is a selection of texts and articles on the New Right site, from the period 2010–2011.9 It is relatively small when compared with the wealth of materials made available by the organisation (the archives for some sections go back to 2000) but sufficient for an overview of the chief themes put forward. It includes the New Right’s doctrine,10 objectives, press releases for 2010–2011 (seven texts), presentation of their actions in 2011 (30 short texts and two videos, excerpts from TV talk shows and news bulletins), the ‘newer entries’ on their leader’s page (ranging from November 19, 2009, to September 22, 2011, seven texts and two videos), the lyrics of five nationalist rock songs by the ‘Assault Brigade’, New Right blog entries from September 2011 and a collection of press reports from the mainstream11 and the alternative far right-wing media and of texts submitted by members of the New Right (due to their large number, 162, only the headlines and leads were considered for the thematic analysis; videos and pictures were not included). Occasionally, references will be made to texts that are not in the original corpus, which I consulted for illuminating certain points or expanding explanations.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

General Introduction The New Right construal of Romania’s present and future entails, schematically, a transformation premised on the spiritual and worldly regeneration of the Romanian nation, modelled closely upon the interwar Legionary doctrine, accompanied by a rejection or ‘dismantling’ of the political views of their adversaries and a sustained campaign against the ills of postcommunism and postindustrialism. ‘Palingenetic ultra-nationalism’, the central

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pillar of Griffin’s definition of generic fascism,12 continues to serve as the basis for the social, cultural and political reform proposed by contemporary radical groups—the Romanian New Right included—even as other characteristics of classic fascism fade away or are carefully disguised. We often witness a turn away from paramilitarism, revolution and extreme violence or from overtly antisystemic politics, replaced, in Griffin’s view, with ‘an illiberal form of democratic politics’ ([2004] 2008: 194) and milder antidemocratic and authoritarian manifestations (Eatwell, 2004). The refashioning of their identity along the lines of ‘illiberal democracy’ may well be what is alluded to in a New Right blog article where it is stated that, although the doctrine they reappropriate is Legionary, ‘the mode of action is [their] own’ (Năstase, 2011). This provides solid ground for the leader of the movement to reject the label of ‘fascist’ as totally erroneous when he complains about ill-willed accusations of racism in the mainstream Romanian press (‘Mass-media din România . . .’, 2011) or lashes out against the Greater Romania Party’s leader (an opponent from the same political spectrum): The New Right is not a ‘fascist’ movement, but a movement of national and Christian rebirth, defined by faith in God, love of the Nation, devotion to the Motherland, and respect for Tradition. Since the founding year 2000, we have led a permanent fight for conscience awakening and warned against threats to the Romanian Nation. (Ionescu, 2010; original capitalisation, my translation, my italics) In line with Legionary palingenetic ultra-nationalism (a strong element of continuity can be detected), the New Right assumes the mission of safeguarding the Romanian nation13 from imminent dissolution. Their selection of excerpts from Sima’s Legionary Doctrine (see, however, Note 10) indicates that, if proper conditions are created in society, individuals will, by way of intuition, reach a state of spiritual fulfilment and total freedom. They will naturally come together as an organic whole in resonance with the soul of the nation (on a metaphysical level) and God. Commitment to the Legionary worldview automatically excludes other visions of the good life and alternative courses of action, disclosing a rather authoritarian and possibly totalitarian drive. In Sima’s interpretation, the Legionaries welcome democracy as a ‘technical’ apparatus that enables the will of the people to be heard (see Eatwell’s discussion of ‘direct democracy’, 2004: 8). Nonetheless, it is assumed that the will of the people will uniformly coincide with a glorification of the Romanian nation, animated by Christian Orthodox spirituality. Anti-egalitarianism is manifest in the principle that elites will be selected from among those instilled with the highest degree of spiritual love (no restrictions apply to the social basis of recruitment). It also underlies the New Right’s intolerance towards groups such as ‘homosexuals’, ‘religious sects’ or anyone who slanders the ‘Nation’, revealing a ‘monist’ tendency (Eatwell, 2004: 9) in their approach (Objectives 14, 15, 16 propose the

New Times, Old Ideologies? 265 prevention or the ‘reincrimination’ of manifestations of this type). Significantly, the excerpts from Sima’s book recontextualised by the New Right give the nation precedence over social class. This might lead to accusations of antiworker attitudes, cleverly counteracted by the contention that social justice is a prerequisite for harmonious national development, so all members of the Romanian nation will be granted the opportunity to fulfil their creative potential. With the exception of their objectives (upon closer examination), such connections and meanings are not immediately obvious from the texts that detail the New Right’s activities (e.g. marches, protests) and interpretation of history. They can be traced only through contextual associations with their doctrine, some of the articles posted on their blog or the movement’s magazines and are implicit in the favourable framing of Legionary ideologues, past and present. It is, however, also the case that no radical action is specified, and lip service is paid to democracy (but see earlier discussion) and the rights of other ethnicities, as long as there are no attempts at ethnic separatism or territorial secession.

The Reconstruction of the Romanian Nation The analysis of discursive themes in my corpus points to a broad strategy of recovery of the two ‘axes’ that, in Iordachi’s interpretation, sustain the Legionary palingenetic myth (Iordachi, 2010: 341ff.): ‘the earthly’, that is, the ancestral territory, the body of the nation, and ‘the divine’, that is, the cult of the Archangel Michael for the Legionaries, partly substituted by the New Right for the cult of Legionary martyrs and heroes, in particular of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. The Romanian nation is portrayed as an enlarged family united by national symbols (the tricolour flag, the anthem, the national day), a common language (which must be preserved pure), a common heroic past, Orthodox faith, and shared origins. ‘Assimilation’, ‘inclusion’, ‘unification’, and ‘cohesivization’ (Wodak et al., 2009: 37–38) around a fundamental essence of the ‘vital Romanian soul’ hold centrality among the sub-strategies deployed by the organisation. Constant preoccupations for the New Right are the wellbeing of Romanian minorities in neighbouring countries (such as Serbia, Ukraine and Hungary) and the reunification with the homeland of the territories and communities Romania lost during World War II. Such revisionist aims, in line with Legionary expansionist goals, surface in their nationas-family rhetoric, populated with terms from this semantic field (‘motherland’, ‘Bessarabian brothers’, ‘our brothers who died’) and intended to arouse feelings of sympathy for and solidarity with the estranged members of the big Romanian family (the inclusive ‘we’ predominates). The reconstitution of Greater Romania is placed at the top of the New Right’s agenda, as stated in their objectives and reiterated during the numerous actions undertaken in Bessarabia or North Bukovina to commemorate glorious (union

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with Romania) or terrible (Soviet occupation and subsequent Russification) moments in the history of these regions. The tricolour flag they display, ‘the expression of our national being’, incorporates the former Romanian provinces. A chief priority is the protection of the ‘national, sovereign and independent, unitary and indivisible’ Romanian state (in conformity with the Romanian Constitution). Their efforts are directed at the historical province of Transylvania (or Ardeal), believed to be under threat from Hungarian irredentism (hence the proviso about ethnic separatism and secession). Noticeable in the discourse of the New Right is what Kymlicka labels the ‘phenomenon of “minoritised majorities”—majorities which think and act as if they were minorities’ (2004: 155), invoking the pretext of historic injustice. In this case, the memory of past oppression under the Habsburg Empire and Austria-Hungary is used to legitimise suspicions and fears of the national minorities in Ardeal. Consecrated symbols of the fight for the independence, unification and modernisation of Romania, such as Avram Iancu, a hero of the 1848 Revolution in Transylvania, are merged into the New Right’s objectives and into its own version of the past-present-future continuity of Romanianness (see, for example, ‘Noua Dreaptă la manifestările de la Ţebea’, 2011).What is omitted from their narrative is the liberal, democratic nationhood cherished by the 1848 Generation and their modernising impetus (Neumann, 1996; see also Ioanid, 2004), which only eventually gave way to the ethnocultural, essentialist conceptualisation of the nation-state. The community imagined by the New Right is likely to strike a chord among the Romanian public, largely accustomed to a similar14 version of Romanianness, founding myths and heroes under national communism. The communists appropriated the interwar extreme nationalist discourse and made it compatible with their ideology. Post-1989, strands of this discourse have been preserved and are circulated in the populist speeches and platforms of mainstream Romanian parties. In light of these factors, two developments are worth noting: a disconnection in the collective mind between ethnonationalism on one hand and the Iron Guard’s divine mission ‘to re-conquer[ing] lost territories’ and ‘safeguard[ing] recovered territories’ and to suffer martyrdom in the name of the ‘pan-Romanian’ dream (Moţa, 1937: 105; my translation) on the other—a trivialisation of the excesses perpetrated in the pursuit of this dream, targeted as it initially was against the Jewish threat and conspiracy. What the New Right seeks to achieve through its construction of Romanianness is a reinsertion among the nation’s heroes of the Legionaries, with their radical vision of national rebirth, sanitised of past abuses and crimes. The panoply of anthroponyms and toponyms that give contour to Greater Romania’s map and to its former glory extends to include prominent leaders of the Iron Guard and the Legionary martyrs persecuted by King Carol II, Marshal Antonescu and the communists. In the postcommunist

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context, their rehabilitation to the status of national heroes is eased in the eyes of the public by the martyrdom the communists inflicted upon them. This (re)construction of the Romanian nation can barely be distinguished from populist right-wing nationalist discourse, especially since no means of action are clearly spelled out and a number of disclaimers and qualifiers normally apply. It is only a between-the-lines reading of their doctrine (see previous subsection), which presumably not everybody who accesses their site feels inclined to carry out, that may constitute a cause for alarm. It also takes a scrutinising, interdiscursive gaze around to notice the connections established with a network of European far-right groups and parties and the sympathy for their ultra-nationalist ethos and guiding principles: Udo Voigt and the German NDP, Gareth Hurley and England First (Noua Dreaptă, 2004), Herve van Laethem and the Belgian Movement Nation (Noua Dreaptă, 2002), and others.

Faces of Inimical Otherness—Strategies of Dissimilation and Dismantling The New Right recontextualizes the radical nationalist discourse of the Legionaries within contemporary parameters, where the enemies of Romanianness take on novel guises and shapes. The collective ethnocultural identity of the Romanian nation is articulated through the strategies of ‘exclusion’ of and ‘dissimilation’ from a number of undesirable or dangerous Others. Prime examples in my corpus are the Hungarian far-right groups, together with Romanian-Hungarian mayors and politicians accused of plotting the territorial secession of two Transylvanian counties inhabited predominantly by Romanian-Hungarians.15 They are joined in the gallery of ‘enemies’ by the Roma and the ‘Gypsified’ Romanians, Romanian politicians from the mainstream parties, the communists, the homosexuals, and various religious ‘sects’. At a more abstract level, the European Union and the multinational corporations participate in a Western conspiracy against Romanian autonomy and independence. This is a theme that closely reproduces the Legionary discourse against the Bolshevik-Jewish attempts to take over Romania in the interwar period (Codreanu, 1936, [1933] 2003; Moţa, 1937). Common means of linguistic realisation encompass pejorative or negatively laden denotations of persons and groups, negative evaluations of Romania’s present state, which resonate profoundly among a disillusioned and impoverished population, and negative evaluations of Romania’s image abroad, blamed on the ‘Gypsy problem’. As space restrictions do not allow for a full discussion of all these topics, I illustrate only the main trends: The separatist aberrations of a bunch of Horthysts suffering from ‘land fever’ have crossed all ‘European’ lines. . . . At the opening meeting of the Office, Szegedi Csanád16 stated his intentions to obtain the auton-

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The New Right’s fight against Hungarian irredentism contributes to the construction of a hostile group that lumps together representatives of the Hungarian radical right, such as Jobbik, Romanian-Hungarian MPs and ministers and political supporters of EU policies assessed as detrimental to Romania’s autonomy. The opposition mounted against Hungarian radicalism provides the New Right with an excellent opportunity to shift the blame and to respond to accusations of fascism by pointing their finger at the ‘true fascists’, as the first quotation illustrates. The syndrome of the ‘minoritized majority’ (Kymlicka, 2004) and the strategy of victimisation it maps onto are not exceptional in the Central and Eastern European space with its legacy of national minorities and ‘nationalising states’ (Brubaker, 1996). The New Right, however, amplifies the already existing mistrust and fear in the collective memory into a hyperbolic, menacing construal. The Roma constitute an altogether different type of threat. Deemed to be unruly, uncivilised and violent, they become the scapegoats for Romania’s negative image abroad and are seen as the purveyors of moral degeneration among Romanians. The Romanian youth, in particular, are vulnerable to ‘Gypsification’ in the absence of strong role models and proper education. The New Right conjures up an apocalyptic image of a takeover of ‘our’ country by an ethnocultural group represented in overwhelmingly negative terms and ‘criminonyms’ (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001). By framing their discriminatory portrayal of the Roma as a display of concern for the cultural stultification of Romanian society, the New Right is able to counteract the accusations of racism formulated by the press and various NGOs. The campaigns they organise, runs their claim, are not against the Roma as an ethnic group but against the ‘Gypsified’ Romanians who damage Romania’s reputation in Italy and other EU states (see ‘Noua Dreapta Italia . . .’, 2011). ‘Gypsification’ refers to the proliferation among Romanians of certain cultural practices associated with the Roma, especially in the poor urban environment (Haiduc, 2011). One example is listening to ‘manele’, a musical genre that combines several Balkan rhythms and is considered to be low culture (it has been popularised primarily by Romani singers). Sexual minorities represent yet another facet of the Otherness portrayed by the New Right, which seems to organise a ‘March for Normality’ for every

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gay parade in Romania (occasional acts of violence have been registered), in support of the traditional family, the Orthodox faith and Romanian values. If the discourse of ‘dissimilation’ from a variety of negative practices has so far addressed contemporary enemies or old enemies (the Roma, homosexuals) in a new context, the focus on corrupt politicians marks a full-fledged return to the interwar radical-right framing of mainstream political parties and democracy. An extended comparison is drawn between an idealised time and space of the Romanian nation and the locus terribilis (Wodak et al., 2009) it has become at the hands of the Romanian political class, derogatively construed as ‘liars’, ‘impostors’, ‘traitors’, ‘thieves’ or ‘mafia’ (very forceful are the lyrics of the nationalist rock songs). The New Right’s criticism is closer to populist anti-Establishment standpoints (Eatwell, 2004) than to an antiparliamentary position, at present also ruled out by their plan to found the Nationalist Party. In sharp contrast to the self-interested members of the traditional political parties, the members of the New Right emerge as the luminous agents of transformation and salvation. This theme predominates in Legionary doctrine, where the corrupt political class was accused of preventing the nation from fulfilling its glorious historical destiny and the true ‘will of the people’ from being heard (see subsection 7.1). The New Right reproduces (masquerades?) a similar position: People . . . wrongly associate the political class ruling the country nowadays, this costly wreck, this amalgam of interests that exclude the will of the Romanian people, with our patriotism based on a sense of honour, a quality unknown to many of the ‘actors’ on the political scene. (‘Ziua Imnului Naţional la Râmnicu-Sărat’, 2011; my translation) Progressively, the discursive configurations ensuing from the construction of the Romanian national being and the antidemocratic exclusion of a significant number of vilified Others are channelled towards transformation.

The Transformation of Romania The discursive strategies of transformation disclose a positively connoted image of the organisation cast in the role of Romania’s saviour, much like their Legionary forefathers. As noted earlier, the alternative worldview legitimised by the New Right taps into the Legionary doctrine of the ‘new man’, active agent of change, animated by high ideals of morality, faith in God and Christian Orthodoxy and a spirit of self-sacrifice (Codreanu, 1936, [1933] 2003; Moţa, 1937; see also Ornea, [1995] 2008). While from the New Right texts in my corpus it is difficult to establish the proportion between the importance attached to moral rebirth and other pragmatically oriented considerations, in the interwar doctrine, moral rebirth prevailed: ‘To give back to the world its moral steering, and not necessarily an extra loaf

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of bread or a better material economy, herein lies the solution to this urgent human problem’ (Moţa, 1937: 68; my translation). Love, work, and zealous militantism are the proposed remedies, put into practice by the New Right in its nationalist campaigns, marches, speeches, songs and texts. ‘Love’ is not simply a feeling of affection and empathy, as an unsuspecting reader might think, but an instance of the ‘spiritual love’ for the organic nation and God, specific to Legionary ideology. Work and militantism adapt the Legionary ways (camps and paramilitary comradeship) to present circumstances. Particularly on occasions that commemorate the Legionary heroes and the Captain, this philosophy is reaffirmed with links to the communist past and the postcommunist ‘enemies’: Our world [the Romanian nationalists’] has always been built upon love and work, but today these two values of the Romanian people have become a target of mockery because of the brainwashing suffered by the Romanians and the consequences that came later through Gypsification and Western capitalism. (Sudiţoiu, 2011; my translation) As we have seen, the New Right takes pride in the Legionary fight against communism and has now embarked upon a confrontation with the unleashed forces of globalism. The opposition against the ‘artisans of globalisation’, the European Union and American imperialism, and the open resentment against the communists are in conformity with the position once assumed by the Iron Guard, with the sole exception that ‘foreign capital’ was believed at that time to be controlled by the Jews.18 The New Right’s objectives announce protectionist measures that favour Romanian investments and drastically reduce the monopoly of multinational corporations and foreign banks. This points in the direction of national autarky, a characteristic of most fascist movements (Woodley, 2010; see also Ornea, [1995] 2008, for the Romanian interwar period). The solution may appear all the more legitimate in the wake of a disastrous privatisation during the postcommunist transition and in the context of the global economic crisis. It is hard to predict what turn their economic policies might take, but the approval of Third Way distributionism (Pădureanu, 2002) also distances them from interwar national corporatism. A legitimate question and a final point to be covered is the New Right’s recontextualization of the Holocaust. The data in my corpus are too scarce to substantiate definitive conclusions: few mentions of Jews, mostly to condemn Israel’s mistreatment of Palestine or US affiliation with Israel, and only one news report that refers to the Holocaust, originating with another radical-right organisation. It is, however, the ‘Red Holocaust’ perpetrated by the communist Jews against Romanians (Ene, 2011). A strategy of ‘relativisation’ through ‘victim/perpetrator inversion’ (Wodak et al., 2009: 36) is performed, not uncommon in the reassessment of historical events, but further research needs to be carried out on an expanded corpus to establish the

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New Right’s reinterpretation of the Holocaust. It might be inferred, though, from the incorporation of antisemitic Legionary writings on their site, that the New Right more or less openly condones such values and attitudes, at least with a view to the interwar period. CONCLUSION The central element of the New Right’s continuity with the Legionary doctrine is the myth of ultra-nationalist palingenesis, with additions facilitated by the collapse of communism, and (less dramatic) projections of contemporary enemies. The ‘new [right] men’ assume the heroic and divine task of national salvation, but the New Right is still searching for its own means and style of action. The movement’s antidemocratic attitudes against minority groups, ‘monistic’ tendencies and potentially authoritarian conceptualisations of the ‘spiritual love’ for the nation are mixed with a quasi-absence of violence, the disappearance of revolutionary impetus and (para)militarism and a range of populist features. This poses considerable obstacles to attempts to classify it as ‘extreme’, regardless of its self-proclaimed devotion to the Legionary ideal and symbolism. The New Right’s ongoing adaptation to the democratic game seems to reinforce Griffin’s thesis about the advent of a ‘post-fascist’ era of illiberal democracy ([2004] 2008), not without its dangers, as unexpected terrorist attacks and accumulating tension around the globe demonstrate. The social, political, organisational and ideological structures that generated interwar fascism may have been displaced forever. Even so, if there is the remotest possibility that a movement like the New Right might push through a hidden (and far darker) agenda, a contextualised understanding of the concepts it deploys to herald a better future remains paramount. NOTES

1. 2. 3.

4.

I am grateful to my friend Ciprian Vălcan (Tibiscus University) for discussions and comments. Thanks are also due to John E. Richardson for an insightful exchange of ideas. See Krzyżanowsky and Wodak (2008) for a nuanced approach to the differences between the two processes. Green and black T-shirts with the Maramureş Cross, a local version of the Celtic Cross, or with Corneliu Zelea Codreanu’s portrait. Shafir and other analysts make a distinction between the orientation of the New Right (and similar organisations) and political formations that actively incorporate communist ideology into their worldviews. The New Right resists communism, but, as I discussed in the first section, its own interpretation of the past and, presumably, the audiences’ reception thereof are inevitably influenced by memories and experiences of the communist period. The specificities of the Iron Guard, in particular its strong religious component, coupled with the theoretical difficulties in defining ‘fascism’, prevented

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5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Irina Diana Ma˘droane scholars from easily classifying it among mainstream European fascist movements (see Iordachi, 2010: 319). Pavel points out that the connection between Codreanu and Sima was of a similar nature to the one between Lenin and Stalin (1998: 213). The movement’s orientation changed after the assassination of Codreanu and other members of the Legion’s elite, taking a more pronounced pro-Nazi and terrorist path (Ornea, 2008). With the exception of Italy, Romania was the only country where prestigious intellectuals were drawn to the movement (Mann, 2004: 79). Even though the idea of ‘doctrine’ was rejected by the Legion’s ideologues (Ornea, 2008; Pavel, 1998). Iordachi (2010: 322ff.) offers a novel interpretation of the genealogy of the national ‘regeneration’ myth in Legionary ideology. He highlights the connections it has with Romantic historicism and Romantic conceptualisations of palingenesis and ‘religious revival’, consolidated during the creation of the Romanian nation-state. In Iordachi’s view, these theories were initially developed by French and Italian thinkers and then were transferred to the Romanian context; they are imbued with elements of the Catholic and Protestant dogmas and of Christian-biblical interpretation (2010: 352–53). Without downplaying the role of the Orthodox dogma and Church, Iordachi uses this argument to firmly locate the Legion amidst traditional European fascist organisations. See http://www.nouadreapta.org/. An interesting development took place while I was working on this chapter. The section on doctrine, a selection of excerpts from Horia Sima’s Doctrina Legionară (The Legionary Doctrine, 1980), has been removed from the organisation’s main site, possibly as a follow-up to their application for the official registration of the Nationalist Party. So has one of their blatantly antidemocratic objectives, which proposed ‘the creation of a Gypsy state in Asia, after Israel’s model’, as a solution to the ‘Gypsy problem’. They are still available (probably temporarily) on the sites of several of the organisation’s branches [search carried out on January 14, 2012]. The selection and the framing of news stories from the mainstream national and international press corresponds to the New Right agenda (sometimes headlines are modified to indicate a particular interpretation). Griffin first introduced the notion of ‘palingenetic myth’ in connection with fascism in 1991. ‘Generic fascism’ and the existence of a ‘fascist minimum’ is widely debated in the field of Fascist Studies (see discussions in Griffin, [2004] 2008; Iordachi, 2010), but they are useful concepts for the analysis of contemporary developments and links with the interwar period. The Romanian words ‘neam’ (in particular) and ‘naţiune’ (which I translate as ‘nation’ throughout) signify an exclusively ethnocultural nation, the Romanian version of the Romantic Volksnation or Kulturnation (see Neumann, 2003: 115ff.; for Central Europe, see Wodak et al., 2009). At a surface level, as national communism propagated a distinct type of nationalism. Legacy of the Treaty of Trianon (1920) and the formation of the Romanian modern state in the wake of World War I. The two counties, which form the Szekely Land, are Covasna and Harghita. Member of the European Parliament and Vice President of Jobbik, the Hungarian Movement for a Better Hungary. Along the border with the Republic of Moldavia. Even today, in certain circles, multinational companies and global capital are believed to be controlled by the Jews (see Tismăneanu, 1998: 108–9), and anti-American resentment is simultaneously directed at a presupposed Jewish conspiracy. In my corpus, there is no evidence to support the conclusion that

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the New Right shares such convictions, but anti-Western, predominantly antiAmerican attitudes are rampant, and Americans are blamed for their favourable politics towards Israel.

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14 European Far-Right Music and Its Enemies Anton Shekhovtsov

I’m patriotic, I’m racialistic, My views are clear and so simplistic (English Rose, 2007b)

In a self-conducted interview that appeared in his manifesto, Norwegian would-be right-wing terrorist and killer Anders Behring Breivik, under the pen name Andrew Berwick, argued that specific music helps sustain ‘high morale and motivation’ of ‘self-financed and self-indoctrinated single individual attack cells’ (2011, p. 856). He went on to list several ‘motivational music tracks’ he particularly liked. Breivik described one of these tracks, ‘Lux Æterna’, by Clint Mansell, which was featured in the trailer for Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, as ‘very inspiring’ and as invoking ‘a type of passionate rage within you’ (2011, p. 858). On 22 July 2011, ‘Lux Æterna’ supposedly played in his iPod while he was killing members of the Workers’ Youth League of the Norwegian Labour Party on the island of Utøya (Gysin, Sears and Greenhill, 2011). Another artist favoured by Breivik in his manifesto is Saga, ‘a courageous, Swedish, female nationalist-oriented musician who creates pop-music with patriotic texts’ (2011, p. 856). Saga soared to the heights of right-wing fame in 2000, when she released three volumes of My Tribute to Skrewdriver on the Swedish right-wing label Midgård Records (2000a). Her three-volume album featured cover versions of Skrewdriver, a model White Power band, whose late leader, Ian Stuart Donaldson, founded the Blood & Honour (B&H) music promotion network in 1987. Saga became so popular within the neo-Nazi scene that in November 2009 she was invited to perform at the B&H Remembrance Day Gig. On 27 July 2011, presumably disturbed by the Norwegian terrorist’s rapturous remarks, Saga issued an official statement that condemned ‘the most vile and criminal acts in recent history’ (2011). She added: ‘My music is conceived to be a positive step towards celebrating our identity and bringing about positive cultural and political change’ (2011). Since most of

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Saga’s music is cover versions of Skrewdriver’s songs, the nature of ‘positive cultural and political change’ is obvious: Strikeforce, white survival, Strikeforce, yeah, Strikeforce, kill all rivals, Strikeforce, into the devil’s lair (Skrewdriver, 1987a; cf. Saga, 2000b).

Or: Our enemies are capitalists, communists as well, Both these forms of evil are raining our death-knell. (Skrewdriver, 1987b; cf. Saga 2000c).

Despite these lyrics, the enemies of White Power movement are not only capitalists and communists. As will be shown in this chapter, it is possible to distinguish two main objects of demonization in White Power music: (1) specific ‘Other’ communities, and (2) the ‘System’. European national contexts offer unique variations, but general patterns do emerge among them. Before I discuss the theme of the Enemy articulated through White Power music, I will briefly analyse the relationships which exist between far-right music scenes and right-wing groups and organisations and describe the emergence of White Power music scenes in Europe. ‘WE’VE GOT THE MUSIC, WE’VE GOT THE BANDS’ The far-right music scene is part and parcel of the far-right sociopolitical movement. Here, movement is considered in its broader sense as ‘a poorly delimited, heterogeneous, loosely co-ordinated and hence “polycratic” current of ideas and values’ (Griffin, 2003, p. 33). The hallmark of a polycratic movement is ‘a minimum of central co-ordination or formally shared objectives, and it will tend to spawn numerous internal factions, sub-currents, conflicts and “dialects” of the central vision’ (Griffin, 2003, pp. 33–34). At the same time, a far-right polycratic movement contains but is not limited to a total of much more distinct and centralised monocratic movements. A minimal shared objective of this far-right polycratic movement is to preserve, actualise or revive an ethnically or culturally homogeneous society. Monocratic movements are more specific in their ideology, agenda and practices. For example, in Britain, the far-right polycratic movement consists essentially of such monocratic groups as the party-political British National Party, the National Front, the British People’s Party and the England First Party; the less centralised English Defence League and New Right/ National Anarchist groups; regional divisions of Blood & Honour; and dozens of small, often violent and terror-oriented extreme-right groupuscules like the Racial Volunteer Force and the British Freedom Fighters. Each of these groups and organisations has more or less its own separate clear agenda; together, though, they constitute a British far-right polycratic movement.

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In its turn, the far-right music scene is understood as ‘the elements of a [far-right] social movement’s culture that are explicitly organised around music and which participants regard as important for supporting movement ideals and activist identities’ (Futrell, Simi and Gottschalk, 2006, p. 276). However, although every component of far-right polycratic movement has its own culture and although it is possible to speak of a general far-right culture, music scenes are attributes of only a limited part of a broad far-right movement on either a national or a European level. In most instances, new European radical right-wing political parties, which have been trying to present themselves as moderate, mature and respectable political forces, do not generate or produce music scenes.1 Rather—as they are aware of the powerful role of music in promoting any socio-political ideas—they are trying to appropriate or penetrate other music scenes. For example, the Danish People’s Party (DPP) played ABBA’s hit ‘Mamma Mia’ at their rallies and meetings. In a version of this song performed by the youth wing of the DPP, the lyrics were changed to ‘Mamma Pia’ in honour of the party’s leader Pia Kjærsgaard. After ABBA threatened to sue the party for using their song for political purposes, the DPP stopped using the song, and no legal action was taken (BBC News, 2010). Right-wing populists also try to invite Folk, Rock and Pop musicians to play at their political events. However, since right-wing populism is considered mauvais ton in mainstream public opinion in European democracies, musicians rarely cooperate with the party-political far right for fear of losing their mainstream or nonpolitical audience. More often, the radical right criticises individual artists, particular music scenes and genres for ‘sins’ like not singing in their native languages, for not producing ‘right music’ and even for racism. David Rachline, former national coordinator of the youth wing of the French National Front, argued that Hip-Hop promoted antiFrench racism, miscegenation and cosmopolitanism (Rachline, 2010), while the official policy of the French National Front states that ‘rap is not an expression of music’ (cited in Brown D., 2004, p. 199). Hip-Hop music, which derives its roots from African American culture, is a frequent target of the far right’s criticism. For example, the radical right-wing All-Ukrainian Union ‘Freedom’ called for a ban of a concert of the American ‘racist band’ Onyx in Ukraine and demanded the deportation of the band from the country (Svoboda, 2010; for more on this party see Shekhovtsov 2011a). In contrast to the party-political radical right, the European New Right movement, which strives to diffuse a system of liberal-democratic values through ‘a metapolitical strategy, in other words a strategy situated outside political institutions and instead within the area of language and objectives’ (Faye, 1982/3, p. 10; for more on the European New Right see Bar-On, 2007), does have its own cultural manifestation in the domain of sound which is ‘metapolitical fascist’, or apoliteic, music (Shekhovtsov, 2009; see also François, 2006; Turner-Graham, 2010). For example, the prolific British New Right author Troy Southgate contributes vocals to such apoliteic bands as H.E.R.R. and Seelenlicht. The Russian Neo-Eurasianist author

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Aleksandr Dugin occasionally produces his own music under the alias Hans Zivers, while the French New Right author Thierry Jolif is known in the musical sphere as Lonsai Maïkov. At the same time, extreme-right political parties and groups have produced their own music scene, which is known as White Power music, or White Noise (Shekhovtsov and Jackson, 2012; Futrell, Simi and Gottschalk, 2006; T. S. Brown, 2004). The other name for this type of music, generally used within the scene itself, is the abbreviation RAC, which stands for ‘Rock against Communism’. The RAC movement originated in Britain in 1978 with two Leedsbased bands, the Ventz and the Dentists (Anon., 1978a, pp. 6–7; Anon., 1978b, p. 10). The movement was originally promoted by the British National Front– affiliated periodical British News, edited by Edmund Morrison, and, from October 1978 on, British News regularly published a feature titled ‘RAC’. The same year, Morrison launched a short-lived newsletter, Punk Front, which further pushed the RAC agenda (Morrison, n.d.). From 1979 onward, the RAC ideas were taken up by the main publication of the Young Nation Front, Bulldog, edited by Joe Pearce (Anon., 1979, p. 3). It was not, however, until the early 1980s that the far-right musical scene began to flourish. The year 1983 was momentous for the British White Power music scene: the National Front’s Joe Pearce and Patrick Harrington launched the White Noise Records label, which released the 7-inch single ‘White Power’ by Skrewdriver (Skrewdriver, 1983). As Lowles and Silver trenchantly noted, the White Power music scene ‘became one of Britain’s most shameful exports’ (1998, p. 7). In 1984, the West German label Rock-O-Rama Records started releasing German and British White Power music, most notably by Böhse Onkelz and Skrewdriver. In 1985, Skrewdriver played in Stockholm—this was the first White Power music gig in Sweden ever—and ‘since then, groups and concerts have proliferated’ in Sweden (Lööw, 1998, p. 154).2 Two years later, the Swedish racist organisation Keep Sweden Swedish sponsored the release of the first EP of Ultima Thule, arguably the most infamous far-right band in the country, which has released more than 15 albums to date. During the 1980s, White Power music rapidly spread all over Europe. The French far-right music label Rebelles Européens was set up in 1987 by Bodilis Gael, who was active in the youth wing of the French National Front, Third Way, and, afterwards, the French and European Nationalist Party (Lebourg, 2004). Socialist Europe was not left behind, either. At the end of the 1980s, sympathisers of the National Rebirth of Poland party formed the far-right band Legion, which helped the organisation recruit skinheads for the political cause (Pankowski, 1998). By the mid-1990s, the far-right scene appeared in Russia, where the band Russkoe Getto, later renamed Kolovrat, was formed and rapidly reached cult status amongst Russian neo-Nazis. The 1990s were undoubtedly the heyday of the White Power music scene in Europe. The B&H promotion network, which had by then become international, played a crucial role in the rise of the scene, which also became

European Far-Right Music and Its Enemies 281 increasingly profitable. B&H, which was taken over by the neo-Nazi organisation Combat 18 following Ian Stuart Donaldson’s death in a car crash in 1993, idolised the late Skrewdriver leader, and, as a result, he ‘became bigger in death than in life’ (Lowles, 1998, p. 30). Combat 18 launched ISD Records (‘ISD’ is an acronym for Ian Stuart Donaldson), while Ian Stuart memorial concerts became a nexus for the European White Power scene. As argued on the B&H website: Every year British and foreign bands take the stage at this event and play together in a vision of brotherhood and unity that Ian Stuart started. With its massive success and status in the musical resistance networks calendar, nations from all over the world now copy the I.S.D. [memorial concerts] in their own lands and pay homage to the man who opened the worlds [sic] eyes through music. . . . (Anon., n.d.) The scene has grown weaker in the first decade of the new millennium, but this weakness is relative, and the scene is still very strong in ‘post-Socialist’ Europe. Because of the opposition of anti-fascists, B&H is not able to advertise music events publicly in Britain and many other Western European countries, whereas, for example, in Russia, White Power bands are allowed to perform not only in clubs but in central squares, as well. For example, in 2009, the far-right organisation Russian Image arranged an open-air gig for its ‘official voice’, Hook Sprava and Kolovrat, at Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square (Kozhevnikova, 2010). However, music-related strategies of the extreme right in some West European countries have become more sophisticated. One of the notable examples of the far right’s advanced strategies is a Schoolyard-CD project devised by the National Democratic Party of Germany in 2004. The Schoolyard-CD project involves distribution of free CDs with White Power music targeting young people, mostly schoolchildren, outside the extreme-right milieu. The year the project started, the National Democrats, with the help of far-right bands and distributors, allegedly produced about 200,000 CDs that also contained information on how to contact German extreme-right organisations (Pfeiffer, 2009, pp. 292–293). As seen from this brief analysis, far-right music constitutes an integral part of far-right movement. Bands and artists involved in the White Power music scene usually cooperate with established or emerging extreme-right organisations, while their releases and concerts represent important tools of recruitment, fund-raising and propaganda. It is often the case that White Power music scenes, and especially concerts and music Internet forums, act as the only conduits between otherwise disengaged right-wingers in European countries. Music scenes in general and the White Power music scene in particular create a powerful sense of community and belonging. As Eyerman argued, this music ‘provides collective experience—not exactly courage, but a sense of belonging to something greater than the individual, instilling a sort of strength’ (2002, p. 452).

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Thus, far-right music acts not only as a point of entry into a far-right sociopolitical movement but also helps keep this movement together. The Blood & Honour Field Manual reads: You meet in the local pub, café or beer joint—or even in your home; drink a little, talk a lot . . ., listen to [White Power] music and generally have a good time. That’s propaganda too. Many have been drawn to the Movement simply through a need of a social life, tight comradeship and a common purpose in life. Of course, such basic events must be followed up by thorough education and more serious activism, but don’t let go of the social bit. It is needed—both to keep people with us and to keep spirits high. Fellowship is the essential platform of all revolutionary forces. (Hammer, n.d.) However, defining a community and creating a sense of belonging at the same time imply defining the enemies of this community: the White Power music scene employs various strategies ‘to construct a “we-group” through particular acts of reference that simultaneously imply a distancing from the “other” ’ (Colombo and Senatore, 2005, p. 59). In case of far-right movement in general and the White Power music scene in particular, the ‘Other’ is an outright Enemy. Violence against the Enemy is glorified, while historical or contemporary organisations or individuals associated with the destruction of the Enemy are given ample praise. GLORIFICATION AND CONDEMNATION At the height of its infamy, during the 1990s, the White Power music scene attracted attention of the authorities across Western Europe: gigs were cancelled, records banned, bands and individuals persecuted. Several major right-wing labels were closed down or seriously abated. German Rock-ORama Records ceased to exist after a police raid in 1994, while the business of the Swedish company Ragnarock Records was seriously damaged after the police found two fully loaded automatic guns and hand grenades at the label’s office in 1998. In Britain, one of the most virulent neo-Nazi CDs, Barbecue in Rostock, recorded by No Remorse and released on ISD Records, became the first record successfully prosecuted for offensive lyrics.3 In Finland, Marko Järvinen was imprisoned for producing the Kriegsberichter video magazine released by the Danish label NS88 and the Finnish Ainaskin (Barber-Kersovan, 2003, p. 197). As a result, as Lööw argued, the [White Power] music industry has been forced to adopt more discreet marketing methods as well as to tone down the ‘messages’ put out by their groups. Song writers have, to some extent, abandoned their openly racist and anti-semitic language in favour of a coded message. (2001, p. 56)

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In Germany, at the same time, Barber-Kersovan observed two opposing tendencies: ‘the texts became less openly fascistic in order to avoid repression’, but a further radicalisation was also evident (2003, p. 196). However, the forced moderation course was more observable in Western than in Eastern Europe. Moreover, the rise of non-European, principally US-based,4 White Power music labels, as well as the worldwide spread of the Internet, contributed to the growth of the shadow economy of the scene, so explicitly racist lyrics and imagery ceased to be a problem. No Remorse’s Barbecue in Rostock (released in 1996) may still be seen as the most spiteful rightwing album in the Anglophone world, but only because it cannot be worse: 10 out 11 songs featured on the album explicitly incite violence against blacks, Pakistanis, Jews, Turks, communists, antifascists, gay people, and even rival White Power musicians. Cotter argues that the message of White Power music fits into the ideology of contemporary extreme right-wing groups and organisations and includes ‘hatred toward outgroups, antisemitic conspiracy theories, chauvinistic nationalism and a disregard for conventional political behavior’ (1999, p. 122). Corte and Edwards add another ideological dimension, namely the glorification of the ‘White race’, to which Saga referred in her quoted statement. They distinguish five core themes of White Power music: (1) ‘pride in belonging to an embattled White ethnicity’, (2) promotion of ‘white supremacy and racist views toward non-whites and immigrants’, (3) condemnation of ‘homosexuals, ethnic minorities, “multiracialism”, interracial marriage and . . . “race-mixing” ’, (4) denouncement of Jews and “Zionist Occupation Government” (ZOG), and (5) ‘opposition to communism, socialism and any other leftist, progressive or liberal political programs’ (2008, p. 8). While this observation is certainly true, points 2–4 can be largely merged into one core theme: the negative or violent attitude towards the ‘Other’. In his analysis of the lyrics of the German White Power bands, Flad highlighted three main themes: (1) objects of love (e.g. Germany, Volk), heroes (e.g. Ian Stuart Donaldson, Rudolf Hess, Viking and Norse gods), and (3) evil forces (e.g. foreigners, the left, punks, police) (2002). Flad’s conclusions are also true for the White Power music scene in general. It should also be noted here that, ideologically, the ‘heroes’ theme lies between the other two themes: the ‘heroes’ are considered to be fighters for the ‘objects of love’ and against the ‘evil forces’. The ‘evil forces’ represented in White Power music are diverse. First of all, these are the ‘Others’, which include particular ethnic, religious and social groups believed to pose an imminent threat to the ‘White race’. For the far-right movement in general, people of non-White background are irredeemable, as it is exactly their unchangeable ethnic background that makes them ‘evil’. Religious identity is often considered irredeemable, too. White Power music demonises drug users and homosexuals, as well, even if they are of ‘White’ origin, since they are thought to defile and to not contribute to the growth of the ‘White race’. The 14 words of the late US

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right-wing terrorist David Lane, ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children’, are a guiding star of this kind of logic. The second kind of ‘evil forces’ are ‘traitors of the White Race’. These are people of ‘White’ origin who are believed to have betrayed their roots by either actively promoting internationalist/multiculturalist ideas or being engaged in ideologically-motivated resistance to ultra-nationalism. To this category, the far right assigns left-wingers, liberals, progressive academics, journalists, anti-fascists, and the like. Another major enemy is the ‘System’. This is a complex, depersonalised structure that incorporates political and legal systems, education, banking, transnational corporations, and mass media. The ‘System’—this concept is a clear conspiracy theory—deliberately seeks to poison, corrupt, impoverish and ultimately destroy the ‘White race’. Thus, it is natural that the ‘System’ is often synonymous with ZOG, or Zionist Occupation Government, which implies that governments are controlled by Zionists or ‘World Jewry’. Although this was originally introduced in 1976 by a US neo-Nazi, Eric Thomson, and received wider dissemination in 1984 through a New York Times article on the right-wing terrorist group The Order, the ZOG concept became extremely popular among the US neo-Nazis in 1990s and quickly travelled across the Atlantic. Sometimes the ‘System’ is also synonymous with the state, meaning a government and its ‘repressive apparatus’. White Power bands and artists attack this enemy either in its entirety or in part. Police forces, which are often identified with the ‘repressive apparatus’ of the ‘System’, are the most common target, and the abbreviation ‘A.C.A.B.’, which stands for ‘All cops are bastards’, is often used for song titles.5 It is important to highlight that the theme of the Enemy in White Power music generally reflects the neo-Nazi ideology that draws both on historical Nazism and postwar right-wing extremism. The old adversaries of Nazism are kept intact; in particular, these are Jews, Roma people, homosexuals and ideological enemies like left-wingers and liberals, as well as elements of the ‘System’ such as transnational corporations and banks. The new enemies can be highly contextualised, that is, conditioned by the alleged problems in a given society, or generalised to the European context. Thus, Pakistanis are mostly demonised by White Power bands and musicians in Britain, Turks in Germany, Arabs in France, and so on.6 At the same time, blacks, unnamed immigrants from ‘third world countries’, anti-fascists, police and other state institutions are vilified by White Power musicians across the whole of Europe. It is easy to detect that White Power music, being part of the farright movement, naturally shares the perceived Enemy with extreme-right organisations. Likewise, White Power bands derive their lyrical inspiration from the same sources used by other segments of the European extreme right. In addition to the conspiracy and Nazi ‘classics’ such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Alfred Rosenberg’s The Myth of the Twentieth Century, far-right musicians draw on the ideas that

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come from a vast array of books, brochures, essays, websites, other musical production and online and offline videos that—in terms of ideology— range from blatant ‘White racism’ and neo-Nazi propaganda to historical revisionism (especially Holocaust denial) and Islamophobia. Doubtlessly, it would be inaccurate to assert that all the members of White Power bands actually read or watch these sources. Despite the immensity of this storehouse of hate and prejudice, unique ideas are few and far between. They are common memes within far-right culture, while its members, including White Power musicians, may well be not aware of the original sources of these ideas. Moreover, many members of the extreme-right movement get infected with these memes exactly through White Power music even before they are indoctrinated either by the literary and visual sources mentioned or by representatives of extreme-right groups and organizations. In the next section of this chapter, I will discuss the main types of the Enemy articulated through White Power music.

‘EUROPE IS FOR WHITES’ In 2004, a German court banned Nordfront’s debut album Werft Sie raus! (Throw them out!).7 The eponymous song from the album released by Pühses Liste8 particularly alarmed the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which collects and analyses information concerning ‘efforts directed against the free democratic basic order’ or ‘against the existence and the security of the Federation or one of its States’ (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, n.d.). The song features the following lyrics: Enemies surround, encroach and cram the country . . ., so we have begun our struggle. Against all those who exploit the country and defile the German honour. (Nordfront, 2000)9

The album was banned with reference to Section 130 of the Criminal Code of Germany, which imposes criminal liability on those who ‘incite hatred against segments of the population or a national, racial or religious group’ (Bundesministerium der Justiz, 2008, p. 114). This case is interesting, because Nordfront did not specify what ‘enemies’ they referred to. Earlier in the song, they did mention ‘Autonome, Zecken, die roten Ratten’ (literally: autonomists, ticks and red rats; these may mean autonomous anarchists, antifascists and left-wingers), but this is clearly a coded message. It is possible to identify ‘those who exploit the country’ with immigrants coming to Germany (‘outer enemies’), while those who ‘defile the German honour’ may be identified with ‘traitors of the White race’, that is, left-wingers (‘inner enemies’). Thus, in the latter case, Nordfront revives an old stab-in-the-back myth (Dolchstoßlegende).

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However, many other German bands are less ambiguous in their lyrics. Landser, which was arguably the most infamous German neo-Nazi band, became the first music group that was recognised as a criminal organisation under Section 129 of the Criminal Code. A Berlin court found the musicians of Landser guilty of production and distribution of CDs with criminal content, dissemination of propaganda of unconstitutional organisations and denigration of the state and its symbols (Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Inneres, Sport und Integration, 2007, p. 44). The court sentenced the band’s lead singer, Michael Regener, to 40 months in prison (Fleishman, 2003). The lyrics of Landser’s songs and the album covers were the focus of criminal prosecution. For example, their scoffing ‘Afrika Lied’ (Africa Song) viciously depicted the repatriation of black people from Germany to Africa by sea and their suffering on boats. The song ended with the following words: Africa is for apes, Europe is for Whites, Shove the apes in a toilet and wash them down like shit. (Landser, 1995)

The cover of Landser’s Ran an den Fiend (Attack the Enemy) featured the image of a white fist crushing the grotesque figures of the ‘evil forces’: black people, Jews, Vietnamese, punks and anarchists. The back cover carried a statement in English: ‘No music, just politics’. This statement, ironically, confirmed that Landser was a political organisation rather than simply a rock band. Before Michael Regener was sent to prison, he had formed another band, Die Lunikoff Verschwörung, and had its debut album studied by lawyers with respect to possible criminal contents. Nevertheless, the album was indexed by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young People.10 German legal provisions against White Power bands are the harshest in Europe. Thus, German bands sometimes try to make their lyrics ‘less guilty’ before the law. For example, in its ‘Schwarze Division’ (Black Division), Stahlgewitter11 tells about a ‘Turkish city on German soil’ populated by ‘millions of strangers’, and, in the refrain, the singer suggests dispatching a ‘black division’ to Kreuzberg (1998). Nowhere is Kreuzberg is explicitly identified with the ‘Turkish city’, while Kreuzberg itself is not and never has been a city or a town. By giving this Berlin borough (known for its large immigrant population) city status, Stahlgewitter isolates it from the rest of the capital as something xenogenic and then calls for its destruction. Because of the laws, many German right-wing bands are forced to release their records on US, Canadian, Scandinavian and Eastern European labels, in countries where the laws on hate speech either do not exist or are implemented less methodically than in Germany. In Finland, the Penal Code imposes criminal liability for threatening, defaming or insulting ‘a certain race, a national, ethnic or religious group or a comparable group’ (Suomen oikeusministeriö, n.d.). However, Mistreat, which is one of the oldest and most prolific Finnish White Power bands, produces self-released albums featuring Finnish and English songs condemning a long list of enemies—‘black

European Far-Right Music and Its Enemies 287 monkeys’, ‘greedy Jews’, ‘third world immigrants’, ‘queers and faggots’, ‘commies’, ‘junkies’—unrestricted by the authorities. Mistreat also associates black people with sexual offenders, as in the song ‘Ei Armoa!’ (No Mercy!), which calls for the expulsion of ‘Pakis’ and ‘black rapists’ from Finland (Mistreat, 2002). Russia’s judicial system is less liberal with regard to White Power bands. The Ministry of Justice of Russia maintains the Federal List of Extremist Materials, which, in particular, features names of banned songs by such Russian right-wing bands as Order, Zyklon B, Kolovrat and Bezumnye Usiliya (Ministerstvo yustitsii Rossiyskoy Federatsii, 2012).12 It is worth noting that the Russian White Power scene—to a certain extent—differs from other such scenes in Europe in that it is strongly influenced by a ‘straightedge’ ideology that, in particular, promotes absolute rejection of alcohol, tobacco and drugs. Sometimes, right-wing bands tend to racialize these ideas. In one song that discourages people from buying from non-Russians, Kolovrat claims that khachi13 sell drugs to Russian people, while in the song ‘Pryamaya liniya’ (Straight Edge) the band declares that ‘straight edge’ is ‘a weapon in the war for survival of the race’ and continues: Let the blacks die out, let alcohol gnaw their liver with cirrhosis, And let the nicotine noose strangle their bronchi and throats. (Kolovrat, 2002b)

Another Russian band, Iron Order, calls ‘straight edge’ a run-up for ‘interracial wars’ and ‘knife onslaught’ and insists that ‘alcohol interferes with the National Socialist deed’ (2009). However, some minor Russian White Power bands, for example, xTerror Wavex and Trezvy Reikh (Sober Reich), dissociate ‘straight edge’ and racism. For xTerror Wavex, the enemies are, first and foremost, drug dealers, ‘junkies’ and ‘drunks’. The band members also believe that immigrants are a consequence rather than a cause of the problems in Russia. For them, it would have been better ‘if the number of murdered migrant workers had amounted to the number of murdered politicians, human right activists, [and] corrupt bureaucrats’ (Anon., 2009). The utmost seriousness of Russian straight-edge White Power musicians is proved by the fact that two members of Trezvy Reikh were sentenced to eight and nine years, respectively, in a colony for beating and murdering two homeless Russian people. An interesting case is European White Power bands’ relationship to other European nations. Landser was extremely critical of the Poles. In the song ‘Polacken Tango’ (Polish Tango), Regener sneered at ‘Polish louts screaming “White Power” ’ and went on: Oh, how I hate this shit nation Since when do Poles belong to the Aryan race? (Landser, 1997)

Landser’s hatred towards the Poles is driven both by ‘Aryan racism’ and, as it becomes evident from the rest of the song, by territorial claims. Naturally,

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no Polish right-wing band contributed to two volumes of Tribute to Landser. However, as Pankowski argues, since the late 1980s, there has been ‘a split between the openly [N]azi and the “national-Catholic” element’ within the far-right culture in Poland (1998, p. 66) and that neo-Nazi Polish bands sympathise with German National Socialism. In 1992, for example, an organisation named Aryjski Front Przetrwania, formed by several influential Polish bands, including Konkwista 88 and Honor, arranged the Hitler Festival. Another instance of the territorial claims articulated through White Power music can be found in the lyrics of the influential Hungarian band Radical Hungary: We can speak again when all of Slovakia will be Hungary again . . . Oh, you Slovak nobodies, you are shit like the Romanians. (Radical Hungary, 2009)14

The Netherlands’ most productive but now defunct band Brigade M, however, called to rise above the territorial issues, promoted a ‘European unity’ and declared ‘fraternisation through music’ the band’s mission: Hungarians and Rumanians, Germans and Poles, know the history of territory stolen, Everything that binds us will never set us apart, and that is why Unity is the very start. (Brigade M, 2005a)15

Indeed, animosity towards other European nations is uncommon in the European White Power scene, while Landser’s hatred for the Poles and Radical Hungary’s enmity towards the Slovaks and Romanians are exceptions, rather than the rule. Particularly interesting here is that sometimes rightwing bands do not harbour the enmity towards particular ethnic groups which is prevalent in the rest of the right-wing movement in their home countries. Thus, Sokyra Peruna, one of the most important Ukrainian White Power bands, gets along well with the Russians, and this is extraordinary for the Ukrainian far right, which generally sees Russia as the cause of all the troubles in Ukraine (Shekhovtsov, 2011a). Sokyra Peruna often plays gigs in Russia, sometimes sings in Russian and prefers to promote ‘Slavic unity’ and ‘European brotherhood’, rather than narrow Ukrainian ultra-nationalism. ‘Aryan racism’ is also inherent in the band’s lyrics, and, for Sokyra Peruna, the enemies are Jews, blacks and ‘race traitors’. The latter are, first and foremost, Hip-Hop fans. In ‘Rapper’, the band states: You behave like a nigger, dress like a monkey, you will eat bananas and climb on a palm. And this is a White person?! This is just a disgrace, the Race War will start with you. (Sokyra Peruna, 2004)

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Brigade M conveys almost the same message with regard to Hip-Hop fans: ‘Rich kids, wannabe niggers . . . they betray their own kind / So I hate, I hate, hate all them phoney, Karl Kani buying race traitors’ (2005b).16 Jews, a common enemy for White Power bands across Europe, are usually endowed with an almost superhuman status, as they are believed to be ubiquitous and omnipotent. For the legendary British band Brutal Attack, in existence since the early 1980s, everything that their ‘ancestors fought for . . . has all been stolen by bankers of the Jewish fold’ (1998). A relatively new British act, Section 88, echoes the British White Power veterans and also associates the alleged loss of Britain’s historical legacy with Jews: ‘in a quest for power’, Jews set out ‘to destroy our race and historic past’ (2008). Kolovrat maintains that Jews ‘pitted the Great Nations against each other’ during the Second World War (1998). In its turn, the once popular but now defunct Polish band Deportacja 68 insisted that ‘the Jewish syndicate govern[ed] the whole world’ and wondered why it was not possible to shoot Jews (cited in Pankowski, 2001, p. 20; for more on racism and popular culture in Poland see Pankowski, 2006). Direct or indirect appeals to murder Jews are implied in almost every White Power song that deals with the alluded-to ‘Jewish power’. According to the twisted logic of the ‘Aryan racists’, whereas other ‘alien’ ethnic groups, especially Africans and Asians, can be simply driven out, Jews can only be killed, as they can ‘rule the world’ from any place on the planet. Holocaust is also a widespread topic in White Power songs. While the majority of the far-right bands openly propagate Holocaust denial, they actually support the genocide of Jews. Thus, in a song called ‘Six Million Words of Lies’, Sokyra Peruna exhorts listeners to ‘free Europe from the [Jewish] plague’ (1999). Because of the twofold interpretation of Jews in White Power music—as a demonised ethnic group and as the driving force behind the world government conspiracy—antisemitism serves as a link between two major types of the ‘evil forces’, that is, the ‘Others’ and the ‘System’. The depiction of and the struggle against the ‘System’ occupy important places in White Power music, and this is where all kinds of conspiracy theories are unleashed. For example, Kolovrat identifies the ‘System’ with a ‘police state’; it is ‘a realm of tyrants’ which is ‘one of the elements of the Masonic design’, ‘the triumph of totalitarianism’ and ‘a tool of manipulation of the masses by the capital and globalism’ (2008b). While some far-right bands believe that Jews are seeking to destroy the ‘White race’ and are making ‘White’ nations fight each other, others put forward the idea of the ‘organised Jewry’ that is known as ZOG. For Sokyra Peruna, ‘ZOG caused civil wars and revolution’, and now it ‘propagates the infection of interracial unity and love’ (2003, 1998). Messages about the plot in which the ‘System’ destroys the ‘White race’ are commonplace in White Power lyrics. Mistreat sings that ‘the cosmopolitan rulers dream their multiracial dreams’ (1997), while Kolovrat tells listeners that ‘This criminal regime is cursed by the people / It organises and promotes the process

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of race-mixing’ (2002a). The British band Avalon, which has almost a 20-year history and describes itself as ‘one of the longest running bands in the sphere of Political & Racial damnation’ (2012), fears that the ‘New World Order . . . almost seals our race to extinction’ (2006). In one of the interviews, Hook Sprava gives its own list of the ‘System’s’ evils: the cult of money, making of consumer society, proliferation and legalisation of sexual and social vice, protection of interests of parasitic minorities at the expense of majority, limitation of liberties of the creative majority, ‘cyborgisation’ of people, extreme individualism, egoism, birth-rate fall, destruction of the cult of family and religion, profanation of traditional values. (Anon., 2008) The far right’s response to the ‘System’ is as violent as that to the ‘Others’. In fact, as xTerror Wavex implied in the interview quoted earlier, the ‘disturbing’ presence of the ‘Others’ in European societies is seen as a consequence of the ‘System’s’ actions, and the ‘System’ is to blame. Hence, a relatively new German right-wing band, Strafmass, that, to date, has released two albums, argues that it is ‘fighting against the System and against the treason of the Volk’ (2010). In the same extreme populist way, the Russian act Molodyozh Tule17 also opposes the people and the ‘System’ and insists that ‘The sentence to the system is each new shot / This is the only way we can be taken seriously’ (2008). It would be, however, erroneous to argue that the concepts of the ‘System’ and ZOG always coincide in White Power music. The former concept is generally more prevalent than the latter, the justification for which often resolves into blatant antisemitism. Notably, the idea of the ‘System’ is indebted to both right-wing and left-wing strands of radicalism. The left-wing roots of this concept are particularly evident in one of Brigade M’s songs: Everywhere you go the same logos and names you’ll see indoctrination by radio and TV, Multinational monsters dominate the scenery, they divide the market without a penalty. (Brigade M, 2003)

The German band Hetzjagd dedicated one of their two albums to the ‘fight against the System’ (Kampf dem System), and one of the songs, titled ‘A.C.A.B.’, deals with the police (2006). The police are usually seen as both an element of the ‘System’ and its servant. Kolovrat holds that the police ‘do not have nationality or Fatherland / Zionists turned them into their house-dogs’ (2008a). In terms of the twisted logic of the White Power music scene, the police are the most visible, immediate manifestation of the ‘System’s’ repressive policies towards the far right. Thus, the veteran British

European Far-Right Music and Its Enemies 291 band English Rose complains that the police storm right-wing gigs and take freedom of speech away from them, not because they break the laws but because they are ‘white’ (2007a). In a similar vein, another prominent British band, Whitelaw, hates ‘coppers’, because police film them with CCTV (2007). Sometimes, however, White Power bands—when dealing with the issue of police—resort to mocking. For example, Mistreat has a song called ‘Man with a Badge’, and one verse reads: His face is bright, but his mind is black, he beats his wife and kids, ‘cos they don’t hit back! Huntin’ folks with a big black stick, he needs to prove that he’s got a dick! (Mistreat, 1995)

Presumably, this kind of humour is intended to persuade right-wing listeners that—as English Rose has it—the ‘bastards’ will fail in the end (2007a).

CONCLUSION White Power music is an integral part of a revolutionary ultra-nationalist movement, and these scenes cannot be considered as something separate from or as an insignificant appendix to the extreme right in European countries. While the revenues of different White Power music scenes vary widely depending on the size of a given enterprise, they still are able to provide financial support to various extreme-right groups. Some distributors are able to support themselves and employ members of the far-right movement as staff, and ‘the movement-connected jobs are an important structural factor fostering the sustained commitment’ (Golova, 2010). Furthermore, White Power gigs are sometimes the only communication link between far-right extremists within a particular European country. Significantly, White Power bands are more ‘internationalist’ in character than purely political or even party-political organisations, as their music is not only politics but business as well. By adopting ‘Aryan racism’, bands define their market, which, therefore, spreads across the whole Europeanised world. Right-wing bands and artists voice far-right ideas, and their message is even more explicit and unvarnished than that of more or less organised sociopolitical extreme-right groups. Propaganda through music is also more powerful than that spread through speeches, leaflets or visual forms of promotion of the far-right agenda. As Ian Stuart Donaldson observed, ‘A pamphlet is read only once, but a song is learnt by heart and repeated a thousand times’ (quoted in Griffin, 1995, p. 363). White Power bands name the enemies of the ‘White race’: the ‘Others’ and the ‘System’. Most commonly, the former are blacks, Asians, Jews, natives of the Caucasus region, homosexuals, left-wingers and anti-fascists,

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while the latter is a demonised state, a regime with a repressive apparatus (judiciary and police), the New World Order or—in an anti-Semitic context—Zionist Occupation Government. Besides naming the enemies, bands and artists explicitly tell their audience what should be done with the Enemy, and thus the threat they pose to the democratic development of European societies is as serious as that coming from any other part of the extreme-right movement. NOTES

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

I am grateful to the Krzyżowa Foundation for Mutual Understanding in Europe and to the Robert Bosch Foundation for providing financial support for this research. I am also grateful to the editors for inviting me to contribute to this volume and to Andrew Scott Bolton and Sacha Colgate for editing and commenting on this chapter. All errors, however, are my own. This chapter is dedicated to the memory of the prominent Russian researcher and antiracist activist Galina Kozhevnikova (1974–2011). In 2005, the British National Party launched its own music label, Great White Records, to release nationalist ‘folkish’ ballads but managed neither to create a music scene nor maintain the label. See Shekhovtsov (2011b). The designation of 1985 as the year of the first White Power gig in Sweden is contested, however, by Andersson (2002), who gives the year as 1986, and by Larsson (1998), who gives the year as 1987. The band No Remorse, which recorded ‘Barbecue in Rostock’, is different from another British neo-Nazi band under the same name that was led by Paul Burnley. In the United States, racist music is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Although the usage of this slogan precedes the development of the Punk scene, it was the British band 4 Skins that popularised the abbreviation ‘A.C.A.B.’ in Punk music through the title of one of their songs. It should be noted that 4 Skins was not a right-wing band, and, since 1980s, the abbreviation ‘A.C.A.B.’ has been used by both left-wing and right-wing bands. That is not to say that any national White Power scene can claim ‘ownership’ of any particular adversary group. This has not, however, stopped Nordfront from releasing albums. At least four studio albums were released afterwards. The Pühses Liste is owned by Jens Pühse, a high-ranking officer of the National Democratic Party of Germany. Translations into English, unless otherwise stated, are by the author of this chapter. For a deep analysis of the lyrics of Landser and Die Lunikoff Verschwörung see Naumann (2009). To date, the band has released five studio albums. After the self-released Germania, Stahlgewitter released three more studio albums on one of the most active German White Power labels, PC Records. ‘PC’ is used sarcastically, since it stands for ‘political correctness’. Of these four bands, only Kolovrat is indeed famous in Russia. Interestingly, Russian courts banned separate songs of only four bands, although, during the first decade of the 20th century, there have been more than 60 White Power bands in Russia. ‘Khachi’ is a pejorative, ethnic slur for natives of the Caucasus region.

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14. English translation by Áron Szele. 15. Hereinafter, English translations of Brigade M’s lyrics are by the band. 16. Karl Kani is a US fashion designer and the founder of a Hip-Hop fashion brand. 17. Molodyozh Tule released one demo and two studio albums between 2004 and 2008.

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15 The Branding of European Nationalism Perpetuation and Novelty in Racist Symbolism Mark McGlashan

Racist organisations and individuals adopt symbols drawn from a complex symbolic system in order to realise discourses that coincide with their particular ideological stances. Recently, the political branding of more populist European nationalist1 parties has diverged and moved towards that of mainstream politics—a move to legitimate nationalist party ideologies in mainstreamed political systems. Shah et al. (2007: 8) observe that ‘[p]olitical campaigns are now grounded in marketing principles, with branding of political candidates and issues, targeted political advertising, staged media events, and market segmentation strategies all commonplace’. Globalised (more specifically, European-wide) trends in political branding have influenced the branding and racist symbolic practices of European nationalist political parties in localised contexts; that is, nationalist political branding is undergoing a process of glocalisation. Glocalisation is the process ‘in which increased homogeneity of brands, products and practices around the globe is countered by heterogeneous local adaptations and meanings’ (Koller 2008: 446); in other words, it refers to ‘localizing the global as well as globalizing the local’ (Mitsikopoulou 2008: 353). Brand marketing, according to Lindsay (2000: 2), ‘is all about creating and communicating a compelling, relevant point of difference’, and a brand may be defined as ‘a unique and identifiable symbol, association, name or trademark which serves to differentiate competing products or services’ (Mitsikopoulou 2008: 354). Effective branding, suggests Lindsay, involves six principles: being relevant to the needs and wants of target consumer; being different ‘from the competition in a way that is relevant . . . to the targeted customer’; being ‘held in high esteem by the customer’; enjoying ‘awareness with the customer and those that influence the customer’; and being consistent over time; and offering emotional or social benefits to the consumer (2000: 5). In the context of European politics, then, the point of difference for nationalist parties is racism realised through widespread, consistent rejection of multiculturalism, often legitimated through focus on immigration and its cultural and economic impact. I suggest that the current multiculturalist stance and the appropriation of brand marketing principles by nationalist

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groups is part of a wider glocalisation of European nationalist political branding strategies. Moreover, as discourses ‘legitimate (or de-legitimate, critique) the practices which they recontextualize’ (Machin & van Leeuwen 2007: 61), I further suggest that this glocalisation of branding (therefore discursive) practices by European nationalist parties aims to legitimate and make more widespread those practices. The strategic brand management of nationalist parties is, then, crucial to optimise their brand and influence (i.e. vote share and membership). Referring to Lindsey’s principles for effective branding, I suggest that nationalist parties must make issues of immigration relevant to their target audience; emphasize the benefits that they and their anti-multicultural stance offer as a better political choice in their local context; appear respectable and trustworthy; take interest in factors that influence voters and voter behaviour; be consistent with their brand positioning; and offer distinct emotional and social benefits to potential voters if they choose a nationalist party over mainstream competition. For example, there is an observable link between what Swank & Betz refer to as ‘radical right-wing populist’ parties and groups that lose as a result of contemporary features of modernisation such as significant increases in international integration, postindustrialisation and the rise of ‘postmaterialist’ values and policy orientations (2003: 216–69). Nationalist parties appeal to and draw disproportionately large support from these groups, signalling that nationalist parties are offering something in their politics, and the branding thereof, that is distinctly relevant to these groups. My focus here is on the symbolic realisations of racism by a selection of European nationalist political parties and their assimilation and localised usage of globalised racist discursive practices through brand marketing (also see Pearce & Wodak 2010). Contexts of interest are those of Germany (mainly in its influence on the production of symbolic realisations), Austria, Great Britain, Hungary and Sweden. Austria and Hungary are of interest because of the significant political gains made in recent years by the FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, ‘Freedom Party of Austria’) and Jobbik (or Magyarországért Mozgalom, ‘Movement for a Better Hungary’) and their potential political influence and also because of the wartime influence of Germany on these contexts. Great Britain has a well-documented history of small-scale nationalist politics (Copsey 2008); however, the BNP (British National Party) in recent years have achieved the greatest success of any nationalist party in Britain’s electoral history (Copsey 2008: 1), and this has occurred during the same period in which the BNP adopted a quasirespectable rhetoric typical of similar rhetorical behaviour of Western Europe’s populist right (Copsey 2008: 204; Trillig 2011: 25). Finally, the Scandinavian countries lack a legacy of strong extreme-right parties and movements, Sweden being a case where extreme right-wing populism has apparently failed (Rydgren 2004: 2–3). In Sweden, the SD (Sverigedemokraterna, ‘Sweden Democrats’), unlike the other parties studied here, have failed to gain seats in the European Parliament. So, the interest here is the symbolic

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realisation of nationalistic discourses in a context lacking any significantly popular nationalist movement. The chapter is structured as follows: first, I provide a description of an adapted Discourse Historical Approach (Reisigl & Wodak 2009; Richardson & Wodak 2009) methodology that I will use in the analysis of the discursive and symbolic practises of nationalist political parties in the contexts of Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary and Sweden. I first apply the methodology to analyse some features of the symbolic rhetoric of the Nazi Party and its influence on that of neo-Nazi and modern nationalist organisations. Second, I analyse the modern branding of European nationalist political parties in Austria, Great Britain, Hungary and Sweden, specifically looking at symbolic realisations of ideologies in party logos. I also offer a discussion of the discourses present in these logos. Finally, I offer a summary of the work done and discuss various implications for the future. METHODOLOGY—A DISCOURSE HISTORICAL APPROACH (DHA)

Figure 15.1

2 TEXT CONTEXT 1 topics discursive strategies levels of context TEXT-BASED ANALYSIS semiotic means Immediate language/text Intertextual and intediscursive relationship Extra-linguistic social/sociological variables and instirutional frames Broader socio-political and historical contexts

Heuristic reinterpretation of the DHA.

3

CONTEXT

CONTEXT

Like all aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis, the DHA is interested in the concepts of critique, ideology and power (Reisigl & Wodak 2009: 87) as they allow for a framework for the analysis of power dynamics in society from a particular sociopolitical perspective. By locating expressions of ideology and assertions of power via critique of textual realisations of discursive practices, it may be possible to analyse the way in which such practices come to be used in that a particular text. In Figure 15.1 I give a slightly elaborated graphic interpretation of the DHA (along with an explanation) to enable a heuristic approach to discourses realised through texts drawing on an array of semiotic modes (singularly or simultaneously) beyond the predominantly linguistic focus of the DHA (Reisigl & Wodak 2009; Richardson & Wodak 2009). Political materials, especially those aimed at or made available to the public, are rarely realised using a single mode. Multimodal and visual analyses are key to understanding the ways in which discourses are realised and for what purposes. As such, the present methodology aims to allow analyses to focus

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on and be initiated from nonlinguistic texts. This is especially important given the present analysis of historically informed visual symbolism which relies on conventions of visual design, intertextuality and interdiscursivity and often avoids the inclusion of linguistic content in the realisation of racist discourses (which can be related to ‘calculated ambivalence’ [Reisigl & Wodak 2002]). The approach here incorporates three broad stages: (1) context; (2) text, including the three dimensions of textual meaning (see Figure 15.1); and (3) text-based analysis, subsuming the four levels of context (again, see Figure 15.1). Stage 1, marked with dashed outlines, represents context/s and the potential for contexts to interact and influence one another. Awareness of a text’s context is crucial to the DHA and to making connections among discourse(s), the origin(s) of discourse(s) and the effects of such discourse(s) in/on the text being analysed. Therefore, to ‘locate discursive practices, strategies and texts in a specific socio-political context’ (Richardson & Wodak 2009: 255), the DHA employs a taxonomy of four levels of context that emphasises the need to acknowledge the text as a context in itself but also as it is affected by its relationships with other texts and the wider society and institutions. The four levels are: (1) immediate language/text; (2) intertextual and interdiscursive relationship; (3) extralinguistic social/sociological variable and institutional frames (e.g. a specific situation such as an election campaign); and (4) broader sociopolitical and historical contexts (see Richardson & Wodak 2009: 255). Stage 1, then, signals the recognition that all texts are produced within (inter alia, institutional and sociopolitical) contexts, as are their analyses (which themselves are intertextual, e.g. citations, bibliographies). The potential for contextually informed biases within a text, as well as analyses of a text (the present study included), must then be fully taken into account. Stage 2, Text, contains three dimensions by which textual meaning is composed within the text being analysed: (1) topics, that is, what the text is about; (2) discursive strategies which contain presuppositions that can be seen as a way of strategically ‘packaging’ information (Chilton 2004: 64); and (3) linguistic means2 which draw upon and realise both topics and discursive strategies (Richardson & Wodak 2009: 255). As texts are semiotic acts realised via semiotic means, their analysis permits interpretation of the meaning of the text. Therefore, the first step in text-based analysis is the recognition of semiotic means, which I equate to immediate language/text at the levels of context stage and which are enclosed in extended arrows and marked 3. Stage 3, Levels of Context, can be interpreted through an analysis of the semiotic means employed in the text. This stage is the ‘text-based analysis’ stage, recognising texts as intertextual entities drawing on other texts, discourses, contexts and so on in their design and production. Stage 3 spans several contexts in order to graphically represent the need for text-based

The Branding of European Nationalism 301 analyses to recognise and incorporate intertextual and interdiscursive relationships. The heuristic may be applied flexibly, analysts being able to use any of the stages as starting points, as part of a recursive analysis in order to fully situate and investigate a text in context. When looking specifically at the visual symbolism of modern European nationalist political parties, it is especially important to understand the semiotic conventions and resources that govern the symbolic realisations of political parties in general and the impact that this has on the political branding strategies of nationalist parties. Jewitt and Oyama (2001: 134–35) suggest that for visual communication: there are kinds of ‘rules’, from laws and mandatory prescriptions to ‘best practice’, the influence of role models, expert advice, common habits, and so on. Different kinds of rules apply in different contexts. As for breaking the rules, only people with a large amount of cultural power are given permission to do this, at least in public places. The point here is that power and influence effect potential semiotic resources and realisations. The political context informs the potentialities of semiotic behaviour for mainstream political parties, which, in turn, has been influenced by brand marketing. In the following analysis, then, I look at conventional nationalist symbolism, how meaning is created throughout their composition and a diachronic shift to more modern political branding. RACIST SYMBOLISM: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION For nationalist parties to compete in modern party political systems, they have had to alter their semiotic behaviour, expanding their semiotic resources beyond those codified during the Nazi era and adapting to and adopting more modern conventions for the symbolic realisation of nationalist and racist beliefs. In the quest for acceptability, many political parties have just simply remarketed the same product, discursively fashioning a more uncontroversial nationalism. In the case of the BNP (British National Party), for example, the party leader, Nick Griffin, has advocated ‘a rejection of the verbal extremism of the past . . . and a remodelling of the BNP’s political style (if not its core ideology) on national-populism’ (Copsey 2008: 103). Such verbal adjustment is reflective of wider a discursive shift by nationalist parties towards populism. Contemporary racist symbolism has its raison d’être, grounded in an argumentum ad populum, that is, appeals to the emotions of the masses (Keinpointner 2008: 5). In order to see how this is done, I firstly focus on some of the symbolic texts created during the time of Nazi Germany. I then go on to look at reinterpretations of racist symbolism by modern racist organisations. Last, I take a critical look at some of the logos of European nationalist

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political parties that have made significant political advances and attempt to link these to underlying nationalist ideals that betray their otherwise nonthreatening appearances.

The Swastika The history of the swastika is mysterious and widely contested. It has been used by many different peoples to mean many different things and has never had a single specific meaning. Today, the clockwise-turning swastika is regarded as a symbol of racial hatred. The anticlockwise-turning swastika, though it may be understandably confused with the clockwise-turning version, retains an ambiguity in meaning and is symbolically obscure. The swastika became a recontextualized symbol onto which Nazi ideology was transposed. Earlier associations with the anticlockwise swastika were with the sun, movement and change. The Theosophical Society’s use of the anticlockwise swastika is probably the earliest influence on the Nazi interpretation of the symbol, with the Germanenorden adapting Blavatsky’s (a founding member of the Theosophical Society) theory on race, focusing it through the lens of Ariosophy and adopting what would later become the central symbol of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. In terms of the text’s composition of the Nazi swastika flag,3 the black swastika takes up the central position in the image. It is framed inside a white circle, and this circle itself forms the centre of a red rectangle aligned horizontally. By being presented in the centre, the swastika becomes the nucleus of information to which the rest of the image is marginal and subservient (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006: 196). The change in the physical orientation of the swastika—from anticlockwise to clockwise turning—is indicative of a symbolic change. There is an interdiscursive relationship between the anticlockwise and clockwise swastikas whereby the clockwise swastika appropriates discourses of movement and change and recontextualizes them within a political text. Those discourses therefore become associated with political and ideological movement (The Third Reich, national socialism), towards social betterment (better conditions for all Germans) and toward state religion (god is dead, worship of the state). Centrality (cf. Kress & van Leeuwen 2006) is key to the swastika’s salience, not to mention the way in which it is framed and the contrast between the colours chosen (i.e. black, white and red), which are the same as those of the flag of imperial Germany,4 thereby signalling an incorporation of discourses of empire and heritage. The absolute contrast between the black of the swastika and the white central circle in the Nazi swastika flag foregrounds the swastika, with the red and the white forming a frame around the swastika. There are no framing lines to separate any elements in the text, but interaction between the red and the white elements creates a dividing line that frames the swastika within a circle. In terms of the semiotic meanings of the colours involved,

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the black of the swastika may variously connote rebellion, mystery, potential and possibility. Red has long been politically associated with labour and communist movements but also, symbolically, with love, anger, emotion, blood and purity, and white has associations with purity, the divine, clarity, and peace. Furthermore, these are all saturated, that is, they are pure colours (De Grandis 1986: 41; see also van Leeuwen 2011). In combination, they appear more saturated than if they were not. As such, the white circle may be said to represent the sun (cf. the Japanese flag), while the swastika at the centre represents a revolution towards the divine, framed within a landscape of labour and purity of blood. MODERN RACIST SYMBOLISM: REINTERPRETATION AND NOVELTY Modern racist organisations are able to draw from a wide pool of symbols now associated with racist discourses. As with the swastika, many symbols have been subject to ideological appropriation but also to semiotic conventionalisation. Most notably, Ariosophy’s focus on a lost Germanic culture included the study of Germanic runes which became a prominent feature in the insignia of the Nazi SS and of several of its (Waffen) SS divisions. Guido Von List developed the Armanic runes system, an esoteric runic system that was adopted by Ariosophy and was claimed by List to be the primeval system from which all other runic systems were derived (Thorsson 2004: 31). A few examples of insignia5 that include Armanic runes include the insignia of the SS (Schutzstaffel, ‘protection squadron’), which uses the sig rune that symbolises, inter alia, the sun, the power to actualize, and victory. The second division (Das Reich) uses an adapted gibor rune, or wolfsangel. Gibor is the god-rune, with associated meanings of ‘cosmic consciousness’ and fulfilment. The sixth division (Nord) features the hagal, symbolising, amongst other things, spiritual leadership, protection and harmony. A final example, the seventh division (Prinz Eugen) contains the odal (or othil) rune, symbolising receptive power/property, arising and inheritance (cf. Thorsson 2004: 32). These visual texts are representative of the conventions followed in the visual design of the military insignia of Nazi Germany. They are ‘monosemiotic’6 texts—runic symbols foregrounded in white, in high contrast to a black background onto which they are mounted—containing only visual content. The recontextualization of the runic alphabet within a military context associated runic mysticism with military force and allowed for the future adoption of such conventions by neo-Nazi and paramilitary organisations. Stormfront, the first website advocating white supremacism and ‘generally regarded as the first major “hate site” on the World Wide Web’ (Levin 2003: 363), has a logo that shares design features with the conventional Nazi military insignia,7 for example, important semiotic content foregrounded in

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white on a black background. However, the inclusion of written language (‘white pride world wide’), rendering this logo ‘multisemiotic’ (O’Halloran 2009: 98), the reformulation of the background’s shape, and the expanding of potential symbolic resources to European Celtic/Pagan symbolism signals a recontextualization of racist discourses. Stormfront’s logo appropriates a typical Celtic cross8 as its central symbol, incorporating Celtic symbolism and associating ‘white pride’ with an alternate discourse of ethnonationalism with the Germanic nationalism found in that of conventionalised Nazi symbolism. The appropriation of the semiotic assemblage codified in (Waffen) SS insignias signals a recontextualization not only of Nazi ideology but also of practice, that is, (para)military force. Further, like the racial ideology of the Nazis, the idea of ‘Celtic culture’ as a homogeneous one ‘would be misleading’ (Dietler 1994: 586), with Celts, as an identification, being ’a product of modern historical philology (Dietler 1994: 585). Deitler offers an explanation for the appropriation of ‘Celtic identity’ for the purposes of nationalistic ‘imagined communities’ (cf. Billig 1995: 68; Wodak et al. 1999: 21–22): The ancient Celts, as the first ‘people’ to emerge from the mists of European prehistory as a discrete category of identity by virtue of having a name applied to them, offer a wealth of possibilities for forging the symbolic and emotional links that bond people together in imagined communities. (Dietler 1994: 597) Overtly racist groups, however, may also attempt to avoid being connoted with racist practises whilst still realising discourses of racism. This presents a kind of racist double entendre—the wish to express racist ideology whilst trying to avoid prosecution for such expression. This strategy of ‘calculated ambivalence’ employs symbolic intertextual reference whereby users simultaneously allude to and avoid association with racist discourses; ‘codes’ are known to in-group members and unknown to out-groups. Users of international forums such as those hosted by www.enationalist.com9 and www. stormfront.org10 often use simple number sequences to indirectly refer to Adolf Hitler or other prominent Nazi figures and their works. For example, 18 refers directly to Adolf Hitler—1 corresponding to A, the first letter of the English alphabet, and 8 to the eighth, H. Using this system, it is possible to symbolically represent the common Nazi salute (88, ‘Heil Hitler’) or to refer to neo-Nazi groups such as Combat 18 (318), itself containing the symbolic 18. The number 88 has a further interdiscursive meaning which relates it to an 88-word sequence from Hitler’s Mein Kampf that stresses the importance of racial and ideological security: What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and

The Branding of European Nationalism 305 independence of the Fatherland; so that our people may be enabled to fulfil the mission assigned to it by the Creator. All ideas and ideals, all teaching and all knowledge, must serve these ends. It is from this standpoint that everything must be examined and turned to practical uses or else discarded. (Hitler 1939: 172) The number 14 is used similarly to symbolise the 14-word phrase ‘we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children’ coined by the prominent neo-Nazi David Lane (Redbeard 1999: 3). In Might Is Right, a work of Aryan propaganda, Lane is portrayed as a martyr,; ‘a political prisoner serving 190 years in the United States Federal Penitentiary for alleged “civil rights violations” ’ (Redbeard 1999: 7). Lane was arrested, along with three other members of the violent right-wing group The Order, on suspicion of the murder of Jewish radio host Alan Berg. ‘No one was ever convicted of murder in Berg’s killing’, but Lane was convicted of the violating Berg’s civil rights and imprisoned (Denver Post 2009). The use of ‘14’ therefore may be used to connote, simultaneously and covertly, discourses of white supremacism and antisemitism (as an interdiscursive reference to Lane’s political beliefs), antiauthoritarianism and political radicalism (through the covert, intertextual referencing of Lane’s words and the symbolic legitimation of his actions and ideological orientations) and, thus, martyrdom (as a symbolic support of Lane’s actions and rejection of mainstream antiracist cultural values). As such, the interdiscursive relationships of these particular number sequences are limited only by the texts they are able to refer to, but the potential for neologisms are endless. BRANDING OF EUROPEAN NATIONALISM Nationalist parties are still engaging in emotional appeals, but they have modified their tactics from discriminating against particular out-groups to a more general populist condemnation of multiculturalism (Delanty et al. 2011; Krzyżanowski & Wodak 2009). Studies of attitudinal surveys conducted in Canada, the Netherlands and Germany show that multiculturalism has been perceived as more threatening by majority-group members than by minority-group members (Berry & Kalin 1995; Verkuyten & Brug 2004). It is by targeting majority groups and stressing the threat potential of multiculturalism that populist parties hope to gain support. Symbolic expressions of nationality and cultural superiority of the majority group are, then, important to nationalist parties. National flags, being ‘probably the most potent visual expression of national identity’ (Dinnie 2009: 113), are often semiotic resources for the symbolic behaviour of nationalist groups. Flags may be thought of as banal; flags and their related traditions ‘can be simultaneously present and absent, in actions [such as flag waving] which preserve collective memory without

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the conscious activity of individuals remembering’ (Billig 1995: 42). The reliance by nationalist groups on intertextual reference to national flags (current and defunct) as semiotic resources is a way of ‘waving the flag’ of remembered (or imagined) present or past national cultures, communities and practices.

Austria Sociopolitical context is a major factor in the branding adopted by the FPÖ11 (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, ‘Freedom Party of Austria’); their branding strategy is one of complete avoidance of nationalistic symbolism. Their current logo consists only of the letters ‘FPÖ’ in bold type, with the letters ‘FP’ coloured in blue and the ‘Ö’ in red. Such a strategy suggests a discursive construction of the FPÖ brand, positioning them, rather than alongside other nationalist political organisations, alongside mainstream political parties whose branding strategies are generally uncontroversial. Unlike that of other European far-right groups (and more like their mainstream counterparts), their promotional material avoids intertextual references to nationalistic symbols, even the Austrian flag, focussing more upon representing the party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, in rather benevolent positions; however, in their use of comics and new social media, some of the Nazi symbols seem to ‘slip in’, probably unnoticed by many but obviously sending important signals to some (see also Köhler & Wodak 2011).

Hungary The logo of Jobbik12 (Magyarországért Mozgalom, ‘The Movement for a Better Hungary’) contains the same colouring as the Hungarian national flag (a horizontal tricolour with red, white, and green in descending order) and no other colours. Jobbik’s logo is formed as though the rectangular Hungarian flag itself had been warped from the centre to form a circle or sphere onto which a white patriarchal cross (a Christian cross with two crossbars taken from the Hungarian coat of arms) has been superimposed. In terms of composition, the elements of the Jobbik logo are positioned within a circular structure which has the potential for a ‘gradual and graded distinction between Centre and Margin’ in information value (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006: 196). The central element is the framed cross, foregrounding and attributing to it greater information value than the Hungarian tricolour, which resides in the background. However, a reading of the text along the vertical axis (i.e. between top and bottom) shows that the symbolic element of the cross’s composition—the dual crossbars—that differentiates this cross from others is situated completely in the upper portion of the text. This placement, along with the foregrounding of this element, suggests that this is an expression of an ideal—foregrounding religious ideals, even, beyond national identity. By intertextual reference to the patriarchal

The Branding of European Nationalism 307 cross that occurs in the Hungarian coat of arms, it creates a symbolic reference to a specifically Hungarian Christian ideal. Interestingly, there is evidence here, through the lack of inclusion of the alternating horizontal red and white Arpád stripes,13 to suggest that Jobbik’s logo is a form of calculated ambivalence. Earlier adopters of the Arpád stripes, such as the nationalist Margyar Gárda, and the Arrow Cross14 drew from the same coat of arms that Jobbik have in their symbolic behaviour; however, the Arpád stripes in modern Hungary strongly connote nationalist groups as part of ‘the Garda’ as a brand (LeBar 2008: 38). Intertextual reference to the coat of arms via the patriarchal cross is, then, important, as it simultaneously excludes direct association with the Arpád stripes and includes intertextual reference to a text that includes them. As such, the discursive intention is the same—Hungarian nationalism—but through less obvious semiotic behaviour.

Great Britain British nationalist groups have used the Union Flag as a primary semiotic resource and have continued to elaborate semiotic devices used by the nationalist groups that preceded them. The British Union of Fascists’ (BUF) intertextual referencing to the Nazi swastika flag15 by adopting a white circle at the centre of a horizontally aligned rectangle understandably fell out of use but was replaced by a more subtle reference in the form of the logo of the NF (‘National Front’).16 The NF logo (the letters ‘NF’ in red are mounted on a white background and encircled by a blue ring) may be said to express the fundamental beliefs of the NF in that it maintains the core symbolic reference to the Nazi flag—the central white circle—reflecting the maintenance of core racist beliefs. However, symbolic elaboration is also important here. The change in form from that reflective of a flag in the BUF’s logo (potentially intertextually and interdiscursively associating the BUF with wider discursive practices of fascist political parties of the time, for example, the Nazi swastika flag17 and state worship) communicates a strategic move away from overt intertextual reference to Nazi symbolism or, indeed, to overt nationalistic symbolism by moving away from the conventional flag form. Recently, the BNP and the NF have more overtly been ‘waving the flag’ by incorporating the union flag into their logos.18 The historic and sociocultural contexts of the union flag’s use, as with Jobbik’s logo, contribute to the kinds of meanings it can connote in its usage. For example, meanings could range from a banal patriotism to imperialism and the advocacy of a cultural superiority. The logo the BNP have in present use was introduced in March 2011 (Bowcott 2011) and takes the form of a symbolic heart (which may refer metaphorically to love or the heart organ), supposedly crudely stencilled by hand to reveal a union flag. Britishness (or what may be potentially defined as British) is metaphorically at the heart of the body (central

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to BNP ideology, Britain as the heart of the world) and defines the outlook of the BNP. Here, discourse on love is meaningfully redrawn in this visual metaphor (nationalism is love), where the union flag is framed in a way that conveys a maximum connection between political ideology (love for one’s country or patriotism) and the party’s political identity. In this context, love is reserved specifically for ‘Britishness’ (or what may be potentially defined as British), thereby excluding or ‘othering’ that which falls outside what may be defined as British. Such an overtly visual emotive appeal (argumentum ad populum) acknowledges in itself that it is not a rational one—a frequent occurrence in populist rhetoric—and aligns itself quite unsubtly with the emotive appeals found in nationalistic discourses. Again, this is an example of strategic, populist (re)branding, recontextualizing visual discourses of nationalism in wider sociopolitical contexts than traditional nationalist enclaves. The alignment of both linguistic and visual ad populum arguments is telling of the repositioning of the BNP brand in recent years. Moreover, it is telling of the development of brand consistency, a consumer-based approach (see Heding et al. 2009: 83–115) to branding which entails the maintenance of consistency in brand communications in order to establish and maintain associations congruent between brand and consumers. However, disturbingly, the present logo represents a fundamental contradiction. The discursive construction of national identity here rests on a seemingly ‘electorally friendly’ (Copsey 2008: 80) conception of what constitutes Britain as a nation. On one hand, visually, the BNP claim to represent and love Britain and its citizens, yet on the other they would exclude and have deported millions of legally British citizens because of the colour of their skin— or, as they may now care to argue, their incompatible cultural origins.

Sweden The current SD (Sverigedemokraterna, ‘Sweden Democrats’) logo takes the form of an iconic blåsippa (literally ‘blue anemone’) flower19 which blooms in spring and is found predominantly in Europe. Parallels are made here between the natural colouring of the blåsippa flower (yellow stamens at the centre, surrounded by blue petals) and the Swedish national flag and, as such, between the natural configuration of the flower and cultural configuration of the flag. The adoption of the image of blåsippan allows the conflation of ideas of nationality and fertility into a visual metaphor for Swedish nationalism. The symbol of the blåsippa acts metonymically, being appropriated as a distinct part of Sweden and used to refer to Sweden as a whole, but also metaphorically (Swedish culture is a flower, Swedish people are blåsippan). In this way, it may be said that the SD are discursively constructing themselves as the gardeners of the blåsippan, responsible for its care, without which it will wilt. Furthermore, the extension of the flower metaphor offers an important interpretation of discourse on immigration. Cross-pollination with other

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flower species may alter the biology of the flower, a reference to the genetic makeup of individuals and, by analogy, to sociocultural distinctiveness. The visual and symbolic distinctiveness of the blåsippa is, then, simultaneously seen as parallel to the cultural and genetic distinctiveness of the Swedish people; the logo of the SD acts as a symbolic ‘myth of the golden past’ (Rydgren 2003) and ‘a yearning for an imagined germeinschaft free of conflict and social problems’ (Rydgren 2004: 23). So, the SD’s choice to create a brand image through the visual metaphor of the blåsippa—Sweden is a flower—allows it to, in circularity, index SD ideology through and draw nationalistic ideas from a natural source. However, previously, the SD’s political branding had been much more in line with that of other European nationalist parties, as is shown in the case study that follows. CASE STUDY: NATIONALIST PARTIES AND THE SYMBOLISM OF FIRE Several nationalist organisations have adopted the symbolism of fire in the visual realisations of nationalistic discourse through their logos.20 Most of these logos are now defunct, though the logos of Italy’s La Destra (‘The Right’) and France’s Front National (FN) still incorporate imagery of fire, with La Destra’s logo being much more similar to conventionalised European nationalist logos than to that of the French FN. The pervasiveness of the adoption of the imagery of fire in the logos of nationalist organisations suggests, through intertextuality, a patterned discourse of nationalism or, in other words, a consistent globalised brand or way of branding European nationalism where recontextualization in local contexts requires only the substitution of the national flag. Noticeably, though, as part of a wider shift in rhetoric from context-specific and overt nationalisms which ghettoise nationalist politics to a widespread ‘construction of legitimacy’ (Copsey 2008: 192), this form of branding has fallen out of favour with European nationalists. I will first look at the conventionalised logos which occur in two broadly distinguishable ways: either as the national flag represented as iconic flames or as a hand holding aloft a torch from which iconic flames (which may or may not be formed using the national flag) emanate. Those flags represented as iconic flames are invariably composed using a generic flame outline which is filled using a vertically oriented tricolour akin, for example, to the French tricolour. Those logos that show a hand raising a lit torch are composed in two ways: in one, as in the examples of the SD and NF logos, the flame held overhead is composed of the national flag, represented as a flame being drawn into the wind; in the second, as in the logo of La Destra, the flame is represented ‘realistically’ rather than through the use of the national flag. Then, following this analysis, I will relate the symbolic conventions of these logos to the current logo of the French FN and discuss how symbolic and discursive abstraction is used as part a construction of legitimacy.

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The metaphor of fire for both of these subgroups is powerful and a dominant means by which each of these texts is realised, though the connotations of what the fire represents differs slightly. Fire in those logos, represented through iconic flames, may variously represent notions of power, purification, transformation, destruction, passion, light, warmth, knowledge and so on. The interdiscursive linking of nationality to such notions allows nationalist organisations to idiosyncratically construct nationality in lines with nationalistic ideologies. The discursive construction of nationality, then, implicitly incorporates conceptions of nationalism—once-pure nations requiring purification by the fire of nationalism; superior knowledge of nations shared and expounded by the nationalist parties; nations and nationalism represent a guiding ‘light’ in the context of the ‘dark’ world/political system; nationalism as the only true patriotism; and so on. Those logos that incorporate the torch include those discourses mentioned earlier but elaborate them further. The inclusion of the torch in the visual discourse of nationalism suggests an indexing of symbolic action and meaning, whereas the previous examples, which use only the iconic flame, simply indexed symbolic meaning. The examples that include the torch therefore express the potentials of what can be done with/through fire (i.e. nations/nationalism). In other words, these images may represent a symbolic wielding of the flame (power and authority) and the potential for cultural/social/genetic purification and transformation, liberty and freedom; the passing of the torch (the spread of nationalism and cultural values); the elevation of nation-specific cultural values; the assertion of cultural superiority; a lighting of ‘the path’; and so on. Finally, though La Destra have retained the use of conventionalised, nationalistic flame symbolism in their branding, the French FN have adopted a more abstract representation (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006: 161) of nationalism. The current logo of the FN still incorporates the French tricolour, though the form into which it is transposed is ambiguous. It may be a symbolic reference to fire as much as it may be to a leaf, feather, or bird’s wing, each of which may connote different symbolic meanings. Rather than directly referencing older textual strategies, then, the NF logo makes more abstract the symbolic reference to fire and therefore to intertextual reference to more conventional forms of nationalism, including their own past logo. As such, the FN’s current logo is linked (interdiscursively and intertextually) to discursive practises of the party’s past; however, it has now been rendered misinterpretable. The ambiguity in FN’s visual branding therefore reflects the kind of ‘calculated ambivalence’ of wider discursive practises of European nationalist organisations. CONCLUSION Political branding—the application of brand marketing principles within the political context—is now part and parcel of modern politics and, ‘like

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the application of branding strategies in other areas, is currently becoming global’ (Mitsikopoulou 2008: 357) and in line with ‘the shifting conception of the consumer and consumption’ and their relations to citizenship, the state and the market (Shah et al. 2007: 9). In other words, modern politics can be conceptualised as a process of ‘political consumerism’ where ideology is backgrounded and brand/political personalities/characters are foregrounded (Mitsikopoulou 2008: 363). The applications of discourse analytical methods to political brands is particularly important in unpicking political brands to make obvious their ideological underpinnings. Analysis of nonlinguistic texts is also of increasing importance in Critical Discourse Studies and in general. Globalised traditional and digital mass media, advertisements and campaigns (political, charitable, and otherwise) have made greater use of nonlinguistic content, such as visuals, videos, intertextual cues (e.g. QR codes, hyperlinks) and so on. The use and importance of digital media specifically in society in general and especially ‘in election campaigns [have] grown steadily over time’ (Dimitrova et al. 2011: 2). And, according to Trent & Friedenberg, ‘there is little doubt that the effects of Internet and Internet tools on political campaigns at all levels will grow exponentially’ (2007: 408). The way consumers relate to brands through their marketing materials is meaningful because people buy brands that they relate to (at least according to brand relationship theory; see Heding et al. 2009: 151–80), though such a causal relationship has yet to be established between digital media and political participation (Dimitrova et al. 2011: 2). Moreover, the adoption by nationalist parties of methods similar to those of mainstream political parties, including textual form, coupled with strategies of calculated ambivalence, signals an attempt at the normalisation of racist discourses in the political arena. In this chapter, the application of the DHA to the visual branding of nationalist political organisations is intended to address the growing need for such analysis in acknowledging the constantly changing discursive behaviours of political groups and uncovering their ideological underpinnings and putting them in context. In terms of the symbols focussed on, though modern logos, such as the SD and the French FN, may not appear overtly suggestive (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006: 106) of racist discourses, critical analyses applying the DHA show that racist discourses may be covertly embedded in nationalist party logos. NOTES 1. Throughout, ‘nationalist’ is used to refer interchangeably to ‘nationalist’, ‘racist’, ‘racist nationalist’, ‘fascist’ and ‘extreme far-right’. 2. For the purposes of the present analysis, I alter “linguistic means” to “semiotic means” in order to broaden potential application in textual analysis 3. Please see http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6c0snwTdN1rzj2xqo1_250. jpg.

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4. Please see http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6c0qqSv4b1rzj2xqo1_250.jpg. 5. Which can all be viewed here: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6c0ph8y CI1rzj2xqo1_r1_500.png. 6. That is, “involving one semiotic resource such as language, image”, etc. (O’Halloran 2009: 98). 7. Please see http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6c0fxHNcw1rzj2xqo1_100. jpg. 8. “The Celtic, or Iona, cross bears a circle, the center [sic] of which is the crossing” (Columbia Encyclopedia 2008). 9. eNationalist is a forum where registered users can discuss “Nationalism, and Nationalist related subjects such as race, politics, religion, race relations, intelligence, ethnicity, and more.” http://www.enationalist.com/forum/showthread. php?t=8163. 10. Regarded as the first hate website, Stormfront is a forum for “a community of White Nationalists” based in the United States. http://www.stormfront.org/ forum/. 11. Please see http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6c0c7TXhw1rzj2xqo1_250. jpg. 12. Please see http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6c0918unG1rzj2xqo1_400.jpg. 13. “The “Arpad” stripes are a part of Hungary’s coat of arms, but are now associated with the far right, as the Nazi Arrow Cross regime, which ruled the country in the winter of 1944–1945, incorporated the stripes into its flag” (LeBar 2008: 34). 14. Please see http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6bzt8a7B51rzj2xqo1_250.jpg. 15. Please see http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6bzqxZiNU1rzj2xqo1_250. jpg. 16. Ibid. 17. Please see http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6c0snwTdN1rzj2xqo1_250. jpg. 18. Please see http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6bzpdE8Vq1rzj2xqo1_500. jpg. 19. Please see http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6bzmr0dIQ1rzj2xqo1_100. jpg. 20. Please see http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6bzdvLgAK1rzj2xqo1_400. jpg.

REFERENCES Berry, J. W., & Kalin, R. (1995) ‘Multicultural and ethnic attitudes in Canada: An overview of the 1991 national survey’. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science 27(3): 301–320. Billig, Michael (1995) Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. Bowcott, Owen (2011) ‘BNP unveils new logo with ‘better aesthetic image’. http:// www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/may/12/bnp-unveils-new-logo (accessed 24/01/2011). Chilton, Paul (2004) Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. Columbia Encyclopedia (2008) ‘Cross’. http://www.credoreference.com/entry/colu mency/cross (accessed 02/20/2012). Copsey, Nigel (2008) Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy (2nd ed.). Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

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De Grandis, L. (1986) Theory and Use of Colour. Dorset: Blandford Press. Delanty, Gerard, Wodak, Ruth, & Jones, Paul (2011) Identity, Belonging and Migration (2nd ed.). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Denver Post (2009) ‘The murder of Alan Berg in Denver: 25 years later’. http:// www.denverpost.com/ci_12615628?IADID=Search-www.denverpost.com-www. denverpost.com (accessed 20/02/2012). Dietler, Michael (1994) ‘Our ancestors the Gauls’: Archaeology, ethnic nationalism, and the manipulation of Celtic identity in modern Europe’. American Anthropologist 96(3): 584–605. Dimitrova, Daniela V., Shehata, Adam, Strömbäck, Jesper, & Nord, Lars W. (2011) ‘The effects of digital media on political knowledge and participation in election campaigns: Evidence from panel data’. Communication Research: 1–24. Dinnie, Keith (2009) Nation Branding: Concepts, Issues, Practice. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Heding, Tilde, Knudtzen, Charlotte F., & Bjerre, Mogens (2009) Brand Management: Research, Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. Hitler, Adolf (1939) Mein Kampf. London: Hurst and Blackett. Jewitt, Carey, & Oyama, Rumiko (2001) Visual meaning: A social semiotic approach. In: Jewitt, Carey, & van Leeuwen, Theo (eds.), Handbook of Visual Analysis. London, Sage, pp. 134–156. Keinpointner, M. (2008) ‘Impoliteness and emotional arguments’. Journal of Politeness Research 4(2): 243–265. Köhler, Katherina, & Wodak, Ruth (2011) ‘Mitbürger, Fremde und, echte Wien’— Ein- und Ausgrenzungen über Sprache. Diskursive Konstruktion von Macht und Ungleichheit am Beispiel des Wiener Wahlkampfes 2010’. Deutschunterricht 6(11): 64–74. Koller, Veronika (2008) ‘ “The world in one city”: Semiotic and cognitive aspects of city branding’. Journal of Language and Politics 7(3): 431–450. Kress, Gunther, & van Leeuwen, Theo (2006) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. . Krzyzanowski, Michał, & Wodak, Ruth (2009) Politics of Exclusion: Institutional and Everyday Discrimination in Austria. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press. LeBar, Adam (2008) ‘Marching back to the future: Magyar Garda and the tresurgence of the right in Hungary’. Dissent 55(2): 34–38. Levin, Brian (2003) Cyberhate: A legal and historical analysis of extremists’ use of computer networks in America. In: Perry, Barbara (ed.), Hate and Bias Crime: A Reader. London, Routledge, pp. 363–384. Lindsay, Marsha (2000) ‘The brand called Wisconsin™: Can we make it relevant and different for competitive advantage’. Economic Summit White Paper. http://www. wisconsin.edu/summit/archive/2000/papers/pdf/lindsay.pdf (accessed 23/02/2012). Machin, David, & van Leeuwen, Theo (2007) Global Media Discourse: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge. Mitsikopoulou, Bessie (2008) ‘Introduction: The branding of political entities as discursive practice’. Journal of Language and Politics 7(3): 353–371. O’Halloran, Kay. L (2009) Historical changes in the semiotic landscape. In: Jewitt, Carey (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. Oxford: Routledge. Pearce, Lynne, & Wodak, Ruth (eds.) (2010) ‘Special Issue: Region/nation/belonging: textual (re)constructions and imaginings’. European Journal of Cultural Studies 13(1): 3–134. Redbeard, Ragnar (1999) Might Is Right. St. Maries, ID: 14 Word Press. Reisigl, Martin, & Wodak, Ruth (2002) Nationalpopulistische Rhetorik—Einige diskursanalytische und argumentations-theoretische U¨berlegungen zur o¨sterreichischen

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Debatte u¨ber den ‘nationalen Schulterschluss’. In: Demirovic, A., & Bojadzijev, M. (eds.), Konjunkturen des Rassismus. Münster: Verlag Westfa¨lisches Dampfboot, pp: 90–111. Reisigl, Martin, & Wodak, Ruth (2009) The Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA). In: Meyer, Michael, & Wodak, Ruth (eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage. Richardson, John E., & Wodak, Ruth (2009) ‘Recontextualising fascist ideologies of the past: Right-wing discourses on employment and nativism in Austria and the United Kingdom’. Critical Discourse Studies 6(4): 251–267. Rydgren, Jens (2003) The Populist Challenge: Political Protest and Ethno-Nationalist Mobilization in France. New York: Berghahn Books. Rydgren, Jens (2004) ‘Radical right-wing populism in Sweden and Denmark’. Centre for the Study of European Politics and Society Papers. http://hsf.bgu.ac.il/ europe/uploadDocs/csepspjr.pdf accessed 13/01/2012. Shah, Dhavan V., McLeod, Douglas M., Friedland, Lewis, & Nelson, Michelle R. (2007) ‘Introduction: The politics of consumption/the consumption of politics’. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 611: 6–15. Swank, Duane, & Betz, Hans-Georg (2003) ‘Globalization, the welfare state and right-wing populism in Europe’. Socio-economic Review 1: 215–245. Thorsson, Edred (2004) Rune Might: History and Practices of the Early 20th Century German Rune Magicians (2nd ed.). Texas: Rûna-Raven Press. Trent, Judith S., & Friedenberg, Robert V. (2007) Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Trillig, Daniel (2011) ‘Fear and loathing’. New Statesman 140(5064): 25–26. Van Leeuwen, Theo (2011) The Language of Colour: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Verkuyten, Maykel, & Brug, Peary (2004) ‘Multiculturalism and group status: The role of ethnic identification, group essentialism and protestant ethic’. European Journal of Social Psychology 34(6): 647–661. Wodak, Ruth, de Cillia, Rudolf, Reisigl, Martin, & Liebhart, Karin (1999) The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Contributors

Tamir Bar-On is a professor in the Department of International Relations and Humanities at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Querétaro, in Mexico. He received his BA and MA from York University in Toronto and his PhD from McGill University in Montreal. He completed postdoctoral work on the International Criminal Court at DePaul University in Chicago. He previously taught political science at George Brown College, Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Windsor. He is the author of Where Have All the Fascists Gone? (Ashgate, 2007). He is currently working on his second book, Rethinking the French New Right. He has published 10 peer-reviewed articles in journals as diverse as Fascism, International Politics, and Patterns of Prejudice. Brigitte Beauzamy holds a PhD in sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and was a lecturer in political science at the University of Paris 13 until 2009. She is currently a Marie Curie Fellow at the Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations of the University of Warwick. Her research interest deals primarily with the transnational agency of social movements, and she focuses currently on the case study of French Jewish peace movements in the Israel/Palestine conflict and their impact both on the conflict and on the French society. Among her latest publications: “Democratic Discourses and Practices within Transnational Social Movements”, in Eva Erman & Anders Uhlin (eds.), Legitimacy Beyond the State? Re-examining the Democratic Credentials of Transnational Actors (London: Palgrave, 2010) and Nation et diversité. La diversité culturelle en France et au Danemark (“Nation and Diversity. Cultural Diversity in France and in Denmark”) (with Dr. Hab. Elise Féron) (Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2011; in press). Michael Billig is a professor of social sciences at Loughborough University and a member of the Discourse and Rhetoric Group. He was published books on a number of topics, including the extreme right, nationalism and rhetoric. His most recent books are Laughter and Ridicule: Towards

316

Contributors

a Social Critique of Humour (Sage, 2005) and The Hidden Roots of Critical Psychology (Sage, 2008). Jakob Engel is a senior research officer at the Overseas Development Institute, a London-based think-tank working on international development and humanitarian policy. He has a particular interest in the political economy of governance and institutional reform at the national and transnational level, as well in the “backstage” processes of policy development and implementation. He has an MSc in development studies from the London School of Economics and previously worked as a policy advisor at the UK Department for International Development. He has also been a research assistant at the LSE Crisis States Research Centre and at the University of Vienna, where he worked on the project “The Discursive Construction of National Identity II,” led by Rudolf de Cillia and Ruth Wodak. Manfred Kienpointner is a professor of linguistics at University of Innsbruck, Austria. His main research areas are rhetoric and argumentation, contrastive linguistics, politeness theory and structural semantics. He is member of the consultation board of several scholarly journals (Argumentation, Journal of Multicultural Discourses, Gesprächsforschung) and received the ISSA-Award of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation in 1998. He worked one year with a Schrödinger scholarship at the University of Amsterdam (1990–1991), spent three months as a visiting scholar at the University of Arizona, Tucson (2001–2002) and taught two years as a guest professor at the Linguistics Department of the University of Vienna (2005–2007). Among his key publications are Argumentationsanalyse (1983), Alltagslogik (1992), Vernünftig argumentieren (1996) and Latein—Deutsch kontrastiv (2010). He is the editor of Ideologies of Politeness (Special Issue of Pragmatics 9.1 [1999]) and Paradoxes in Latin Language and Literature (Special Section in Argumentation 17.1 [2003]). He co-edited (with Ohnheiser and Kalb) Sprachen in Europa (1999) and (with Shi Xu and Servaes) Reading the Cultural Other (2005). András Kovács is a professor at Central European University, Budapest, and academic director for the Nationalism Studies Program and Jewish Studies Program. His previous and visiting appointments include Paderborn University (FRG); École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris); New York University (New York); TH Twente (The Netherlands); Salomon Steinheim Institut für Deutsch-Jüdische Geschichte, Duisburg (FRG); Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna, (Austria); Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum für Jüdische Studien, Potsdam (FRG); Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna (Austria); Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, TU Berlin; and Institut für

Contributors 317 Zeitgeschichte, Universitat Wien. His research interests include Jewish identity and antisemitism in postwar Europe; memory and identity; socioeconomic attitudes and political choice. Irina Diana Ma d̆ roane is a lecturer in the English language at the West University of Timis¸oara, Romania. She holds a PhD from the West University of Timis¸oara, with a thesis on the representation of Romanians in the British press (a Critical Discourse Analysis approach), and an MA in Sociology from Lancaster University. Her main areas of interest are the construal of national and ethnic identities in media discourse and discursive aspects of the (post)transition of the CEE states, with a focus on Romania. Recent publications include “Roma, Romanian, European: A Media Framed Battle over Identity” (Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines, 2012); “The Role of Multiculturalism in the Discursive Rescaling of an Eastern European City” (Mobilities, 2012); and various book chapters (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Editura Academiei Române). Cristina Marinho has recently completed her doctorate in social psychology at the Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University. Under the supervision of Michael Billig, she has been conducting research into the annual celebration of the April Revolution in the Portuguese Parliament. She recently presented her findings at the International Conference of the Society for Political Psychology. Previously she undertook a Master’s Degree in Social Psychology at ISCTE, Lisbon, investigating blatant and subtle racism in children, and she conducted research at the Institute of Social Science, University of Lisbon. She also investigated with Professor Paula Castro the press coverage of the annual commemorations of the April Revolution and presented their findings at the Congrès National de la Société Française de Psychologie at Nantes University in 2007. Mark McGlashan is a doctoral student at Lancaster University’s Department of Linguistics and English Language, where his research, backed by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), is on children’s picturebooks featuring same-sex parent families. His main research interests include Critical Discourse Analysis, multimodality and picturebooks, pedagogy and gender and sexuality identities. His contribution here relates to personal interests not covered by his research in (brand) marketing, nationalism and subcultures. His recent publications are Jane Sunderland and Mark McGlashan (2010), “Stories Featuring Two-Mum and Two-Dad Families,” in Jane Sunderland, Language, Gender and Children’s Fiction (London: Continuum), and Jane Sunderland and Mark McGlashan (2012, forthcoming) The Linguistic, Visual and Multimodal Representation of Two-Mum and Two-Dad Families in Children’s Picturebooks (Language and Literature).

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Contributors

Andreas Musolff is a professor of intercultural communication at the University of East Anglia and has worked before at the Universities of Aston and Durham. He has published on the history of political discourse, metaphor theory and the history of pragmatics. His monographs include Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust (2010), Metaphor and Political Discourse (2004), and Mirror Images of Europe (2000); he has co-edited several volumes on Metaphor Theory and Comparative Studies of Public Discourse about Europe. Derrin Pinto, PhD, University of California at Davis, is currently associate professor of Spanish linguistics at the University of Saint Thomas in Minnesota. He has published studies involving different areas of pragmatics, discourse analysis and second-language acquisition. His articles appear in journals such as Hispania, Spanish in Context, Discourse & Society, Multilingua, Journal of Politeness Research, International Journal of Bilingualism and Interlanguage Pragmatics. One of his latest projects is a co-edited book titled En (re)construcción: discurso, identidad y nación en los manuales escolares de historia y de ciencias sociales (Under (Re) construction: Discourse, Identity and Nation in History and Social Science Textbooks), published by Cuarto Propio. Claudia Posch Dr. phil., University Assistant at the University of Innsbruck, Department of Languages and Literatures: Linguistics; PhD in Applied Linguistics, degree in English and American Studies. Her research interests include language and gender, feminist linguistics, language and postcolonial theory, political rhetoric and argumentation and corpus-based linguistics. Her publications include “Primitive Sprachen oder sprachlicher Primitivsimus?” in Christina Antenhofer (ed.), Fetisch als heuristische Kategorie: Geschichte—Rezeption—Interpretation (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011); “From Aktieninhaberin to Freakin: A Corpus-Based Study on the Usage of the Suffix ‘-in’ in German,” in Claire Maree and Kyoko Satoh (eds.), IGALA 6 Proceedings (DVD) (Tokyo, 2011); and “ ‘This World He Created Is of Moral Design’: The Reinforcement of American Values in the Rhetoric of George W. Bush,” Studia Interdisciplinaria Ænipontana 7. Univ.-Dipl. (Wien: Praesens, 2006). John E. Richardson is a senior lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University. He is editor of the international peerreview journal Critical Discourse Studies and is on the editorial boards of Discourse and Society, Social Semiotics, the Journal of Language and Politics and CADAAD, amongst other journals. His research interests include structured social inequalities, British fascism, racism in journalism, critical discourse studies and argumentation. His publications include the books (Mis)Representing Islam: The Racism and Rhetoric of British Broadsheet Newspapers (paperback edition 2009); Analysing

Contributors 319 Journalism: An Approach from Critical Discourse Analysis (2007); Language and Journalism (edited, 2010) and Analysing Media Discourses (2011, co-edited with Joseph Burridge) and academic articles on critical discourse studies, newspaper representations of Muslims, balance and impartiality in BBC reporting of Israel/Palestine, argumentation in readers’ letters, political communications and party political leaflets. He is currently writing a book offering a Discourse Historic Analysis of British fascist discourse (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014) and is co-editing a book on cultures of postwar British fascism (Routledge, 2014). Per Anders Rudling holds a PhD in history from the University of Alberta, Canada, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of History, Lund University, Sweden. His recent publications include “AntiSemitism and the Extreme Right in Contemporary Ukraine” in Mammone, Godin, and Jenkins (eds.), Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe (2012); “Anti-Semitism on the Curriculum: MAUP—The Interregional Academy for Personnel Management,” in Feldman and Jackson (ed.), Doublespeak: The Rhetoric of the Far Right since 1945 (2012); “The OUN, the UPA, and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths”(2011) and “Multiculturalism, Memory, and Ritualization: Ukrainian Nationalist Monuments in Edmonton, Alberta” (2011). His research interests include identity, history writing, diaspora politics and long-distance nationalism and the far right in East and Central Europe. Anton Shekhovtsov received his PhD in political science in 2010. His academic interests include but are not limited to radical right-wing parties, the European New Right, interwar European fascisms, sacralization of politics and far-right music. Shekhovtsov has published articles in these areas in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Patterns of Prejudice, Europe-Asia Studies, The Russian Review, Religion Compass, Ab Imperio and other journals. He is also co-author of the Russianlanguage book Radical Russian Nationalism: Structures, Ideas, Persons (2009), which surveys contemporary Russian ultranationalist parties, organisations, and groupuscules. Shekhovtsov is also general editor of the Explorations of the Far Right book series which is being launched at ibidem-Verlag (Stuttgart). Maria Stopfner is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Linguistics Department at the University of Innsbruck. In her master thesis, she dealt with the argumentative strategies of the Austrian Freedom Party before and after the political turn in 1999. She completed her PhD in 2011, analyzing parliamentary heckling and its influence on parliamentary discourse. She received the Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler Award, the Erwin Wenzl Recognition Award and the Dr. Otto Seibert Award. Recent

320

Contributors

publications and fields of interest focus on stereotypical images of migration in mass media, the use of scandals for political campaigning and the far right’s grasp of the Internet. Anna Szilágyi is a PhD candidate at the Department of Media and Communication at City University of Hong Kong. She holds an MA in Hungarian language and literature from Eötvös Loránd University and an MA in political science from Central European University (both in Budapest, Hungary). Her research concerns political communication, discourses and media in postcommunist Central and Eastern Europe and Russia, especially the rhetorics of nationalism, populism and far-right radicalism, and the way internal and external ‘Others’ are constructed by political actors and the media. She has published several articles in Hungarian. Ruth Wodak is Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University since 2004 and has remained affiliated with the University of Vienna, where she became full professor of Applied Linguistics 1991. Besides various other prizes, she was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize for Elite Researchers in 1996. She is currently president of the Societas Linguistica Europea. Recently, she was also awarded an honorary doctorate by Örebro University, Sweden. Her research interests focus on discourse studies; gender studies; language and/in politics; prejudice and discrimination and ethnographic methods of linguistic field work. She is a member of the editorial board of a range of linguistic journals and co-editor of the journals Discourse and Society, Critical Discourse Studies and Language and Politics and co-editor of the book series Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture (DAPSAC). She has held visiting professorships at Uppsala, Stanford University, the University of Minnesota, the University of East Anglia and Georgetown University and is a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 2008– 2009, she held the Kerstin Hesselgren Chair of the Swedish Parliament (at University Örebrö). Recent book publications include Ist Österreich ein ‘deutsches’ Land? (with R. de Cillia, 2006); Qualitative Discourse . Analysis in the Social Sciences (with M. Krzyzanowski, 2008); Migration, Identity and Belonging (with G. Delanty, P. Jones, 2008); The Discursive Construction of History: Remembering the Wehrmacht’s War of Annihilation (with H. Heer, W. Manoschek and A. Pollak, 2008); The Politics . of Exclusion (with M. Krzyzanowski, 2009); Gedenken im Gedankenjahr (with R. de Cillia, 2009) and The Discourse of Politics in Sction: ‘Politics as Usual’ (2009). Daniel Woodley teaches politics at DLD College in London. He received his doctorate in political sociology from the University of Essex in 2002 and is the author of numerous articles and books on ideology and political theory, including, most recently, Fascism and Political Theory (Routledge

Contributors 321 2010). This text examines the structural and ideological links among fascism, capitalism and modernity, challenging revisionist approaches in fascist studies which depict fascism as a “secular religion.” His principal field of interest is the political sociology of postliberal capitalism, and he is currently researching a new book on economic fascism.

Index

A

Alliance of European National Movements 239 ambivalent rhetoric see rhetoric, ambivalent analogy 61, 136, 309 antisemitism 78, 214, 219 – 24; in Britain, 183 – 4, 196, 200; in Hungary 203 – 5, 207, 210 – 12, 214; in Lithuania (OUN) 229 – 237; in Romania 258 – 9 applause see political applause argumentation 78 – 9, 103, 114 – 16, 203 – 4, 209 – 10, 217 – 19 Ariosophy 302 – 3 Arpád Stripes 307 Association for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) 75 – 6, 79 – 81, 84, 100 Austria 99 – 100, 102, 104 – 6, 146 – 7, 298 – 9, 306; and Nazis 73 – 8, 87, 89 autonomous nationalists 236, 239 – 41, 245 – 6 Avalon 290

B

Bandera, Stepan 229, 232 – 3, 235, 240 – 5, 247, 249 Bean, John 11, 184 – 7, 189 – 90, 197 – 200 Blood & Honour 101, 277 – 8, 282 BNP see British National Party body see metaphor brand 12, 185 Breivik, Anders 30, 106, 238, 277 Brigade M 288 – 90, 293 Britain 27, 29, 278, 298 – 9, 307 – 8

British National Party (BNP) 29 – 30, 239, 278, 298, 301, 307 – 8 Brutal Attack 289 BZÖ see Association for the Future of Austria

C

Caetano, Marcelo 147, 149, 151, 154, 156 – 7, 159 – 60 capitalism, finance see finance capitalism causality 115 CDA see Critical Discourse Analysis Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement (TsDVR) 234 – 5 Civics 122, 126, 137 – 8, 140 – 1 code(s) 87, 190 – 1; and fascism 187; and historic discourses 201; in Hungary, antisemitism 203, 213, 223; and in-group members 304; and justification, legitimation strategies 78; and White Power (music industry) 282, 285 coded language 87, 213 colonialism 46, 49, 156, 164 commodity fetish 26 Communist system 29, 34 – 5, 124, 200, 203, 211 – 12, 256 – 76 concealing fascist past 49, 51, 146 – 62, 164, 166 Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN) 235 conspiracy theory 172, 198, 237, 284 context, contextual 36, 181 – 3; and DHA 77 – 9, 299 – 301; and Germany 66; and Greece 32;

324

Index

and new media 211 – 13; and old media, Hungary 204 – 5; political, British fascism 183 – 6, 201; and scandals 78; and the swastika 302 conversational implicatures 107, 109, 111; see also implicature core 59, 66, 98, 191 – 2, 196, 283 core/periphery distinction 306 courtesy 122, 126, 128, 130 – 2, 136 – 7, 141 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 58, 103, 123, 182, 259 – 60, 299

D

DHA see Discourse Historical Approach Die Lunikoff Verschwörung 286 disavowal 25 discourse 74, 122 – 3, 127 – 8, 297 – 300, 302 – 5, 308, 310 – 11; analysis, critical see Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA); analysis, history 58; extreme nationalist 266; fascist, far right 146, 163 – 80, 181 – 202, 256; ideological 128; Legionary 267; National Catholic 138; nationalism, nationalistic 299, 308 – 10; Nazi 67; New Right 259, 261, 266; and politeness 141; racist 297, 303 – 4, 311; and social practices 127 Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) 77 – 9, 259 – 60, 299 – 300, 311; discourse-historical approach 66 Donaldson, Ian Stuart 277, 281, 283, 291 duplicitous rhetoric see rhetoric, ambivalent

E

education 83, 117, 268, 284 English Rose 277, 291 Estado Novo see New State ethnopluralism 239 euphemism 108, 140, 168, 188 exclusionary populism see populism

F

Facebook 104, 106, 114, 226 far right, Hungary see Hungary

fascism 17 – 19, 26 – 7, 97 – 9, 247, 268, 270 – 1, 307; and Austria 73 – 5; and Britain 307; definitions of 97 – 8, 117, 148; European 203; generic 203, 263, 272; German neo-fascist discourse 103 – 7; mainstreaming 27 – 36; and neo-fascism 99, 101 – 2, 113; and Romania 257 – 9, 261 – 4; and Spain 122 – 45; and Ukraine 229 – 32, 239 – 43 fetish, commodity see commodity fetish finance capitalism 20, 22, 191, 197, 200 FN, le see Front National Fountaine, Andrew 184, 189 – 90, 192 – 3, 197 FPÖ see Freedom Party of Austria France 44 – 5, 48 – 50, 53 – 4, 188, 279 – 80, 309 – 11 Franco, Francisco 122 – 45, 230 Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) 74 – 6, 79 – 81, 84 – 6, 99 – 102, 104 – 6, 298, 306 Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) see Freedom Party of Austria Front National (FN) 75, 167 – 70, 172, 176 – 7, 309 – 11

G

generic fascism see fascism genocide 56 – 72, 189, 214, 220, 231, 289 globalization 18 – 20, 24, 36, 170, 216 Goebbels, Josef 59, 62, 64 – 5, 243 Gudenus, John 9, 74, 78, 79 – 94, 106

H

Haider, Jörg 75 – 6, 84, 88, 99 – 100, 105, 146, 203 heterogeneity 26 – 7 Hitler, Adolf 56 – 67, 109, 147 – 8, 173, 199, 304 – 5 Holocaust 57, 61 – 68, 192 – 3, 213 – 4, 230 – 1, 257 Holocaust denial 105 – 6, 110, 220, 224, 258 – 9, 285, 289 Hook Sprava 281, 290 Hungary 29, 34 – 5, 248, 266 – 8, 288, 298 – 9, 306 – 7 hyperindividualism 25

Index I

identitarian identification 18 ideology 17, 127 – 8, 170 – 1, 299, 308 – 9; antisemitic 221; capitalist 24 – 5; and COMBAT 186 – 7, 190; extreme/far right 99, 224, 228, 283 – 5, 308 – 9; fascist 52 – 3, 97, 200 – 1, 241 – 2, 247; Legionary 262 – 3, 265, 270; National Socialist (NS) 9 – 10, 66, 74, 82; Nazi 56 – 7, 61, 66 – 7, 302, 304; old, Romania 256 – 276; racist 304 implicature 68, 78, 108 – 9; see also conversational implicatures indirectness 107 – 108, 117 insinuation 169 interdiscursive see discourse international finance 33, 56, 111, 189, 196 – 8, 200, 215; see also finance capitalism intertextual 173, 182 – 3, 198, 259 – 60, 299 – 301, 304 – 7, 309 – 11 Islamophobia 31, 164 – 5, 285 Israel 43, 47, 164 – 7, 171, 173, 212 – 19, 270; Israelis 168, 216

J

Jobbik (Magyarországért Mozgalom) 35, 212 – 13, 218 – 19, 222 – 4, 239, 298, 306 – 7 Jordan, Colin 184 – 5, 188 – 90, 196

K

Klemperer, Victor 2, 57, 59, 65 – 7 Kolovrat 280 – 1, 287, 289 – 90 Kronen Zeitung 86, 88 Kubijovycˇ, Volodymyr 235 KUN see Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN)

L

La Destra 309 – 10 Landser 286 – 8 Lunikoff Verschwörung see Die Lunikoff Verschwörung Lypa, Iuryi 242

M

manners 122, 124, 126–7, 130–2, 137–41 Magyarországért Mozgalom see Jobbik media, right-wing see right-wing media

325

metaphor 107, 173 – 4, 207, 209 – 10, 218, 307 – 10; and the body 56, 58 – 9, 65 – 8, 207, 307; and cognitive analysis 58; and conversational implicatures 107; and disease 56, 62, 194, 207, 209 – 10, 218, 221; and fertility, flower 308 – 9; and fire 310; and illness 66 – 8, 118, 207, 209 – 10, 218, 221; and love 307 – 8; and parasites 56 – 9, 61 – 9, 114, 218, 220 – 1; and prophecy 56 – 72; strategic use of 112 – 14, 117 – 18; visual 308 – 9; and war 118, 210 MIÉP see Party of Hungarian Justice and Life mistreat 286 – 7, 289, 291 Mosley, Oswald 3, 183 – 5, 188, 242 MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano) 42 – 3, 45 – 53 Mykhal’chyshyn, Yurii 236, 240 – 5 myth-making 136, 228, 230 – 1, 266

N

nationalism 52 – 3, 97 – 9, 101, 104, 148, 203, 245; Algerian 167; autonomous 236, 239 – 41, 245 – 6; and the BNP 185 – 6, 191, 200; cultural 27; extreme 203; Legionary 264; and Le Pen, Jean-Marie 176; metaphysical 262; and the National Front 29, 52, 185 – 6, 278, 280, 307; and National Socialism 2, 64, 73, 76, 87 – 9, 147, 185, 243; and the New Right 47; regenerative 17; Ukrainian 228, 242, 245; ultra- 53, 97 – 8, 258, 263 – 4; Zionist 166 nationalist 33 – 6, 146 – 7, 228 – 9, 230 – 6, 239 – 48 Nationalistische Partei Deutschlands see NPD Nazi 110 – 11, 230, 235, 284, 299, 301 – 4; and Austria 73 – 8; discourse 104, 116 Nazism 46, 58, 78, 106, 181, 284 Neue Kronen Zeitung 86, 88 New Right 18, 22, 47, 256, 258 – 9, 263 – 71, 278 – 80; see also discourse

326

Index

newspaper 104, 106 – 7, 119, 183 – 4, 186, 204 – 6, 212 New State (Estado Novo) 122, 125, 147 – 8 Nordfront 285 NPD 100 – 2, 104, 108 – 11, 113 – 14, 237, 241

O

Orange Revolution 228 Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) 229 – 39, 242 – 3, 246 – 7 Other-Self division see Self-Other division

P

parasite 56 – 9, 61 – 9, 114, 218, 220 – 1 Party of Hungarian Justice and Life (MIÉP) 212 party programmes 100, 104, 110 – 11, 116, 169 politeness 122, 125 – 37, 139 – 41 political applause 85, 151, 155 – 6, 158 political branding 297 – 8, 301, 309 – 10 populism 17 – 41, 99, 176, 279, 298; exclusionary 29 Portuguese, Revolution of April 1974 32; Socialist Party (PS, Portugal) 152 – 3 post-Communist countries 29, 203, 211 post-war Spain see Spain, post-war praxis 25 prejudice 73, 163 – 5, 167, 174, 194, 260, 285 presupposition 78, 300

R

race 56, 58, 242, 245, 287 – 90, 302, 304; and discrimination 138; and inequality 167; and law 43, 46 – 7, 51; Race Relations Act 200; and supremacism 187 – 90, 193 – 8; White 188, 194, 198, 283 – 5, 289, 291 racism 166 – 7, 258, 279; accusations of 66, 165, 220, 264 – 5, 268; anti-Arab 166; biological 258; and class 31; cultural 23, 28, 31, 258; denial of 66

Regener, Michael 286 – 7 revolution, orange see Orange Revolution rhetoric, ambivalent 150 rhetorical dilemma 150 – 1 right-wing media 46, 263 Roma 34 – 5, 212 – 3, 223, 258, 267 – 9, 284 Rosenkranz, Barbara 74, 78, 85 – 90

S

Salazar, Antonio 147 – 9, 151, 157, 159 – 60 Salazarism 147 – 9 schoolbooks 79, 83, 87 securitization 24 Self-Other division 206 – 7, 209, 214, 220 – 1 Shukhevych, Roman 235, 242, 245, 247 Skrewdriver 277 – 8, 280 – 1 Sokyra Peruna 288 – 9 Spain, post-war 122 – 45, 230 Spanish textbooks 137 – 40 SS see Waffen-SS Galizien stigma 59, 62, 65, 67, 112 Strache, Heinz-Christian 76, 81, 85, 89, 100, 112, 306 Straight Edge 287 Streicher, Julius 59 – 60 Sverigedemokraterna (SD, ‘Sweden Democrats’) 30, 298, 308 Svoboda see VO Svoboda SVP (Schweizerische Volkspartei) 102, 104 – 5, 116 – 17 swastika 302 – 3, 307 Sweden Democrats (SD) see Sverigedemokraterna symbolism 43, 46, 240, 245, 271

T

taboo 46, 61, 66, 74, 80, 211, 219 talk 133, 150 – 1, 153 Tiahnybok, Oleh 237, 239, 240, 247 totalitarian 140 – 1, 147 – 8, 154, 157; capitalism 22 TsDVR see Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement Tyndall, John 184 – 5, 189, 196, 201

Index U

Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) 229 – 39, 246 – 7

V

valorization 27 value form 36 V’’iatrovych, Volodymyr 230 – 2, 234 – 5 victim-victimizer reversal 209 – 10, 217, 221 – 2 visual metaphor see metaphor VO Svoboda 228 – 255, 279

327

W

Waffen-SS Galizien 230, 235, 238–9, 245 Waldheim, Kurt 73 – 4, 78 White Power music 277 – 8, 280 – 91

Y

Yushchenko, Viktor 228, 230 – 2, 237, 242, 244, 247

Z

Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG) 283 – 4, 289 – 90, 292