Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text

ROUTLEDGE CRITICAL STUDIES IN DISCOURSE
Analysing Fascist Discourse

European Fascism in Talk and Text
Edited by
Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson
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 national-
socialist 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 ide-
ologies, 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, vi-
sual, written, sounds) and genres such as policy documents, speeches, school
books, media reporting, posters, songs, logos and other symbols—is neces-
sary to deconstruct exclusionary meanings and to confront their inegalitar-
ian 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

Edited by Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson
Edited by Ruth Wodak and

John E. Richardson
First published 2013
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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 vii

List of Figures ix
1 European Fascism in Talk and Text—Introduction 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 146
CRISTINA MARINHO AND MICHAEL BILLIG
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 315
Index 323
Tables
11.1 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Egyedül

vagyunk (January–December 1942). 205
11.2 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Harc
(May–July 1944). 206
11.3 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Barikád
(March–May 2011). 213
11.4 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Kuruc.
info (June–August 2011). 213
Figures
10.1 Post-war development of British Fascist parties. 185

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. 233
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. 234
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.” 236
12.5 Denial of war crimes: Bi-lingual Svoboda billboard
on the site of the Polish village Huta Pieniacka. 238
12.6 “We are Banderites!” Political propaganda of the
autonomous nationalists. 240
12.7 Lviv, April 2009. Svoboda poster. 244
12.8 Lviv, April 28, 2011; March in commemoration
of the 68th anniversary of the establishment of the
Waffen-SS Galizien. 245
12.9 “March in honor of the Heroes of UPA,” Lviv,
October 16, 2011, leaflet by the Autonomous
Nationalists. 246
12.10 “100 years since the birth of the ideologue of
the social and national revolutions, Yaroslav
Stets’ko,” 2012 Svoboda poster. 246
15.1 Heuristic reinterpretation of the DHA. 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 na-
tional and transnational ‘identity politics’ and started to investigate how
the discursive construction of such identities draws on collective and in-
dividual 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
2 Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson
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 illus-
trate 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. Linguis-
tic 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 mean-
ings, 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 for-
mer 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 sig-
nificant point of departure for the development of the entire field (Chilton,
2006).
All these studies were influenced by the massive use of propaganda dur-
ing 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 (Galasińska and Krzyżanowski,
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 indi-
vidual 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 Blom-
maert, 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 necessar-
ily consign themselves to a position outside democratic politics, leading the
party down a pseudo-revolutionary path, trying to secure power through vi-
olence 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 democ-
racy” (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, Mădroane,
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 manifesta-
tions context-dependent and in which ways? Which functions do such con-
tinuities fulfil in contemporary politics?
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 trau-
matic experiences of the past. In this vein, Pelinka (2009: 49) argues that
[i]n dealing with war crimes and crimes against humanity, three differ-
ent, 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 de-
mocracy 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 con-
flicting 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 equa-
tion 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 sup-
pression 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 dif-
ferent 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
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 univer-
sally 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 dif-
ferent 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 plural-
ity of what fascism ‘really’ was—and perhaps is—and what the aims and
characteristics of a fascist political movement may be. Central to these dis-
cussions were a number of debates which have yet to be resolved: Was fas-
cism 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 differ-
ent 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 re-
gard 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 lead-
ers and their supporters (Adorno et al., 1950)? Within work advancing so-
ciopolitical 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 “or-
ganic 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 fas-
cism, 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
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 anticommu-
nism; antiliberalism; anticonservatism; the Führerprinzip; a party army; and
the aim of totalitarianism), and his objective (though not his theoretical ap-
proach) 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 ultra-
nationalism” (Griffin, 1991: 26), or, “formulated in three words: ‘palingenetic
populist ultra-nationalism’ ” (1998: 13)—is, truly, a minimal fascist mini-
mum. Indeed, the extreme brevity of his definition drew withering comments
from Paxton (2005: 221), who suggests that Griffin’s “zeal to reduce fas-
cism to one pithy sentence seems to me more likely to inhibit than to stimu-
late 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 reflec-
tion 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 so-
called 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 writ-
ing 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 apprecia-
tion 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 intercon-
nections between these different periods in time. But, we would argue, any
appropriate theory of fascism must begin with the idea that fascism must
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 theo-
rizing (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 interdisciplin-
ary research on social change (Fairclough, 1992; Heer et al., 2008; Kovács
and Wodak, 2003; Krzyżanowski and Wodak, 2009).
(Critical) Discourse Analysis is concerned with the analysis of texts in
relation to other elements of social processes—written texts, spoken interac-
tions, ‘multi-semiotic’ texts which combine language, visual images, music,
symbols, and so on. Texts are the relatively stable records of the discourse el-
ement of social events (also, in a broad sense, including actions, interactions
and happenings). Insofar as discourse analysis focuses on texts in research-
ing relations between discourse and other elements of social change, the the-
oretical 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, af-
fected 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
between such contexts. Recontextualization as one of the salient linguistic
processes governing historical change is concretely manifested in the intertex-
tuality 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 stand-
points 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 longitudi-
nal 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, Mădroane, 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, non-
simultaneity 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 sa-
lient 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 Eu-
ropean 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 discourse-

analytic 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.
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 Wood-
ley examines the tension between state-based authoritarian populism and
radical-populist movements of the far right in the wake of the current finan-
cial 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, his-
torically 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 in-
voked 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 Move-
ment, 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 correla-
tions 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 discursive-
pragmatic practices and devices. Jakob Engel and Ruth Wodak analyse con-
temporary 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 Bar-
bara Rosenkranz’s candidacy for Austrian president in 2010—Engel and
Wodak demonstrate the implicit and coded ways that Holocaust denial is
discursively accomplished in Austria, despite the legal constraint of the Ver-
botsgesetz, 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 German-
speaking 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) re-
vise history by casting doubt on the historical reality of NS atrocities. Focus-
ing 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 socialisa-
tion 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 en-
tailed 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, ques-
tions 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 con-
ventionally 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 rhe-
torical 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 dis-
courses produced by the French Front National since the 1980s and the
ways that blaming ‘the Jews’ shifted from being the FN’s main explana-
tion 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, dispropor-
tionate to its success and influence (Payne, 1995; cf. Rees 1979). However,
certain factors are worthy of note and therefore justify academic examina-
tion 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 politi-
cal 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, Ro-
mania, 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 dis-
cusses 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
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 ex-
hibitions 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 Mădroane’s chapter contextualises and un-
packs the various layers of signification embedded in the discourse(s) of
contemporary radical-right movements in Romania and specifically dis-
cusses the potentiality and opportunities for the reappropriation of interwar
radical myths and nationalist ideologies available to extremists in post-
Communist societies. Taking the ‘New Right’ organisation as a case in
point, Mădroane shows how their construal of Romania’s past, present and
future entails a transformation premised on the spiritual and material regen-
eration of the Romanian nation and a ‘dismantling’ of the political views
of their adversaries, in accordance with a tradition of ‘illiberal democracy’.
Mădroane 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 associ-
ated with pseudo-revolutionary neo-Nazi groupuscules, other ‘metapoliti-
cal 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 in-
corporated international (European) trends in their symbolic realisations of
racist discourses. Analysing the discursive and symbolic practises of nation-
alist 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 (mor-
ally and politically loaded) time frames, and this in turn involves the usual
power differences of entextualisation: access to contextual spaces, the impor-
tance of ‘the record’, orientation towards authoritative voices, shifts in refer-
ential and indexical frames and so on”.
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2 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 ideol-

ogy based on regenerationist myth. Representative of this view are Stern-
hell’s (1986) definition of fascism as ‘regenerative nationalism’ and Griffin’s
(1991) complex descriptor ‘palingenetic ultranationalism’. Both locate fas-
cism 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 produc-
tion 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 his-
toric 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 ‘un-
dercut mobilization from below and [introduce] more far-reaching transfor-
mation’ (Robinson & Barrera 2011: 3).
Rather than search for a typology of fascism and its more recent manifes-
tations, 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 com-
munication to bridge the gulf between subjects as atomized consumers (pre-
carized 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
18 Daniel Woodley
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 na-
tionalist 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 capi-
tal, 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), right-
wing populist movements interpellate subjects not as individuals or mem-
bers 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 inter-
mediate strata against the ‘existing system of power management’ (Baier
2011), the net effect of populist interventions is to neutralize counterhege-
monic 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 restric-
tion 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, neo-
liberal 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 neoliberal-
ism 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 capi-
tal, states no longer have the capacity to resist the erosion of constraints on
labour exploitation, creating anxiety among those who benefited from state-
democratic capitalism. After decades of unprecedented material prosperity,
the financial crisis has revealed the insecurity not only of the ‘losers’ of neo-
liberalism (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 vot-
ers 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 ig-
nores 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 cor-
don sanitaire separates the populist and mainstream right and to acknowl-
edge 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 be-
cause neoliberals favour economic globalization as a way of promoting the
interjurisdictional competition which they believe consolidates neoliberal-
ism 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 semi-
peripheral economies of southern Europe, and the peripheral economies of
east-central Europe which remain caught between retraditionalization and
modernization (Mitrović 2010) and where the rapid transition to capitalism
after 1989 created additional complexities in relation to identity politics
20 Daniel Woodley
(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 in-
equalities 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 compra-
dor 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 glo-
balization ideologies which mistake the political determination of uneven
development in the hierarchical structure of global capitalism for ‘interna-
tional 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 de-
velops 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 rou-
tinization of transactions through vertical integration and horizontal combi-
nation. 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
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 (profit-
ability 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 cre-
ates 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 classi-
cal 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 ac-
cumulation’ (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
22 Daniel Woodley
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 ‘to-
talitarian 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 plan-
ning 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 chal-
lenge to British hegemony—neoliberalism is a transnational project: a glob-
ally 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 nation-
alisms 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 demo-
cratic 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 chal-
lenging the underlying tenets of a growing authoritarianism’ (2005: 12–13).
Yet, while some observers predict a future shift away from neoliberalism
towards a more ‘rational’ form of capitalism, the evidence suggests other-
wise. Explaining the evolution of neoliberalism in the present crisis, Kon-
ings 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 separat-
ing 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 contradic-
tions giving rise to instability: ‘the cyclical character of crises of accumu-
lation 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 possibili-
ties they contain’ (ibid.). Depressions provide not merely a ‘cure’ for declin-
ing 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 in-
terests of corporations into the political-cultural framework of the nation-
state; it articulates a structural interrelation between the sovereign power of
capital as a globally disembedded, self-augmenting value in perpetual mo-
tion (Westra 2010), and labour as a territorially embedded commodity or-
ganized for the fulfilment of socially necessary labour within discrete spatial
units. As a key component in the scalar reorganization processes in capital-
ism (Brenner 2011), however, labour mobility within the EU (both legal and
24 Daniel Woodley
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, neoliberal-
ism extends the chrematistic logic of capital as value augmentation, yet re-
produces 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 coher-
ent spatial unit in the capitalist world system.
The monocultural ideological violence and fanaticism of right-wing pop-
ulism derive less from a primordial eruption of nationalism than from an in-
herent tension between capitalism and democracy epitomised by the decline
of the culturally homogeneous welfare-warfare state, leaving a broad con-
stituency 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 inconsis-
tencies in the discursive narrative of capitalism. On the other hand, politi-
cal 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 com-
petition state based on the corporatization of public administration and the
securitization of citizenship (Watson 2009; Kaya 2009). Populist anger to-
wards 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 white-
collar 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 neolib-
eralism 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
adapted to the expansion of global capital, neoliberalism arrests popular
consciousness by creating a fantasy of freedom and gratification that com-
pensates for the lack of real satisfaction in market societies though the pro-
duction 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 social-
ized 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 au-
thority 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 out-
come, 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
26 Daniel Woodley
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 demod-
ern 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 adher-
ence to narrowly focused routines and systems of regimentation, measure-
ment 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 strate-
gies which interrogate private economic power, the social function of anti-
establishment populism is not to foster ‘anti-capitalism’ but to pressure the
state to manage an emergent contradiction between the transnational or-
ganization of globalizing capital and the localized interests of native com-
munities 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 mate-
rial 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 con-
sumption 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 de-
fence 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) mar-
ket value and cultural status.
To explain in material terms the rearticulation of counterhegemonic dis-
course in the ideology of the neoliberal state, it is necessary to see that fas-
cism is generated in the commodity fetish—namely in the production of
identity from heterogeneity. As Harootunian notes, it this relation of fas-
cism to the commodity form ‘that is missing in most accounts of fascism
and that offers a plausible explanation for its capacity to return punctu-
ally, 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
territory in the nation-state and expresses the fetish character of the com-
modity 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 le-
gitimately be reproduced in a given system of social relations.
MAINSTREAMING FASCISM
The production of homogeneity thus plays a critical role in right-wing dis-

course, given the reifying logic of capitalism in which all social relations can
be exchanged equally as commodities. As Desai notes, cultural national-
ism 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 impor-
tant 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 represen-
tation; where neo-nationalists are more strongly represented in conserva-
tive 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, lead-
ing centrists to adapt their ideology to compete more effectively. As a rule,
moderate right-wing parties respond pragmatically to the rhetoric of the
28 Daniel Woodley
radical right, while radical-right parties adapt their rhetoric to market dis-
course 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 iden-
tifying ‘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 competi-
tors 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, self-
reliance 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, of-
ficial 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, of-
ficial discourse excuses the West from responsibility for the reality of migra-
tion: ‘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 tran-
sit” 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 differenti-
ate between patterns of ideological development in the core economies of
northern Europe, the semiperipheral economies of southern Europe and the
peripheral post-Communist economies of eastern Europe, each of which
possess their own historical traditions of right-wing politics. If the politi-
cal 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 right-
wing populism may be far more serious than political scientists realize. To
demonstrate this, three examples of the appreciating currency of exclusion-
ist 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 right-
wing 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 contribu-
tion 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 pres-
ervation of UK sovereignty, reduced income tax, increased spending on de-
fence, 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 half-
million 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
30 Daniel Woodley
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 constitu-
ency 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 mark-
ers 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 right-
wing 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 fu-
tile. 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 Febru-
ary 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 West-
ern 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 de-
nial 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.
Yet the increasing acceptability of Islamophobia (in contrast with the
1970s) and the tendency of many British citizens to take seriously liberal-
imperialist 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 ‘homogene-
ity 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 multi-
culture’ (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 own-

ers’ and ‘respectable citizens’ to ‘take back the streets’ from those de-
scribed 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 transpor-
tation 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
32 Daniel Woodley
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 residen-
tial 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 metro-
politan 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 se-
curity services were modelled on the CIA, and although the United States
supported democracy in public, the ‘measures adopted to produce a western-
type 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 ben-
efit 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 in-
evitable 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 cor-
rect 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 coun-
try 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
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 Eu-
ropean Central Bank by promising a referendum on the first EU bailout, the
‘government of national unity’ has pushed through wage freezes, national-
izations 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 polar-
ization of Greek society between the generation which benefited from liber-
alization 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 deter-
mined 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 pre-
vent 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
34 Daniel Woodley
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 iso-
lated nation which lurched violently from authoritarian capitalism to fas-
cism 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 periph-
ery . . . in the hope of achieving dependent development and the rapid,
spontaneous emergence of the institutional and cultural fabric that consti-
tutes 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 polariza-
tion in Hungarian politics between support for and rejection of transna-
tional 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 radi-
cal 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,
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 pres-
sure 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 phe-
nomenon, 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 tri-
umphalism 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 govern-
ment 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 poli-
cies. (Dinescu 2011: 2)
Fidesz, adds Dinescu, contains several leaders who are themselves notori-
ous 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 in-
creasingly 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
36 Daniel Woodley
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 con-
texts. Right-wing populism is conservative in defence of identity but radical
in defence of economic freedom, defending structured inequality and cultur-
ally specific distributions of power in a ‘fortress state’ closed to multicul-
turalism. 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, national-
ism and racism, evidenced by the neoconservative view that shared values
between individuals with the same culture or ethnicity promote social stabil-
ity 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 dis-
articulates opposition to the hegemonic narrative of globalization while re-
producing 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 cul-
tural production in the European avant-garde and the aesthetic reconstruc-
tion 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 funda-
mentalism 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 clas-
sic 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 inter-
dependent states and citizens that escapes the classical categories of political
authority, resting instead on the dialectical fusion of segmental autonomy and
collective policy formation’ (2009: 131).
5. Here it might be useful to recall Betz’s (1994) distinction between the neoliberal-
populist 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 eco-
nomic 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).
6. 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.
7. See Veblen’s (1923) classic analysis of absentee ownership and corporate
capitalism.
8. On the relevance of Carl Schmitt for discussions of neo-imperialism, see Zolo
(2007).
9. See the UKIP website for details (http://ukip.org/content/ukip-policies).
10. See Paul Ray’s blog ‘Lionheart’ (http://lionheartuk.blogspot.com) for an ex-
ample of the ultra-patriotic social attitudes of EDL members.
11. See Mouze (2010). EDL members are subject to intensive surveillance by the
UK National Public Order Intelligence Unit, which infiltrates all radical or-
ganizations 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.
12. 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).
13. 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 legiti-
mate peaceful mass protest into violent disorder by provoking the police with
staged attacks.
14. 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.
15. Jobbik activists descended on the town of Gyöngyöspata to ‘impose discipline’
on the local Roma population, openly challenging the rule of law. The inten-
tion was to force Roma families to evacuate the area and to replace the local
mayor with a Jobbik official.
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3 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 pe-
riod. 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; Bar-
On, 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 Nou-
velle Droite (ND—New Right), took a metapolitical path by seeking to
win hearts and minds as a prelude to the destruction of liberal democ-
racy 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 revolution-
ary 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 govern-
ments, 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’ be-

cause 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 Almi-
rante (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 double-
breasted 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 Fas-
cism 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 fol-
lowing 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 govern-
ments 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 nec-
essarily 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 stat-
ing 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
44 Tamir Bar-On
the 1995 Fiuggi Congress motion that condemned all forms of totalitarian-
ism (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) indi-
viduals 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 soci-
ety and state. According to Hannah Arendt (1963, 21–58), modern revolu-
tions 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 18th-
century liberal revolutions and implies that “the course of history suddenly
begins anew.”
Moreover, revolutions can be violent or semiviolent, such as the Bolshe-
vik Revolution in Russia in 1917 or the Fascist Revolution in Italy in 1922.
Revolutions can also be ‘nonviolent’, as with the ‘Quiet Revolution’ in Qué-
bec (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 pro-
pose 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 institu-
tions, and its dominant values” (Bar-On, 2010, 7). Contemporary ND
thinkers search for their own ‘Quiet Revolution’ on the European conti-
nent, 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
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, pros-
perity, 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 (Bar-
On, 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 theoreti-
cian. 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 re-
spect 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 de-
mocracy’ 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 revolution-
aries 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) par-
liamentary neo-fascism (e.g. the MSI-AN); (2) extra-parliamentary neo-
fascism (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 for-
mer 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.
46 Tamir Bar-On
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 le-
gitimacy 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 neo-
fascism’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 po-
litical 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 Ber-
lusconi, 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 revolu-
tionary, 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 aforemen-
tioned 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 Berlus-
coni’s stunning coalition invitation to the MSI in 1994.
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 seven-
month stint in office due to disagreements with coalition partners, particu-
larly 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 min-
ister. 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, Berlus-
coni’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 min-
ister 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 lib-
eral 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 ultra-
nationalist, pro-fascist terrorist group ON in the 1960s but was later ex-
onerated 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. Ale-
manno 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 demonstra-
tion, 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 sophis-
ticated and uses cultural, legal and parliamentary means to achieve power
and return Europe to a more homogeneous continent cleansed of non-
European immigrants (Spektorowski, 2003, 55–70). This neo-fascist tacti-
cal 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
48 Tamir Bar-On
‘anti-fascist’ age (Bar-On, 2007, 2009). The neo-fascists today borrow mod-
ern and antimodern discourses, neo-fascist and New Left themes, mytholog-
ical 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 intellec-
tual 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 So-
cial 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, fas-
cism 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 ex-
cesses 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 uni-
versities 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 ad-
venture, the quest of Bilbo Baggins and the ‘hobbits’ against great odds, the
battle against the deadly Five Armies (its martial theme appealing to neo-
fascists 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 Indo-
European societies where egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism and American-
ization 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
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 im-
migration 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 ideo-
logical 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 con-
sciously downplayed his fascist past and stressed law and order and even
democratic, ‘left-wing’, and environmental discourses. Yet, questions re-
mained in respect of Alemanno as when, in 2008, he refused to condemn fas-
cism 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 Fas-
cist 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 dra-
matically drifted decidedly towards the anti-egalitarian right on both eco-
nomic issues and cultural, regional and national-identity questions. So, for
example, LN leader Umberto Bossi wants a stop to non-European immi-
gration 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 terror-
ism’ 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 multicul-
turalism have caused worries about the loss of European regional and na-
tional 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
50 Tamir Bar-On
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 Musso-
lini’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 root-
ing 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 partici-
pation in government tame Italian neo-fascism and increase adherents’ sup-
port 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 under-
mine 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 parlia-
mentary, 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 organisa-
tions 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.
Furthermore, I argued that, in general, post-war Italian neo-fascism at-
tempted to downplay its ties to Fascism, Benito Mussolini, race laws, anti-
semitism, 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 fas-
cist 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 mani-
festations 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 ideo-
logical 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 Tri-
colour 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 leg-
acy of Italian Fascism, while guaranteeing free membership for ex-RSI mili-
tary. 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 Mus-
solini 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
52 Tamir Bar-On
vacated by Alessandra Mussolini. FN sought to cultivate neo-fascist trans-
nationalism through the European National Front, a structure consisting
of European Third Positionist, anticommunist, anticapitalist, and ultra-
nationalistic parties. In March 2011, Fiore led the FN in demonstrations
against illegal immigrants from Tunisia and other African countries to the is-
land 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 anti-
immigrant 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 neo-
fascists 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 equiva-
lent 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 si-
multaneously 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 de-
mocracy. 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 right-
wing labels. This essay focused on these three distinctive neo-fascist or revo-
lutionary 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 de-
mocracy. A second important question asked whether neo-fascists, particu-
larly 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
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 ‘an-
other 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 ex-
planation 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 rejec-
tion 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 ‘pal-
ingenetic 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
54 Tamir Bar-On
and other European countries from Russia to Hungary, shows that neo-
fascists 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 culti-
vated 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.”
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4 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 in-
famous 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 annihi-
lation [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”; oth-
erwise, Jewry might “succumb to a crisis of unimaginable severity” (Doma-
rus 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 ideologi-
cal 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 histor-
ical 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 con-
text of the speech, the “prophecy” repeats the preceding warning of an un-
precedented “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 con-
ditions 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 sur-
vived 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 particu-
larly 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 “Se-
curity 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, Schma-
rotzer) 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 dif-
ficult 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 warn-
ings 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
58 Andreas Musolff
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 an-
alysing 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 Cogni-
tive 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 “out-
come” 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 suppos-
edly 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-crisis-
therapy, with the parasitic Jewish enemy-race on the one hand and the heal-
ing 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
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 part-
ner, 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), organ-
ised 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. Vic-
tor Klemperer felt as if he was experiencing “a pogrom in the deepest Mid-
dle 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 indif-
ference (Friedländer 1998: 22–23), and it is difficult to determine to what
extent the specifically antisemitic measures were distinguished in public per-
ception from the simultaneous repression of Communists, Social Democrats
and other political enemies of the Nazis, which accounted for the vast ma-
jority 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, pros-
titutes), 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 citizen-
ship and from marriage or sexual relations with Germans (Kershaw 1999:
568–573; Friedländer 1998: 146–170; Longerich 2006: 92–100). The SD
60 Andreas Musolff
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 Ger-
many’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 ste-
reotype 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 sweet-
heart 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 fur-
ther 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;
Gilbert 2007). Reactions among the German public, as registered by the So-
cial 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 for-
eign 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 pos-
sible 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 histo-
rian 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 con-
veyed 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 parasite-
therapy metaphor played a crucial role. It provided the discursive frame
in which the annihilation/elimination of the European Jews was “mention-
able” after all, by way of analogy. The destruction of biological parasites
is a legitimate concern in the context of hygiene and medicine. Its analogi-
cal 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 para-
doxical 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
62 Andreas Musolff
Jude) from 1940, which presented it as the obvious solution to the problem
of Jews, who were directly likened to disease-spreading rats (Hornshøj-
Møller 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, accept-
ing 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, Hit-
ler’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 com-
bined 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 Einsatzgrup-
pen, Police Reserve Battalions and Wehrmacht troops, with the support of
parts of the indigenous population, started mass killings that quickly esca-
lated to murders of whole regional Jewish communities (Browning 1992:
86–121, 2004: 309–352; Matthäus 2004: 253–308). In these murder cam-
paigns, 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, Goeb-
bels 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, Goeb-
bels 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
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 can-
not 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 mili-
tary 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 quasi-
magical 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 mil-
lions of Jews was by now becoming widely known in Germany through dis-
semination of soldiers’ eyewitness and participant accounts to relatives and
friends (Kulka and Jäckel 2004: 486, 489, 491, 510, 528–531, 533; Neitzel
64 Andreas Musolff
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 co-
incided 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 “de-
composing” (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 deep-
est 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 apoca-
lyptic 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 radi-
cal measures to stop the Jewish infection and the further sacrifices that the
whole of the nation would have to make were accordingly likened by Goeb-
bels 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).
Klemperer, who read it in a Dresden newspaper (to which he had clandes-
tine 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 warn-
ing underlined the real possibility of defeat and decomposition.
Such a “disingenuous” reading of Goebbels’s speech and Nazi propa-
ganda in general was not confined to the few surviving Jews but was be-
coming 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 atroci-
ties 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 re-
inforce 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 estab-
lishing 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. Doma-
rus 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
66 Andreas Musolff
and more nations to the Jewish parasite (as manifested in the enemy ad-
vances 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 ideologi-
cal 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 continu-
ously in order to establish in the public mind the strongest possible link be-
tween 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 “proph-
ecy” 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 rein-
forcement 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 mur-
der of the Jews. Plain descriptive or evaluative vocabulary (e.g. “mass kill-
ing”, “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 concep-
tualized in terms of defending the German fatherland and Europe. Their
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 an-
nounced the imminent completion of racial-cum-military triumph; now it
presented the destruction of “the Jew” as a last-ditch defensive survival strat-
egy. 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 accom-
plices 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 thoroughgo-
ing 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; Kop-
perschmidt 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 right-
wing “Party of Nationally Oriented Swiss,” protested against the election
of the Zurich-born Whitney Toyloy as “Miss Switzerland” and against the
68 Andreas Musolff
runner-up, Rekha Datta, because both of them, on account of their darker
skin colour, personified the “brown tumour that was eating up” free Swit-
zerland (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 Toy-
loy 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 emo-
tionally 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 seman-
tic 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 at-
tacks 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 in-
correct” 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 Wil-
son 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 sociopoliti-
cal entities, carrying with it the same inference, that is, the affirmation of
a necessity to destroy the perceived threat. Judges who acquit racist hate-
speakers who use such imagery effectively pretend not to know what a di-
agnosis 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.
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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 de-
nazification process, a war-weary population that had survived the bomb-
ings, 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 unbur-
dened 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 def-
inition remained essentially unchallenged until the election of Kurt Wald-
heim, 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 usu-
ally 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 de-
velopment of a new collective or public memory shaped by the Allied occu-
pation, a reservoir of antisemitic prejudices from the First Austrian Republic
and a commitment to becoming a Western democracy (Wodak et al. 2009;
Wodak 2011a).
74 Jakob Engel and Ruth Wodak
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 encour-
aged 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 re-
cently, 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 sur-
rounding the candidacy of Barbara Rosenkranz in 2010 for Austrian presi-
dent. 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 con-
front 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 ideolo-

gies (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 Bailer-
Galanda & Neugebauer 1997: 326), who felt unable to support either the
Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) or the (formerly Christian) con-
servative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), founded the VdU (Verband der
Unabhängigen—Association of Independents). This party became the elec-
toral 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 there-
after, the VdU called for the abolition of all laws governing de-nazification
procedures. The argument that the VdU employed to this end rested above
“Calculated Ambivalence” and Holocaust Denial in Austria 75
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 con-
glomerate 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 Commit-
tee 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” (Ma-
noschek 2002: 7) and shaped its character in a way which precluded any treat-
ment 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 govern-
ment, having formed a coalition with the conservative ÖVP. This develop-
ment 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 face-
saving 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
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 elec-
tions. 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 Holo-
caust 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 his-
tory 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 Na-
tional Socialist crimes. De-nazification measures were passed in the imme-
diate aftermath of World War II, on 8 May 1945, and were reformulated
in 1947. The laws forbid, among other things, any activity related to Na-
tional 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 posi-
tions. 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 Para-
graphs 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
harsher sentence under other legislation—is punishable with imprison-
ment 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 Na-
tional Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against hu-
manity 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 al-
lowed 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 con-
troversies 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 justi-
fied 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 treat-
ment of Holocaust denial more broadly—are impacted by the specific his-
torical experiences of the respective country with the Holocaust, that is, that
the treatment is strongly context-dependent. In this sense, the discourse-
historical 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
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 other-
presentation, as well as on strategies of justification and legitimation.
We distinguish between five types of discursive strategies, which under-
pin 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 “Strat-
egy” generally refers to a (more or less accurate and more or less inten-
tional) 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 ac-
tors 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 at-
tributions can be justified. Positive self- and negative other-presentation
requires the explicit or implicit (coded) use of justification and legitima-
tion strategies; the latter imply the usually strategic and manipulative ap-
plication 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 jus-
tify 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 an-
tagonist, the obligation to “matter-of factness”, the correct references to
implicit premises, the respect of shared starting points, the use of plausible
arguments and schemes of argumentation, the employment of logical valid-
ity, the acceptance of the discussion’s results and the need for clarity of ex-
pression 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 empha-
size that the “strategy of calculated ambivalence” serves to convey at least
two contradictory messages in one utterance which address different audi-
ences (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 com-
memorative 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 par-
liament (the Bundesrat), Siegfried Kampl (BZÖ) and John Gudenus (FPÖ),
in which they expressed revisionist views on the treatment of complicit Aus-
trians in the aftermath of World War II (in Kampl’s case) and on the ac-
tual 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 anal-
yse 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
official formation and affirmation of Austrian identity that is propa-
gated 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 rep-
resentative themselves but in the responses they elicited from leading politi-
cians of all parties.
So how was it that John Gudenus, after all only a representative in Vi-
enna’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 [assump-
tion]. 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
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 deliber-
ate 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 state-
ment 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 repu-
tation 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 vot-
ers), 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
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 Holo-
caust 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 re-
marks 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 pri-
marily 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, com-
mitted in the concentration camps during the Second World War [is] an evi-
dent 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 spec-
trum, 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, Gude-
nus raised the stakes in an interview published by the newspaper Der
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 bound-
aries 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 outspo-
ken 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 bet-
ter, 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 his-
torical 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 ab-
surd and in no way even remotely comprehensible. It would imply blam-
ing 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 Gude-
nus’s line of reasoning, antisemitism had not discredited the Chancellor’s
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 cre-
ated 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, in-
deed, being used continually by right-wing populist politicians, as has been
shown in great detail in multiple studies (see, for instance, Krzyżanowski &
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 Ver-
botsgesetz so that virtually no politician could and would address his re-
marks in any way other than outright rejection. His remarks appeared to
play into a long history of questioning the proven historical consensus per-
taining 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 histori-
cal 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
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 Gude-
nus 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 imprison-
ment 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, an-

nounced publicly that the FPÖ would nominate Barbara Rosenkranz as its
presidential candidate34—even before the federal executive board had actu-
ally 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 candi-
date 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 extrem-
ist National Democratic Party (NDP). She herself is the author of a book
that criticises feminism and efforts towards gender mainstreaming.37 She op-
poses 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
(Zur Zeit, “Die Einbürgerung stoppen”, February 2008). During her can-
didacy 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 candi-
dacy for the Austrian presidential election in 2010. She also received signifi-
cant 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 pro-
Rosenkranz 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 prais-
ing 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 Verbotsge-
setz (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
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 Mittags-
journal 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 unchal-
lenged 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 politi-
cal 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, Cardi-
nal Christoph Schönborn, labelled Rosenkranz as ineligible for the presi-
dency, 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 simul-
taneously 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 cur-
rent 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 de-
bates revolved around her utterances.
However, on 6 March 2010, Hans Dichand, again under his pseudonym
CATO, demanded a serious and honest declaration of distance from Na-
tional Socialist beliefs and ideology.
Text 7 (CATO’s Demand)

As an independent newspaper, the “Kronen Zeitung” has always at-
tempted 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. There-
fore it is currently necessary that Barbara Rosenkranz distances herself
under oath from all National Socialist ideas. Anything else would dis-
qualify 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 “ideo-
logical miscarriage” (ideologische Missgeburt); of course, Haider triggered a
huge scandal with such a negative predication (Wodak et al. 2009). Rosen-
kranz 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 “be-
lieves” 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 eligi-
bility 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 declara-
tion 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 vehe-
mently from the ideology of National-socialism”.43
On 18 March 2010, Rosenkranz, for the first time, explicitly acknowl-
edged 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 state-
ment 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
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 sys-
tem and even the Catholic Church when it comes to confronting expres-
sions 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 Ver-
botsgesetz 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 inter-
ested in reviving the so-called victim thesis (i.e. that Austria was the first vic-
tim 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 rel-
evant 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 in-
cumbent, 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
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 Rosen-
kranz’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 wissen-
schaftlich 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 debattie-
ren 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 Massen-
mord 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 entschul-
digen, 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 Staat-
sanwaltschaft 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
nachvollziehbar. Sie würde bedeuten, dass man die Verantwor-
tung 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 Ger-
man 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 eco-
nomic security which is the only basis for lasting peace. Austria is reminded,
however, that she has a responsibility, which she cannot evade, for participa-
tion 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 Krzyżanowski 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 compara-
tive legislation and controversies pertaining to Holocaust denial. Lipstadt’s
Denying the Holocaust is particularly notable not only for its thorough treat-
ment 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 (ac-
cessed 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). Con-
troversies 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.
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 Re-
isigl 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 annexa-
tion 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 repre-
sentatives of the Republic (Kampl was to be president of the Bundesrat for the
second half of 2005); second, they triggered an extended debate among lead-
ing 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 con-
demning 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 rep-
resentatives 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 pre-
sented 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 Stan-
dard, 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
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.
26. See Hannes Jarolim in “Ermittlungen gegen Gudenus eingestellt”, http:/
wien.orf.at/oesterreich.orf?read=detail&channel=1&id383978 (accessed Au-
gust 17 2006).
27. See John Gudenus in “Gudenus: ‘Es gab Gaskammern, aber nicht im Dritten
Reich’ ”, http://derstandard.at/?id=2071354 (accessed August 16 2006).
28. Siehe Oliver Rathkolb in “Einserfrage: Keine Gaskammern im ‘Dritten
29. See Heinz Fischer in “Bereit, etwas weniger Populäres zu sagen” (Michael
Völker), Der Standard, S. 13 (accessed August 16 2006).
30. In a radio interview broadcast by the local station “Radio Kärnten”, for in-
stance, he declared: “So I was a Nazi-victim. I have to maintain I was, regret-
tably. 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 Nazi-
victim”, is another evident instance of calculated ambivalence and implicit
double message. See Siegfried Kampl in “Naziverfolgung und Kamaraden-
mörder”, http://kaernten.orf.at/oesterreich.orf?read=detail&channel=9&
id=384050 (accessed August 16 2006).
31. “Staatsanwalt will höhere Strafe für Gudenus”, http://oesterreich.orf.at/wien/
stories/105572/ (accessed August 16 2006).
32. 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).
33. 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).
34. See http://www.krone.at/Oesterreich/Strache_schickt_Rosenkranz_ins_Rennen_
um_Hofburg-Seite_an_Seite-Story-187536 (accessed 8 September 2011).
35. See http://derstandard.at/1267131932485/Rosenkranz-wird-fuer-FPOe-kandidieren.
36. 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 “Keller-
nazi” (the term, literally “cellar Nazi”, describes a person who supported Na-
tional Socialist or antidemocratic ideas through clandestine activities).
37. 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 Müt-
terlichkeit nicht auseinanderfallen dürfen, wenn wir im Gesamten eine Zuku-
nft haben wollen” (ibid.).
38. 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.
39. See http://derstandard.at/1267132251749/Kandidatur-Rechtsextreme-NVP-
unterstuetzt-Rosenkranz, http://derstandard.at/1268700952546/Rosenkranz-
ist-eine-nationale-Sozialistin; see also http://www.kleinezeitung.at/nachrichten/
politik/bundespraesident/2307151/zwei-gesichter-kandidatin.story (both accessed
10 September 2011).
40. See http://www.vol.at/news/politik/artikel/bundespraesident—-rosenkranz-
stehtweiterhin-zu-umstrittenen-aussagen/cn/news-20100303–12292321,
http://www.krone.at/Oesterreich/FPOe-Kandidatin_Rosenkranz_gegen_NS-
Verbotsgesetz-Meinungsfreiheit-Story-188096 (accessed 8 September 2011).
41. See http://diepresse.com/home/politik/hofburgwahl/544630/Rosenkranz_Kein-
Zweifel-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-Die-
Nullnummer-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_Ueber-
Identitaet-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 Stan-
dard, 27 April 2005, S. 7.
48. Siehe John Gudenus in “Gudenus: ‘Es gab Gaskammern, aber nicht im Dritten
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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 de-
fining “fascism”. It is frequently argued that there is not even a conceptual
minimum which covers all historical varieties of interwar and postwar fas-
cism or is acceptable for all relevant scholarly frameworks (cf. Neugebauer
2010: 5ff.; Priester 2010: 38 on similar problems defining “right-wing ex-
tremism”). Nevertheless, a brief survey of a few classical definitions of “fas-
cism”, mainly based on the reader published by Griffin (1998a), allows both
a critical comparison of some similarities and differences of these frame-
works 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 defini-
tion from 1933, “[f]ascism is the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most
reactionary, most chauvinist and most imperialist elements of finance capi-
tal” (Griffin 1998: 59; cf. Trotsky 1940: 72: “Fascism is the continuation of
capitalism”). While this is a realistic critique of the opportunistic arrange-
ments usually met by fascist leaders with powerful capitalist groups, it can-
not 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 nega-
tive attitude of fascism towards other ideologies (“antiliberalism”, “anti-
communism”, “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 elit-
ism, 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).
98 Claudia Posch, Maria Stopfner and Manfred Kienpointner
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 defi-
nition 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 permuta-
tions, 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” concern-
ing 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 defi-
nition 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 repre-
sentative, 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 men-
tioned 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 con-
crete utterances as instances of fascist thought and propaganda. Needless
to say, the following critical analysis has to take into account the context-
sensitive 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 analy-
sis 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 wehr-
hafte/streitbare Demokratie, that is, a democratic system on its guard. Be-
cause of the lessons learnt from the Weimar Republic and the National So-
cialist regime, this Defensive Democracy has the constitutionally granted
right to defend itself against forces which do not adhere to the basic demo-
cratic values by using all possible means to destroy the democratic system
(Adamovich, Funk and Holzinger 2011: 156–157). The Austrian Ver-
botsgesetz (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 ex-
treme right is forced to operate in secret and/or veil its ideology in ambigu-
ous, 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 ex-
treme and more eligible outward appearance while kowtowing to the radi-
cal 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 Free-
dom Party. Founded in 1956 out of the former Verband der Unabhän-
gigen (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, fra-
ternities 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; Muz-
icant 2011). From an ideological point of view, Pelinka (2002) character-
izes 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
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 Zu-
kunft 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 sociode-
mographic 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; Steg-
lich 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 nonpar-
tisan 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 practi-
cally nonexistent organisation, the party’s only hope was a highly contro-
versial 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; Verfassungss-
chutzbericht 2010; Kailitz 2005).
The Nationalistische Partei Deutschland (NPD), founded in 1964 (Jesse
2011: 87), is at present the most influential right-extremist party in Ger-
many (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 sig-
nificantly 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. Ideologi-
cal 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 ac-
tivities 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 (Verfassungschutz-
bericht 2010; Jesse 2011).
In Switzerland the “presence of the radical right in the Swiss party sys-
tem 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 de-
velopment stages of the radical right in Switzerland. In phase one (from the
1960s to 1980s), four small political parties emerged with “overforeigniza-
tion” as their core issue: Nationale Aktion (NA), Vigilance, Schweizeri-
sche 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.
Also, conflicts within the parties prevented their greater success. As a sec-
ond 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 radical-
right party in Switzerland, since it vigorously opposed ecological policies
and state interventions, and propagated both a neo-liberal economic pro-
gramme 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 pre-
vious 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 “politi-
cal and ideological radicalization”, the billionaire Christoph Blocher, who
has been responsible for the party’s success since the 1990s. Populist rhet-
oric 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 sig-
nificantly influence legislation, even if several of the party initiatives have
been defeated. With its programme, the SVP was able to become the stron-
gest 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 re-
gimes. 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 Aktivdienstgenera-
tion 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 slit-
ting the throats of the Swiss”: http://www.svp.ch).
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 frame-
works 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 Eeme-
ren & 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 “ob-
jective 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 argu-
ments, 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 reason-
ableness 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.
Before we begin our analysis on the basis of the theoretical and meth-
odological principles we have drawn up, our corpus will be described in
some more detail. It consists of the following items: articles from news-
papers 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 Spie-
gel; 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 compa-
rable 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 formu-
lated 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 conser-
vatism 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
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 revi-
sionist 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 par-

ties, who have frequently formulated messages with (neo-)fascist under-
tones 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 exam-
ples) 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 di-
rected 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 unem-
ployment 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: Cz-
ernin Verlag, p. 35)
4. Finally, there are parties such as the Swiss right-conservative SVP,

which are firmly based within right-conservative democratic princi-
ples but which defend racist positions on immigration by formulat-
ing 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 Rechtsstaatli-
che 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 prohibi-
tions and also use street violence, brutal attacks on minority groups and
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 will-
ing to take the risk of being brought to justice or even put into jail, for
example, Horst Mahler (*1936), Ernst Zündel (*1939) and Michael Küh-
nen (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 ideo-
logical 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 concentra-
tion camps of the Third Reich. Gudenus was put on probation (Kienpoint-
ner 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 Norwe-
gen 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 Eu-
rope 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
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 net-
works. So we will focus on the following three phenomena, which can
also illustrate aspects of the three subtypes of strategic manoeuvring dis-
tinguished 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 audi-
ence) 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 strat-
egies 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 im-
portance 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 con-
stellations of premises and conclusions that follow certain seman-
tic 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 dis-
course, some causal schemes are typical for and extremely frequent in
extreme right-wing discourse.
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 (fas-
cist) 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 Mor-
danschläge 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. There-
fore, the party chairman has put together a reliable team taken from
the security force of the party, which will certainly do its best”. Hans-
Ulrich 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 poli-

tician, Patrick Schröder, who assigns an important role in the political
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 kämp-
fen 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 kämp-
fen hat. Im Jugendbereich haben hier die Freien Kräfte natürlich deut-
lich 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 at-
tack 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 re-
sponsibility for attacking the Soviet Union:
(5) Rettet die Alleinschuld! Das Thema ist so brisant, weil das Bek-
enntnis zur deutschen Alleinschuld am Zweiten Weltkrieg—neben der
permanenten Vergegenwärtigung des Holocaust—den einzigen Iden-
titätsanker 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)
Another figure of speech that violates the first sub-maxim of quality is hy-
perbole. A patently obvious exaggeration cannot be rejected so easily be-
cause 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 gleich-
bedeutend 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 al-
lows making vague and obscure accusations against political enemies or anti-
semitic 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 de-
portiert 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 concentra-
tion 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 “in-
fluential political forces” which, according to him, are responsible for the
“deplorable condition” of German justice. Thus, he can avoid being accused
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 rele-
vant 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 ver-
ordneten Schuldkult, der nicht zuletzt im Dienst fremder Finanzinteres-
sen 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 Na-
tional Democrats reject the state-mandated cult of guilt which if noth-
ing 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 law-
suits. On March 9, 2011, a probation sentence against leading NPD politi-
cians 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 Pat-
rick 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 enlighten-
ment”, 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.
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, edi-
tor 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 Ken-
nzeichen 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 op-
posed 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 Heinz-
Christian 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 ges-
ture 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 power-
ful instruments to shape the cognitive perspectives of voters and to transport
ideologies (Lakoff 2005). Although metaphor is used by all political parties
and movements, some source domains are more typical for neo-fascist and
(extreme) right-wing populist discourse. In order to stir aggressive emo-
tions in their supporters and in the broader public, to promote clear-cut
black-and-white portraits of the political landscape, to describe their po-
litical 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 ex-
treme 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 met-
aphorical “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 un-
serer Seite abgewehrt werden . . . Einzelkämpfer. . . . In erster Linie
soll FSN der nationalen Bewegung zur Kontaktaufnahme und Einbind-
ung 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 angespro-
chen 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 po-
litical 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 at-
tack on our project. This attack really happened, but it could be fought
off without casualties on our side . . . lone fighter . . . FSN should pri-
marily 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 . . .
will make an important contribution to the ‘Reconquista’ of our na-
tive land”. Patrick Schröder, NPD. Interview on the new internet-radio
FSN. Deutsche Stimme, 6.6.2011)
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 expres-
sion for decades: »German Angst«. But German, too, is rich enough in
expressions to state concisely what is driving our country: pure mad-
ness. 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 meta-
phors. 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 con-
tained aggressive antisemitic (metaphorical) utterances. Likewise, in right-
wing 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 (“para-
sites”; 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 argumenta-
tion and political discourse, we wish to focus on some patterns of causal
arguments. Again, these schemes are used in a specific way by representa-
tives of the extreme right, although they are omnipresent and extremely
important within any kind of political discourse.
Without being able to deal with all the complexities of the concept of cau-
sality (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. B regularly follows A
2. A occurs earlier than (or at the same time as) B
3. A is changeable/could be changed
4. 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 condi-
tions 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 ac-
tions 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 pur-
poseful 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 al-
most 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 conclu-
sions 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.
The strategic manoeuvring with (elements of) causal argument schemes
that allow such conclusions is, most of the time, in danger of becoming fal-
lacious. 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 perpe-
trator 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 politi-
cal problems and dangers. This monocausal reductionism is explicitly racist
(antisemitic) in the case of neo-Nazi discourse and is directed against politi-
cians, 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 vari-
ety 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 pro-
gramme 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 Verein-
heitlichung und Zentralisierung der europäischen Währungen zentral
an der gegenwärtigen Finanz- und Staatsschuldenkrise schuld sind, ver-
suchen nunmehr mit eben weiterer und verschärfter Zentralisierung,
die Krise zu lösen.
(“At the moment the top “Eurocrats” are trying doggedly to replace
one evil with another. They, who through the hasty unification and cen-
tralisation 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 specu-
lators. 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 Arbeit-

splätzen, Sozialwerken, Integration, Sicherheit, Bildungs- und Gesund-
heitswesen, Infrastrukturen, Verkehr, Raumplanung und Umwelt.
(“The pressure of immigration creates huge problems: with employ-

ment, social benefits, integration, security, education and public health,
infrastructure, traffic, regional development planning and environ-
ment”. 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 analy-
sis 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
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 particu-
larly common in (extremist) right-wing discourse. We argue that (extremist)
right-wing populists use the war metaphor more frequently than other poli-
ticians 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 dis-
coursal comparison of democracy with mental illness and the use of aggres-
sive 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 quali-
tative 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 investiga-
tion 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. Look-
ing at extreme right activities in Germany and Austria, we get the alarming
feeling that it has.
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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 second-
ary-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 sig-
nificant 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 as-
signing 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 Forma-
tion 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 is-
sues 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 ma-
jority of them were published for use in primary schools. Studies of etiquette
books for children and adults have examined different aspects of the con-
struction 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, na-
tional identity, racism, abuse of power, linguistic strategies of persuasion
and manipulation, among other topics (Atienza Cerezo, 2011; Atienza Cer-
ezo 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 set-
ting, 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 differ-

ent 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 ideologi-
cal 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 con-
trol 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 Cau-
dillo, 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 in-
fluences that made up la Falange Española did not become a long-standing
124 Derrin Pinto
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 interna-
tional acceptance. The preliminary makeovers eventually led to concrete re-
sults 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, maga-
zines 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 Ger-
many (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 ter-
rorist 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 inter-
nal 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 reli-
gious indoctrination based on morality (de Miguel, 1991) but also provided
an outlet for teaching the proper conduct for other activities of religious life,
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 ele-
ments, 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 ab-
solute 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 is-
sues 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 teach-
ings of the New State, the Youth Front (el Frente de Juventudes) was cre-
ated 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 tar-
geting 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 pre-
military 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, in-
creasingly 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
126 Derrin Pinto
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 logi-
cal 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 in-
doctrination 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 concep-
tualization 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 vulner-
able 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 cur-
ricular 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.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Ideology
With the goal of investigating how politeness formed part of the ideologi-
cal 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 dis-
course. For the first phase, the components formulated by van Dijk (1998)
are applied to study the ideas and beliefs that the authors attempt to trans-
mit through the texts. Van Dijk establishes a set of criteria for the organiza-
tion 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 legiti-
mizes 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 dis-
course of politeness since it provides validity and normative respectability
for the behaviour that is being prescribed and proscribed (Berger and Luck-
mann, 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 ref-
erences 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,
128 Derrin Pinto
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 think-
ing and feeling in conformity with ideology and religion’ (66). The author
who wants to control the reader tries to influence the decision-making pro-
cess 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 cer-
tain social practices are valid, while control implies one additional step—the
desire to influence the norms of behaviour that the members of a group as-
similate. In accordance with this perspective, the objective of legitimation is
to induce the reader to think a certain way, while control involves persuad-
ing 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 sim-
ple 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 es-
tablish that not all of the members of a society are equal; consequently, they
do not have the same rights, opportunities or access to resources. This factor
is crucial for politeness since, as previously emphasized, one of the func-
tions 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 real-
ity, 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 ex-
aggerated 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 in-
structions 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 peo-
ple 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 nor-
mas, 1959: 9)
(4) When we address the Head of State, the high dignitaries of the Gov-
ernment, 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 es-
colar ‘Estudio’, 1966: 746)
130 Derrin Pinto
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 obser-
vations. 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 man-
ners, 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 re-
lations 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 text-
books, this time related to place of residence. The discourse of the texts fa-
vours 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 repug-
nance, 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 re-
ligious activities are integrated under norms of politeness. One of the
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 im-
plication, 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 Su-
preme 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 en-
tering 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 oth-
ers, 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 teach-
ing of greetings (10) and introductions (11), students are given a conscious-
ness 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 intro-
duces 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 for-
mative value on their own, given that they mould from the outside
132 Derrin Pinto
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 en-
tail 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 cu-
rious 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. Ulti-
mately 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 miser-
able 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 as-
pect is involved, one can distinguish between varying degrees of ideological
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 Father-
land’ 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 accep-
tance 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, modera-
tion, 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 ob-
ligation. 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
134 Derrin Pinto
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 evalua-

tions (‘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 situ-
ation, with each person, in order to act in the correct way. (Edu-
cación 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 al-
ways be like this. Impersonal obligation (‘must always be different’) is also
employed:
(22) Women also have received special consideration, a heightened at-

tention from males, thus the way men treat women must always be
different from the way men treat other men. (Educación fundamen-
tal, 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 be-
tween 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 demon-

strate our formation, in its multiple aspects. (Valverde, 1966: 10)
The use of proverbs, which appear frequently in the corpus, is another strat-
egy that implies the authority of tradition; even these contain expressions
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 in-
stance, 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 con-
sisting 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 con-
trol 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
136 Derrin Pinto
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 fam-
ily 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, re-
spect and obedience for parents and teachers; attention to their ex-
planations. 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 caution-
ary 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 frag-
ment (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:
(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 ac-
cidently 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 op-
portunity 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. ‘With-
out 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 rep-
etition of mechanisms of legitimation and control contributes to a per-
suasively 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 dictator-
ship 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 pub-
lished during a conservative dictatorship during the middle of the 20th cen-
tury. In 2006, the Spanish government passed a controversial law (la Ley
Orgánica 2/2006), requiring obligatory courses, Education for Citizenship
138 Derrin Pinto
and Civics (Buletín Oficial del Estado, www.boe.es). The objectives pro-
posed 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 ear-
lier analysis was the idea of membership. Both of the contemporary texts
make a noticeable effort to present an all-inclusive membership, emphasiz-
ing 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’ (Ma-
teos et al., 2009). It is difficult to read this text and to look at the accompa-
nying illustration without seeing how it emerges from and simultaneously
incites the modern-day paranoia surrounding immigration (see Atienza Cer-
ezo, 2011, for a recent study on the portrayal of immigrants in recent Span-
ish 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 citi-
zenship 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 fos-
ter all-inclusive membership.
The values put forth in the two contemporary texts are obviously not an-
chored 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. In-
terestingly, 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
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 cor-
pus, 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, be-
sides 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 gov-
ernment 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 mecha-
nisms 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 mea-
sures 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 curricu-
lum of the Education for Citizenship program with that of the Formation
140 Derrin Pinto
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 differ-
ences, 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 sys-
tem, it could be considered that ‘being polite’ was basically equivalent to
acting according to the rules and norms established by both the totalitar-
ian 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 mean-
ing’, 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
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 tradi-
tions and customs to justify its legitimacy. Nevertheless, traditions and cus-
toms are not necessarily ethical or deserving of imitation given that they can
hide behaviour that runs contrary to civic-mindedness, such as sexist prac-
tices 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 con-
trol; 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: Dis-

curso, identidad y nación en los manuales escolares de historia y de ciencias soci-
ales, edited by Teresa Oteíza and Derrin Pinto (2011) and published by Editorial
Cuarto Propio (Santiago, Chile).
142 Derrin Pinto
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.
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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
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 them-
selves 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 com-
pletely 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 Aus-
trian 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 in-
herently historical or diachronic element. These far-right parties are posing
as modernizers, as if they are distinctly new parties, but, beneath the sur-
face, the links with the fascist past are preserved. Such parties cannot pres-
ent 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 particu-
larly 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 demo-
cratic party even when it is not part of a governing coalition. This means
outwardly disavowing connections with the pre-democratic totalitarian re-
gimes 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 actu-
ally 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 re-
placed 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 opposi-
tion, free speech and individual freedoms. Salazar particularly appealed to
conservative Catholics and the rural right wing. In some respects, this distin-
guished 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 Sec-
ond 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. Sala-
zar 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
148 Cristina Marinho and Michael Billig
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). Left-
wing analysts often stress the anticommunist, totalitarian and antidemo-
cratic nature of fascism, while right-wingers sometimes define ‘fascism’ in
ways that suggest parallels or similarities with socialism. Certainly, Por-
tuguese 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 catego-
rized as fascist cannot be divorced from political considerations. As we will
see, left-wingers in the context of Portuguese politics have had no hesita-
tion 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 de-
mocracy 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 cen-
trist. 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
(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 Caeta-
no’s Minister for Justice, he nevertheless worked as a solicitor for the Cham-
ber 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 support-
ers 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
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 construc-
tion 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 opin-
ion, 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 posi-
tion 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 govern-
ment 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 pres-
ence 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 ab-
sences 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 pro-
testations, 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 Parlia-
ment held a formal ceremony of celebration. The ceremony brought to-
gether 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 Revo-
lution. 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
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 analy-
ses of analogous ceremonies, see Ensink and Sauer, 2003; Tileagă, 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 over-
throw 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 celebra-
tion, 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 un-
inhibited 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 re-
ports. 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 pro-
vide a means for documenting the ambivalence that the party often avoids
expressing. The party’s website and official propaganda might avoid men-
tioning 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
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 ma-
tured into an annual ritual with expected, customary behaviour—are in-
structive. The leader of the centre-left Socialist Party in Parliament, Salgado
Zenha, a notable anti-fascist, offered typically direct rhetoric. After the ini-
tial greetings, he began his speech unambiguously: ‘During almost a half-
century, 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 Revolu-
tion. 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 deliver-
ing 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
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 con-
science. 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 patri-
otic essence’. It sounds impressive—and it sounds, at first hearing, suitably
revolutionary. The acceptable value terms are in place—‘democratic’, ‘pop-
ular’, ‘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 ele-
ments 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 sov-
ereignty 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
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 free-
dom. It was the people who had got used to not deciding things for them-
selves. 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 specifi-
cally 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 lib-
erating message’ and ‘freeing themselves from the totalitarian yokes of con-
trasting 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 ‘totalitar-
ian’ 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 duplici-
tous 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) ignor-
ing 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 manipu-
late their audience by changing and avoiding particular themes. In doing
this, analysts need to examine particular examples in rhetorical depth, using
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 cele-
brations 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 cel-
ebration. Unlike in 1977, the CDS-PP was in government, as the junior
party in a coalition with the centre-right Partido Social Democrata (Demo-
cratic 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 revolution-
ary 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, Presi-
dent Xanana Gusmão: ‘I begin by greeting the President of the Republic of
East Timor, who wanted to honour us with his presence at this commemo-
ration of the thirtieth Anniversary of April 25’. Correia is doing more than
personally greeting the President. In this sentence, he switches from first-
person 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)
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 in-
dicate 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 embar-
rassing 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 Revo-
lution 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 rhetori-
cal 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 anniver-
sary 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 re-
gime. Twenty years takes East Timor and Gusmão back only to the antico-
lonial struggle against Indonesia. Correia’s admiration stops there.
In this way, Correia seems to be orchestrating Parliament in a celebra-
tory 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.
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’ be-
cause 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 im-
mobilization’ 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 Revo-
lution: 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 ‘im-
passe’ 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, Cor-
reia 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 pe-
riod. 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.
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 pre-
senting its version of the past, the CDS-PP speaker was glossing over the
previous regime. References were not more specific than ‘situation of im-
passe’ 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 mean-
ing 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 cere-
mony. 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 criticis-
ing, 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
previous regime. Instead, his speech was, in effect, a catalogue of nonspe-
cific 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 men-
tioned 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 Cor-
reia, 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 al-
lowed 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 Sala-
zar 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 deter-
mination 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 ambiva-
lences of his predecessors. He may have paid homage to the ‘militaries’, but
he did not specifically pay homage to the Revolution that those militaries di-
rected. In fact, like his predecessors, he spoke lengthily and critically about
the postrevolutionary period. He referred to it as ‘totalitarian’, which is ar-
guably 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 na-
tion 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
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 obliga-
tion 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 re-
quest 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 annu-
ally. 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 Tec-
nologia (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).
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9 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 main-
stream political argument prominent at the end of the 19th century and dur-
ing the Vichyist era to a form of prejudice today that is vigorously combated
by public policies and civil society organizations. A central dimension of pre-
war fascist discourses, it was gradually banned from public discourses fol-
lowing 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 dis-
appeared 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 re-
newed threat: from the hideous abduction and murder in 2006 of a young
Jew by a self-proclaimed “barbarian gang” led by a Black criminal, Yous-
souf 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 Jew-
ish 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
164 Brigitte Beauzamy
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 su-
premacists 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 coun-
tries. 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 move-
ments 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 paradoxi-
cal 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 dif-
fers 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 poli-
ties 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 main-
stream 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 men-
tions (Rufin 2004, p. 15) the “stable diminution of the share of extreme-
right-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 cate-
gory is the most disputed: “anti-Semitism by proxy” committed by “facilita-
tors whom through their opinions—or their silence—legitimize anti-Semitic
actions while being wary of not committing them themselves” (ibid., em-
phasis 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 pro-
moting 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 pe-
riphrases and metaphors that Israel is here not named but transparently al-
luded 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
antisemitism theory themselves—or even silence, in any case to the crimi-
nalization 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 con-
tribute to the extension of the category of antisemitism beyond any refer-
ence 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 dis-
courses through the lens of its continuities with the discourses of the fascist
era allows us to glimpse a very different landscape. Usually the French ex-
treme 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 con-
nected 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. Sub-
sequently, 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 ad-
miration” (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 en-
tirely 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
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 cleav-
age 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
objective of such threats is to prevent our Jewish compatriots from
hearing me, to prevent me from telling them that they have nothing to
fear from the FN, on the contrary. That we are not anti-Semitic . . . but
patriots and because of that we defend all the French whoever they are
and wherever they come from provided that they share our love for
France, its culture, its values. So one threatens to kill, and uses fascist,
anti-democratic and anti-Republican methods. For years, certain com-
munitarian associations such as the UEJF, the CRIF and others have
been artificially feeding the fear of the FN among our Israelite compa-
triots. . . . (http://www.frontnational.com/?tag=antisemitisme)
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 extreme-
right 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 disclaim-
ers 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 xeno-
phobic nature of the claim the appearance of “realism”, “truth”, or “com-
mon 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.
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, insinua-
tions or blatant expressions of negationism were rare but regular features
of the leader’s speeches, never failing to generate public debate, heated criti-
cism 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 organi-
zation (Milza 1994, p. 43). Moments such as the annual Bleu-Blanc-Rouge
(BBR) gathering organized by the party from 1981 to 2007 are here particu-
larly 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 anti-
semitic 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, al-
lowing 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
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 ne-
ologism “globalism” actually predated the wide use of the word “global-
ization” (“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 argu-
ments and antisemitic denunciations of global capitalism. The suffix “ism”
suggests that there is an ideology behind the global interconnectedness char-
acteristic 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 global-
ism, 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 refor-
mulation 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 con-
tinuity 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
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 every-
thing 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 for-
mulations 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 com-
plex: 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 ab-
stracted into the “world economic order” or called the “monstrous fruit
of the European culture” (Seidel 1981, quoting Guillaume Faye, a promi-
nent 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 con-
veyed in seemingly neutral discursive strategies, such as through compari-
sons. 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 hos-
tility in ND texts, replaced with an appeal to objectivity, an element that
de Benoist was quite blunt about: “A political movement is so to speak
condemned to doublespeak (‘double discours’): the necessities of propa-
ganda 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 (Duranton-
Crabol 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 di-
rectly 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 un-
dermined 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 ex-
pressed 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 antitaxa-
tion 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 argu-
ments 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 commu-
nicate with another through oblique references. Allusions create a shared
understanding; yet, an inherent problem with implicit meanings is that they
may not be understood correctly by the untrained reader. Propagating an-
tisemitic 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 problem-
atic 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 represen-
tations, 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 ar-
gument 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 pejora-
tive 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 impor-
tant 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 reach-
ing 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
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 ap-
proach to the understanding of texts, in which it is acceptable not to under-
stand 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 po-
litical 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 commu-
nity 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
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 Re-
port 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 dis-
plays 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 pres-
ents Blacks as inferior while depicting Whites and Jews as superior.15 He
preached in favor of the conversion of French Blacks to an Egyptian Ato-
nian 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 de-
tailed 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 char-
acterized 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 contrib-
uted 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 rapproche-
ment 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 an-
cient secrets and perennial hidden truths to explain the poor situation of
contemporary French Blacks. Jews (sometimes referred to in his speeches as
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). Clas-
sically 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 posi-
tive attribute, which supposedly belonged to Black people before being sto-
len from them: “Who are the Jews? A people born completely black” (ibid).
Seba’s homemade theological universe therefore mixes African suprem-
acy with antisemitism in a way which transcends religious boundaries—
characteristically, he claimed that being a Muslim should not prevent Af-
ricans 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 ex-
clamations 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 iden-
titarian fringe, he aims at portraying himself as the francophone voice of
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 anti-

Semitism 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 extreme-
right antisemitism should not be obscured even if new forms of antisemi-
tism 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 con-
temporary 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 her-
self 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 appro-
priation 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” radical-
right 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
met with great opposition from French historians who protested against
“memory laws”.
2. A narrative of the case and an analysis of its impact on the French Jewish com-
munity 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.
3. 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”.
4. 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.
5. 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 dis-
courses in their campaigns before the 2004 European elections.
6. Trained in psychiatry, Jean-Christophe Rufin is well known for his career
working with major hunger-relief NGOs and in diplomacy. At the time Domi-
nique de Villepin (UMP), then Minister of the Interior, commissioned the re-
port, Rufin had no previous experience of policymaking in the field of racism
and antisemitism.
7. This refers to the debates surrounding the UNESCO World Conference
Against Racism in 2001 and the antisemitic content of arguments against Is-
raeli occupation policies (see Taguieff 2010).
8. The Rufin report was, however, appropriated as a tool for mobilizations by
radical defenders of Israeli policies who wished to pursue the goal of crimi-
nalizing what they call “Israel bashing” and was discussed again seven years
later, for instance, by the webradio site Jerusalemplus.tv when a similar re-
port was produced in Belgium (http://www.jerusalemplus.tv/index.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=11753&Itemid=62).
9. This analysis draws on the material of a deliverable from the EU-funded
XENOPHOB project (Beauzamy and Naves 2005).
10. BBR speech 1997, available online at data.bnf.fr/12013472/jean-marie_le_pen/.
11. Ibid.
12. 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 (Em-
manuel Kreis, personal communication).
13. 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).
14. 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 as-
sociated 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 biogra-
phy goes beyond the scope of this essay, it is worth noticing that, after having
been identified as a leftist anti-imperialist, he became associated with the radi-
cal right. His connections to Jean-Marie Le Pen himself were particularly ap-
parent 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.
15. 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 Jew-
ish convert, Edouard Guershon Nduwa, engaged in a theological comment
on the malediction of Cham, arguing that it had been misrepresented as anti-
Black and pro-Jewish. This fitted within a more general advocacy addressed
to French Jewish religious authorities and aimed at raising awareness of anti-
Black racism in Jewish prayer books and congregations.
16. At the time of the dissolution of the Tribu Ka, Seba had already declared that
he “appealed to the wretched of Zionism”.
17. 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.
18. See http://archives-fr.novopress.info/5598/kemi-seba-«-je-lance-un-appel-a-
tous-les-damnes-du-sionisme-»/.
19. Although this claim is debatable in the French case, since many French Blacks
are actually of Antillean descent.
20. See http://www.egaliteetreconciliation.fr/Kemi-Seba-Black-Panthers-Nouvel-
Ordre-Mondial-et-le-New-Black-Panther-Party-11175.html.
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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 dis-
cursive 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 consid-
ered 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 fol-
lowing 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 resur-
gence. Now comes confirmation from the pen of Mr Colin Cross who,
in his book on the pre-war Fascist movements in Britain and by newspa-
per articles has become the accepted authority amongst establishment
political commentators on Right-Wing politics.
182 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 move-
ments, 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 open-
ing 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 character-
istics 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 Parliamen-
tary 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 imply-
ing 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, specifi-
cally 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 histori-
cal 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 pro-
cesses of negotiation’ (Reisigl and Wodak 2001: 41), such as turn-taking,
citation of multiple voices and opinions and so on. With regard to multi-
modal materials, such as the BNP’s newspaper COMBAT, co-textual analy-
sis 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 perspec-
tive. 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 analy-
sis 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 particu-
lar 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 con-
ventionally understood—the broad and complex interactions of people, or-
ganizations, 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 develop-
ment 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 Ar-

nold Leese, the leaders of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and the Impe-
rial 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).
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 deporta-
tion, 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 Sur-
vival, 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 insti-
gated 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
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 ar-
rested 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 mar-
riage 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 oppor-
tunity to rebrand the BNP, attempting to put clear blue water between his
‘racial nationalism’ and Jordan and Tyndall’s move towards violent sub-
version. 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 organisa-
tions competing on Britain’s fascist fringe. Clearly, this was unsustainable,
and so, in February 1967, the LEL, the BNP and members of the pres-
sure group the Racial Preservation Society agreed on a merger, forming the
British Union of
Fascists and Chesterton League of Empire Jordan White Defence
National Loyalists 1954 League 1957
Socialist 1936 National
Tyn Labour
d all
Party 1958
Bud
Patriotic Party
den
of True Tories Jo
rda
1962 British n+
Mosley
Tyn
British League of National da
Ex-Servicemen ll
Party 1960
1944
Racial National Socialist
Preservation Movement 1962
Union Society 1965 Greater Britain ll
da
Jordan
Movement Movement n
Ty
1948–73 1964
National Front
Action Party 1967
1973–75 British Movement
Union 1968–1984[?]
Movement New National
1975–1978 Front 1980
Yorkshire Campaign
to Stop Immigration
1969–72
League of British Campaign to British Whole party incorporated

St George 1974 Stop Immigration 1972 National
Party only partly incorporated
Party 1982
Members’ delayed incorporation
(Adapted from Troyna, 1982)
Figure 10.1 Post-war development of British Fascist parties.

National Front (NF). At the inaugural meeting of the NF, in 1967, Ches-
terton (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 news-
paper 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 re-
mainder 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 articula-
tion 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, in-
dependent of both the American money power and the tyranny of
Communism. (‘Principles of the NLP,’ COMBAT, Issue 1, Autumn
1958, p. 8)
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 fas-
cism: 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 ‘Jew-
ish’ 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 co-
loured influx, and to establish a Britain for the British wherein perma-
nent 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 Na-
tion’, 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 So-
cialist. 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 devel-
opment 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 benefi-
cial 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 con-
cept 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 ‘non-
Northern 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
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 politi-
cal 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 lieu-
tenant 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 Pal-
estine 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 mil-
lion’, 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’. Specifi-
cally, the
. . . Union Movement is inadequate and unreliable on the fundamental

question of the Jews—fundamental because Jewish power over Brit-
ain 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 fa-
vourite 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.
. . . Those members of Union Movement who, though they are anti-
Jewish themselves, are prepared to defend its attitude of avoiding ap-
pearing 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 Mos-
cow 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 ex-
plain 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, Jor-
dan’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? In-
deed, this glaring ‘fact’ is indexed by the claim that the loci of Jewish Inter-
national 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.
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 activi-
ties were worrying Bean. At an emergency meeting of the National Council
in February 1962, Bean and Fountaine tried to eject Jordan as National Or-
ganiser. 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, tak-
ing 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 extermi-
nation 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. How-
ever, the aims are now euphemized and recoded into more expedient politi-
cal 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 ‘politi-
cal, 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
(coded) support for nationalism in the face of ‘a common enemy’, which
incorporates a significant shift in referential strategy. Gone are the refer-
ences to Jews and Jewish power; instead, those interfering in British politics
are identified by geographical location and political-ideological commit-
ment: ‘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 geopo-
litical 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 news-
paper or the texts on sale via the party’s bookshop, Kinsman Books. How-
ever, 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 identi-
fied ‘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 is-
lands 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
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 Foun-
taine, it is not members’ ‘dedication and fanaticism to the cause’, even to
the NSDAP, which are of concern but rather the manifestation of such com-
mitments 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 it-

self 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 acknowl-
edge the existence of the Holocaust, in fact it presents a revisionist reading.
The scale of the ‘Final Solution’ is moderated and thereby implicitly ques-
tioned 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 Mil-
lion’, ‘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 actu-
ally 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 antise-
mitic conspiracy theorists, as indicated by the ways that the BNP focused
on it, reframing both its status as historic fact and its broader political sig-
nificance 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 Tac-
tics’, COMBAT, Issue 16 March-April 1962, p. 3). In its place, the BNP
elected to campaign more insistently on aim/purpose 1(b)—against ‘biologi-
cal 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-Au-
gust 1963; ‘IMMIGRATION: AN ELECTION ISSUE’, COMBAT, Issue
27, April-June 1964), the BNP was thoroughly and implacably opposed
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, anti-
immigration 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 (particu-
larly street crime/‘mugging’, drugs and sexual crime), of facing a financial
burden and of allowing in people who would take advantage of ‘our’ gen-
erosity. 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 cor-
rupted 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 in-

terests 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 Brit-
ish 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 poli-
ticians 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
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 understand-
ing of the basic principles of race that are involved. Certainly, we racial-
ists 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. (‘Pres-
ervation 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 ‘mongrelisa-
tion of our stock’ that inexorably follows). It is doubtful whether a family
recently migrated from the Commonwealth would have felt any less threat-
ened 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 con-
tinued white-rule in apartheid South Africa.
This inconsistency reveals the true commitment of the party, a commit-
ment which has continued through to the BNP of the present day (Rich-
ardson, 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. . . . How-
ever, it will not stop the BNP from continuing its struggle to see that all
non-European immigration is stopped and that positive steps are taken
to see the return of those already here. If we merely refer to ‘immi-
grants’, the British people will know that it is not a flood of Frenchmen,
Dutchmen or Australians that we are suffering, but Africans, West Indi-
ans and Asiatics! (‘KEEP BRITAIN WHITE! And to Hell with Wilson’s
Race Laws!’, COMBAT, Issue 32, May-June 1965, p. 1)
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 con-
tinually moderate their language whilst maintaining their political objectives
but also because it indexes the extent to which immigration had become thor-
oughly 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 commu-
nities, two things which the BNP obviously considered inherently malevo-
lent. 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!
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 nei-
ther ‘coloured’ nor an Englishman; logically, this entails a third category.
On initial examination, the binary categories that the BNP use in establish-
ing 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 alter-
natives, 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 some-
thing 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 appear-
ance 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 de-
scribed/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 repeat-
edly worked up the idea that Jews look different to ‘Us’ and through carica-
tured cartoons depicted the stereotypical features one can use to distinguish
‘Them’ from ‘Us’ (hooked noses, curly dark hair, round horn-rimmed spec-
tacles), 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 eco-
nomic domination. It was this ‘Jewish’ character of international finance
that was at the heart of the pseudo-anticapitalist arguments of British fas-
cism 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 re-
minded, 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
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 em-
pire 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, politi-
cal, 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 book-
stalls’. 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 vi-
ciously 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 pub-
lished the following article, wherein the BBC were incorporated in the inter-
national conspiracy:
. . . the so-called ‘British’ Broadcasting Corporation [is] one of the larg-

est, best organised and most blatant centres of Communist and anti-
White propaganda and subversion in this country. . . . In a recent Radio
Newsreel, describing the richly deserved execution of the Spanish Com-
munist 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 propa-
ganda 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
to ensure that the BBC News services really do become the representa-
tive 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 euphemis-
tically named ‘activities’. The author therefore offers an explicit compari-
son 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 equivoca-
tion of Eichmann’s active role in the Holocaust (contravening the language-
use 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 con-
trol 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 so-
cial 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 con-
spiratorial 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 dismiss-
ing 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
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 ex-
tracts 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 political-
economic 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 Brit-
ish fascist ideology allows for a ‘resolution of contradictions’ (Billig, 1978:
162). Opposition to ‘the Jew’ and Jewish political/economic/cultural influ-
ence is, according to fascist logic, the corollary of each of their core ideo-
logical 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 political-
economic 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 Rela-
tions Act (1965) but predominantly to present a moderate face to the British
public as an electorate and as a source of financial support. To contempo-
rary eyes, this perhaps does not appear a radical departure. Indeed, it was a
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 predom-
inantly 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 re-
contextualized into more palatable (i.e. coded and euphemised) forms for
contemporary audiences. Though the words are different, once their geneal-
ogy 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 oppo-
nents to further its goals. Fascism can rise to power as the ‘party of counter-
revolutionary despair’ (Trotsky 1969) during periods of hegemonic crisis and
working-class defeat.
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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 fa-
natical 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 sub-
stantial 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 organisa-
tions in the European post-Communist countries. The core of the debate
concerned whether the newly emerged extreme right was a direct descen-
dant 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 an-
tisemitic. Readers of the contemporary journals, websites and fanzines of
the extreme right find so many similarities in the antisemitic labels, stereo-
types 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 dic-
tatorship. 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.
204 András Kovács and Anna Szilágyi
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, examin-
ing 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 contempo-
rary websites, Barikad.hu and Kuruc.info, that belong to the current Hun-
garian 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, fol-
lowing 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 stereo-
typing, 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 an-
tisemitic 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 charac-
terized as antisemitic propaganda outlets, cultivating hardcore political
rhetoric.
Egyedül vagyunk [We are alone] was a biweekly newspaper which oper-
ated 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 govern-
ments 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
Variations on a Theme 205
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 op-
erated 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 Ques-
tion. 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 poli-
cies. 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, mirror-
ing perhaps the ‘literary character’ of the journal, the ‘overwhelmingly dom-
inant 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, econ-
omy, 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
Table 11.2 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Harc (May–July 1944)

Articles about world Jewry 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, typi-
cally 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 színésznő’) 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 Ala-
pítvány zsidó vonatkozásai’, Egyedül vagyunk, September 11), to the ‘half-
Jewish 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 identi-
fication 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 na-
tional context, a similar implication was made: the references created the
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, refer-
ences 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 élő mag-
yarok 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 an-
tisemitism 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 bűnözik 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 ‘con-
tamination’. 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 ex-
cerpt as a ‘human body’, while the ‘Jewish other’ was identified as a tox-
icant. These and other, similar metaphorical representations implied in a
powerful way that the implementation of the anti-Jewish policies was inevi-
table and necessary. Metaphors of illness suggested that the ‘Jewish other’
was not simply a threatening ‘ethnic other’ or a ‘political other’ but a dan-
gerous ‘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
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 occupa-
tion and by their ethnic origin. In these particular cases, the naming strat-
egies 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 ex-
ample, the ‘affluence of Hungarian Jews’ was regularly contrasted with the
‘poverty of Hungarians’, implying that the latter was the result of the for-
mer. Jewry was portrayed as the group that ‘stole from working Hungar-
ians’ (‘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 Hungar-
ians’ 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 intellectual-
ity’ 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 ste-
reotypes’ were frequently applied by Egyedül vagyunk and Harc. The fig-
ure 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 hon-
est 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 élő magyarok kiáltása:
Mentsenek meg minket a zsidó házastárstól!’, Harc, July 8).
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 con-
text, 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 let-
ters . . .’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 dis-
cussed earlier played a prominent role. Negative constructions of Jewish
‘dominance’, ‘intellectualism’, ‘parasitism’, ‘dishonesty’, ‘threat’ and ‘aber-
ration’ were often combined with metaphors of illness, disease and infec-
tion, suggesting in various contexts that Jews endanger Hungarians in a
physical sense. For instance, in one article, the stereotypes of ‘Jewish intel-
lectualism’ 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 con-
struction of Hungarian Jews as the ‘biological other’ in the articles. The ab-
solute 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 il-
lustrates well how derogatory stereotypes contributed to the victim-
victimizer 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
wealth, but also of smuggling into our political, societal, economic and cul-
tural 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 spe-
cific 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 impor-
tant 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 solu-
tion 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, dis-
ease and infection not only dehumanized discursively Hungarian Jews but
also argued for the necessity of their extermination. In the words of Bau-
man: ‘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 poli-
cies 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 Hungar-
ian public opinion should be aware of the real reason, sense and aim of
the self-defensive struggle against the Jewry’12 (‘Végső 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
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 em-
ployed 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. ‘threaten-
ing 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 re-
marks’13 (‘Mikor a fővárosból eltűnt 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 pre-
sented 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 disman-
tling of the taboo that had previously surrounded public display of anti-
semitism. 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
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 anti-
semitic 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 rea-
sonable 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’ di-
vision: ‘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 non-
mainstream outlet, using a harsh, insulting language close to that used by
openly Nazi forums. It is edited and written by anonymous authors. Eth-
nic 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 crim-
inality’. In recent years, even official attempts were made to ban the oth-
erwise 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 obvi-
ous 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 con-
tributing 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
Hungarian parliament. Barikád and Barikad.hu have since functioned as
‘unofficial’ forums for the party. Barikad.hu can be regarded as a ‘semi-
mainstream’ 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 out-
lets 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 world Jewry in the international context 13
Articles about world Jewry in the Hungarian context 3
Articles about Israel in the international context 50
Articles about Israel in the Hungarian context 6
Total 83
Table 11.4 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Kuruc.info ( June–August, 2011)

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
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 con-
nection 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 ad-
ditional 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 po-
litical 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 institu-
tions, which are identified as ‘Jewish’. Accentuating the self-other division,
the references to the ‘Hungarian self’ once again include the use of nati-
onyms and ethnonyms or plural personal pronouns. Meanwhile, the articles
also refer to the International Monetary Fund as ‘the Jewish financial insti-
tution’ (‘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 bankok-
ban?’, 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, cog-
nitive 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 ideologi-
cal 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
“minősítők” ’, 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 atomlétesít-
ményeit, Sarkozy “megelőző 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 referen-
tial strategies highlight, Israel is constructed by Barikad.hu and Kuruc.info
as the representative of global Jewry. Instead of the Israeli state, govern-
ment, population or military, the articles often refer to ‘Jews’ in general. In
some cases this occurs quite concretely: ‘The Jews [i.e. the Israeli govern-
ment] 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
of the Israeli defense minister]: Syria is responsible for the Israeli massa-
cres 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 készülő 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 Hun-
garian 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 [Presi-
dent of Israel] announced a few years ago that they will buy up Hungary’22
(‘Izraeli coming-out: Üzleti életünk szereplői 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 Palestin-
ians and Hungarians. ‘Many believe that in Hungary this [the Israeli aggres-
sion] would be impossible. Well, the Palestinian natives also believed this
when, 80 year ago, they sold land to Jewish “property developers”, inves-
tors, kibbutzim’23 (‘Mi lesz földjeinkkel? Csak Izraelben mintegy 140 ezer
magyar állampolgársággal is rendelkező 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 ‘gen-
eral 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 Hun-
garians 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 ‘Jew-
ish 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’.
In connection with the previous theme, Jews are often portrayed as ‘su-
pranational 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 ex-
president and current prime minister Putin does not represent the national
interest to the extent that many think he does. In our press review on Janu-
ary 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 Palestinian-
Israeli conflict. For instance, citing foreign sources, Kuruc.info associated
the Oslo massacre in July 2011 with Israel: ‘According to Iran Israel is be-
hind 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 hűtőbe nyolcéves fajtársát egy brooklyni zsidó,’
Kuruc.info, July 13). Additionally, the collective singular is applied in the par-
ticular context of sexual crime: ‘The orthodox Jew in Jerusalem pinched small
boys’ penises with pincers’29 (‘Kisfiúk hímvesszőjét 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.
Occasionally, this setting is supported by metaphors of illness, disease
and infection in the new far-right media. For instance, in the following quo-
tation published on Kuruc.info, Jews are identified as ‘parasites’ by a politi-
cian 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 mon-
eychangers 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 közeledő pénzügyi összeomlás-
ról’, Kuruc.info, July 26).
Similar to the newspapers of the 1940s, while creating a victim-
victimizerreversal, 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 Hun-
garian passport holders’31 (‘Mi lesz a földjeinkkel? Csak Izraelben mintegy
140 ezer magyar állampolgársággal is rendelkező 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 ‘gen-
eral 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 cri-
sis 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, im-
plying 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. None-
theless, interestingly, in the new media, for the most part, the topic of self-
defense 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 para-
phrased 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
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 per-
sistent 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 Pal-
estinian 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 gyanús-
nak vélt zsidókra lővő palesztin rendőrt’, 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 head-
line also illustrates, the Israel topic serves two opposing functions simulta-
neously: 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 mat-
ter 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
words, Kuruc.info does not try to refute accusations of racism; instead, it
puts forward explicitly racist arguments that justify and legitimize antisemi-
tism. 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 posi-
tive 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 busi-
ness and entertainment, identifying, for example, the extermination camps
in Sobibor and in Auschwitz as the ‘Sobibor Disneyland’ (‘sobibóri Disney-
land’) (‘Háborognak a zsidók: bezárták a sobibóri Disneylandet’, June 7)
and ‘the Auschwitz holiday camp’ (‘auschwitzi üdülőtábor’) (‘Az auschwitzi
üdülőtábor emléktárgyait dézsmálta meg egy zsidó házaspár—felfüggesztet-
tel megúszták’, June 25).
Additionally, connected with this theme, the compensation of Jewish vic-
tims 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 hig-
gyünk? A holokauszt-bizonyítás útvesztői’, 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 dif-
ferent 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 simi-
larities. A comparison of the stereotypes employed reveals a fundamental
continuity: in both periods, there is an emphasis in the texts on the histori-
cal 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 dan-
ger’ 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 ap-
pears 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 an-
nihilating the lethal parasite. However, in the second case, fending off the
danger implies a fight for emancipation and independence, for the realiza-
tion 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 seman-
tic patterns but also the function of the antisemitic discourse? Research-
ers 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
removal of the harmful influences of Jews and, indeed, of the Jews them-
selves as a prerequisite for the realization of their political goals.
The group-identity function of antisemitism is evident in both of the ana-
lyzed discourses, but it is a particularly prominent feature of the current dis-
course. This is succinctly expressed in texts authored by Krisztina Morvai, a
representative of the Hungarian far-right Jobbik Party in the European Par-
liament, and published on Barikad.hu: Setting ‘our kind [of people]’ (the in-
group) 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 im-
poverished 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 re-
gime” 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 hos-
pitals. . . . 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 cur-
rent antisemitic discourse, for constructing a narcissistic national self-image
and self-identity.
Nevertheless, the present-day antisemitic discourse is not simply a Hun-
garian type of generic antisemitism in which the antisemitic semantic, hav-
ing preserved its basic structures and functions, manifests itself in a new
context. The functions of the current antisemitic discourse can be best un-
derstood 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 re-
sult of its ability to find a common denominator that unites various groups
of voters in their support for the party. A strong anti-establishment atti-
tude seems to be the element that binds the various groups together. The
party correctly identified this factor and has based its program and election
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 opposi-
tion. This cleavage has been constructed by using such issues as the revision
of the post–World War I peace treaties (the Trianon Treaty), the discrimi-
nation 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 ele-
ments of the far-right discourse. Whereas each of the discourse elements un-
derlying 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 segrega-
tion 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 mobi-
lization 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 rec-
ognizable 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 phenom-

enon that the current antisemitic discourse represents a part of is largely
correct. Griffin referred to the radical far-right ideology as ‘the ethnocratic
perversion of liberalism’ (Griffin 2000: 163), that is, as an ideology that pur-
ports 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 dif-
ferent in the case of the Hungarian far right. In Western countries, if anti-
semitism 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 ‘normaliza-
tion and rehabilitation’ of fascism (Griffin 2000: 169) with a view to mak-
ing 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 dis-
courses 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.
4. ‘A mérgező anyagot ki kell vonni a nemzet testéből, amelynek egy részét—
főként a felső, arisztokratikus rétegét—megfertőzte, hogy aztán a meggyógyí-
tott nemzetszervezet keményen állhassa meg helyét a nagy történelmi próbán’.
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 behízelgő mo-
dorával 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 ólombetűvel. . . ’
9. ‘Ez az idegrendszerében beteg, szokásaiban és erkölcsében annyira idegen faj,
ma még mindig fehér köppenyben fertőzi népünk széles rétegeit’.
10. ‘Mi nem csak azzal vádoljuk a zsidóságot, hogy határt nem ismerő telhetetlen-
ségével, 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 elő, amelyekből, ha
nem sikerül társadalmunkat kigyógyítanunk, úgy a következmények valóság-
gal beláthatatlanok’.
11. ‘Tiszta már a fürdővízünk!’
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 részéről, hogy
voltaképpen olyan nagy bűnt követett-e el a zsidóság, hogy így kelljen la-
kolnia? . . . Hogy mivel tartozunk a zsidóságnak ezt mindannyian tudjuk,
sőt 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.
17. ‘Bár a ház őrizetből kiszabadul, az ügyészség álláspontja értelmében továbbra
sem utazhat szabadon a zsidó’.
20. 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 ezelőtt bejelentette,
hogy felvásárolják Magyarországot’.
23. ‘Ma sokan azt hiszik, hogy ez Magyarországon soha nem lesz lehetséges. Nos,
a palesztin őslakosok is ezt hitték 80 évvel ezelőtt, amikor földet adtak el
a zsidó “ingatlanfejlesztőknek”, befektetőknek, kibucoknak. Lehet, hogy ma
már másként cselekednének’.
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 műsorát, amelyben több orosz vezető is meg-
szólalt. 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’.
30. ‘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
ő kezükben volt, mert a pénzüktől függtek és szabadon dönthettek háború
vagy béke kérdésében’.
33. ‘Ilyen egyszerű. “A zsidóknak el kell menniük Ciszjordániából a francba!” ’
34. ‘[A]z egész nyugati világot végeredményben néhány dúsgazdag és rendkívül
befolyásos zsidó család tartja uralma alatt, akiknek a hatalma évszázadok
szívós cselszövésével szinte mértéktelenre nőtt. Ne tévesszen meg senkit, hogy
a globalizált világban rendkívül sok szereplő van jelen, a háttérben mindig is a
“nagyok” hozzák a döntéseket’.
35. ‘Izraeli katonák rendszeresen lőnek mindenkire, akit “gyanúsnak találnak”,
s ezt szinte soha nem követi semmilyen vizsgálat. Most egy palesztin rendőr
tett így—le is csukták’.
38. ‘[A] krematóriumok kapacitása és a kokszfelhasználás alapján (és persze
számos más okból), nem volt lehetséges a gázkamrákban zajló tömeges
megsemmisítés’.
39. ‘Döntéseiket mindig az diktálja, hogy akkor és ott aktuálisan mi az, ami éppen
“bejön”, ami számukra hasznos, azaz pénzt vagy hatalmat hoz. A közös ér-
tékrendet pótolja tehát az ANTIFÁZÁS és a magyargyűlölet, a Magunkfajták
rendszabályozásának egyéb formái’.
40. ‘A Magukfajták szófogadó alattvalóknak, szolgáknak, cselédeknek (szánnak
bennünket) az elszegényedett, megnyomorított, harmadik világbeli gyarmattá
tett Magyarországon’.
41. ‘Ha bennünk a Maguk ötven évnyi kommunizmusa után maradt volna egy
szemernyi is az ősi magyar virtusból, akkor az ún “rendszerváltás” után a
Magukfajták nem csomagolták volna ki legendás bőröndjeiket, amik állítólag
készenlétben álltak. Nem. Bőröndöstül 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!’
42. 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).
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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 instrumental-
ization 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 pro-
duction 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 Ukrai-
nian 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 req-
uisitions 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
The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right 229
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 Ban-
derites, OUN(b). Both wings enthusiastically committed to the new fascist
Europe. In June 1941, the OUN(b) made an attempt to establish a Ukrai-
nian state as a loyal satellite of Nazi Germany (Rossoliński-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 dep-
uty, supported “the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing
German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine, barring their assimila-
tion 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 set-
tled 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
230 Per Anders Rudling
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 pub-
lisher. 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, aim-
ing 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 totali-
tarians, the OUN(b) cooperated mostly with Franco’s Spain, Chiang Kai-
Shek’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 com-
mitment 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 atroci-
ties, instead presenting the organization as composed of democrats and plu-
ralists who had rescued Jews during the Holocaust. The diaspora narrative
was contradictory, combining celebrations of the supposedly anti-Nazi resis-
tance 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 counter-
parts in some other post-Soviet states, Ukrainian “nationalizing” historians
did not have to invent new nationalist myths but re-imported a narrative de-
veloped 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 Bez-
peki Ukrainy, the Ukrainian Security Service) formal propagandistic du-
ties 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
combined his position as government-appointed memory manager with ultra-
nationalist 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 his-
tory 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 myth-
makers 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 nar-
rative of suffering (the famine) and resistance (the OUN-UPA) leading to
redemption (independence, 1991). Curiously, Yushchenko’s legitimizing his-
torians 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 sym-
bols and uses the past to provide legitimization and to mobilize the popula-
tion 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 anti-
Jewish 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 antise-
mitic 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
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 self-

consciousness 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 heno-
fondu 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 physi-
cal 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 Rossoliński-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
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 Kulińska.
Ukrainian statehood” was re-enacted in Lviv as a popular festival, where par-

ents 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 post-
Soviet 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 restau-
rant 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 entrepre-
neur and a graduate of the Ivan Franko University. Nazaruk argues that
“Our cafes confirm myths. People need this. . . . It is a transmission of
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 rac-
ism 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 Libera-
tion Movement and by the OUN(b)-affiliated Ukrainian Youth Movement, Kyiv,
January 2012. A nationalist salute was required by the door, the dress code stipu-
lated “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 Copy-
right Lucyna Kulińska.
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, shot-
guns, 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 Kubijovyč. In the Lviv city hall,
Svoboda is currently working to have the Lviv airport renamed after Ban-
dera. 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 National-
ists (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 Social-
National Party of Ukraine through the merger of a number of ultra-
nationalist 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.
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 Kulińska.
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’ko-
zhydivs’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 Yush-
chenko 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 far-
right 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 conti-
nuity, as well as organization and political culture (Shekhovtsov, 2011b:
13–14). Presenting Svoboda as the successor of Dontsov and the OUN, Ti-
ahnybok 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 (Olszański, 2011).
Svoboda subscribes to the OUN tradition of national segregation and de-
mands the re-introduction of the Soviet “nationality” category into Ukrai-
nian 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 con-

spiracies with anti-Semitic undertones. In August 2011, in an apparent at-
tempt to distance themselves from the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring
Breivik, Svoboda claimed that he was a Jewish Mason (Redkolehiia chaso-
pysu “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 Svo-
boda 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: Righ-
twing 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 Kulińska.
minority in Galicia. For instance, on the site of Huta Pieniacka, Svoboda has
placed a huge billboard denying the conclusion of both Polish and Ukrai-
nian 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 collab-

orates with Narodowego Odrodzenia Polski (NOP) and other European
ultra-nationalist and neo-fascist movements (Pankowski, “Polsko-ukraińska
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 Na-
tional 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 fas-
cination 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 terri-
tory, 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 sev-
eral of its leading figures (“Diial’nist Kanads’koho predstavnytstva ‘Svo-
body,’ ” 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 veter-
ans of the Waffen-SS Galizien call themselves (“Esesovtsy nagradil lidera
ukrainskikh natsionalistov,” 2010). Following the conviction and sentenc-
ing 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, Ul-
rich Busch, presenting the death camp guard as a hero, a victim of persecu-
tion, 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 col-

laborators is accompanied by ideological claims that the OUN-UPA con-
ducted an anti-Nazi resistance struggle against Hitler (Rudling, 2011c: 40).
Yurii Mykhal’chyshyn (b. 1982), Tiahnybok’s adviser on ideological mat-
ters, Svoboda’s top name in the election to the Lviv city council and its candi-
date 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 tol-
erance a crime” and that “We value the truth of the spirit and blood over-
all 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 par-
ticularly 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 pa-
rades under black banners with SS symbols resemble the political rituals
Figure 12.6 “We are Banderites!” Political propaganda of the autonomous nation-
alists, glorifying assaults on perceived enemies. Image Copyright Lucyna Kulińska.
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 “Transforma-
tion 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 conserva-
tive revolutionary Ernst Jünger14 (Olszański, 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 na-
tionalists coordinate their activities with the extreme-right parties while re-
taining 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 cam-
paign “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 con-

duct a constant struggle for the destruction of all normal people, which
takes place through the dissolution of nations, classes, and races. In
other words, a total and permanent national, class, and racial war of
destruction has been declared against the Ukrainians: they are trying
to liquidate us as a community of blood and spirit, as the social type
of worker-warrior and anthropological type. The social-nationalist
Weltanschauung is based exclusively on positive values: Freedom.
Totality. Force. Dedication. Justice. Hierarchy. Order. Authority. Dis-
cipline. Brotherhood. Faith. Sacrifice. Pride. Messianism[Mesianstvo].
Faithfulness. Passionate dedication. Equality. Non-conformity. Hatred.
Passion. The desire for something greater than yourself. The impos-
sible. At the same time, the social-nationalist Weltanschauung is formed
through opposition to negative, anti-people, and anti-national phenom-
ena of today, raising its battle banners against the land gains of the
enemy spirit: Anti-bourgeoism, anti-capitalism, anti-globalism, anti-
democratism, anti-liberalism, anti-bureaucratism, anti-dogmatism.
(“Aksiomy sotsial-natsionalizmu,” 2011)
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 Ukrai-
nian 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 narra-
tive 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
(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 collec-

tion of some of the key ideological texts of his movement, bringing to-
gether 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 con-
tains 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 So-
cialist 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 intellec-
tual 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 Fou-
cault, 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 symp-
tomatic of the situation, as few people within the Lviv intellectual elite are
ready to acknowledge the fact that Mykhal’chyshyn places the OUN ideol-
ogy in a historically accurate context, in line not only with how both schol-
ars of fascism and the OUN leadership perceived the OUN and their fascist
contemporaries.
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 sen-
sational performance in the elections for the Ternopil regional Rada in
March 2009, where it received 34.69 per cent of votes cast. The most re-
spected Ukrainian mass media, like TV Channel 5 and the popular talk
shows, such as Evgenii Kiselev’s Velyka polityka and Savik Shuster’s Shus-
ter 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, Yush-
chenko 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 in-
creased 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 Ukrai-
nian Division “Galicia.” They defended Ukraine.” Image Copyright Lucyna Kulińska.
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 smolosky-
pnoho 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 Svo-
boda and the “autonomous nationalists.” Nearly 700 participants (the or-
ganizers 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 Ukrai-
nian nationalism.” (“U L’vovi proishov marsh,” 2011; “Marsh Velychy
Dukhu,” 2011).
Figure 12.8 Lviv, April 28, 2011; March in commemoration of the 68th anniver-
sary 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 Kulińska.
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 Kulińska.
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
Kulińska.
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 representa-
tives 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 Olszański at the Polish Center for Eastern Studies suggests that
Svoboda could be utilized as a sort of ultra-nationalist bogeyman to mobi-
lize Yanukovych’s electorate (Olszański, 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 ultra-
nationalist activism is silently accepted by much of the intellectual establish-
ment: “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 anti-
Semitic) jokes, but nearly nobody speaks up and organizes against this dis-
grace” (Amar, 2011b; see also Amar 2011a).
The frantic nationalizing activities under Yushchenko were partly car-
ried out by ultra-nationalist activists, who denied the fascist ideology of the
OUN(b), obfuscated atrocities and rehabilitated perpetrators of mass eth-
nic 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, demo-
cratic 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.
Like the Hungarian Jobbik, Svoboda draws its powers from nationalist my-
thology of great heroes and self-vicitimization. As in the case of Svoboda’s
Hungarian sister party, these sentiments have grown out of right-wing, revi-
sionist history departments. From its base in the western part of the country,
Svoboda is now making inroads also into other regions of Ukraine. If cur-
rent 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
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
Kulińska for generously sharing the visual material used in this chapter. The
usual disclaimers apply.
1. On the historiography of the 1932–1933 famine, see Marples (2007: 35–77)
and Snyder (2010: 53).
2. 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).
3. See, for instance, ABN Correspondence, 28 (2/3) (1977): 7; ABN Correspon-
dence, 30(4) (1979): 14; ABN Correspondence, 18(1) (1967): 33.
4. 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).
5. See Bolianovs’kyi, 2000: 230, citing The Journal for Historical Review; Land-
wehr, 1985; and Bolianovs’kyi, 2003: 10, 14, 152. On The Journal for His-
torical Review and Landwehr, see Lipstadt, 1994: 137–156.
6. 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.
7. 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 Social-
National Party, between 1989 and 1991 (Kuzio 2010).
8. 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).
9. For an image of the billboard, with its full text, see Rudling (2012a: 368).
10. 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 pro-
cess, see Benz, 2011.
11. “L’vovskii deputat prognoziruet”, 2011. Blue and white are the colors of
Yanukovych’s ruling Party of Regions.
12. Mykhal’chyshyn, 2009. PNF, Partido Nazionale Fascista, the National Fascist
Party, was the political party of Benito Mussolini.
13. Olszański (2011): The number 88 is neo-Nazi code for the National Socialist
salute Heil Hitler. Nachtigall was a OUN(b)-led Ukrainian battalion in Ger-
man 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 be-
cause 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 Insti-
tute of Ukraine published two briefing papers condemning Party of Regions
financial support for Svoboda (Jatras, 2011a, 2011b). Thanks to Taras Kuzio
for these references.
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13 New Times, Old Ideologies?
Recontextualizations of Radical
Right Thought in Postcommunist
Romania
Irina Diana Mădroane
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 Eu-
rope’ and catalysed by the European Union enlargement process, created
fertile ground for the reappropriation of interwar radical myths and nation-
alist 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 at-
tempting to undo its effects (Mann, 2004). Against the backdrop of frail
democracies, weak state institutions, abject poverty and corruption, radical-
right 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 care-
fully contextualise and unravel the multifarious layers of signification em-
bedded 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, trace-
able in sanitised versions of shameful events or selective highlights of ideolo-
gies 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
New Times, Old Ideologies? 257
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 transi-
tion 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 pre-
dominantly 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 (Wil-
liams, 1999: 37ff.). The gradual disenchantment with the promise of capi-
talism and democracy and the continuous struggle for survival have allowed
radical-right ideologies to present themselves as viable options for the re-
fashioning 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 be-
tween 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
258 Irina Diana Mădroane
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 num-
ber 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, chau-
vinism, 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, anti-
semitism 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 re-
attach 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 radical-
right movements in Romania. It was founded in 2000, its leader and out-
standing 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
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 pur-
chased. Importantly, it excels at employing the new media for communica-
tion 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 antisemi-
tism’ in Michael Shafir’s (2008) typology of Romanian antisemitic radical-
right 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 Ro-
manian radical-right ideology and mythology in the ‘imagined communi-
ties’ (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 com-
munist 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 penetra-
tion 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 histori-
cal 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
(oral, written and visual) or ‘semiosis’ as a form of social practice, dialecti-
cally related with the social structures, practices and events within which it
is embedded; discourse is socially constituted and socially constitutive, par-
ticipating 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 con-
cerned 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 Cil-
lia, 2007; Wodak and Richardson, 2009; Wodak et al., 2009).
As a ‘context-sensitive’ approach, the DHA examines four layers of con-
text: ‘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 histori-
cal context which the discursive practices are embedded and related to’ (Re-
isigl 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 strat-
egies 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 dis-
course 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 dis-
courses, 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, narra-
tives, 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
of conflicting interpretations, narratives and myths; a particular construal
gains legitimacy on the basis of a number of contextual factors (institu-
tional, political, social, cultural).
In my investigation of the New Right discourse, I situate recontextualiza-
tion in relation to discursive macro-strategies deployed in the construction
of collective, national identities: ‘construction’, ‘justification and relativiza-
tion’, ‘transformation’, and ‘dismantling’ or ‘demontage’, as well as a num-
ber 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 sup-
port 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 politi-
cal 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 analy-
ses 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 in-
sightful and fresh interpretations of numerous other aspects that are not in-
cluded 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 “fas-
cist” can be applied’ (Barbu, 1981: 154), and this was the Legionary Move-
ment.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 charis-
matic 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 intel-
lectuals.6 Its doctrine and subsequent political platform addressed, however,
other social strata: the Romanian middle class (as a reaction against the
Jewish upper middle class); peasantry (the Legionary Movement was in-
spired 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, antiparlia-
mentary 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 vir-
tuous 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 encoun-
tered 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 extend-
ing 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 collec-
tivity (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
of reconciling the violence adherents believed necessary and the profoundly
chauvinistic nationalism in which the movement was grounded with Chris-
tian 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 cur-
rency 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 sec-
tions 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 alter-
native 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 con-
sidered for the thematic analysis; videos and pictures were not included). Oc-
casionally, 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, sche-
matically, a transformation premised on the spiritual and worldly regenera-
tion 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 postcom-
munism and postindustrialism. ‘Palingenetic ultra-nationalism’, the central
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 char-
acteristics 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 anti-
democratic 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 ac-
tion 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, devo-
tion 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 safe-
guarding the Romanian nation13 from imminent dissolution. Their selec-
tion 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 pos-
sibly 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). Nonethe-
less, 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
prevention or the ‘reincrimination’ of manifestations of this type). Signifi-
cantly, 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 mem-
bers 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 ideo-
logues, 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 na-
tional 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 ‘cohe-
sivization’ (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 well-
being of Romanian minorities in neighbouring countries (such as Serbia,
Ukraine and Hungary) and the reunification with the homeland of the terri-
tories and communities Romania lost during World War II. Such revisionist
aims, in line with Legionary expansionist goals, surface in their nation-
as-family rhetoric, populated with terms from this semantic field (‘moth-
erland’, ‘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 reconsti-
tution 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 un-
dertaken in Bessarabia or North Bukovina to commemorate glorious (union
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 inde-
pendent, 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). No-
ticeable in the discourse of the New Right is what Kymlicka labels the ‘phe-
nomenon 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 ob-
jectives and into its own version of the past-present-future continuity of Ro-
manianness (see, for example, ‘Noua Dreaptă la manifestările de la Ţebea’,
2011).What is omitted from their narrative is the liberal, democratic na-
tionhood 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 dis-
course 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 be-
tween 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 Roma-
nianness 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
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 connec-
tions 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 Le-
gionaries within contemporary parameters, where the enemies of Romani-
anness 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 reli-
gious ‘sects’. At a more abstract level, the European Union and the multina-
tional 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 Ro-
mania 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 impov-
erished 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-
omy of the Szekely Land by any means possible. (‘Un Europarlamentar
extremist . . .’, 2010; my translation, original inverted commas)
In fact, Romania’s accession to the Schengen Area would lead to a
new ‘Iron Curtain’ across the Prut17 and would only serve Hungarian
interests. Hungary supports Romania’s accession fully and uncondi-
tionally for the sole reason that it would facilitate the free circulation
of the 12 million Hungarians in Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. . . .
(Ionescu, 2011; my translation)
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 radical-
ism 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 leg-
acy 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 degenera-
tion among Romanians. The Romanian youth, in particular, are vulnerable
to ‘Gypsification’ in the absence of strong role models and proper educa-
tion. 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 fram-
ing 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 dam-
age Romania’s reputation in Italy and other EU states (see ‘Noua Dreapta
Italia . . .’, 2011). ‘Gypsification’ refers to the proliferation among Roma-
nians 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
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, homosexu-
als) 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, dero-
gatively construed as ‘liars’, ‘impostors’, ‘traitors’, ‘thieves’ or ‘mafia’ (very
forceful are the lyrics of the nationalist rock songs). The New Right’s criti-
cism 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 nowa-
days, this costly wreck, this amalgam of interests that exclude the will
of the Romanian people, with our patriotism based on a sense of hon-
our, 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 sig-
nificant 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 le-
gitimised 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 be-
tween the importance attached to moral rebirth and other pragmatically ori-
ented considerations, in the interwar doctrine, moral rebirth prevailed: ‘To
give back to the world its moral steering, and not necessarily an extra loaf
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 circum-
stances. 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 un-
leashed forces of globalism. The opposition against the ‘artisans of glo-
balisation’, 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 invest-
ments and drastically reduce the monopoly of multinational corporations
and foreign banks. This points in the direction of national autarky, a char-
acteristic 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 post-
communist transition and in the context of the global economic crisis. It is
hard to predict what turn their economic policies might take, but the ap-
proval 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 con-
demn 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 ‘rela-
tivisation’ through ‘victim/perpetrator inversion’ (Wodak et al., 2009: 36) is
performed, not uncommon in the reassessment of historical events, but fur-
ther research needs to be carried out on an expanded corpus to establish the
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 doc-
trine 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 con-
cepts it deploys to herald a better future remains paramount.
NOTES
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.
1. See Krzyżanowsky and Wodak (2008) for a nuanced approach to the differ-
ences between the two processes.
2. Green and black T-shirts with the Maramureş Cross, a local version of the
Celtic Cross, or with Corneliu Zelea Codreanu’s portrait.
3. 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.
4. The specificities of the Iron Guard, in particular its strong religious compo-
nent, coupled with the theoretical difficulties in defining ‘fascism’, prevented
scholars from easily classifying it among mainstream European fascist move-
ments (see Iordachi, 2010: 319).
5. 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 move-
ment’s orientation changed after the assassination of Codreanu and other
members of the Legion’s elite, taking a more pronounced pro-Nazi and terror-
ist path (Ornea, 2008).
6. With the exception of Italy, Romania was the only country where prestigious
intellectuals were drawn to the movement (Mann, 2004: 79).
7. Even though the idea of ‘doctrine’ was rejected by the Legion’s ideologues
(Ornea, 2008; Pavel, 1998).
8. Iordachi (2010: 322ff.) offers a novel interpretation of the genealogy of the
national ‘regeneration’ myth in Legionary ideology. He highlights the connec-
tions it has with Romantic historicism and Romantic conceptualisations of
palingenesis and ‘religious revival’, consolidated during the creation of the Ro-
manian 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 downplay-
ing the role of the Orthodox dogma and Church, Iordachi uses this argument
to firmly locate the Legion amidst traditional European fascist organisations.
9. See http://www.nouadreapta.org/.
10. An interesting development took place while I was working on this chap-
ter. The section on doctrine, a selection of excerpts from Horia Sima’s Doc-
trina 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].
11. 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).
12. 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 contem-
porary developments and links with the interwar period.
13. The Romanian words ‘neam’ (in particular) and ‘naţiune’ (which I translate
as ‘nation’ throughout) signify an exclusively ethnocultural nation, the Ro-
manian version of the Romantic Volksnation or Kulturnation (see Neumann,
2003: 115ff.; for Central Europe, see Wodak et al., 2009).
14. At a surface level, as national communism propagated a distinct type of
nationalism.
15. 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.
16. Member of the European Parliament and Vice President of Jobbik, the Hun-
garian Movement for a Better Hungary.
17. Along the border with the Republic of Moldavia.
18. 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
the New Right shares such convictions, but anti-Western, predominantly anti-
American attitudes are rampant, and Americans are blamed for their favour-
able 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 in-
dividual attack cells’ (2011, p. 856). He went on to list several ‘motiva-
tional 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 inspir-
ing’ 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 terror-
ist’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
278 Anton Shekhovtsov
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” cur-
rent of ideas and values’ (Griffin, 2003, p. 33). The hallmark of a polycratic
movement is ‘a minimum of central co-ordination or formally shared objec-
tives, 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 so-
ciety. 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 Eng-
land First Party; the less centralised English Defence League and New Right/
National Anarchist groups; regional divisions of Blood & Honour; and doz-
ens 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.
European Far-Right Music and Its Enemies 279
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 per-
formed 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 threat-
ened 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, musi-
cians 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 anti-
French 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 coun-
try (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 Brit-
ish New Right author Troy Southgate contributes vocals to such apoliteic
bands as H.E.R.R. and Seelenlicht. The Russian Neo-Eurasianist author
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 Com-
munism’. The RAC movement originated in Britain in 1978 with two Leeds-
based 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 prolif-
erated’ 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 re-
named Kolovrat, was formed and rapidly reached cult status amongst Rus-
sian 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 in-
ternational, played a crucial role in the rise of the scene, which also became
increasingly profitable. B&H, which was taken over by the neo-Nazi or-
ganisation 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 ad-
vertise 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 Bo-
lotnaya 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 strat-
egies 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 school-
children, 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 Euro-
pean 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).
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 fol-
lowed 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 revolution-
ary 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 move-
ment 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 destruc-
tion 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 can-
celled, records banned, bands and individuals persecuted. Several major
right-wing labels were closed down or seriously abated. German Rock-O-
Rama 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 Re-
cords, 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)
In Germany, at the same time, Barber-Kersovan observed two opposing ten-
dencies: ‘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, con-
tributed 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 right-
wing 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 ide-
ology of contemporary extreme right-wing groups and organisations and
includes ‘hatred toward outgroups, antisemitic conspiracy theories, chau-
vinistic 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”, inter-
racial marriage and . . . “race-mixing” ’, (4) denouncement of Jews and
“Zionist Occupation Government” (ZOG), and (5) ‘opposition to commu-
nism, socialism and any other leftist, progressive or liberal political pro-
grams’ (2008, p. 8). While this observation is certainly true, points 2–4
can be largely merged into one core theme: the negative or violent atti-
tude 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
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 ‘Sys-
tem’ 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 Eu-
rope. It is easy to detect that White Power music, being part of the far-
right 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
come from a vast array of books, brochures, essays, websites, other musi-
cal 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 store-
house 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 Püh-
ses 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 Ver-
fassungsschutz, 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, an-
tifascists and left-wingers), but this is clearly a coded message. It is possible
to identify ‘those who exploit the country’ with immigrants coming to Ger-
many (‘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).
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 musi-
cians 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 crimi-
nal prosecution. For example, their scoffing ‘Afrika Lied’ (Africa Song) vi-
ciously 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 in-
dexed 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 im-
migrant 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 re-
lease 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 fea-
turing Finnish and English songs condemning a long list of enemies—‘black
monkeys’, ‘greedy Jews’, ‘third world immigrants’, ‘queers and faggots’,
‘commies’, ‘junkies’—unrestricted by the authorities. Mistreat also associ-
ates 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 Usil-
iya (Ministerstvo yustitsii Rossiyskoy Federatsii, 2012).12 It is worth not-
ing 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 ‘straight-
edge’ 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 ‘inter-
racial 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,
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 sym-
pathise with German National Socialism. In 1992, for example, an organisa-
tion 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, how-
ever, 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 Eu-

ropean White Power scene, while Landser’s hatred for the Poles and Radi-
cal Hungary’s enmity towards the Slovaks and Romanians are exceptions,
rather than the rule. Particularly interesting here is that sometimes right-
wing 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 extraor-
dinary 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 Pe-
runa, 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)
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 usu-
ally 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 rela-
tively 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 syndi-
cate 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 popu-
lar 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 propa-
gate 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 govern-
ment 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 impor-
tant 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 manipula-
tion 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 crimi-
nal regime is cursed by the people / It organises and promotes the process
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 legali-

sation of sexual and social vice, protection of interests of parasitic mi-
norities 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, profana-
tion 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 ‘disturb-
ing’ 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 trea-
son 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 ‘Sys-
tem’ 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 in-
debted 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 ‘Sys-
tem’s’ repressive policies towards the far right. Thus, the veteran British
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 Brit-
ish 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 listen-

ers 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 coun-
tries. 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 fi-
nancial 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 European-
ised 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 so-
ciopolitical extreme-right groups. Propaganda through music is also more
powerful than that spread through speeches, leaflets or visual forms of pro-
motion of the far-right agenda. As Ian Stuart Donaldson observed, ‘A pam-
phlet 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, na-
tives of the Caucasus region, homosexuals, left-wingers and anti-fascists,
while the latter is a demonised state, a regime with a repressive appara-
tus (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
I am grateful to the Krzyżowa Foundation for Mutual Understanding in Europe

and to the Robert Bosch Foundation for providing financial support for this re-
search. 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 com-
menting 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).
1. 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).
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. In the United States, racist music is protected by the First Amendment to the
US Constitution.
5. 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.
6. That is not to say that any national White Power scene can claim ‘ownership’
of any particular adversary group.
7. This has not, however, stopped Nordfront from releasing albums. At least four
studio albums were released afterwards.
8. The Pühses Liste is owned by Jens Pühse, a high-ranking officer of the Na-
tional Democratic Party of Germany.
9. Translations into English, unless otherwise stated, are by the author of this
chapter.
10. 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.
11. After the self-released Germania, Stahlgewitter released three more studio al-
bums on one of the most active German White Power labels, PC Records. ‘PC’
is used sarcastically, since it stands for ‘political correctness’.
12. 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.
13. ‘Khachi’ is a pejorative, ethnic slur for natives of the Caucasus region.
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 par-
ticular ideological stances. Recently, the political branding of more popu-
list 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]oliti-
cal 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 influ-
enced the branding and racist symbolic practices of European nationalist
political parties in localised contexts; that is, nationalist political brand-
ing 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 na-
tionalist 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
298 Mark McGlashan
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 immigra-
tion 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 posi-
tioning; 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 contempo-
rary 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 quasi-
respectable 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 (Sverigedemokra-
terna, ‘Sweden Democrats’), unlike the other parties studied here, have failed
to gain seats in the European Parliament. So, the interest here is the symbolic
The Branding of European Nationalism 299
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; Richard-
son & Wodak 2009) methodology that I will use in the analysis of the dis-
cursive 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 organisa-
tions. Second, I analyse the modern branding of European nationalist po-
litical 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)
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 ide-
ology and assertions of power via critique of textual realisations of discur-
sive 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 dis-
courses realised through texts drawing on an array of semiotic modes (sin-
gularly 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
TEXT 2 CONTEXT 1
topics
discursive strategies
CONTEXT
CONTEXT
TEXT-BASED ANALYSIS levels of context 3

semiotic means
Immediate language/text
Intertextual and intediscursive relationship
Extra-linguistic social/sociological variables and instirutional frames
Broader socio-political and historical contexts
Figure 15.1 Heuristic reinterpretation of the DHA.

300 Mark McGlashan
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 rac-
ist 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 po-
tential 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 con-
text 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/so-
ciological 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. cita-
tions, 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 dis-
cursive 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, dis-
courses, contexts and so on in their design and production. Stage 3 spans
several contexts in order to graphically represent the need for text-based
analyses to recognise and incorporate intertextual and interdiscursive rela-
tionships. 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 re-
sources 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 re-
sources beyond those codified during the Nazi era and adapting to and
adopting more modern conventions for the symbolic realisation of nation-
alist 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 rejec-
tion 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 na-
tionalist parties towards populism.
Contemporary racist symbolism has its raison d’être, grounded in an ar-
gumentum ad populum, that is, appeals to the emotions of the masses (Kein-
pointner 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 organisa-
tions. Last, I take a critical look at some of the logos of European nationalist
302 Mark McGlashan
political parties that have made significant political advances and attempt to
link these to underlying nationalist ideals that betray their otherwise non-
threatening 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 re-
garded as a symbol of racial hatred. The anticlockwise-turning swastika,
though it may be understandably confused with the clockwise-turning ver-
sion, retains an ambiguity in meaning and is symbolically obscure.
The swastika became a recontextualized symbol onto which Nazi ideol-
ogy 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 hori-
zontally. 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 an-
ticlockwise and clockwise swastikas whereby the clockwise swastika ap-
propriates 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 sa-
lience, not to mention the way in which it is framed and the contrast be-
tween 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 fram-
ing 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,
the black of the swastika may variously connote rebellion, mystery, poten-
tial 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 col-
ours (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 conven-
tionalisation. 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 (Thors-
son 2004: 31). A few examples of insignia5 that include Armanic runes in-
clude the insignia of the SS (Schutzstaffel, ‘protection squadron’), which
uses the sig rune that symbolises, inter alia, the sun, the power to actual-
ize, 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, protec-
tion and harmony. A final example, the seventh division (Prinz Eugen) con-
tains the odal (or othil) rune, symbolising receptive power/property, arising
and inheritance (cf. Thorsson 2004: 32). These visual texts are represen-
tative of the conventions followed in the visual design of the military in-
signia 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 ‘gener-
ally 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
304 Mark McGlashan
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 sym-
bol, 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 recontextual-
ization 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 cul-
ture’ 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 Eu-
ropean 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 simul-
taneously allude to and avoid association with racist discourses; ‘codes’ are
known to in-group members and unknown to out-groups. Users of inter-
national 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
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 stand-
point 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 Peniten-
tiary 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 radi-
calism (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 main-
stream 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 con-
ducted in Canada, the Netherlands and Germany show that multicultural-
ism 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 na-
tional identity’ (Dinnie 2009: 113), are often semiotic resources for the sym-
bolic 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
306 Mark McGlashan
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 main-
stream counterparts), their promotional material avoids intertextual refer-
ences 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, foreground-
ing and attributing to it greater information value than the Hungarian tri-
colour, which resides in the background. However, a reading of the text
along the vertical axis (i.e. between top and bottom) shows that the sym-
bolic element of the cross’s composition—the dual crossbars—that differen-
tiates this cross from others is situated completely in the upper portion of
the text. This placement, along with the foregrounding of this element, sug-
gests that this is an expression of an ideal—foregrounding religious ideals,
even, beyond national identity. By intertextual reference to the patriarchal
cross that occurs in the Hungarian coat of arms, it creates a symbolic refer-
ence 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 Job-
bik’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 national-
ist 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 na-
tionalist 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 con-
ventional 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 sociocul-
tural 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 poten-
tially defined as British) is metaphorically at the heart of the body (central
308 Mark McGlashan
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 (argumen-
tum ad populum) acknowledges in itself that it is not a rational one—a fre-
quent 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, recontextu-
alizing 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 contra-
diction. The discursive construction of national identity here rests on a seem-
ingly ‘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 de-
ported 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 con-
figuration 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 con-
structing 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
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 con-
flict 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 po-
litical 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 Euro-
pean 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 ‘construc-
tion 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.
310 Mark McGlashan
The metaphor of fire for both of these subgroups is powerful and a domi-
nant 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, purifica-
tion, transformation, destruction, passion, light, warmth, knowledge and
so on. The interdiscursive linking of nationality to such notions allows na-
tionalist organisations to idiosyncratically construct nationality in lines with
nationalistic ideologies. The discursive construction of nationality, then, im-
plicitly incorporates conceptions of nationalism—once-pure nations requir-
ing 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 men-
tioned 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 superi-
ority; a lighting of ‘the path’; and so on.
Finally, though La Destra have retained the use of conventionalised, na-
tionalistic flame symbolism in their branding, the French FN have adopted a
more abstract representation (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006: 161) of national-
ism. 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 refer-
ence 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 am-
biguity in FN’s visual branding therefore reflects the kind of ‘calculated am-
bivalence’ 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
the application of branding strategies in other areas, is currently becoming
global’ (Mitsikopoulou 2008: 357) and in line with ‘the shifting concep-
tion 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, inter-
textual 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 be-
haviours 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 em-
bedded in nationalist party logos.
NOTES
1. Throughout, ‘nationalist’ is used to refer interchangeably to ‘nationalist’, ‘rac-

ist’, ‘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.
312 Mark McGlashan
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 cross-
ing” (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, intel-
ligence, 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 as-
sociated 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.
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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 post-
doctoral work on the International Criminal Court at DePaul Univer-
sity 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 Trans-
national Social Movements”, in Eva Erman & Anders Uhlin (eds.), Le-
gitimacy 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 Diver-
sity. 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 Crit-
ical Psychology (Sage, 2008).
Jakob Engel is a senior research officer at the Overseas Development In-

stitute, a London-based think-tank working on international develop-
ment 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 de-
velopment 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 Inns-

bruck, 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 (Argu-
mentation, 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 schol-
arship 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 ar-
gumentieren (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 Stud-
ies 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); Sa-
lomon Steinheim Institut für Deutsch-Jüdische Geschichte, Duisburg
(FRG); Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna, (Austria);
Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum für Jüdische Studien, Potsdam (FRG); In-
ternationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna (Aus-
tria); 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; so-
cioeconomic attitudes and political choice.
Irina Diana Ma d̆ roane is a lecturer in the English language at the West

University of Timişoara, Romania. She holds a PhD from the West Uni-
versity of Timişoara, 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 Parlia-
ment. She recently presented her findings at the International Conference
of the Society for Political Psychology. Previously she undertook a Mas-
ter’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 Profes-
sor 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 Depart-

ment 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 in-
terests include Critical Discourse Analysis, multimodality and picture-
books, 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 Pic-
turebooks (Language and Literature).
318 Contributors
Andreas Musolff is a professor of intercultural communication at the Uni-
versity 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 Min-
nesota. 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 Bi-
lingualism 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 Sci-
ence 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 inter-
ests include language and gender, feminist linguistics, language and post-
colonial theory, political rhetoric and argumentation and corpus-based
linguistics. Her publications include “Primitive Sprachen oder sprachli-
cher Primitivsimus?” in Christina Antenhofer (ed.), Fetisch als heuris-
tische 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 Interdisci-
plinaria Ænipontana 7. Univ.-Dipl. (Wien: Praesens, 2006).
John E. Richardson is a senior lecturer in the Department of Social Sci-

ences, Loughborough University. He is editor of the international peer-
review 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 journal-
ism, critical discourse studies and argumentation. His publications in-
clude 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); Lan-
guage 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 read-
ers’ 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 His-
tory, Lund University, Sweden. His recent publications include “Anti-
Semitism 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 Inter-
regional 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 Manufactur-
ing 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 Cen-
tral Europe.
Anton Shekhovtsov received his PhD in political science in 2010. His aca-
demic 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 Russian-
language 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 Lin-

guistics 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 parliamen-
tary 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 migra-
tion 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 Commu-

nication at City University of Hong Kong. She holds an MA in Hungar-
ian 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 Lin-
guistica 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 discrimi-
nation and ethnographic methods of linguistic field work. She is a mem-
ber 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 Ap-
proaches to Politics, Society and Culture (DAPSAC). She has held visiting
professorships at Uppsala, Stanford University, the University of Min-
nesota, 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 Annihi-
lation (with H. Heer, W. Manoschek and A. Pollak, 2008); The Politics
.
of Exclusion (with M. Krzyzanowski, 2009); Gedenken im Gedanken-
jahr (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 fas-
cism, 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 British National Party (BNP) 29 – 30,

Alliance of European National 239, 278, 298, 301, 307 – 8
Movements 239 Brutal Attack 289
ambivalent rhetoric see rhetoric, BZÖ see Association for the Future of
ambivalent Austria
analogy 61, 136, 309
antisemitism 78, 214, 219 – 24; in C
Britain, 183 – 4, 196, 200; in Caetano, Marcelo 147, 149, 151, 154,
Hungary 203 – 5, 207, 210 – 12, 156 – 7, 159 – 60
214; in Lithuania (OUN) capitalism, finance see finance
229 – 237; in Romania capitalism
258 – 9 causality 115
applause see political applause CDA see Critical Discourse Analysis
argumentation 78 – 9, 103, 114 – 16, Center for the Study of the Liberation
203 – 4, 209 – 10, 217 – 19 Movement (TsDVR)
Ariosophy 302 – 3 234 – 5
Arpád Stripes 307 Civics 122, 126, 137 – 8, 140 – 1
Association for the Future of Austria code(s) 87, 190 – 1; and fascism 187;
(BZÖ) 75 – 6, 79 – 81, 84, 100 and historic discourses 201;
Austria 99 – 100, 102, 104 – 6, 146 – 7, in Hungary, antisemitism
298 – 9, 306; and Nazis 73 – 8, 203, 213, 223; and in-group
87, 89 members 304; and justification,
autonomous nationalists 236, 239 – 41, legitimation strategies 78; and
245 – 6 White Power (music industry)
Avalon 290 282, 285
coded language 87, 213
B colonialism 46, 49, 156, 164
Bandera, Stepan 229, 232 – 3, 235, commodity fetish 26
240 – 5, 247, 249 Communist system 29, 34 – 5, 124, 200,
Bean, John 11, 184 – 7, 189 – 90, 203, 211 – 12, 256 – 76
197 – 200 concealing fascist past 49, 51, 146 – 62,
Blood & Honour 101, 277 – 8, 282 164, 166
BNP see British National Party Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists
body see metaphor (KUN) 235
brand 12, 185 conspiracy theory 172, 198, 237, 284
Breivik, Anders 30, 106, 238, 277 context, contextual 36, 181 – 3; and
Brigade M 288 – 90, 293 DHA 77 – 9, 299 – 301; and
Britain 27, 29, 278, 298 – 9, 307 – 8 Germany 66; and Greece 32;
324 Index
and new media 211 – 13; and fascism 17 – 19, 26 – 7, 97 – 9, 247, 268,
old media, Hungary 204 – 5; 270 – 1, 307; and Austria 73 – 5;
political, British fascism 183 – 6, and Britain 307; definitions of
201; and scandals 78; and the 97 – 8, 117, 148; European 203;
swastika 302 generic 203, 263, 272; German
conversational implicatures 107, 109, neo-fascist discourse 103 – 7;
111; see also implicature mainstreaming 27 – 36; and
core 59, 66, 98, 191 – 2, 196, 283 neo-fascism 99, 101 – 2, 113;
core/periphery distinction 306 and Romania 257 – 9, 261 – 4;
courtesy 122, 126, 128, 130 – 2, 136 – 7, and Spain 122 – 45; and Ukraine
141 229 – 32, 239 – 43
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 58, fetish, commodity see commodity
103, 123, 182, 259 – 60, 299 fetish
finance capitalism 20, 22, 191, 197,
D 200
DHA see Discourse Historical FN, le see Front National
Approach Fountaine, Andrew 184, 189 – 90,
Die Lunikoff Verschwörung 286 192 – 3, 197
disavowal 25 FPÖ see Freedom Party of Austria
discourse 74, 122 – 3, 127 – 8, 297 – 300, France 44 – 5, 48 – 50, 53 – 4, 188,
302 – 5, 308, 310 – 11; analysis, 279 – 80, 309 – 11
critical see Critical Discourse Franco, Francisco 122 – 45, 230
Analysis (CDA); analysis, Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) 74 – 6,
history 58; extreme nationalist 79 – 81, 84 – 6, 99 – 102, 104 – 6,
266; fascist, far right 146, 298, 306
163 – 80, 181 – 202, 256; Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ)
ideological 128; Legionary see Freedom Party of Austria
267; National Catholic 138; Front National (FN) 75, 167 – 70, 172,
nationalism, nationalistic 299, 176 – 7, 309 – 11
308 – 10; Nazi 67; New Right
259, 261, 266; and politeness G
141; racist 297, 303 – 4, 311; generic fascism see fascism
and social practices 127 genocide 56 – 72, 189, 214, 220, 231,
Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) 289
77 – 9, 259 – 60, 299 – 300, 311; globalization 18 – 20, 24, 36, 170, 216
discourse-historical approach 66 Goebbels, Josef 59, 62, 64 – 5, 243
Donaldson, Ian Stuart 277, 281, Gudenus, John 9, 74, 78, 79 – 94, 106
283, 291
duplicitous rhetoric see rhetoric,
H
ambivalent
Haider, Jörg 75 – 6, 84, 88, 99 – 100,
105, 146, 203
E heterogeneity 26 – 7
education 83, 117, 268, 284 Hitler, Adolf 56 – 67, 109, 147 – 8, 173,
English Rose 277, 291 199, 304 – 5
Estado Novo see New State Holocaust 57, 61 – 68, 192 – 3, 213 – 4,
ethnopluralism 239 230 – 1, 257
euphemism 108, 140, 168, 188 Holocaust denial 105 – 6, 110, 220,
exclusionary populism see populism 224, 258 – 9, 285, 289
Hook Sprava 281, 290
F Hungary 29, 34 – 5, 248, 266 – 8, 288,
Facebook 104, 106, 114, 226 298 – 9, 306 – 7
far right, Hungary see Hungary hyperindividualism 25
Index 325
I metaphor 107, 173 – 4, 207, 209 – 10,
identitarian identification 18 218, 307 – 10; and the body
ideology 17, 127 – 8, 170 – 1, 299, 56, 58 – 9, 65 – 8, 207, 307;
308 – 9; antisemitic 221; and cognitive analysis 58; and
capitalist 24 – 5; and COMBAT conversational implicatures 107;
186 – 7, 190; extreme/far right and disease 56, 62, 194, 207,
99, 224, 228, 283 – 5, 308 – 9; 209 – 10, 218, 221; and fertility,
fascist 52 – 3, 97, 200 – 1, flower 308 – 9; and fire 310; and
241 – 2, 247; Legionary 262 – 3, illness 66 – 8, 118, 207, 209 – 10,
265, 270; National Socialist 218, 221; and love 307 – 8; and
(NS) 9 – 10, 66, 74, 82; Nazi parasites 56 – 9, 61 – 9, 114,
56 – 7, 61, 66 – 7, 302, 304; old, 218, 220 – 1; and prophecy
Romania 256 – 276; racist 304 56 – 72; strategic use of 112 – 14,
implicature 68, 78, 108 – 9; see also 117 – 18; visual 308 – 9; and war
conversational implicatures 118, 210
indirectness 107 – 108, 117 MIÉP see Party of Hungarian Justice
insinuation 169 and Life
interdiscursive see discourse mistreat 286 – 7, 289, 291
international finance 33, 56, 111, Mosley, Oswald 3, 183 – 5, 188, 242
189, 196 – 8, 200, 215; see also MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano)
finance capitalism 42 – 3, 45 – 53
intertextual 173, 182 – 3, 198, 259 – 60, Mykhal’chyshyn, Yurii 236, 240 – 5
299 – 301, 304 – 7, 309 – 11 myth-making 136, 228, 230 – 1, 266
Islamophobia 31, 164 – 5, 285
Israel 43, 47, 164 – 7, 171, 173,
212 – 19, 270; Israelis 168, 216 N
nationalism 52 – 3, 97 – 9, 101, 104,
148, 203, 245; Algerian 167;
J autonomous 236, 239 – 41,
Jobbik (Magyarországért Mozgalom)
245 – 6; and the BNP 185 – 6,
35, 212 – 13, 218 – 19, 222 – 4,
191, 200; cultural 27; extreme
239, 298, 306 – 7
203; Legionary 264; and Le Pen,
Jordan, Colin 184 – 5, 188 – 90, 196
Jean-Marie 176; metaphysical
262; and the National Front 29,
K 52, 185 – 6, 278, 280, 307; and
Klemperer, Victor 2, 57, 59, 65 – 7 National Socialism 2, 64, 73,
Kolovrat 280 – 1, 287, 289 – 90 76, 87 – 9, 147, 185, 243; and
Kronen Zeitung 86, 88 the New Right 47; regenerative
Kubijovyč, Volodymyr 235 17; Ukrainian 228, 242, 245;
KUN see Congress of Ukrainian ultra- 53, 97 – 8, 258, 263 – 4;
Nationalists (KUN) Zionist 166
nationalist 33 – 6, 146 – 7, 228 – 9,
L 230 – 6, 239 – 48
La Destra 309 – 10 Nationalistische Partei Deutschlands
Landser 286 – 8 see NPD
Lunikoff Verschwörung see Die Nazi 110 – 11, 230, 235, 284, 299,
Lunikoff Verschwörung 301 – 4; and Austria 73 – 8;
Lypa, Iuryi 242 discourse 104, 116
Nazism 46, 58, 78, 106, 181, 284
M Neue Kronen Zeitung 86, 88
manners 122, 124, 126–7, 130–2, 137–41 New Right 18, 22, 47, 256, 258 – 9,
Magyarországért Mozgalom see Jobbik 263 – 71, 278 – 80; see also
media, right-wing see right-wing media discourse
326 Index
newspaper 104, 106 – 7, 119, 183 – 4, Regener, Michael 286 – 7
186, 204 – 6, 212 revolution, orange see Orange
New State (Estado Novo) 122, 125, Revolution
147 – 8 rhetoric, ambivalent 150
Nordfront 285 rhetorical dilemma 150 – 1
NPD 100 – 2, 104, 108 – 11, 113 – 14, right-wing media 46, 263
237, 241 Roma 34 – 5, 212 – 3, 223, 258, 267 – 9,
284
O Rosenkranz, Barbara 74, 78, 85 – 90
Orange Revolution 228
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists S
(OUN) 229 – 39, 242 – 3, 246 – 7 Salazar, Antonio 147 – 9, 151, 157,
Other-Self division see Self-Other 159 – 60
division Salazarism 147 – 9
schoolbooks 79, 83, 87
P securitization 24
parasite 56 – 9, 61 – 9, 114, 218, 220 – 1 Self-Other division 206 – 7, 209, 214,
Party of Hungarian Justice and Life 220 – 1
(MIÉP) 212 Shukhevych, Roman 235, 242, 245,
party programmes 100, 104, 110 – 11, 247
116, 169 Skrewdriver 277 – 8, 280 – 1
politeness 122, 125 – 37, 139 – 41 Sokyra Peruna 288 – 9
political applause 85, 151, 155 – 6, Spain, post-war 122 – 45, 230
158 Spanish textbooks 137 – 40
political branding 297 – 8, 301, SS see Waffen-SS Galizien
309 – 10 stigma 59, 62, 65, 67, 112
populism 17 – 41, 99, 176, 279, 298; Strache, Heinz-Christian 76, 81, 85, 89,
exclusionary 29 100, 112, 306
Portuguese, Revolution of April 1974 Straight Edge 287
32; Socialist Party (PS, Portugal) Streicher, Julius 59 – 60
152 – 3 Sverigedemokraterna (SD, ‘Sweden
post-Communist countries 29, 203, Democrats’) 30, 298, 308
211 Svoboda see VO Svoboda
post-war Spain see Spain, post-war SVP (Schweizerische Volkspartei) 102,
praxis 25 104 – 5, 116 – 17
prejudice 73, 163 – 5, 167, 174, 194, swastika 302 – 3, 307
260, 285 Sweden Democrats (SD) see
presupposition 78, 300 Sverigedemokraterna
symbolism 43, 46, 240, 245, 271
R
race 56, 58, 242, 245, 287 – 90, 302, T
304; and discrimination 138; taboo 46, 61, 66, 74, 80, 211,
and inequality 167; and law 43, 219
46 – 7, 51; Race Relations Act talk 133, 150 – 1, 153
200; and supremacism 187 – 90, Tiahnybok, Oleh 237, 239, 240,
193 – 8; White 188, 194, 198, 247
283 – 5, 289, 291 totalitarian 140 – 1, 147 – 8, 154, 157;
racism 166 – 7, 258, 279; accusations capitalism 22
of 66, 165, 220, 264 – 5, 268; TsDVR see Center for the Study of the
anti-Arab 166; biological 258; Liberation Movement
and class 31; cultural 23, 28, 31, Tyndall, John 184 – 5, 189, 196,
258; denial of 66 201
Index 327
U W
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) Waffen-SS Galizien 230, 235, 238–9, 245
229 – 39, 246 – 7 Waldheim, Kurt 73 – 4, 78
White Power music 277 – 8, 280 – 91
V
valorization 27 Y
value form 36 Yushchenko, Viktor 228, 230 – 2, 237,
V’’iatrovych, Volodymyr 230 – 2, 234 – 5 242, 244, 247
victim-victimizer reversal 209 – 10, 217,
221 – 2 Z
visual metaphor see metaphor Zionist Occupation Government
VO Svoboda 228 – 255, 279 (ZOG) 283 – 4, 289 – 90, 292

Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text

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ROUTLEDGE CRITICAL STUDIES IN DISCOURSE

Analysing Fascist Discourse

This book focuses primarily on continuities and discontinuities of fascist

Ruth Wodak is Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster

John E Richardson is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences,

Edited by Michelle M. Lazar, National University of Singapore

1 Framing Discourse on the Environment

2 Language and the Market Society

3 Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust

4 Hybrid Voices and Collaborative Change

5 Analysing Fascist Discourse

Edited by Ruth Wodak and

List of Tables vii

1 European Fascism in Talk and Text—Introduction 1

2 Radical Right Discourse contra State-Based Authoritarian

3 Italian Postwar Neo-Fascism: Three Paths, One Mission? 42

4 The Reception of Antisemitic Imagery in Nazi Germany and

5 “Calculated Ambivalence” and Holocaust Denial in Austria 73

6 German Postwar Discourse of the Extreme and Populist Right 97

7 Education and Etiquette: Behaviour Formation in Fascist Spain 122

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

10 Racial Populism in British Fascist Discourse: The Case

11 Variations on a Theme: The Jewish ‘Other’ in Old and

12 The Return of the Ukrainian Far Right: The Case

13 New Times, Old Ideologies? Recontextualizations

14 European Far-Right Music and Its Enemies 277

15 The Branding of European Nationalism: Perpetuation

11.1 Distribution of Articles by Major Topics, Egyedül

10.1 Post-war development of British Fascist parties. 185

DISCOURSE STUDIES, FASCISM, AND

Judt’s seminal book Post-War (2007) presents a comprehensive and detailed

Careful deconstruction of many current debates about the past in different

DISCOURSE AND SOCIAL CHANGE—INTERTEXTUALITY

The chapters in this book are based on an integration of Pelinka’s argument,

SUMMARIZING THE BOOK

This book explores ‘the dis/continuities of fascisms’ from a discourse-

1. In a similar vein, Blommaert (2003: 177) employs the term ‘entextualisation’,

Achugar, Mariana (2008). What We Remember: The Construction of Memory in

In revisionist historiography, fascism is understood as a nationalist ideol-

FROM FASCISM TO NEOLIBERALISM

‘Fascism’ refers to those capitalist regimes which exercise an authoritarian

FETISHIZED IDENTITY-DRIVEN CONSUMPTION

To explain the relationship between neoliberalism and right-wing populism,

The production of homogeneity thus plays a critical role in right-wing dis-

more than a whiff of fascism in the repeated appeals to ‘property own-

Although unrest had been predicted if the Conservatives forced through

In a period of economic crisis and growing political conflict, there are

Aly, G. (2005) Hitlers Volksstaat, Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlage.

Let me begin by clarifying what I mean by ‘revolutionary right-wing’ be-

THREE DIFFERENT PATHS

RECENT TRENDS IN ITALIAN NEO-FASCISM

I have argued that in the post–World War II era, Italian fascism/neo-fascism

Arendt, H., 1963. On Revolution. London: Penguin.

PROPHECY, METAPHOR AND GENOCIDE

On 30 January 1939, in his annual speech to celebrate the anniversary of

PREPARING THE GERMAN PUBLIC FOR THE GENOCIDE:

‘FULFILLING THE PROPHECY’: HOLOCAUST

RACIAL ANNIHILATION AS AN INSURANCE AGAINST TOTAL

However, with the catastrophic turnaround in Germany’s military fortunes

What happened to the parasite-annihilation scenario as the ideological and

POSTWAR AUSTRIA: NARRATIVES OF VICTORY OR DEFEAT

THE POST–WORLD WAR II INTEGRATION OF THE FAR

When investigating manifestations of fascist and national socialist ideolo-