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MP3 One Seg­ment

Begin­ning with review of Yock­ey and the post-war fas­cist inter­na­tion­al, the pro­gram ana­lyzes Yock­ey’s mag­num opus Imperi­um. This fas­cist tract pro­pos­es a Euro­pean pan-fas­cist empire as a bul­wark against the for­mer Sovi­et Union and the Unit­ed States. (It should be not­ed that Yock­ey viewed the U.S. as the greater threat.)

Yock­ey (in part­ner­ship with oth­er mem­bers of the post-war fas­cist inter­na­tion­al) formed an ear­ly attempt at real­iz­ing Imperi­um: the Euro­pean Lib­er­a­tion Front. A unit­ed, fas­cist Europe was a goal envis­aged by key mem­bers of the SS (the Waf­fen SS, in par­tic­u­lar) dur­ing the clos­ing stages of the Sec­ond World War. In con­sid­er­a­tion of the alien­at­ing effect of the doc­tri­naire Ger­man chau­vin­ism of the “tra­di­tion­al” SS and the Third Reich, these SS offi­cials sought to rem­e­dy the defect.

Propos­ing that Europe be con­sol­i­dat­ed as a fas­cist enti­ty with­out nation­al­ist hier­ar­chy, these SS men exert­ed a direct, per­son­al influ­ence on Yock­ey and his ideas.

The pro­gram under­scores the pro­found anti-Amer­i­can­ism of Yock­ey, and the influ­ence this out­look has had on con­tem­po­rary fas­cist groups. Although Yock­ey is not well known by those out­side the ranks of doc­tri­naire fas­cists (and those who study them), he was very influ­en­tial.

One of the best-known fig­ures on the far right was Sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy, who was sig­nif­i­cant­ly influ­enced by Yock­ey. Intro­duced to Yock­ey’s think­ing and work by com­mon asso­ciates on the pro-Ger­man far right, McCarthy incor­po­rat­ed Yock­ey’s atti­tude and work in his attack on the Malm­e­dy tri­als. (These war crimes tri­als assessed the fate of SS offi­cers who had mas­sa­cred Amer­i­can POW’s dur­ing the Bat­tle of the Bulge.)

McCarthy bit­ter­ly attacked Amer­i­can sur­vivors of the mas­sacre and his and oth­ers’ attacks on the Malm­e­dy pro­ceed­ings sub­vert­ed fur­ther pros­e­cu­tions of Nazi war crim­i­nals and under­mined the denaz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: dis­cus­sion of the mys­te­ri­ous fate of Karl Han­ke (select­ed to suc­ceed Hein­rich Himm­ler as head of the SS (Han­ke flew out of Berlin as the Red Army was enter­ing the city, nev­er to be seen or heard from again); dis­cus­sion of Wern­er Best (one of the SS the­o­reti­cians who influ­enced Yock­ey’s think­ing); dis­cus­sion of Franz Alfred Six (an SS col­league of Best and an influ­ence on Yock­ey); dis­cus­sion of Alfred Franke-Griksch (an SS asso­ciate of Best and Six and an influ­ence on Yock­ey); analy­sis of the atti­tude of influ­en­tial Amer­i­can mil­i­tary offi­cers who shared McCarthy’s antipa­thy toward the Malm­e­dy tri­als; dis­cus­sion of the impend­ing pub­li­ca­tion of Kevin Coogan’s bril­liant and con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant man­u­script “Amer­i­can Glad­io?” (Record­ed on 3/l9/2000.)