Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #383 Interview with Kevin Coogan

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MP3 Side 1 | Side 2
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1. High­light­ing aspects of his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary fas­cism that are not gen­er­al­ly well known, this broad­cast sets forth aspects of “Red/Brown” or Third Posi­tion fas­cism. To do so, we vis­it with Kevin Coogan, author of the sem­i­nal Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey and the Post War Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al (Copy­right 1999 [SC]; Autono­me­dia; ISBN 1–57027-039–2.)

2. Much of the first side of the pro­gram con­sists of dis­cus­sion of Horst Mahler, a Ger­man fas­cist-turned-left­ist who has revert­ed to fas­cism. An asso­ciate of the Red Army Fac­tion (also known as the Baad­er-Mein­hoff group), Mahler worked with a strange amal­gam of fas­cists, ultra-left­ists, and Mid­dle East­ern ter­ror­ist groups. High­lights of the Mahler dis­cus­sion include: Mahler’s rela­tion­ship with the PFLP; his con­nec­tions to Fran­cois Genoud; Mahler’s periph­er­al con­tacts [through the RAF] to Ger­hard Schroder and Otto Schi­ly [respec­tive­ly Chan­cel­lor and Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic]; his anti-Semi­tism; his sup­port of the PLO; and above all, his endorse­ment of the 9/11 attacks as nec­es­sary and right. (For more about the PFLP, see, among oth­er broad­casts, FTR#350, in addi­tion to many of the pro­grams cit­ed in the intro­duc­tion to this pro­gram.)

3. The pro­gram delin­eates the devel­op­ment of “dialec­ti­cal” the­o­ry, espoused by Hegel and adopt­ed by numer­ous social sci­en­tists and philoso­phers across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum, includ­ing Karl Marx. Dialec­ti­cal think­ing was a major influ­ence on Mahler and oth­er Third Posi­tion­ists, Yock­eyites and Red/Brown fas­cists.

4. One of Mahler’s prin­ci­pal polit­i­cal forums is the NPD, arguably the top Ger­man “neo” Nazi par­ty. With his affin­i­ty for Mid­dle East­ern ter­ror­ists, his pro­found anti-Amer­i­can­ism, his links to Fran­cois Genoud and his Nazi ori­en­ta­tion, it should come as no sur­prise that Mahler is asso­ci­at­ed [through the NPD] with Ahmed Huber.

5. Review­ing one of the inter­est­ing his­tor­i­cal links between the 9/11 attacks, Genoud and the Third Posi­tion, the broad­cast reviews the Genoud/Verges/Carlos the Jack­al link. High­lights of that con­nec­tion include: Genoud and Verges’ con­nec­tions to the Alger­ian FLN; Verges’ rela­tion­ship with Genoud and the tri­al of for­mer Gestapo chief Klaus Bar­bie; Verges/Genoud’s close rela­tion­ship with Car­los the Jack­al; the role of Isabel Coutant-Peyre [a law part­ner of Genoud pro­tégé Verges and the wife-to-be of Car­los Jack­al] as the French attor­ney for Zac­cha­rias Mousaoui; the recent appoint­ment of Car­los’ broth­er to a key post in the Venezue­lan ener­gy min­istry under Hugo Chavez [a bit­ter oppo­nent of the Unit­ed States and head of a key OPEC coun­try].

6. Con­tin­u­ing with dis­cus­sion of Third Posi­tion­ists and the Euro-fas­cist/Mid­dle East ter­ror­ist link, the broad­cast focus­es on Jean Thiri­art, a Third Reich asso­ciate whose career extend­ed from the 1940’s until the 1990’s. High­lights of the Thiri­art dis­cus­sion include: Thiriart’s asso­ci­a­tion with the SS; his par­tic­i­pa­tion with “Jeune Europe” (a Nazi pan-Euro­pean youth orga­ni­za­tion); Thiriart’s attempts at form­ing an anti-Amer­i­can, Euro-fas­cist alliance with Mid­dle East­ern ter­ror­ists and fas­cists includ­ing the PLO and a young Sad­dam Hus­sein; his con­nec­tions to ODESSA oper­a­tives includ­ing Otto Sko­rzeny and Otto Ernst Remer; and his influ­ence on oth­er Third Posi­tion­ists, Thiriart’s back­ing for the French irre­den­tist OAS [at the same time as he was sup­port­ive of the Alger­ian FLN]; the ide­o­log­i­cal con­tra­dic­tion between Thiriart’s OAS/FLN sup­port; Nazi sup­port for the OAS and the FLN.

7. Con­tin­u­ing with the pre­sen­ta­tion of Right-Left, “oscil­lat­ing fas­cism,” the pro­gram fur­ther devel­ops the career of Otto Ernst Remer. High­lights of the Remer dis­cus­sion include: Remer’s mem­ber­ship in the SS and his role in the liq­ui­da­tion of the July 1944 con­spir­a­tors against Hitler; his devel­op­ment of the SRP (a top post­war Ger­man neo-Nazi par­ty); the SRP’s advo­ca­cy of a neu­tral role for Ger­many in the Cold War and the SRP’s back­ing by the for­mer Sovi­et Union.

8. In addi­tion to Thiri­art, the Third Posi­tion in France was pro­mul­gat­ed by Chris­t­ian Bouch­er. Bouch­er, in turn, main­tained con­tact with Russ­ian fas­cists in the post-Sovi­et era.

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