FTR #984 Fascism: 2017 European Tour

We begin our tour by exam­in­ing overt­ly fas­cist ele­ments in the gov­ern­ing Bul­gar­i­an coali­tion of Boyko Borisov, evoca­tive of Bul­gar­i­a’s past as an ally of Nazi Ger­many in World War II. ” . . . May 17, Pavel Tenev, Min­is­ter of Region­al Devel­op­ment, at the time, was forced to resign, after pub­li­ca­tion of a pho­to, show­ing him with his right arm extend­ed in a Nazi salute, stand­ing in front of a wax fig­ure of a Nazi offi­cer in Paris’ Musée Grévin. May 19, anoth­er pho­to was pub­lished on the inter­net, show­ing the fresh­ly appoint­ed depart­ment direc­tor in the Min­istry of Defense, Ivo Antonov, also giv­ing the Nazi salute in front of a Sec­ond World War tank of the Wehrma­cht. . . .”

Oth­er coali­tion part­ners have made dis­parag­ing remarks about Roma (“gyp­sies”) and Jews. Worth not­ing that Borisov’s selec­tion of coali­tion part­ners: ” . . . .Fol­low­ing the recent March 26, par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, Borisov, the win­ner of the elec­tions (his GERB with 32.7 per­cent), did not begin nego­ti­a­tions for a gov­ern­ment coali­tion with the Bul­gar­i­an Social­ist Par­ty (27.2 per­cent) or with the Move­ment for Rights and Free­doms (9 per­cent) rep­re­sent­ing the Turk­ish-speak­ing minor­i­ty, but rather with the Unit­ed Patri­ots (9.1 per­cent). The Unit­ed Patri­ots is an alliance of three extreme right-wing par­ties. . . .”

In recent weeks, the strug­gle over the poten­tial seces­sion of Cat­alo­nia from Spain has gar­nered con­sid­er­able atten­tion

That strug­gle is framed against a larg­er polit­i­cal dynam­ic embrac­ing advo­ca­cy of the elim­i­na­tion of for­mal nation­al bor­ders in Europe in favor of “region­al­ist plans.” Just such region­al­ist advo­ca­cy was the focal point of a promi­nent arti­cle (with accom­pa­ny­ing maps of the pro­ject­ed realign­ment) in Die Zeit, a major Ger­man week­ly.

Region­al­ist advo­ca­cy has a sig­nif­i­cant past, with the ear­ly post­war CIA and Allen Dulles hav­ing embraced such a dynam­ic. ” . . . . the fed­er­al­ists had ini­tial­ly been sup­port­ed and con­trolled by the CIA pre­de­ces­sor, the Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS) and [one of its top spies] Alan Dulles, resid­ing in Bern, and lat­er by the CIA itself. . . .”

In addi­tion, the region­al­ist dyanam­ic enjoyed the sup­port of long-time Ger­man finance min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schauble, whose advo­ca­cy and imple­men­ta­tion of bru­tal fis­cal aus­ter­i­ty helped beg­gar much of the EU, includ­ing Spain, fol­low­ing the finan­cial cri­sis of 2008. ” . . . . Wolf­gang Schäu­ble, as Pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Euro­pean Bor­der Regions (AEBR) in the ear­ly 1980’s, was also pro­mot­ing region­al­ist plans. Inspired by for­mer Nazi func­tionar­ies, the AEBR crit­i­cized the ‘nation-state’s bar­ri­er effect’ of bor­ders in the inter­ests of large cor­po­ra­tions. . . . For­mer Nazi func­tionar­ies were active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing both on the AEBR’s com­mit­tees and in the imme­di­ate entourage of its plan­ning of the ‘region­al­iza­tion’ of the bor­der regions, includ­ing Gerd Jans, the for­mer mem­ber of the Waf­fen SS in the Nether­lands, Kon­rad Mey­er, respon­si­ble for the Naz­i’s ‘Gen­er­alplan Ost,’ Her­mann Josef Abs, of the Deutsche Bank, as well as Alfred Toepfer, described by the pub­li­cist Hans-Rüdi­ger Minow as ‘infa­mous for his bor­der sub­ver­sion of France’s Alsace.’ In an exten­sive study, Minow describes the con­ti­nu­ities of the Naz­i’s con­cepts. . . .”

Despite an ini­tial impres­sion of “region­al­ism” that many might see as alien, The Schauble/AEBR/regionalism dyan­mic ide­ol­o­gy may be seen as some­thing of a sub­sidiary ele­ment of glob­al­iza­tion. ” . . . .  .In 1979, Schäu­ble became pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Euro­pean Bor­der Regions (AEBR), an orga­ni­za­tion with the objec­tive of down­grad­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of bor­ders in Europe. Busi­ness inter­ests played an impor­tant role, which is why the AEBR could find reli­able sup­port­ers in indus­try. A ‘Euro­pean Char­ter on Bor­der and Cross-Bor­der Regions,’ passed by the AEBR in 1981, stip­u­lat­ed that the ‘elim­i­na­tion of eco­nom­ic and infra­struc­tur­al bar­ri­ers’ must urgent­ly be pur­sued. . . .”

The imple­men­ta­tion of region­al­iza­tion would facil­i­tate Ger­man dom­i­na­tion of Europe, which has met resis­tance from poor­er EU and EMU coun­tries over the aus­ter­i­ty doc­trine favored by Wolf­gang Schauble. ” . . . . Eco­nom­ic maps by the EU’s Euro­stat sta­tis­tics admin­is­tra­tion show the regions where Europe’s wealth and, there­fore, Europe’s eco­nom­ic pow­er is con­cen­trat­ed, a block with its cen­ters in south­ern and cen­tral Ger­many, to the west, in Flan­ders and spread­ing to seg­ments of the Nether­lands, and to the South to parts of Aus­tria and North­ern Italy and in var­i­ous sep­a­rate regions of West­ern and North­ern Europe. A num­ber of these regions main­tain close rela­tions to Ger­many, or to the Ger­man regions. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[11]) This clear­ly Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed block would hard­ly have any dif­fi­cul­ty con­trol­ling a ‘Europe of the Regions.’ . . . .”

Also worth not­ing is the fact that the Cat­alon­ian inde­pen­dence move­ment embraces a Cat­alon­ian iden­ti­ty that involves peo­ple from France, as well as Spain: ” . . . . The Cata­lan move­ment cur­rent­ly push­ing for seces­sion is in fact large­ly defin­ing itself eth­ni­cal­ly. The autonomous move­ment has been close­ly coop­er­at­ing with French cit­i­zens, who live out­side the Span­ish region of Cat­alo­nia, but also con­sid­er them­selves ‘eth­nic Cata­lans.’ At their ral­lies one can hear ‘Nei­ther France nor Spain! Only one coun­try, Cat­alo­nia!’ . . . .”

The two Twit­ter accounts that appear to account for near­ly a third of all Twit­ter traf­fic with the #Cat­alo­nia hash­tag, in ref­er­ence to the Cat­alon­ian seces­sion move­ment belong to Julian Assange and Edward Snow­den.

 Of more  than pass­ing inter­est, under the cir­cum­stances, is the Twit­ter effort by both Julian Assange and Edward Snow­den on behalf of Cat­alon­ian inde­pen­dence.

 As seen in many past pro­grams and posts, Snow­den and Assange are as far to the right as it is pos­si­ble to be.

 Their cyber­lib­er­tar­i­an activism and their sup­port for Cat­alon­ian inde­pen­dence is root­ed in anar­cho-lib­er­tar­i­an eco­nom­ic the­o­ry. See­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of nation­al gov­ern­ments as desir­able, their sup­port for the prin­ci­ple of seces­sion is root­ed in what Mus­soli­ni termed “cor­po­ratism.”

 Snow­den and Assange’s osten­si­bly “lib­er­at­ing” doc­trines, if put into effect, would leave cit­i­zen­ry  at the mer­cy of unfet­tered eco­nom­ic will, exer­cised by cor­po­ra­tions and their asso­ci­at­ed elites.

Snow­den specif­i­cal­ly appears to be advo­cat­ing that no seces­sion move­ment any­where ever can be reject­ed by the gov­ern­ment under the premise that self-deter­mi­na­tion is a human right, view­ing this as a “nat­ur­al law” issue.

In that con­text, the right to secede is cham­pi­oned by the Lib­er­tar­i­an far-right, all the way down to the right to indi­vid­u­als to secede from all gov­ern­ment. As this piece from Lib­er­tar­i­an David S. D’Amato demon­strates, extend­ing the right to secede down to the indi­vid­ual facil­i­tates the imple­men­ta­tion of an anar­cho-cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety with no gov­ern­ment at all, as seen by fig­ures like Mur­ray Roth­bard. This is envi­sioned as an excel­lent way­of achiev­ing an anar­cho-cap­i­tal­ist utopia.

The Snowden/Assange pro-seces­sion­ist move­ment should also be seen against the back­ground of the Neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment, cham­pi­oned by Ron Paul and the Lud­wig Von Mis­es Insti­tute.

 Fol­low­ing cap­ture of 13 per­cent of the vote in Germany’s fed­er­al elec­tions on Sun­day by the Alter­na­tive For Ger­many (AfD), Alexan­der Gauland, the AfD leader, pro­voked out­rage after sug­gest­ing that Ger­mans should no longer be reproached with the Nazi past.

This type of behav­ior appar­ent­ly moti­vat­ed AfD leader Frauke Petry to leave the par­ty, just hours after the elec­tion over its extrem­ism.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-Review of Dorothy Thomp­son’s 1941 arti­cle about what a Nazi vic­to­ry in Europe would look like–a sce­nario that bears con­sid­er­able resem­blance to the region­al­iza­tion plan dis­cussed above.
2.-Discussion of the poten­tial for­tunes of Aus­tri­a’s Free­dom Par­ty, formed in 1956 as a vehi­cle for the re-intro­duc­tion of Aus­tri­an Third Reich alum­ni into that nation’s polit­i­cal process.

Berlin has the same old new plan. But this time it’s “special”

Reports of a new “six-point plan” are com­ing out of Merkel’s gov­ern­ment and rais­ing the hope that Berlin’s aus­ter­i­ty-fetish has final­ly been sati­at­ed. Keep hop­ing.