The hidden responsibility for World War II rests not upon Adolph Hitler, but rather with Johann Dietrich Eckart. Had Eckart not introduced Hitler to larger crowds and inner circles, had the echoes of his maiden speech not bounced across the basement walls, the madman would have slithered to the corner and nursed his tea in the company of demons and visions forever unrealized. Instead, the first opportunist calculated his gain and a basement full of bystanders fell silent.
Hitler’s path from oblivion to deity was paved by a thousand Judases and a million Pilates; mercenaries and cowards each, who, in moments of destiny, used or excused the monster and hastened him on his way.
The simplest action might have arrested Hitler’s ascent. Here a judge who shortened a sentence, there a socialite whose glittering luncheons legitimized the odd man and his dream for a new Germany. Almost everyone dismissed Hitler’s ominous threats; taking the man at his word cost too much.
Such moments of destiny now test us in our turn. Two short weeks ago, across Everests of whipped cream and dense cappuccino fog, our iPads blipped something or other about the Greek Neo-Nazi party winning seven percent in elections held amid Weimar-like disintegration of that country’s economy. A hundred million eyes rolled, five million deigned to snort, and all buried their minds, ostrich-like, in caffeinated indifference.
The once-obscure Greek Golden Dawn is worthy of more than snorting disdain. Its growth and the conditions in Greece are reminiscent of pre-War Germany. The organization owes its advent in part to a band of new Eckarts, men who use religion to mask their antisemitic ideology and socialist economic theory in Europe and the United States. The organization’s growing popularity demonstrates how quickly small numbers and risible doctrines can achieve power given favorable social factors.
Led by Nikolaos Michaloliakos, Golden Dawn is a member of the European National Front (ENF), an umbrella organization consisting of eight European nationalist branches headed by Roberto Fiore, founder of the Italian Forza Nuova. The branches promote their own country’s ethnic traditions, but share the broader mission outlined by Fiore:
The real Europe, to rise again, will need a single political center that embodies a compelling Idea. This will only happen with a state entity, by its nature “superior” to individual people and offering them a great historic mission: that of “order” making the world a mirror of the Order of heaven. The Idea is the rediscovery of the imperial (not imperialist!) (It is the Idea) of a power “consecrated” from on High and rooted in many people- related, similar and united — but still distinct and vital. It will be one hundred flags of the European Empire.
The web pages of ENF members contain Nazi-like iconography and documentation of joint rallies looking, for all the world, like miniature reenactments of Triumph of the Will. Cartoons advocate not balanced immigration policies, but supremacist malevolence towards foreigners.
The ENF embraces an economic policy that opposes the “effects of Zionism.” It advocates distributism, a social philosophy erroneously claiming to be based on that of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, who outlined solutions for the ill effects of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of Communism.
Distributism has much in common with communism, particularly its Utopian promise that the world will be in harmony when human beings share equally the means and fruits of meaningful work. Radical distributists wax eloquent concerning the role of “Zionist international banking empires” in the present state of Europe, but are shy when asked for details concerning the distribution of presently-held “Zionist” wealth. The implementation of distributism requires stringent state involvement.
Fiore identified what he believes is the obstacle to a restored European economy when speaking of Golden Dawn’s victory:
Greece could escape the clutches of international finance in a few days.
Who, exactly is, for the European National Front, “international finance”?
In 2011, Fiore told a gathering of supporters in Budapest:
The men who brought about the world financial crisis of 2008 were the very same who put Christ on the Cross.
Distributism was promoted in the European National Front by its Irish co-founder Derek Holland. Holland joined forces with Fiore when the Italian fled to England as a person of interest in the 1980 Bologna train bombing. Together, they started the International Third Position, a group that used Catholic devotional practices to legitimize and market their radical economic and political philosophy. Holland outlined his program for a new kind of religious-political activist in his book The Political Soldier, which drew inspiration from the fascist Julius Evola.
When Fiore returned to Italy, he launched Forza Nuova and recruited the other members of the National Front including Greek Golden Dawn. Holland turned to America where his friend, Bishop Richard Williamson, ran the seminary of the Society of St. Pius X. Like Fiore, Holland frequented the chapels run by the organization now known for Williamson’s infamous Holocaust denial and 9-11 truther sermons.
Holland and a young American, also a devotee of Williamson, established IHS Press to spread distributism in the United States. They benefited from the sympathies of the Society leadership in the U.S and their literature flowed into SSPX bookstores.
Holland’s American business partner spread not only the anti-capitalist economic theory espoused by the ENF, but its antisemitism as well. On September 12, 2001, with the nation transfixed in horror at the sight of the Islamic terrorist attacks, Holland’s protégé wrote the following for his website The Legion of St. Louis:
Readers will notice that we didn’t begin today’s special issue on yesterday’s remarkable events with “America is attacked.” America wasn’t attacked. America isn’t the World Trade Center, nor is it the Pentagon. At least those things don’t represent our America, nor should they for our readers. … If we lived in a sane world, and bound ourselves by our own rules of logic, we would consider very seriously the question of whether those who caused these accidents are “sane” or “insane,” whether these hypothetical “crazy Muslims” are really “crazy Muslims” and not “justifiably angry Arabs. The intended victims were the financial and military power of a nation that, should introspection ever become the order of the day, cannot claim ignorance nor innocence of having earned the hatred and resentment of the non-Western European world. Turn off the TV and go outside. Unless you live in Manhattan, the sky is clear, the birds are chirping, there is a nice breeze, and God is still Good and life is still sane.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URkVjGIL29w
(Neo-Conned was published by Sharpe’s publishing house in 2005.)
Having posted his rant, the author, Lieutenant Commander John Sharpe, headed to his day job at the U.S. Atlantic Fleet Public Affairs Office. Sharpe later wrote the following:
In a way it is a pleasure to be back with you on this silly “anniversary” of 9-11. For those of you who suffered through the televised ground zero memorial ceremony… what is the relevance of that to a so-called terrorist attack on the financial capital of the world? The waving flags, the tears, the constant voice-overs about what the first moment was that we realized we were “at war,” the metal circle placed in the middle of the dirt at ground zero with groups of people marching up to it to pay their respects…it’s all such nonsense.
…if the collapse of the WTC was not caused, at least from the highest levels or in its root causes, by bin Laden and his henchmen, but rather by the Powers that Be in order to lead us into a further intervention in world events, to ensure that the liberal-democratic order triumphs based on force of arms, then the grief and suffering of the 9-11 ceremonies should be accompanied not by smugness that “American greatness will triumph in the end,” but rather by sheer outrage that 3000 citizens were allowed to perish in order to further the aims of the Zionist New-World-Order gang, run and/or coordinated from and/or coordinated by America in the first place!
The contents of this U.S. officer’s webpage were brought to the attention of the Navy, which conducted an internal investigation. Sharpe was not disciplined by the Navy for his antisemitism. He has always declared his publishing house to be distinct from the organized neo-fascism of his friend, though his writings were declared to be antisemitic as a rule of law during a civil trial.
Reports concerning the writings and associations of Sharpe, Holland, and Fiore were sent to religious superiors, to the U.S. Navy, to journalists, and to a dozen others in positions of authority with power to at least limit the influence of the European National Front and its associates.
But these rolled their eyes, snorted, and reached for their coffee.
In 2005, Director Marc Rothemund’s cinematic masterpiece Sophie Scholl: The Final Days received a nomination for an Oscar for its superb depiction of the White Rose German resistance movement. Explaining why he felt it was important to tell the story of Sophie Scholl, a 23 year-old student decapitated by the Nazis, Rothemund explained:
I travel all over the world and I learned that you have Nazis everywhere. As long as there are Nazis in Germany, you have to tell the stories from the past. When I travel through Germany, I ask the young people, “Did you see the movie of the White Rose from 1981?” And it was only half of the teachers who raised their hands. But the young people, nobody saw it. We have five million unemployed people and people have a lot to do to look for jobs and they are worrying about their future. Especially in the time if you have economical problems, then the young people are easy to influence, to seduce. If one politician tells to the people, “The Turkish guys, or the foreign guys, or the Jewish guys are responsible, then you believe it and you vote for the Nazis.”
Golden Dawn will send 19 members to the next session of the Greek Parliament. IHS Press will host its first Restoring Christendom Congress in Washington, D.C., in August of 2012.
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