“Were the majority of the German and
European Jews disloyal? Yes, at least the so called liberal Jews, similar to
the liberal Jews today that opposes nationalism/Zionism and supports
multiculturalism. Jews that support multiculturalism today are as much of a
threat to Israel and Zionism (Israeli nationalism) as they are to us. So let us
fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all
anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxists/multiculturalists. Conservative
Jews were loyal to Europe and should have been rewarded. Instead, [Hitler] just
targeted them all.” (p 1167)
Breivik’s objection to Hitler,
then, is that he was indiscriminate in his punishment of Jewish disloyalty,
when only “the majority” were disloyal.
The implication is that only the latter should have been “targeted”. This is not so much Holocaust denial, as
Holocaust affirmation. And in Breivik’s
treatment, even loyal Jews are better disposed of in some far away land:
“[Hitler] could have easily worked out an
agreement with the UK and France to liberate the ancient Jewish Christian lands
with the purpose of giving the Jews back their ancestral lands ... The UK and
France would perhaps even contribute to such a campaign in an effort to support
European reconciliation. The deportation of the Jews from Germany wouldn't be
popular but eventually, the Jewish people would regard Hitler as a hero because
he returned the Holy land to them.” (p
1167)
The second principle objection to Hitler, then, is that he did not
simply ethnically cleanse the Jews from Germany in the cause of Zionism. For Breivik is fanatically pro-Zionist,
seeing in them the ‘good Jews’ that nationalists can work with. While most, approximately 75% of European and
American Jews are “disloyal” today - being “multiculturalist (nation-wrecking)
Jews” – only 50% of Israeli Jews are “disloyal”. This “shows very clearly that we must embrace
the remaining loyal Jews as brothers rather than repeating the mistake of the
NSDAP.” This is a vital strategic point
for Breivik, who maintains that in Western Europe, only the UK and France have
a “Jewish problem” – in contrast to the US which, due to its relatively high
Jewish population, “actually has a very considerable Jewish problem”. (p 1167)
Breivik’s embrace of Zionism
puts him at odds with many fascists and neo-Nazis, but he is not out on a limb
among his fraternity. For several years
now, far right groups in Europe have been gravitating toward a pro-Israel
position. Geert Wilders, though not a
fascist, represents a strain of radical right opinion that is pro-Israel. Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean Marie Le Pen
and leader of the fascist Front National (FN) in France, argues that the FN has
always been “Zionistic”. The BNP’s legal
officer, Lee Barnes, gave full-throated supported to Israel’s 2006 invasion of
Lebanon: “I support Israel 100% in their dispute with Hezbollah ... I hope they
wipe Hezbollah off the Lebanese map and bomb them until they leave large greasy
craters in the cities where their Islamic extremist cantons of terror once
stood.” The BNP declared itself
“prudently” on Israel’s side, for reasons of “national interest”: Israel was
part of a “Western, if not European” civilization whose opponents were “trying
to conquer the world and subject it to their religion”. An article on the BNP’s website explained
that the party had cast off “the leg-irons of conspiracy theories and the
thinly veiled anti-Semitism which has held this party back for two decades”.10
This realignment reflects a
geopolitical reality in which the ‘war on terror’ has revived colonial
discourses and designated Islam as the eternal Other of the ‘West’. In this situation, Israel is seen as an ally
against the Muslim peril. Thus, it is
quite logical that anti-Semitism should take the form of embracing the ‘good
Jew’, and Zionism.11 Yet history, and the thrust of Breivik’s
argument, suggests that even the ‘good Jew’ would not be safe from a
reconstituted European fascism.
Capitalist globalism and
Eurabia
The predominant theme of
Breivik’s manifesto, as with most fascist texts, is the over-riding importance
of the nation-state. This does not mean
support for the existing state authorities.
As he puts it: “we CANNOT and should not trust that our police forces
and military act in our interest now or in the future. Both our police forces
and military are lead by the multiculturalist traitors we wish to defeat.” (p
1240) Thus, an extra-parliamentary
movement is needed to recapture the state apparatus, and restore the
nation-state’s standing. But what has so
enfeebled the European national state?
If the immediate danger for Breivik is the
presence of Muslims, this is merely a symptom of a much larger problem internal
to European societies. Two major enemies
combine in Breivik’s purview. The first
is the capitalist globaliser, driven by greed, and the second is the “cultural
Marxist”, driven by hate. We shall deal
with an example of the first here. Like
most on the European hard right, Breivik is an opponent of the EU. He draws on the analysis of the British
‘Eurosceptics’, Christopher Booker and Richard North, to argue that it is at
root a project aimed at creating a tyrannical multinational state, inspired by
the USSR (hence, “the EUSSR totalitarian system”, p 1384) and driven by
France. The idea is that France is, in
pursuit of continental dominance and in great power rivalry with the
Anglo-American axis has sought to suppress national sovereignty in the
interests of a Greater France. (pp
294-5)
Worse, however, is that this
is bound up with the aim of pursuing a pro-Arab foreign policy. And this is where ‘Eurabia’ comes in. Bat Ye’or, one of Breivik’s muses, and the
author of the ‘Eurabia’ thesis, is credited with explaining how “French
President Charles de Gaulle, disappointed by the loss of the French colonies in
Africa and the Middle East as well as with France's waning influence in the
international arena, decided in the 1960's to create a strategic alliance with
the Arab and Muslim world to compete with the dominance of the United States
and the Soviet Union.” The result was
Eurabia, a political-cultural entity bound by markets and migration, turning
the Mediterranean into “a Euro-Arab inland sea by favouring Muslim immigration
and promoting multiculturalism with a strong Islamic presence in Europe.” (p
289)
In fact, Breivik goes
further. Citing newspapers such as the
British Daily Express (the most
right-wing of UK tabloids), he asserts that the EU has decided that “the Union
should be enlarged to include the Muslim Middle East and North Africa ... has accepted
that tens of millions of immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries in
northern Africa should be allowed to settle in Europe in the years ahead ... is
planning to implement sharia laws for the millions of Muslims it is inviting to
settle in Europe ... [T]he EU is formally surrendering an entire continent to
Islam while destroying established national cultures... This constitutes the
greatest organised betrayal in Western history, perhaps in human history”. (p
318)
Like fascists past and present,
Breivik has no objection to the profit system. He is himself someone who has invested in the stock market, and set up
two private businesses. What he objects
to is an effect of capitalism, which is its tendency to break out of the bounds
of the national state and to transport cultural, religious and political trends
with it. What he wants is the
impossible: a ‘national’ capitalism, subordinate to the imputed cultural,
spiritual and material needs of ‘the nation’.
Anticommunism: Against the
Marxist Tyranny
The 2083 manifesto pivots on anticommunism, in an era where actual
communism is thin on the ground. Most of
Breivik’s reflections on what communism is are unremarkable, if fanciful. For example, he calls upon the liberal
political economist Friedrich Hayek and the conservative tobacco salesman Roger
Scruton to explain the appeal and thematics of socialist ideology (a
totalitarian doctrine, based on wrong theories, attractive to wrong-headed intellectuals). (pp. 63-4) It is rather when he explains the role of communists in the betrayal of
the nation that things become interesting. For, as Markha Valenta has put, Breivik “hates the left even more than
he fears Islam”.12 The text of 2083 begins not with Muslims, the EU, or weapons advice, but rather
with an extended soliloquy (not, as noted above, written by Breivik) on the
influence of “cultural Marxists” in upholding “multiculturalism” and “Political
Correctness”. The burden of the argument
is as follows:
Multiculturalism is what
results when the doctrine of Marxism is transposed from economic class struggle
to culture. As a result of the failure
of socialist revolutions to spread through Europe in the post-WWI situation,
Marxist theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and Georgy Lukacs attempted to locate
the source of the obstacle in the failure of Marxists to win cultural
battles. For Gramsci, the winning of
such battles meant creating a new ‘communist man’ who would be the ideal
subject for a socialist state. But to
win the culture wars meant “a long march through the society’s institutions,
including the government, the judiciary, the military, the schools and the
media”. In short, it meant taking hold
of the levers of power.
Later, this mode of analysis
was combined with Freud, in the Frankfurt school, and then linguistic theory,
to become ‘deconstruction’. ‘Deconstruction’ exists to prove that any and all texts discriminate
against minorities, and has had a powerful effect on educational theory,
helping produce the doctrine of ‘Political Correctness’. This in turn works to control language, thus
thought. Cultural Marxists, wherever
they obtain power, expropriate white European males just as much as communist
regimes expropriated the bourgeoisie, both on behalf of defined victims – whether peasants and workers, or Muslims and
minorities. (pp 21-3) In this way,
cultural Marxists have quietly formed a treasonous power bloc within the state
that is: “anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-family, anti-nationalist,
anti-patriot, anti conservative, anti-hereditarian, anti-ethnocentric,
anti-masculine, anti-tradition, and anti-morality”. (p 38)
It is not just on questions of
race and culture that the white European male is persecuted. Modern feminism is also, owing to its Marxist
roots, “totalitarian”. As a result, it
is producing a “feminisation” of society and of men. Breivik regards Adorno’s theory of the
“authoritarian personality” as the key weapon in the feminist arsenal, devised
for “psychological warfare against the European male”, making him unwilling to
defend his traditional gender role. (p 37)
An important upshot of this is
that ‘Political Correctness’ stifles the unpalatable truth about important
subjects. Breivik cannot say “an evil,
retarded and supremacist death-cult that refuses to afford women and
unbelievers respect and the most basic of human rights” without being “smeared
as an ‘Islamophobe’”. Nor can he say
“Whites are generally more intelligent and creative than blacks and have,
throughout human history, solved the problems presented to the human race by
Mother nature far more effectively than blacks have” without being “vilified as
a racist”. No dissent from “the childish
Liberal fantasy of equality” is possible. In so altering people’s conscious, the cultural Marxists have inflicted
a “mental illness”, and one that only affects “the people of the white race as
other races and cultures know full well the entirely natural order of
inequality.” (pp 400-1)
The white European male, then,
is a pitiable figure, not only expropriated, oppressed and feminised, but also
prevented from speaking of it by the Marxist dictatorship: “we, the cultural
conservatives of Europe, have become slaves under an oppressive, tyrannical,
extreme left-wing system with absolutely no hope of reversing the damage they
have caused. At least not democratically”. (p 799)
It is not necessary to ponder
the absurdities, fictions and paranoia of this analysis, taken from a Free
Congress Foundation pamphlet. It is
sufficient to note what it means to believe such things. The idea of the communist as conspirer and
traitor to the nation has been a mainstay of fascist polemic since its
inception. For Mussolini, international
socialism of the kind advocated by the anti-war Zimmerwald Left during WWI was
a “German weapon” of war, a “German invention”. For Hitler, communist treason was Jewish treason, placing the German
masses “exclusively at the service of international Marxism in the Jewish and
Stock Exchange parties”. And while
Austrian fascists vituperated against “Judeo-Bolshevism” and the “aliens” and
“traitors” who defiled the nation, the leader of the Romanian Iron Guard
Alexandru Contacuzino excoriated communism for being “harmful to the essence of
Romania and to the national life”.13 Their answer was to use terror against the
Left. Breivik’s answer was to bomb
government buildings in Oslo, then descend on a Labour Party youth camp on the
island of Utøya and gun down 69 unarmed children.
Fascism: organising the
counter-revolution
“We, the free indigenous peoples of Europe, hereby declare a
pre-emptive war on all cultural Marxist/multiculturalist elites of Western
Europe.” (p 812)
Anders Breivik is not a
Nazi. His manifesto makes it clear that
he would be “offended” to be called a Nazi, and that he “hates” Adolf
Hitler. This is because he considers Hitler
a “a traitor to the Germanic and all European tribes”, whose “crazed effort for
world domination” was “reckless”. The
Nazis “knew perfectly well what the consequences would be for their tribes if
they lost, yet they went ahead and completed the job ... And people like
myself, and other cultural conservative leaders of today, are still suffering
under this propaganda campaign because of that one man.” (pp 1166-7) Breivik hates the Nazis, then, primarily because the Nazis made things
difficult for people like him. His
objection would be moot were it possible for the Nazis to have won.
Perhaps it would not be
pressing the point too far to say that, on balance, Breivik has more in common
with the Nazis than separates him from them. Indeed, he is sympathetic to present-day Nazis, believing that they are
“fellow patriots” and that “90% of the individuals who uses [sic]
Neonazi/fascist symbols are not real national socialists. They are only extremely
frustrated individuals who have been demonised and ridiculed for too long by
the establishment.” (p 1239) That said, the fascist agenda that he has
outlined does differ in several respects from that of historical fascism. This is because the context, especially the
geopolitical context, is radically different. Fascism initially arose amid a crisis of liberal capitalism, a wave of
revolutionary socialist insurrection, economic turmoil, and the first signs of
the decline of European empires and the ascent of the United States. In a colonial world, characterised by
inter-imperialist rivalries, it was still possible to envision solving the
nation’s productive problems through territorial expansion – be it the
“proletarian nation” grabbing its fair share of the colonies, or the Third
Reich reaching for Lebensraum. In a
post-colonial era, far right activism has centred on a defensive white
nationalism. So it is with Breivik.
Not that Breivik is opposed to
imperialism. His appraisal of
colonialism is largely positive, and his objection to the ‘war on terror’ is
strategic. It is impossible to bring
democracy to Muslim countries such as Iraq, so “we should shift from a
pro-democracy offensive to an anti-sharia defensive.” We should “talk straight about who the enemy
is”. The real war coming is not this
politically correct “war on terror”, but “World War IV”. (pp 524 & 572) Still, having purified the nation, he wants
to batten down its hatches rather than risk any potentially compromising encounters
with nefarious aliens: “The best way to deal with the Islamic world is to have
as little to do with it as possible.” (p
338)
Similarly, interwar fascists
had a steady stream of recruits among young, idealistic men socialised in
institutions which moralised violence (such as the army). They filled up paramilitary units such as the
squadristi and freikorps, where non-fascist recruits could be hardened into
fascist cadres, through comradeship and ‘knocking heads together’. Since WWII, mass recruitment for such
activities has been an endemic problem for the far right. This has left fascists with two options. The first is to seek respectability through
parliamentary campaigns, shedding explicit references to fascist or white
supremacist language and demonstrating their fitness to govern. This is problematic for fascists, for whom
control of the streets is more important than control of the council
chamber. The alternative is to find
substitutes in existing gangs with a culture of violence and nationalism. The infiltration of football gangs by the
National Front in 1970s and 1980s is an example of this. Today’s English Defence League (EDL), in
which organised fascists lead mobs of racist football hooligans in targeted
street campaigns is another. In practise,
many fascist organisations have tried to maintain both strategies concurrently.
Breivik attempts a hybrid of
these strategies. While declaring that
democratic struggle is otiose, he is embryonically aware of the need to engage
in hegemonic battles, shedding the stigma of the Third Reich. As he puts it: “Copy your enemies, learn from
the professionals”. The “cultural
Marxists” whose dominance “cultural conservatives” bridle under have
effectively concealed “their true political intentions by claiming to be driven
by humanist principles”. Thus, while
“cultural Marxists” exert dominance through front organisations supporting
human rights, feminism or environmentalism, so “cultural conservatives” should
embrace front tactics based on alliances “against Muslim extremism”, “against
Jihad”, “for free speech”, and for human and civil rights. (pp 1241-2)
Intriguingly, Breivik credits
the “British EDL” for being “the first youth organisation that has finally
understood this. Sure, in the beginning it was the occasional egg heads who
shouted racist slogans and did Nazi salutes but these individuals were kicked
out. An organisation such as the EDL has the moral high ground and can easily
justify their political standpoints as they publicly oppose racism and
authoritarianism.” He goes on to urge “conservative intellectuals” to support
the EDL and “help them on the right ideological path. And to ensure that they
continue to reject criminal, racist and totalitarian doctrines.” (pp
1242-3) We do not need to take Breivik’s
descriptions of the EDL at face value, any more than we accept his
idiosyncratic understanding of what constitutes racism. It is sensible to assume that he is aware of
the EDL’s record as a violent street gang, and that no “individuals were kicked
out” of the EDL for Nazi salutes or racist slogans. But it is two features of the EDL that he
particularly values: what he perceives as their ability to gain favourable
media coverage, and polarise opinion; and their loose model of street
organization which “is the only way to avoid paralyzing scrutiny and
persecution”. (pp 1243 & 1255)
The key to his argument,
however, is that “patriots” must begin preparing for an armed insurgency. The moral and political argument for armed
struggle is that multiculturalism, “like drugs”, has already destroyed “the
heart and fabric” of the nation, such that its subjects “possess no potential
for resistance”. As such, it is not
“remotely possible” that a “conservative, monocultural party will ever gain
substantial political influence”. “The cultural Marxists have institutionalised
multiculturalism and have no intention of ever allowing us to exercise any
political influence of significance.... It is ... lethal to waste another five
decades on meaningless dialogue while we are continuously losing our
demographical advantage” (pp 802-3) As such, “armed struggle is the only
rational approach”. (p 812)
This insurgency must attack
the “category A and B traitors” (Marxists, “suicidal humanists”, “capitalist globalists”,
etc), first and foremost, rather than Muslims whose presence Breivik deems to
be a symptom rather than the source of the problem. “We will focus on the Muslims AFTER we have
seized political and military control. At that point, we will start deportation
campaigns.” (pp 1255-6) This is not to say that Muslims cannot be
singled out. Numerous targets are
suggested because of a high Muslim population, or because they constitute a
major Muslim gathering. But the priority
is to assault “cultural Marxists” and what he regards as the centre-left
establishment. A key section on weapons
of mass destruction is headed: “Obtaining and using WMD’s against the cultural
Marxist / multiculturalist elites”. It
proceeds to outline ways of obtaining or cultivating anthrax, procuring deadly
pathogens, and gaining access to chemical agents. 2083
does not envision “cultural conservatives” getting hold of small nuclear
devices until the later days of the insurrection, between 2030 and 2070 – but
this is no reason not to think ahead, and the manifesto describes scenarios for
their acquisition and use. (pp 960-73)
Breivik envisions a
three-staged civil war in Europe, characterised at first by clandestine cells
using “military shock attacks”, followed by a phase of more advanced resistance
movements and preparations for “pan-European coup d’états, and finally a period
of coups, repression, the defeat of “Cultural Communism”, and the deportation
of Muslims. By 2083, 400 years after the
‘Battle of Vienna’ between the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire, the
revolution is to be victorious. (p 813)
Once the revolution is successful, there is to be a transitional phase
of dictatorship in which a “patriotic tribunal” will ensure that
nationalist-minded individuals are placed in prominent positions in the
security forces, and the media, all public offices, publishing outfits, and
schools. It will choose a new “birth
policy”, and social structures will go from being “matriarchies to once again
becoming patriarchies”. It will organise
the execution of “all category A and B traitors who continue to oppose
us”. This will be followed by a shift
away from “mass democracy” to “administered democracy”. “Mass democracy does not work,” Breivik
asserts, “as has been proven.” It must be
replaced by constitutional monarchies and republics. The tribunal will continue to act as a
guardian council to ensure that the nation is inoculated against renewed
Marxist infiltration, that the fertility rate is kept to an acceptable level,
and that “the suicidal humanists and capitalist globalists do not misuse their
influence”. (pp 795-801 & 1325)
This sinister augury, supplying
– Nostradamus-like – a detailed prospectus of events, many of which the author
of these prognoses would not live to see, is of a piece with classical fascist
millenarianism. The European “tribes”
are endowed with a destiny, an apocalyptic final reckoning, out of which is to
come national redemption. It is this
which, in part, was responsible for the perpetual radicalisation of the Nazi
regime. It was ultimately this which informed
Hitler’s decision to provoke a Europe-wide war in a situation in which he was
very unlikely to win. It was this which
led to his turning on Stalin and attempting to enslave Russia, despite this
adding an impossible dimension to his war. And it was this which culminated in auto-obliteration as Nazi planes
were sent back to bomb German cities to prevent their capture by Allied forces.14 The culmination of fascism is not dictatorship;
it is catastrophe.
Conclusion
Breivik’s 2083 is a fascist manifesto not because it apes the language of fuhrers and duces past, but because it has absorbed the elements of contemporary reactionary discourse and
articulated them in an agenda of mass rightist insurrection. He has eschewed many of the obsessions and
talking points of much white supremacist discourse, which has been concerned
with reviving the prospects of fascism by restoring the reputation of the Nazi
regime. He does not need Holocaust
denial to articulate his agenda, any more than he needs the hard biological
racism of the colonial period to express his supremacism. His vituperations about ‘cultural Marxism’
have, by placing crypto-communists in senior positions of authority, provided
the conspiracy that he needs to explain the nation’s parlous circumstances. The nefarious ‘Jew’ of anti-Semitic discourse
is not rejected, but is qualified, allied to a Zionist posture, and is at any
rate secondary to his wider schema.
There are other respects in which
Breivik’s manifesto is very different from classical fascist discourse. For example, there is nothing about trade
unions, very little about traditional revolutionary socialism, and also nothing
on the global economic crisis, in 2083. It is hard to imagine a Mein Kampf without
some reference to the trade unions, to winning the German workers from the
reds, and so on. To put it another way,
there is very little that is specifically addressed to the problems of the
working class, or even the insecure petty bourgeoisie. Unlike most fascist parties and intellectuals
in Europe, Breivik has no orientation toward winning over masses. In politics, he worked as part of a milieu, but
ultimately set out to make his most significant contribution to the fascist
struggle on his own. Yet, Breivik
aspires to trigger a mass movement, even if he does not attempt to offer
plausible solutions to popular problems. And in defining a ‘revolutionary’ rightist creed that is more informed
by this conjuncture than the interwar period, 2083 outlines some of the
contours of what we can expect from fascist movements of the future.
Richard Seymour
