Recorded May 20, 2007
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Introduction: Revisiting Kevin Coogan, author of Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, this program sets forth some of the fundamentals of Kevin’s weighty and formidable book. Although not well known, even after his death, Francis Parker Yockey exerted a profound ideological influence on the course of postwar fascism. A Nazi agent before, during and after World War II, Yockey is best known for his signature piece Imperium. Advocating a globally-dominant, Pan-European fascism, Yockey’s book prescribes this state of affairs as the solution to Oswald Spengler’s thesis of The Decline of the West, which foresaw the disintegration of Western civilization. Seeing the United States as the greatest threat to civilized society, Yockey advocated that fascists of “the Imperium” ally with some strange bedfellows in order to reverse the course of history. Yockey believed it necessary for fascists to work with political and ethnic elements usually seen as antithetical to fascism, such as the former USSR, the People’s Republic of China, Castro’s Cuba, Third World countries and African-American separatists. Much of the program highlights various individuals and movements within the postwar fascist international that manifest elements of Yockey’s philosophy.

Program Highlights Include: Discussion of the Third Position, a form of fascism with much in common with some of the tenets of Imperium; Discussion of Francois Genoud [a key Nazi operative who paved the way for forging alliances between Arab nationalist and Islamist movements and Nazism]; analysis of the National Renaissance Party—an American fascist party that forged liaisons with black separatists; Yockey’s enthusiasm for Stalin’s anti-Semitic policies. Be sure to listen to the other interviews with Mr.Coogan about “Dreamer of the Day,” available on the WFMU website.

1. Presenting an overview of his book Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, this interview with Kevin Coogan will [hopefully] spur enterprising listeners to read this vitally important and remarkable volume. Cited by Mr. Emory as one of the most important books ever written about fascism, “Dreamer . . .” illuminates the landscape of contemporary international fascism, revealing political alliances that will surprise those with a more limited, conventional view of fascism. To learn more about this pivotal document, check out Mr. Emory’s numerous interviews with, and programs about, Mr. Coogan’s work.

2. A Chicago native, Yockey hated America, American culture and Jews, and saw a Europe united under fascism—an “Imperium”–as the only alternative to the “Decline of the West” [the title of the magnum opus of Oswald Spengler, a major influence on Yockey.] Having spied for Nazi Germany and participated in the Axis Fifth Column movement in this country, Yockey was shaken by the defeat of the Third Reich. Continuing his efforts on behalf of fascism, Yockey devoted the postwar years to working with what Mr. Coogan calls a “postwar fascist international.” Eventually, Yockey was arrested in the United States and committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule in prison.

3. In the aftermath of World War II, Yockey crafted his signature document, a formidable tome titled Imperium, which he published under the pseudonym “Ullick Varange.” Hating America and despairing of anything useful coming out of the U.S., Yockey felt that renascent European fascists should make common cause with elements in the Third World, the former USSR, the People’s Republic of China and Cuba in order to defeat the United States and “International Jewry.” The various publishing outlets of the fascist Liberty Lobby have published Imperium.

4. A key point of discussion concerns the Bandung conference in Indonesia in 1955. Convened with an eye to charting a course for former colonial territories that had achieved their independence, the conference formalized the concept of ‘non-aligned” nations, charting an independent foreign policy between the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R. Yockey saw Europe in the post World War II period as being, in essence, a colonial territory occupied by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In this contest, he felt that allying with the Third World offered the possibility of a European rebirth.

5. One of the primary elements of Yockey’s ideology was that the United States was the greatest evil on earth and that the Soviets (particularly under Stalin) were preferable to the Yanks. Driven by his virulent anti-Semitism, Yockey’s world view saw Stalin’s Prague trials of Jews in the early ‘50’s as an indication that the Soviets offered a viable ally for the fascists of the “Imperium.” Mr. Coogan points out that Yockey’s views were influenced by traditional German “Ostpolitik” and geo-politics, which saw Russia as a necessary ally of an expansionist Germany, providing the Fatherland with valuable raw materials.

6. Yockey was also significantly influenced by elements within the Waffen SS who rejected the traditional “Aryan Supremacy” of Himmler in favor of a more pragmatic pan-Europeanism. Better suited to Germany’s projected role as master of occupied Europe, this pan-Europeanism was adopted by Yockey as a key element of his concept of the “Imperium.”

7. Yockey’s ideas were realized, to a certain extent, by the remarkable career of Francois Genoud. Genoud was one of the most important activists in the postwar fascist international, executing operations on behalf of the Third Reich and its residua that echo to the present. [Genoud died in 1996, but his name crops up in a number of contexts in connection with the events of 9/11.] Most of Kevin Coogan’s appendix on Genoud is reproduced in FTR#453. Genoud was particularly active in forming political alliances between Nazism and the Arab and Muslim worlds.

8. The discussion highlights the tactic pursued by some fascist groups of allying with African-American separatists in order to bring down the existing social order. In particular, Kevin discusses the National Renaissance Party, headed up by James Madole and advised by Fred Weiss. [The later was a German-American who worked as part of the Nazi Fifth Column in American before, during and after the Second World War. Weiss was very close to Yockey.]

9. A political milieu with much in common with Yockey’s philosophy is the fascist Third Position. Incorporating elements of the far left and the far right into a [functionally] unified political front, the Third Position rejected the notion of allying either with Marxist socialism or free market capitalism. In addition, the Third Position also advocates ideological alliance with Third World peoples, such as the Iran of the Ayatollahs and black separatists such as the Nation of Islam. For more about the Third Position, see Miscellaneous Archive shows M19 and M21, available from Spitfire, as well as the many for the record shows on the subject. To locate the for the record shows on the third position, use the Search Function at the top of the Spitfire page.

10. Two video productions are being generated by a couple of documentary filmmakers. One is a DVD of a three-lecture series called “The First Refuge of a Scoundrel: The Relationship Between Fascism and Religion.” To learn more about this, visit The Anti-Fascist YouTube.com page. In addition, there will soon be a documentary about Mr. Emory, titled “The Anti-Fascist.” For more about this project, visit theantifascist.com.