Martin A. Lee cont.
Martin wrote a great book on neo-fascism, "The Beast Reawakens, " equally tough on the CIA and faux anti-imperialists.
Mercenaries for Palestine
After Israel's overwhelming victory in the Six Day War in June 1967, a mood of desperate militancy engulfed the Palestinian refugee camps. Deprived of a homeland, the leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) apparently felt that they couldn't afford to turn down offers of help, no matter how unsavory the donors. Karl von Kyna, a West German neo-Nazi mercenary, died during a Palestinian commando raid in September 1967.
Eager to continue their vendetta against the Jews, several right-wing extremists subsequently joined the Hilfskorp Arabien ("Auxiliary Corps Arabia"), which was advertised in the Munich-based Deutsche National-Zeitung, a pro-Nazi newspaper, in 1968.
The following year, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked several commercial airplanes. When three PFLP members stood trial after blowing up an Israeli jet in Zurich, the legal costs for their defense were paid by Francois Genoud, an elusive Swiss banker described by the London Observer as "one of the world's leading Nazis." Genoud had previously picked up the tab for Adolf Eichmann's legal defense, and a number of other Nazi war criminals and Arab terrorists would also benefit from his largesse. Where did the money come from? According to European press accounts, Genoud was managing the hidden Swiss treasure of the Third Reich, most of which had been stolen from Jews. "Security services claim he transferred the defeated Nazis' gold into Swiss bank accounts," reports Gitta Sereny, who called Genoud "the most mysterious man in Europe."
After World War II, Genoud served as the financial advisor to the Grand Mufti. In 1958, the Swiss Nazi set up the Arab Commercial Bank in Geneva to manage the war chest of the Algerian National Liberation Front, whose partisans were fighting to free their country from French colonial rule. Several Third Reich veterans, including Major General Otto Ernst Remer, who had served as Hitler's bodyguard, smuggled weapons to the Algerian rebels, while other German advisors provided military instruction. Under the guise of supporting the Arabs' struggle against French colonialism, Genoud and his Nazis cohorts were following the same geopolitical strategy that Hitler had pursued in the Middle East.
Black September and Achille Lauro
In addition to brokering arms sales to Arab militants, Genoud helped subsidize terrorist networks in Europe and the Arab world. This financier of fascism waited until the statue of limitations ran out before admitting that he had personally written and sent ransom notes demanding $5 million to the German airline Lufthansa and several news services after PFLP terrorists hijacked another jet in 1972. That same year, the Black September organization murdered nine Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. When Black September leader Hassan Salameh needed medical attention, Genoud arranged for him to be treated at a private clinic in Lausanne.
In 1974, PLO chief Yasser Arafat publicly indicated a willingness to renounce international terrorism and declared his interest in a settlement that would finally establish a Palestinian homeland in the Israeli-occupied territories. These steps toward moderation angered Arab hardliners, who ruled out any compromise with Israel. Not surprisingly, Genoud and other neofascists favored the most belligerent factions that kept calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state.
After bombing four U.S. Army bases in West Germany in 1982, Odfried Hepp, a young neo-Nazi renegade, went underground and joined the Tunis-based Palestine Liberation Front (PLF). Hepp, one of West Germany's most wanted terrorists, was arrested in June 1985 while entering the apartment of a PLF member in Paris. Four months later, PLF commandos seized the Achille Lauro cruise ship and murdered Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound Jewish American. Included on the PLF's list of prisoners to be exchanged for the Achille Lauro hostages was the name of Odfried Hepp.
Fundamentalist Revolution in Iran
Islamic fundamentalism got a tremendous boost when the Ayatollah Khomeini toppled the Shah during the 1979 Iranian revolution. The Ayatollah's description of the United States and the Soviet Union as "the twin Satans" dovetailed neatly with the "Third Position" politics of many European and American neofascists, an ideology the rejects both American capitalism and Soviet Communism. Some white supremacists also shared Khomeini's dream of launching a "holy war" against what was seen as decadent, Western-style democracy. When Iran issued a call for the assassination of author Salmon Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses, several neo-Nazi groups supported the Iranian fatwa.
Far-right fanatics also hailed the 1983 suicide car-bombing by Iranian-backed Shiite terrorists that killed 271 U.S. Marines in Beirut. The British National Front had nothing but praise for Khomeini's Islamic Revolutionary Guards: "Their belief in their cause is so strong that they will run through mine fields unarmed to attack enemy positions; their ideals are so all-consuming that they will drive truck bombs into enemy camps knowing full well their [own] death is inevitable .... This power, this contempt for death, is the stuff of which victories are made."
In 1987, French police cordoned off the Iranian embassy in Paris and demanded that a magistrate be allowed to interrogate Wahid Gordji, an Iranian official suspected of orchestrating a series of bombings that rocked the French capital during the previous a year. French investigators got on to Gordji's trail after they discovered a check for 120,000 francs (about $20,000) that he had written to Ogmios, a neo-Nazi publisher and bookstore in Paris. The money was used to underwrite a slick catalogue promoting The Myth of the Jewish Holocaust and similar titles. But the Iranian government rebuffed French authorities, who wanted to question Gordji, causing a rupture in diplomatic relations between Paris and Tehran. The six-month embassy stand-off was finally resolved after French officials met with representatives of a group called "The Friends of Wahid Gordji" -- a group which included the redoubtable Nazi banker Francois Genoud.
Nazis in Baghdad
Links between white supremacists and the Iranian government continued after Khomeini's death in 1989. On several occasions in recent years, American neo-Nazi chieftain William Pierce has been interviewed by Radio Tehran. U.S. white supremacists have also snuggled up to Iran's archenemy, Saddam Hussein. In 1990, Gene Schroder, an ideologue of the far-right "common-law court" movement, joined a delegation of Midwest farmers to Washington for a meeting in the Iraqi embassy, where Iraqi officials were trying to drum up opposition to the impending Persian Gulf War. During that 1991 war, Oklahoma Klan leader Dennis Mahon organized a small rally in Tulsa in support of Saddam. Mahon says he later received a couple of hundred dollars in an unmarked envelope from the Iraqi government.
In addition, shortly before the war, German neo-Nazis solicited support from Iraq for an anti-Zionist legion composed of far-right mercenaries from several European countries. The members of this so-called international "Freedom Corps" pretentiously strutted around Baghdad in SS uniforms. But as soon as bombs started to fall on the Iraqi capital, the neo-Nazi volunteers scurried back to Europe.
A number of prominent neofascists have expressed support for Saddam, including Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian demagogue, who visited Iraq after the Gulf War. Jean Marie Le Pen of the French Front National also got the red-carpet treatment when he met Saddam in Baghdad. Although he built his political career by disparaging Arab immigrants, Le Pen now claims that he is deeply concerned about the plight of Iraqi children who have suffered under sanctions imposed by the United Nations. His wife, Jany, who heads a group called SOS Children of Iraq, has joined Le Pen on several trips to Baghdad. Thus far, however, Arab children in France have yet to benefit from the supposed good Samaritan act of the Le Pens.
The Libyan Connection
On June 28, 2000, the Times of London reported that Libyan leader Muammar Ghaddafi had ordered the deposit of $25 million into a bank in Carinthia, the Austrian province governed by Jorg Haider, defacto leader of the far-right Freedom Party. (The Freedom Party is an immigrant-bashing organization that is home to many neo-Nazis and former Nazis and has downplayed German war atrocities.) Col. Ghaddafi's cash gift -- which Haider described as "Christmas for Austria" -- was meant to ease the strain of sanctions imposed on Austria by the European Union after the Freedom Party joined Austria's national governing coalition.
This was the second rabbit Haider pulled from his hat as a result of two private forays to Tripoli, where he met Ghaddafi. After his first Libyan excursion, Haider announced he was tackling Austria's high gas prices by arranging for Libyan gasoline to be sold in Carinthia at a discount. News photos showed Haider, the Porsche-driving populist, beaming as he pumped gas for motorists.
Over the years, Ghaddafi has been wooed by several neofascist leaders, including Italian fugitive Stefano delle Chiaie, who was accused of masterminding a series of bomb attacks in Rome and Milan. Described in a 1982 CIA report as "the most prominent rightist terrorist … still at large," delle Chiaie wrote a letter to Ghadaffi, inviting him to join in a common struggle against "atheistic Soviet Marxism and American capitalist materialism," both of which were supposedly controlled by "international Zionism." Delle Chiaie added: "Libya can, if it wants, be the active focus, the center of national socialist renovation [that will] break the chains which enslave people and nations." <SNIP> Michael Pugliese