[lbo-talk] Neo-fascist exemplar

c b cb31450 at gmail.com
Tue Jul 26 10:55:49 PDT 2011


Ferenc Molnar

FM: From reading as much of the manifesto as I could stomach, Breivik apparently supports anti-Palestinian Israelis but Jewish multiculturalists are in the enemies camp. Breivik says Arab Christians are welcome to join the battle to save Christianity. He repeatedly says the battle is not about race. The target he seems most zealous in attacking are members of his own tribe who have engaged in "suicidal humanism" by enshrining what he sees as a multicultural take over of European government. What's significant about the manifesto is that its racism tends towards the covert or perhaps even the submerged. In some ways it connects to the soft-pedal racist populism of Marine LePen or the crypto-racism of some aspects of the Tea Party Movement. Which is not to say that there's an easy comparisons between the different forms of racist populism growing in different European states and the U.S. Marine LePen's popularity has surged since she submerged the neo-fascist and Nazi symbolism of her father's campaigns (who had already begun to soften overt fascist symbolism himself). In Russia, the very large and well organized anti-immigrant movement doesn't seem to have as much of an issue with overt neo-fascist rhetoric and symbolism. But what seems to be held in common by all of these groups is a murderous hatred and phobia directed towards immigrants.

^^^^ CB: In the US , the signal characteristic of the Reaganite white supremacy of the last thirty years or so has been its denial that Reaganism is white supremacist. This was the "brilliant" tact taken (maybe discovered by a right wing think tank) after the success of the Civil Rights movement made openly avowed white supremacy "unfashionable", well, un-PC. Evidently, from what Ferenc says, more generally this denial of their white supremacist ideology by white supremacists is an approach more generally in so-called neo-liberalism. Who does Breivik think he's fooling ?

That the Tea Party Movement's white supremacy would be characterized as "crypto" and not open and notorious, with the top priority that the Tea Partiers give to anti-immigrant and anti-Obama political action, speaks to the success of the denial tactic.



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