Counter-Currents
Martin Sellner
1,885 words
The center-right government of Austria persecutes Identitarians. The center-Right government of Poland bans Identitarians.
Both governments are seen by many Identitarians as models for nationalist governance, Poland in particular. Yet the recent actions of these governments cast doubt on that impression.
The German-speaking offshoot of Generation Identitaire, Identitarian Movement (IB), has recently become public enemy number one. After it was revealed IB had received a donation from the Christchurch shooter, the group was hit with a terrorism investigation, and leaders’ houses were raided. That investigation is led by Left-wing prosecutors in Graz, but conservatives in power are doing little to halt this miscarriage of justice.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has said the government may ban IB over this one donation. “Our position is very clear,” Kurz said last month. “No form of extremism must be allowed to have a place in our society, whether it be radical Islamists or rightwing fanatics.”
His opinion was echoed by his nationalist vice chancellor, Heinz-Christian Strache. “Any connection to the brutish murders in Christchurch has to be ruthlessly cleared up,” the Freedom Party leader stated. He added, “The Freedom party has nothing to do with the Identitarians.”
In 2016, Strache had defended identitarians as “young activists from a non-leftwing civil society.” Now he and his party want them excised from Austrian society. Strache blocked Identitarian leader Martin Sellner on Twitter and continues to condemn the patriotic movement. Sadly, most of his party has followed his lead.
The Upper Austrian state government voted to will bar anyone associated with IB from state employment. Both conservatives and nationalists voted in favor of the measure to punish anyone who may have ever liked an IB post.
FPO Defense Minister Mario Kunasek announced last week his department would reinstate its prohibition on Identitarians serving in the military. Kunasek’s defense ministry had previously loosened this prohibition.
FPO Transportation Minister Norbert Hofer, who nearly became president in 2017, says the Identitarians need to be isolated from polite society and declared he would never have a beer with Sellner.
It’s odd that a party which pursues and champions Identitarian policies would seek to ban actual Identitiarians from the government and society.
Austrian Interior Minister Herbert Kickl is a notable exception to FPO cucking. Kickl argued there is no direct link between the identitarians and the Christchurch shooter. He himself is currently fire for speaking at an Identitarian event in 2016, where he said they are “like-minded people.” That act prompted Kurz to strip Kickl of his oversight of Austria’s intelligence services. “Far-Right extremism has no place in any political party,” Kurz declared last week. “Any sort of involvement with the Identitarians must stop. Looking away is not an option.”
The FPO used to stand up for the Identitarians. When IB was prosecuted as a “criminal organization,” FPO leaders condemned the prosecution as ridiculous. “The activities of the Identitarians seem very similar to those of organizations like Greenpeace. If that standard is to be maintained, then most likely many organizations would have to be criminally charged, and democracy cannot endure that,” FPO justice spokesman Harald Stefan said last May.
But the one donation has seemingly changed the FPO’s stance. Identitarians are now dangerous extremists in the party’s eyes. This virtue signaling is done to placate Kurz and his party, which makes the FPO appear as the weaker party.
The conservatives and supposed nationalists of the FPO attack the Identitiarians to bolster their anti-extremism credentials. It’s similar to the ruling Law and Justice Party’s strategy in Based Poland.
American Renaissance founder Jared Taylor was banned from Europe at Poland’s request last month. This request may have been made over talks Mr. Taylor delivered in Poland earlier this year. He had spoken in Poland last September without incident, but his talks in February drew the scrutiny of Polish police. Authorities told the organizer of the February event that that the gentlemanly race realist spreads “a totalitarian ideology” and the organizer would be held responsible for Taylor’s scary speech.
The group had to change venues for both talks to avoid police harassment. Taylor left Poland without any problems. His return to Europe in late March–to speak at the Scandza Forum in Sweden–was blocked in Zurich. There he was informed he has a three-year ban from the Schengen area thanks to Poland and was deported back to America.
Right-wing Swedish activist Jonas Nilsson was banned from Poland in 2018. Richard Spencer was banned from the Schengen area by Poland in 2017. The Polish foreign ministry claimed Spencer’s views “pose a threat to all those who hold dear the values of human rights and democracy” and “are in conflict with the legal order” of Poland.
Conservative foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski stated that Spencer “should not appear publicly, and especially not in Poland.” Waszczykowski has fully supported Poland’s resistance against migrant acceptance and once said “no state has the duty to accept immigrants.”
His party, the Law and Justice Party (PiS), has a complicated relationship with its own nationalists. PiS appeals to the “far-Right” when it comes election time but always makes a point to condemn their extremism.
PiS’s relationship with the nationalists’ famed Independence Day rally illustrates this tension. International media whined that the 2017 rally featured signs that warned of white genocide and expressed racial pride. PiS leaders were quick to condemn these expressions while delivering qualified praise of the rally.
Waszczykowski condemned the “reprehensible” incidents at the rally he said encouraged “patriotic behavior.” PiS’s powerful chieftain Jaroslaw Kaczynski called these ethno-nationalist sentiments “disgraceful rubbish” and alien to Polish tradition.
Yet, PiS still supports the nationalist-led Independence day rally. Last year, the party was instrumental in overturning Warsaw’s ban on the march. PiS parliamentary caucus deputy chief Tadeusz Cymanski explained to Reuters his party’s strategy on nationalists. According to Cymanski, the party wishes these Right-wing groups would not have representation in parliament and views them with contempt. However, the party realizes nationalists represent a vital constituency and they must be appealed to.
“It is in the interest of democracy, in the interest of our state that extreme groups, either left or right-wing, have no representation in parliament,” Cymanski told Reuters in 2018. “Any association [of nationalist groups with PiS] is painful and unpleasant, I reject it with shame, but I think it would be better even if I, or my faction, were associated with them rather than these forces were to gain in force.”
The National Radical Camp (ONR) has no parliamentary representation in spite of its large rallies and substantial influence. This is due largely to PiS’s tough stance on immigration and implicit defense of Polish homogeneity. ONR’s leaders admit the ruling party has copied their rhetoric and they seem pleased by it.
Unlike in Austria, Polish conservatives don’t want to ban or suppress their own nationalists. They merely want them out of power, contained and not expressing rhetoric that embarrasses Poland in the eyes of globalists. At the same time, PiS does not want foreign Identitarians and nationalists to visit and speak in their country.
Poland’s migration policy is commendable but its government is not the ideal some nationalists think it is. Poland is still heavily dependent on the European Union and America and maintains a careful balancing act to retain that support. This balancing act apparently requires condemnation of nationalist rhetoric and the banning of identitarians.
A more extreme example of the “suppress nationalists/adopt nationalist rhetoric” is seen in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Putin has sent numerous nationalists to jail and banned multiple groups while proclaiming himself a nationalist. Nationalists have been imprisoned for such offenses as carrying banners that read, “Russian power in Russia.” That apparently counts as spreading “extremism” in Russia. In the 2000s, Putin suppressed the ethno-nationalist Rodina party because it incited “racial hatred.” The real reason for the suppression was Rodina’s threat to Putin’s United Russia Party.
While Putin’s government harasses nationalists and jails them, it still relies on them to support the regime. Nationalist groups were instrumental to the organization of rallies for Russia’s National Unity Day and provided many of the fighters for the war in Donbass. However, those groups that organized the National Unity Day–the Movement Against Illegal Immigration and Slavic Union–are both currently banned and their leaders in jail or in exile.
Putin has created or subverted several nationalist groups to act as controlled opposition and reaffirm his power. This includes the Liberal Democratic Party, which is the third largest party in Russia. Those that don’t fall in line suffer the fate of the Slavic Union.
Other Eastern European conservatives with power have a similar relationship with their Right-wing opponents. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government has taken suppresionary actions against the nationalist Jobbik party while adopting many of its policies. In some ways, Orban’s Fidesz has moved to the Right of Jobbik. Ukraine’s conservative government faces mounting pressure to suppress their ultranationalists, even though these patriots have led the fight against Russian separatists.
Nationalists in Western Europe face ostracism from their center-Right countrymen. Conservative candidate Francois Fillon endorsed Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 French presidential election following his elimination. Even though he had copied much of the rhetoric and policies of Marine Le Pen, he could not endorse her. “The National Front, the party created by Jean-Marie Le Pen, has a history known for its violence, its intolerance. Its economic and social program would lead France to bankruptcy and, to that chaos, you would have to add the European chaos of exiting from the euro,” Fillon said. “I assure you: Extremism can bring only misery and division to France. So, there is no option but to vote against the extreme Right I will, therefore, vote for Emmanuel Macron.”
Popular nationalist parties like the Sweden Democrats, Alternative for Germany, and Vlaams Belang are explicitly kept out of center-Right coalitions. Besides the FPO, the only nationalist parties to join in government coalitions are the Danish People’s Party and Italy’s Lega. Lega’s coalition partners are not conservatives but the populist Five Star Movement. Arguably, the Italian nationalists have been the most successful in exploiting their situation and has implemented solid immigration and cultural policies. Lega has also not been forced to disavow or persecute fellow nationalists.
A few folks on the Dissident Right look to the Italian coalition as a model for other nationalists. Instead of the center-Right, they say we should ally with Left-wing populists. However, Italy is a unique situation that cannot be replicated in other countries. The Five Star Movement is amorphous and based primarily on outrage against corrupt elites. It isn’t really ideological, which allows it to work with national populists. The same can be said for the Yellow Vests in France. But all other westerns Leftists see nationalists as a greater enemy than the establishment and would never work with us.
Whether nationalists make coalitions with center-Right cucks or amorphous populists, they should see the Freedom Party as a warning. When you let yourself be dominated by your coalition partner, you end up sacrificing your own.
Austria and Poland are both advancing in a positive direction, but neither government is going to be the West’s savior. Identitarians still need to build our own institutions, advance our own ideas, and enact our own agenda. We cannot trust conservatives, no matter how sympathetic they may seem, to conserve our civilization.
15 comments
The thing about right-wingers is that, we’re basically a bunch of autistic purity spiralers. Right-wingers are as likely to lash out against other right-wingers for “lack of purity” as they are against the left for actual offenses against order.
From that psychological POV, it makes sense that rightists in power would put the squeeze on alternate forms of rightism within their own countries, in order to encourage said right oppositionists to join with them instead.
That being said, do you think its better that we:
(1) adopt the “worse is better” position and vote for the worst Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 so that the center-right will find its self in the same boat as us, and perhaps further radicalize over to our side, as happened when WN experienced a massive boost upon Obama’s re-election in 2012
-or-
(2) adopt the “less worse is better” position and vote to re-elect Donald Trump in 2020 so that, at least there won’t be massive explicit crackdowns against identitarians, and give us time to build our numbers.
Right now, I’m becoming more and more in favor of #1, but am interested in hearing what others have to say.
Respectfully, Benjamin, I think you may have missed Robert’s main point here. It’s not about Righties being so ‘purist’ that they fail to support Center-Right parties. No. It’s about those very Center-Right parties (FPO, PiS, etc.) turning savagely against us once they’re in power. Cracking down on peaceful ‘extremism’ is their foolish attempt at virtue-signaling, believing (perhaps) that the Jew-media will stop calling them Nazis if they are seen to betray their kinsmen. In some cases (Donald Trump comes to mind) they may even be Zionist decoys from the start.
We want accelerationism, but we dont want whites to get comfortable. Trump is both of those things.
Obama was the best thing.
A Kamala or Booker presidency would create WN 3.0: what we need.
(2) – US is heading toward even more racial polarization and toward a de facto multi-national state where politics is done through negotiations between the leaders of the major ethnic/racial national groups. Trump is still the ‘implicitly white candidate’ and this kind of politics, like all politics, will also require compromises (in this case compromises between the ethnic/racial political blocks).
Save a civil-war, there isn’t anything that you can do at this point but too look forward to the emergence of this type of politics.
Purity spiraling is not completely a bad thing, because it does police a movement for entryism and infiltration.
One of the reasons the establishment forced the dissident right underground is because more or less it can’t be subverted and co-opted within the present system. Shills and counterfeits like Milo or Jordan Petersen may have gotten MSM coverage heaped on them, but intolerant movement trolls have always been like Temple Guardians ripping them to pieces on every media available.
If a significant movement figure started talking about moderation and working within the globalist system, maybe visiting a synagogue and wearing a skullcap in the interests of ideological ecumenicism, can you imagine the result. I’d say sit back, grab some popcorn, and wait for the show.
Of course without any party discipline in this movement it does admittedly get a bit out of hand but at this point it’s just something to be lived with.
Not if it’s fake, Zionist-controlled ‘identitarianism’. In that case their betrayal makes perfect sense.
Ironically, I could see MLP doing exactly as Sebastian Kurz has done if she ever actually came to power in France. Since assuming control of Front national from her father, she has spent all kinds of time and effort sucking up to the Zionists. (‘They’re against immigration too, dontcha know!’)
Unfortunately, this is probably correct. Five-Star is relatively unique in today’s world. They are leftists in an older, non-ideological sense: more patriotic, more populist, more pro-working-class, with no slavish devotion to any Comintern (or Homintern, etc.). There aren’t many parties like that in the west nowadays. But who knows? Maybe they will begin to make a comeback in other countries if they do well in Italy.
Indeed, Vice-Chancellor Strache has eaten humblepie in Jerusalem also. Hence, any genuine feeling for welfare and life of his people might have been chained and made subservient to powers not in accord with such a natural goal.
People forget that we aren’t in an alliance with conservatives.
All conservatives are is a pool of potential recruits, because conservatism is a do-nothing dead end. That’s it. And that means antagonizing the left to expose the weakness of the center-right, thus showing us as the only real alternative to the left.
The best analogy of the conservative/cuckservative is that of the story of the vampire living in the castle on the top of the mountain. It conserves itself and its interests by swooping down and sucking the lifeblood of a innocent peasant/nationalist in the villages below it. The villagers who keep their traditions and value their people are just cattle or fertilizer used and ground into the dust by the conservative vampire class deigning from their castles of decay.
The present results from the eastern European countries are nothing new or surprising. Read the history of the Spanish civil war or the pre war situation in Romania or Portugal. In all these cases the Nationalist far right leaders were either killed, imprisoned or left to be killed by the conservative establishment and the far right movement co-opted by the leadership and used for fodder. Spain is the best example where Franco let Rivera be executed by the Reds knowing he would then have no rival to his conservative power play. The Falange was neutered and used as a placebo to con the nationalist sentiments of the people.
How ironic that in Italy, as in the last century and now in this century are the ones showing the way forward. The good news is that the conservatives don’t have a way forward and must allow the ideas of Nationalists filter into the populace which can allow a possible breakthrough of the vitalists of Nationalism.
@Tim Askin
“Read the history of the Spanish civil war or the pre war situation in Romania or Portugal. ..”
Yes, or Germany’s history indeed. Wasn’t Hitler who in 1934 eliminated Ernst Rohm and the SA in order to consolidate his power and to placate the military ( Reichswehr) and to appease the conservative critics of his new regime ?
So what ? Were Antonescu, Franco or Hitler “center-Right cucks” ? I don’t think so, it is a matter of political realism and the far-right can become a problem if it pushes too far too soon.
If you are into wielding power (as opposed to being an ideologue writing and theorizing about power) the correct strategy is to be somewhere close to where the center of gravity is at any given moment and from there to push the things, slowly and in small increments, further to the right. Anything else will lead to you losing the power and becoming useless because you will find yourself at the extreme and thus without consistent popular political support. Politics is alliance politics and this requires compromises.
Is Orban a “center-right cuck” ? He has been doing a pretty good job at pushing Hungary to the Right on all fronts (political and meta-political/cultural) and at neutering the liberal-faction inside the country. What could have offered Jobbik with their plain speaking and radical challenges save a clash (unavoidable when you go for radicalism) with the Western powers, a clash which would have crushed Hungary immediately.
What else could Putin do ? Russia has some 25% non-ethnic-Russian minorities spread over a huge territory and who form the majority in many areas. Not moderating the Russian ethnic-nationalism would lead to the radicalization (out of fear, in response) of the minorities as well, and to clashes. This would only invite Western interference.
You have to be realist. These East-European regimes have started doing a lot for their people and they are clearly nationalistic and resisting the globohomo Western zeitgeist but they are too weak to take on the West. They are realists and they play their game against the West on the field where they are the stronger party, that is at home.
They protests and act against the Western interference in their internal national affairs (which is done through all kinds of NGOs, Soros and CIA funded organizations and puppets, etc.).
How then could these East-European small countries support (even if passively, indirectly) people as Jared Taylor or Richard Spencer, or the now internationally connected “white identity/nationalism” movement ? There have been plenty of public signals from the major Western political establishments that the “white nationalism” is for them an internal-enemy. Not taking into account these signals would amount to Poland and Hungary interfering adversarially in the internal political affairs of the West by supporting a dissident faction.
Putin may perhaps do that but not Hungary, Austria or Poland. They can barely resist the Western pressure and keep on fighting for their own people. Blame Trump not Orban for this state of affairs.
Check out George Orwell’s “Homage To Catalonia” if you want a legit first-hand account of the Spanish Civil War
It is a complete short cut to thinking to assume any present leadership of the countries you’ve stated are in any way nationalistic. They are all conservatives taking advantage, as all conservatives do, of the mood of the people who see the results of global semitism’s goals in the west of Europe and North America. Conservatives have never had nationalistic sentiments and those who govern Poland, Austria and Hungary are just co-opting the “peasantry” for their own elite whether that is their clique or as in Hungary their own family. Conservatives are only interested in self preservation at others expense hence their cozy adherence to inclusive patriotism that seems to always include a certain powerful global minority(oy vey).
To be a political realist is to realise who your enemies really are and don’t delude yourself that there can ever be real compromise with parasites. You must use your enemies until you can stick the political blade in their back and sometimes that may take a hostile act or March on Rome. The nationalists and identitarian organizations should denounce the conservatives in all European countries and make it clear that the leaderships of those countries are not nationalists which will force the conservatives to pander to sentiments of the people rather than the other way round. If not the conservatives will bleed the nationalist sentiment dry until there is nothing left but for the people to once again turn to the left for utopic answers.
As I stated in my first post, Nationalists need to take advantage of the empty conservative present to make it clear who has the peoples or nations interest and that conservatives are merely the undead of any political era.
At the end of the day these people are all the same, professional democratic politicians produced by political machines. Truly perhaps one of the most wonderful product of liberal civilisation.
As a man from Vienna once so perceptively put it they are all just pigs waiting for their turn at the trough, and they will cynically use these politics to solicit mass support only to abandon them at the first sign of trouble.
Le Pen would be just as worthless in power. Whatever the specific reasons were, a woman who expels her own father from the movement he created – essentially over optics – is not hiding the kind the kind of person she is.
Two weeks ago there was a conference about anarcho-tyranny in Budapest, organized by a Fidesz think tank. (Fidesz is the ruling party in Hungary, headed by Orbán.)
They invited a media lawyer and got him read the Facebook Terms of Service. It turns out all EU residents can sue Facebook in their own country, under the local law. There have been successful lawsuits against Facebook brought on by Hungarians* whose accounts or content had been censored.
The conference panel also formulated a list of recommendations for the government, including:
1. Courts should be required to process censorship cases in expedited procedures.
2. Social media companies should be brought under the supervision of the Hungarian National Media Authority.
Imagine Facebook being constantly swarmed by thousands of expedited lawsuits in 28 national jurisdictions…
I assume many, if not most big social media, payment processor, etc. companies operate under EU law and are vulnerable to this kind of lawfare.**
The day after the conference the government denied any plans to collide with Facebook. But everybody is pretty sure all of the above will be part of Hungarian law within a year.
But of course this is just cuckservative Hungary. Or are we in the “amorphous populists” category? LOL. Honestly, Orbán banned several “movement” figures from Hungary, and so far there hasn’t been a banning that I didn’t like.
And I’m not even an Orbán voter at the moment. In the upcoming EU elections I will vote for a small far right party. They are at 1% in the polls, but still campaigning at full speed. Stellar examples of the Hungarian fighting spirit.
* Only applies to private persons. Corporations have to sue Facebook headquarters in Ireland, under Irish law.
** I think this has something to do with EU VAT and location of service regulations.
It is already the law. If you are an EU resident, you can sue in your own country. Government support is only needed for a new law to expedite procedures. The recommendation came from the think tank of the ruling party, so the official govenment statement is not to be taken too seriously.
No, tech companies don’t write Hungarian law. In the EU their lobbyists are sometimes successful and sometimes not. Even if they are successful, it will take a lot of work to change EU law, because the question of jurisdiction is entangled with a lot of other stuff, e.g. taxation.
No, lawfare won’t solve all our problems and give us eternal life. It’s just about staying standing on the battlefield for a couple more years. If you search for a solution to all our problems, I recommend you look into religions.
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