(Mirror.)

Within the camp, first barrack foundation is located next to the entrance. The foundation consists of c. 20 cm high and 1 meter wide bank of fine sand (Figure 6) and is the size of prefabricated barracks that the Finnish woodcraft enterprises sold [to Axis] troops in great quantities […] (Figure 7) (Westerlund 2008b, 133; Kallatsa 2009, 21).

A concrete slab that served as a base for a stove is identifiable within this foundation. Remains of some more lightweight structure were documented opposite to the barrack. Deeper into the camp, a kitchen and mess hall (with cooking area reinforced with concrete), and an animal shelter with a turf foundation (and a manure pile behind it) stood on the riverside terrace. A rubbish pit filled with German tins was documented between the barrack foundation and the kitchen (S1; see Seitsonen and Herva 2011, Figure 10.7) in 2006 and excavated in 2009.

One of our informants had visited the mess hall as a young boy on a cloudberry-picking trip, possibly in 1943, and his recollections indicated that there had been structures in the camp that have not left any visible traces on the ground. He reminisced, for instance, that near the kitchen and the animal shelter had stood lightly built tent-like structures, some of which had been covered with turf for insulation, including a sauna for delousing the soldiers.

These lightweight structures were probably ‘yurt’-shaped cardboard and plywood tents, an important wartime product of the Finnish woodcraft industry (Figure 7). There are several vague stone and concrete features that may derive from the foundations of stoves used in lightweight tents.

[…]

Artefacts related to everyday economic and household activities form over two-thirds of the catalogued finds, as might be expected in a base inhabited for nearly four years (Table 1). Sherds of porcelain and glass, cutlery and empty ration tins were most common in this category. The food economy seems to have relied largely on [Wehrmacht]-issued canned meat and fish, some produced in the occupied Denmark and Norway (Figure 10(i)–(j)).

Many of the tins and tin tops have indented manufacturer stamps on them, but as far as we know, there are no guides at the moment for decoding the canning plant identities; descriptions of the tins’ contents were marked on the storing cardboard boxes or crates (Nash n.d.).

Nearly 500 sherds of porcelain were catalogued and show an interesting variety: at least one-third are of a Finnish origin, mostly products of the Arabia factories with various flowery and gilded designs, whereas the rest comprise [Wehrmacht]-issued ware. Two sherds of the latter are products of Johann Haviland, Bavaria and one sherd has the stamp ‘Fl.U.V., 1942, Bohemia’ (Flieger Unterkunft Verwaltung, Flight Barracks Administration; Figure 10(d)–(g)).

Some of the Arabia sherds have manufacturing dates on them which show that they were made in the late 1920s and the 1930s. Some could also be refitted and turned out to be from an Arabia Pääsky jug (Figure 10(b)). The presence of Finnish wares is interesting in the view that there was a large German supply depot in Kaamanen, some 20 km away from Peltojoki, where large quantities of military-issued porcelain was stored: when it was exploded in 1944, the surroundings were sprinkled with porcelain sherds. Why, then, such a prominent presence of Finnish civilian wares in a [Wehrmacht] camp?

Also one piece of cutlery found at Peltojoki, a small spoon with flower ornamentation, is a civilian item, whereas another spoon is a Finnish military issue, with the stamps Puolustuslaitos, Sorsakoski (Finnish Defence Forces, Finnish manufacturer), and the Finnish swastika emblem (the symbol of the Finnish Defence Forces since 1918, and unrelated to the [Fascist] swastika).

The rest of the cutlery finds are standard [Wehrmacht] issue, all stamped Fl.U.V. (Figure 10(j), (s)–(t)). Pieces of bottle glass were found primarily in the glass dump on the upper terrace (S31) and indicate that alcohol was abundantly available. A couple of bottle tops shows that at least French Delbeck wine or cognac and products of Swedish state-owned Aktiebolaget Vin & Spritcentralen were consumed at Peltojoki (Figure 10(v)–(w)).

[…]

Documentary sources and memoirs show that the [Wehrmacht], including the battle-hardened élite Gebirgsjäger, were poorly prepared to, and overwhelmed by the unfamiliar Arctic environment, which effectively stalled their advance so quickly in 1941 (Pipping [1947] 2008, 10; Jokisipilä 2005). […] The [Wehrmacht's] performance improved over time, however, as manuals were prepared (e.g. Halter 1942; Wehrmacht [1943] 2006; Merkblatt 18a, 17 1943; Merkblatt 18a, 26 1944) and active training programs assisted by Finnish specialists implemented (Alftan 2005, 189; Airio 2014, 238–240).

[…]

A tabulation of the recovered finds by the origin illustrates the place of Peltojoki in a wider network of [Axis] military logistics and movements of things (Table 2, Figure 11). For instance, canned food was imported from Denmark and Norway, and alcohol from Sweden and Central Europe, whereas porcelain finds included Central European as well as Finnish products; as an extreme example, at a nearby WWII site fish tins originating from Brazil were uncovered in a German dump.

The presence of products from numerous countries and factories echoes also the commercial importance of war efforts for diverse entrepreneurs in the occupied countries, as well as in [the Third Reich], Finland and even the ostensibly neutral Sweden. The [Axis] presence instigated a major economic boost in Lapland (e.g. Björklund 1981; Westerlund 2008a), which was not without ethical implications, given that PoWs were quite liberally used as a cheap workforce by various companies in different countries (e.g. Westerlund 2008a, 2008b; Suhonen 2011).

(Emphasis added.)

Some anticommunists may not see what the 'big deal' is with Fascists benefitting an economy, but that is only because somebody conditioned them to believe that 'economic prosperity' should trump everything else… including war crimes. I once had a conversation with an anticommunist who explicitly defended the phenomenon of overproduction because it was necessary to 'keep inflation down'. The obvious wastefulness of the process was irrelevant to him!

There is a myth that ‘democracy’ elected Adolf Schicklgruber into power. While it is correct that the so-called ‘National Socialist German Workers’ Party’ became the Weimar Republic’s largest party in 1932 (despite lacking a majority), which is probably how this misconception originated, Adolf Schicklgruber himself was unappointed by the common voter. Instead, the bourgeoisie’s representatives appointed him:

For two years, repeatedly resorting to Article 48 to issue presidential decrees, the Bruening government sought and failed to build a parliamentary majority that would exclude Social Democrats, Communists, and Nazis. In 1932, Hindenburg dismissed Bruening and appointed Franz von Papen, a former diplomat and Center party politician, as chancellor.

Papen dissolved the Reichstag again, but the July 1932 elections brought the [NSDAP] 37.3 percent of the popular vote, making it the largest political party in Germany. The Communists (taking votes from the Social Democrats in the increasingly desperate economic climate) received 14.3 percent of the vote. As a result, more than half the deputies in the 1932 Reichstag had publicly committed themselves to ending parliamentary democracy.

When Papen was unable to obtain a parliamentary majority to govern, his opponents among President Hindenburg's advisers forced him to resign. His successor, General Kurt von Schleicher, dissolved the Reichstag again. In the ensuing elections in November 1932, the [NSDAP] lost ground, winning 33.1 percent of the vote. The Communists, however, gained votes, winning 16.9 percent.

As a result, the small circle around President Hindenburg came to believe, by the end of 1932, that the [NSDAP] was Germany's only hope to forestall political chaos ending in a Communist takeover. [Fascist] negotiators and propagandists did much to enhance this impression.

On January 30, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Hitler was not appointed chancellor as the result of an electoral victory with a popular mandate, but instead as the result of a constitutionally questionable deal among a small group of conservative German politicians who had given up on parliamentary rule. They hoped to use Hitler's popularity with the masses to buttress a return to conservative authoritarian rule, perhaps even a monarchy.

Within two years, however, Hitler and the [Fascists] outmaneuvered Germany's conservative politicians to consolidate a radical [anticommunist] dictatorship completely subordinate to Hitler's personal will.

I have to admit that at first I forgot why I wrote this draft when I went back to review it (I had written nothing other than two URLs, both of which had little to do with November). It quickly dawned on me that presently it is election season here in Imperial America, and for months now centrists, social democrats, neoclassical liberals, and other (white) moderates have been pressuring everybody to vote, frequently under the pretension that it is necessary to ‘stop fascism’.

I have been studying fascism for seven years now and I can confidently say that engaging in a hopelessly broken process like a U.S. election is not an antifascist method. The most that voting may do is measure how little opposition that the ruling class can expect from the general public when the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie inevitably appoints its own representatives to the government. That is it. U.S. elections are effectively nothing more than glorified public opinion polls, just like the Third Reich's plebiscites.

My best advice is to boycott the election as a means of protesting an illegitimate process. Your time would be much better spent on supporting the proletariat (especially strikers) through direct action. If you absolutely must recommend voting, though, you could at least familiarize yourselves with the gross corruption that is part of the process, then constantly demand election integrity. I personally don't consider that the best action to take, but I can promise you that that would be more effective than scorning adults who feel alienated from voting.

In any case, the point here is that stopping fascism is not so easy that you can do it at a ballot box (something that thousands of voters in the Saar Basin learned the hard way in 1935). Rather, (neo)fascism is the inevitable consequence of capitalism's contradictions and inadequacies. Only when the lower classes finally overthrow capitalism will neofascism lose its purpose. Don't blame me; I didn't invent reality.

Doing a little research on horror films from the Third Reich, it appears that only a handful of titles originated from it: Der Dämon des Himalaya, Der Student von Prag, Fährmann Maria, Der Hund von Baskerville, and (technically) Spuk im Schloß. (A few sources call Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse and Der Schimmelreiter horrors, but that is quite arguable, and Fascist Italy’s horror films were even fewer: Maciste all’inferno and possibly the lost film Il caso Haller.) From what I can tell, this very particular subject has attracted little more than a passing interest from Anglophone academics, and going by first impressions, none of those films looks especially political either.

Nevertheless, I know how to improvise, so I am inviting you to read about a film that is instead somewhere in the same neighbourhood as horror: propaganda that demonises us. It lacks the supernatural elements of an ordinary horror film, so you may be disappointed that it does not depict us as unfigurative monsters. That said, it does feature an early example of what I like to call “anticommunists’ ignorant view of how communists talk”, so let us not look this gift horse in the mouth, shall we?

Quoting David Welch’s Propaganda and the German Cinema 1933–1945, pages 214–217:

Goebbels was returning to his original mission of safeguarding Europe from the ‘Jewish‐Bolshevik conspiracy’. Reflecting this shift was Karl Ritter’s virulently anti‐Bolshevik film G.P.U. (1942). Interviewed by Filmwelt while making the film, Ritter outlined the basic propaganda message that was to be disseminated: ‘That the German Armed Forces had destroyed the terror organization of the G.P.U. which had been established by Jewish‐Bolshevik “criminals” intent on planting the vile seeds of Bolshevik revolution throughout the world.’³¹

G.P.U. came from an original idea by the actor Andrews Engelmann, who starred in the film and wrote the script together with Ritter and Felix Lutzkendorf. Production was started in December 1941, and it had its première in Berlin on 14 August 1942. The following synopsis is taken from the Allied Commission’s Catalogue of Forbidden German Feature Films:

Olga, a White Russian refugee from Bolshevik terror, has joined the Bolshevik G.P.U. Secret Police in order to find the man who killed her parents. After many years she at last meets him in Riga and then in Kowno in the summer of 1939. He is Bokscha, one of the chief agents of the G.P.U. in Europe, instigator of numerous assassinations, uprisings, acts of sabotage, etc. Bokscha falls in love with her, she goes with him to many countries. At last in France she feels the time is ripe, denounces him to Moscow as a traitor and he is liquidated.

She goes to Moscow, refuses the decoration offered to her, discloses her real reasons for joining the G.P.U., and she too is liquidated. Interwoven is the story of a young Baltic couple whom Olga befriends; in Rotterdam they are arrested by the G.P.U. and imprisoned in the cellar of the Commercial Attaché of the UDSSR, and the film ends with the victorious advance of the German Army into Holland in May 1940 when the two young people are at last released.³²

The film is intended to reveal the Jewish influence behind Bolshevism and the brutality of the G.P.U. In the prologue to the film, G.P.U. is translated as: Grauen (horror), Panik (panic), Untergang (destruction). So as not to leave the audience in any doubt, the Programm von Heute, which accompanied the film, stressed the insidious nature of the G.P.U. in a language reminiscent of that used to describe Jews: ‘It is mid‐1939. Like the threads of a spider’s web the G.P.U. spreads out beyond the Soviet “paradise” to engulf many unsuspecting lands.’³³

In fact the term ‘G.P.U.’ was no longer employed in the USSR; it had been replaced in 1934 by NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Domestic Affairs). But of course this did not affect Goebbels’s anti‐Bolshevik propaganda. The G.P.U. was so firmly embedded in the minds of [anticommunist] Germans as the symbol of Russian barbarism that it had to be perpetuated regardless of whether it existed or not.

Moreover, the Russian Secret Police are presented as a Jewish‐directed Communist organization. This is established in the first scene where Olga Feodorovna is giving a violin recital for the International Women’s League in Riga. Introducing Olga, the Chairwoman maintains that the organization was established to further international cooperation and is ‘totally unpolitical’.

But an old man interrupts and claims that they are in fact organized and financed by Jewish interests in Moscow. He maintains that he has proof that they had sent greetings telegrams to the Jewish politician Litvinov‐Finkelstein.³⁴

The Chairwoman repeats that the organization is concerned only with promoting peace and freedom for all people. But the old man will not be interrupted:

OLD MAN. Don’t interrupt! I said, financed by Moscow! The conclusive evidence is the presence of this gentleman, who calls himself a Soviet diplomat. Do you know who this Consular Attaché Smirnov is? He is the murderer Bokscha, G.P.U. agent … yes, G.P.U. agent! The blood of hundreds of thousands of poor people clings to his hands. Yes, I have evidence. I also have evidence that he murdered my son … [struggle] … You will not keep me quiet! Not you! Look at him, this representative of peace and freedom! He should be caught…

The fact that the old man was seen to be violently removed from the hall by G.P.U. agents and subsequently murdered tended to substantiate his allegations. Other scenes served to highlight Jewish participation in the G.P.U. and the manner in which the Russian Secret Police carried out their subversive activities in other countries. Invariably, Bolshevik meetings would take place deep underground, where they would dispassionately plot sabotage and murder beneath portraits of Lenin and Stalin.

In Moscow, Bokscha is shown plotting the downfall of foreign politicians and the sabotage of allied shipments from Sweden. Action is needed in Finland; we are told that Molatov is waiting for a chance to give an ultimatum and then invade the country. Bokscha is sent to Helsinki, where G.P.U. agents are conspiring with Jews to find an appropriate excuse for a Russian invasion. Once again, the meetings take place in cellars where the Bolsheviks can seek refuge in the shadows:

BOKSCHA. I have a very amusing plan; an assassination attempt on Soviet employers and Soviet citizens in Helsinki. This would precipitate an ultimatum and then an invasion.
JEW. And who will carry out these assassinations?
BOKSCHA. Funny question! We will, of course, our people.
ANOTHER MAN. So you mean we should kill our comrades?
BOKSCHA. Yes!
JEW. Do they know about it up there?
BOKSCHA. Of course not, they would report to Moscow in noble indignation.
JEW. [laughing] Yes, that’s certainly very funny.
[They all start laughing and Bokscha closes the meeting. As they leave, one turns to the Jew…]
ANOTHER MAN. That’s a wonderful plan!
JEW. [throws his hands in the air] Oh, wonderful, wonderful!

The Jewish‐Bolshevik conspiracy is invoked by the fact that Bokscha is prepared to engage Jewish agents in his subversive activities. Such scenes are intended to reveal the alien beliefs and behaviour of the G.P.U., who are prepared even to murder their own comrades. The moral appears to be that the ends justify the means — a philosophy that could be equally applied to [anticommunism].

It is interesting to note in comparing these two different political systems that at no time in [the Third Reich’s] film propaganda is Bolshevism discussed in terms of Marxist‐Leninism, although ideological comparisons are implicit throughout. Rather, Bolshevism is equated with certain brutal types that recur in [anticommunist] cinema under different guises, ranging from the barbaric Chernov in Friesennot to the cynical murderer Bokscha in G.P.U.

If the [Fascists] were not prepared to enter into an ideological debate then they had to specify a target for hatred. The stereotype employed in G.P.U. is, of course, Nikolai Bokscha. Yet he is not an amalgam of either the Untermensch line or the deeply committed Communist; he is neither a racially inferior Slav nor a misguided Party member.

Instead, he symbolizes the opportunism of Bolshevism and its alienation from Western civilization. He is referred to in the film as ‘one who has made a career for himself without being either a Jew or a proletarian’. Olga summed up his value to Moscow as a ‘good executioner who is worth a great deal to the Central Bureau’. In another scene with Olga in the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki a portrait of Lenin is drawn to his attention, and he replies: ‘Oh yes! It was the era of proletarian revolution. A dark age! Fortunately one forgets!’

In G.P.U., Asiatic features have largely disappeared from the stereotype image of the Bolshevik enemy. He is now portrayed in collusion with conspiratorial Jews. In fact, in Nikolai Bokscha we have the archetypal bourgeois, albeit a brutal and cynical one. Filmwoche referred to him as ‘the bourgeois after his acre of land, and a manipulator of chaos for his own enrichment’.³⁵

(Emphasis added.)

Aside from maybe the antisemitism being too obvious, it does not sound like there is much in this film that a committed antisocialist would find objectionable: the antiutopian pretensions, a hypocritical upper‐class communist, assertions that we murder hundreds of thousands of innocents (just ’cause), assertions that we’re cannibal‐like savages who enjoy killing each other, and of course, blatant anachronisms (antisocialists are nothing if not inept at managing time). All of these are well trod tropes for those of us who made the mistake of either trying to reason with antisocialists or subjecting ourselves to their mindnumbingly brainless content.

The trope that we are sensitive to criticism while our problems only continue to fester is an all too common one in the capitalist media. Unfortunately for anticommunists, if they think that they are a viable alternative, then they have another think coming. Case in point:

Smart also quoted an anonymous Ukrainian official who said that Pugliese is an “activist” known in Kyiv for “his public anti-Ukrainian rhetoric,” which “coincides with Russian propagandist narratives.” This individual reportedly said that “Ukraine would consider him to be, writing in all capital letters,” an “UNDESIRABLE PERSON.”

My guess is that this official came from the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, which a few months later accused Pugliese of promoting “anti-Ukrainian rhetoric and narratives aimed at demonizing the Ukrainian military,” not least of all with social media posts in which the Ottawa Citizen journalist “repeatedly spoke about the so-called problem of nazism in Ukraine, particularly related to the supposed nazi regiment ‘Azov’. Such rhetoric about the ‘Ukrainian Nazis’ clearly echoes the Russian narrative, which Putin used as an excuse for his invasion of Ukraine.”

[...]

In early 2014, Chris Alexander “committed to work with” the nationalist Ukrainian Canadian Congress “to take immediate and concrete action condemning Russia’s continued economic and political coercion of Ukraine.” That summer, he had an awkward moment at the annual Ukrainian festival in Toronto. A neo-Nazi from “Right Sector Canada” set up a table to raise money for “anything.” When the CBC interviewed Chris Alexander at the festival, and asked him what he thought about this, the Minister fumbled as Right Sector flags waved in the background.

“You’re telling me something second-hand that is a rumor that I have no ability to comment on in a responsible way,” Alexander said, standing in front of a booth for the largest Ukrainian-Canadian financial institution, which is also an OUN-B front, and has supported the Banderites’ book publishing operation in Ukraine.

For the first anniversary of the February 2014 coup d’etat in Kyiv, an important far-right Ukrainian politician, Andriy Parubiy, took a trip to Canada. Parubiy, a former neo[fascist] paramilitary leader, commanded the “Maidan Self Defense Force” that provided the muscle for the “Euromaidan” protests that started in late 2013. A few months later, he was secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, and by 2015 served as the first deputy chairman of Ukrainian parliament. In this capacity, Parubiy took several meetings in Ottawa, and addressed the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) in Toronto.

“I thank the Ukrainian community,” said Parubiy, “which to a large degree displays the [pro-western, nationalist] position of Ukraine, and obviously the [Canadian] government orientates itself on the position of the community.” At the UCC event, he appeared alongside Chris Alexander, who donned a handkerchief from the far-right-led Maidan Self Defense, and made a warmongering speech to Toronto’s nationalistic Ukrainian community.

We know, as you know, that Vladimir Putin is only going to face his comeuppance and his whole mad nightmare is only going to come apart at the seams, when the whole world is standing against him, with every option on the table […] This is the biggest issue facing the world today, in my view […] What is happening in eastern Ukraine has roots that go as far back as […] the Second World War, but it really has to do with the incomplete process of ending the existence of the Soviet Union for good — ending the oppression and the Faustian bargain that had been made in the Second World War with Stalin’s Soviet Union, for good.

[…]

We must speak out against this dangerous ideology [of Russian revanchism] which is present in our own city of Toronto, which is present across Canada, which comes to use through state-sponsored Russian channels that are preaching absolute poison! For Vladimir Putin’s media handlers to be calling the government of Ukraine, calling us Ukraine supporters, [and] to be calling the whole western world “Nazis” is nothing less than reprehensible, and we must be taking the lead, not only in fighting, and supporting those who are fighting, not only in making sure that Ukraine gets all the support that it needs, but in denouncing one of the greatest perversions of history that I have seen in my lifetime […] Ladies and gentlemen, let’s join that fight as well.

There are ideas as stake here, there is ideology at stake here, there is history at stake here, and all of our democracies! All of our democracies depend on the outcome of this struggle. It is going to be a great struggle. We are just at the beginning of this struggle, and I think when I see groups like this assembled, when I see determination on the level that is plain from all of your faces, I know that the future of Ukraine is still bright. I know the ties that bind Canada to Ukraine have never been stronger, and I know that Canada’s leadership in the world on this issue, as on others, has never been more important. […] Slava Ukraini!

Left to right in Toronto, 2015: Paul Grod (UCC president), Ted Opitz (Conservative MP), Andriy Parubiy, Chris Alexander, and Markian Shwec (UCC-Toronto)

Before moving on, let’s take a moment to digest Alexander’s comments about the “perversions of history.” It almost goes without saying that according to him, “Hitler was an ally of Stalin, Putin’s idol,” and “Putin has resurrected this red-brown alliance.” This politician and former diplomat helped to initiate the project to establish an extremely problematic “Victims of Communism” monument in Ottawa.

As David Pugliese recently reported, “The Department of Canadian Heritage is being told that more than half of the 550 names on the Memorial to the Victims of Communism should be removed because of potential links to the Nazis or questions about affiliations with fascist groups, according to government records.”

His numerous stories about this controversial project are another reason for Alexander to have an axe to grind with the award-winning journalist. Pugliese, who specializes in writing about military issues, apparently also embarrassed Alexander back when he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Defence.

In the spring of 2022, Chris Alexander told his ~130,000 Twitter followers that Russia is “committing the same war crimes as Nazi invaders.” A couple months later, he said, “There is no substantive difference between the threat to world peace represented by revanchist Nazi Germany in 1939 & that of genocidal, irredentist & fascist Russia in 2022.” Last year, Alexander shared an article about the “Jewish Question” from the U.S. Holocaust Museum, just to compare “Hitler’s determination to ‘remove the Jews’” with “Putin’s obsession with ‘removing Ukraine.’”

Even before Putin launched his so-called “special military operation,” Alexander said that “Germans should understand” they don’t deserve all the blame for “the horrors of the Second World War,” which the Kremlin started. “Germany has overcome its Nazi past. It now needs to face down, with equal vigour, Russia’s dark Stalinist legacy.”

I actually agree with him that Germans should understand that they do not deserve all of the blame for the horrors of the Second World War. Certainly, the Imperial bourgeoisie deserves a great deal of blame for starting it by invading Manchuria in 1931, and anticommunists from the Anglosphere, Austria, the Balkans, the Baltics, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Hungary, Iberia, Italy, Poland, Romania, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Turkey, and elsewhere deserve blame for only aggravating the violence, but contemporary anticommunists do not want to talk about any of that, do they?

Likewise, modern Germany is most certainly not a model for the Russian Federation if it seeks to face down its “dark Stalinist legacy” (don’t laugh!). Between the surviving architecture, the abundance of neofascists, and the mistreatment of anticolonial Jews, only Italy or Japan would be a worse model.

Whatever you may think about the Russian Federation, hopefully we can at least come to an agreement that it is not the greatest threat to world peace today.

And Chris Alexander is undoubtedly the worst historian in Canada:

In the coming months, before Ukraine’s unsuccessful counter-offensive, Chris Alexander insisted, “The war will only end with fascist Russia’s defeat, as the Second World War ended with Nazi Germany’s defeat.”

For those of us unaware, Mountain Jews are Jewish people who have lived in the North Caucasus for several centuries. They are a unique demographic, identifying neither as Ashkenazic nor Sephardic (though some have had Ashkenazic neighbors), and there are undoubtedly aspects of their culture that many of their Jewish siblings elsewhere would find odd.

When the anticommunists reinvaded Soviet Eurasia in 1941 and later made it to the North Caucasus, some of their victims were Mountain Jews:

[T]he [Axis’s] first encounter with Mountain Jews ended with the latter’s murder. This first massacre of Mountain Jews took place outside the borders of the North Caucasus, in the Shaumian Kolkhoz in the Crimea, most of whose members, it would seem, were Mountain Jews.⁴⁶

In March 1942 one of the Gentile neighbors informed the [Axis] authorities about the “Jewish presence” in the area. In response, Einsatzgruppe D—in cooperation with the military gendarmerie (Feldgendarmerie) and local collaborators—rounded up and murdered all 114 Mountain Jews there.⁴⁷ This was carried out in full cognizance of the fact that these were Mountain Jews, i.e., not Ashkenazi.⁴⁸

The Mountain Jews had been settled in the Crimea under the aegis of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, whose aid the Soviet government accepted as part of a program to resettle Jews “on the land”; the [Axis powers] were aware of this, and it may have inclined Einsatzgruppe D to view the Mountain Jews there as participants in the same “world Jewish conspiracy” and therefore to kill them along with the Ashkenazi Jews.⁴⁹

It should be noted that the annihilation of Mountain Jews was mentioned only in a local military report,⁵⁰ but not in the more official Ereignismeldung (Situation Report) that Einsatzgruppe D sent to Berlin. Thus it may be that the Einsatzgruppe considered its decision to murder the Mountain Jews in the Crimea a local matter, and that they thought they did not need to obtain authorization from Berlin for such actions—either before or after

[...]

The first communities of Mountain Jews captured by the [Axis] in the Caucasus, at the end of August 1942, were two kolkhozes in Bogdanovka and Menzhinskoe (Kursk Raion, Stavropol Krai), in which the Mountain Jews constituted a significant portion of the entire Jewish membership.⁵⁷ Meanwhile, spontaneous incidents of looting Jewish property, brutalization of Jews, and murder multiplied rapidly.

There is no evidence that the [Axis] even considered treating the Mountain Jews here differently from their Ashkenazi co-religionists: perhaps the fact that they lived together caused the [Axis] to view them as a single entity. Scores of Mountain Jewish families who remained in Bogdanovka and Menzhinskoe were murdered by machine gun fire on September 20 and August 19, 1942, respectively,⁵⁸ a total of about 850 victims.⁵⁹

We do not know with certainty which [Axis] forces were responsible for exterminating the Jews in these two places. In theory, the kolkhozes were situated in the operative domain of Einsatzkommando (EK) 12. However, Soviet findings claim that a large Wehrmacht unit camped in Bogdanovka⁶⁰ and murdered the Jews there; this points to the possibility of the direct involvement of the [Wehrmacht]. This would increase the likelihood that the [Axis powers] (at least in Bogdanovka) were unaware of the Mountain Jews’ uniqueness.

Hence,

86. Both Altshuler and Arad estimate that about 1,000 Mountain Jews perished during the Holocaust. Altshuler, Yehudei mizrah Kavkaz, 151; Arad, History of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, 2004, 535. However, this estimate does not take into account up to 1,400 Mountain Jews murdered in the village of Ganshtakovka (see n. 56). With this the death total reaches between 2,000 and 2,500, some forty to fifty percent of the original number in the region occupied by the [Axis].

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

If 2,500 seems like a 'low' number, your suspicion is justified by numerous factors, namely the Axis's limited reach as well as its relatively brief presence where Mountain Jews lived:

The [Axis] advance had brought under occupation large sections of the North Caucasus, including Orzhonikidze (after liberation changed to Stavropol) and Krasnodar territories (krai, pl. kraia), the Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Republic, and a large part of the North Ossetian Autonomous Republic, homes to a large portion of the Mountain Jew population. These found themselves under [Axis] occupation for varying periods of up to five months.

However, most of the large groups of Mountain Jews were in fact not overrun. Out of a Mountain Jewish population of 35,000 in the USSR on the eve of the Second World War,⁸ the only major centers that would be occupied were Nal’chik (capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, occupied for only two months) and Mozdok (in Ordzhonikidze Krai, occupied for four and a half months). In addition, Mountain Jews were a significant component of the local population in some small rural settlements.

Silly racial theories:

The [Axis] did not conclude decisively whether the groups were of Jewish origin. Two variants contradicted the possibility of common ancestry with European Jews: (a) the Mountain Jews originated in Persia after mixing with the Persians;³⁸ or (b) they derived from a mixture of several “Eastern races.”³⁹ [...] The [Axis powers] were [...] inclined to the opinion that these were not Jews at all because physically they did not have a Jewish “appearance,” and because they practiced polygamy.⁸⁰

Along with Soviet and partisan recruitment:

A factor reducing the number of Mountain Jews falling under [Axis] occupation was the induction of males between the ages of eighteen and forty (and in many cases older than that) into the Red Army and (to a much lesser extent) the partisan movement. Many testimonies¹⁰ document the enlistment of the men, since at this point—about a year into the war—the Soviet Union was maximizing the exploitation of its human resources to fight the war.¹¹

We can reasonably assume that a large percentage of the men of the community had been drafted before the [Axis] arrived.¹² Regarding participation in the partisan movement, we have only isolated examples and incomplete information allowing no basis for estimating the percentage of Jews who adopted this course.¹³

Taken together, these reasons explain why the Axis’s violence against Mountain Jews was surprisingly less awful than it could have been; the majority of Mountain Jews who had come under occupation survived thanks to the Axis’s uncertainty and hesitation. Even so, for some of us this is going to feel like an inadequate compensation; two thousand deaths is still deeply upsetting.

Further reading: Beyond the Pale: The Holocaust in the North Caucasus. I leave you with a quote from page 196:

Ashurova recalled how the Ifraimov family of Mountain Jews paid with their lives for an unsuccessful attempt to rescue a family of Ashkenazi Jews: “Our Mountain Jews hid two sisters who were physicians… [The Axis] executed both sisters with the Mountain Jews who were hiding them. Twelve souls [were killed] instantly.”⁴²

In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, middle-class liberals condemned general strikes as unpatriotic, economically disruptive, and politically divisive acts that threatened the potential for industrial recovery and national unity in Italy.

Though there was disagreement among the liberal middle classes about the merits of the workers’ reasons for striking, they were unanimous in their criticism of workers’ demonstrations as harmful to the Italian patria (fatherland).

With the 1920 factory occupations and the concurrent emergence of workers’ self-defense groups, the liberal middle classes began associating workers’ demonstrations with physical and ideological violence.

Finally, during the biennio nero, middle-class liberals blamed workers’ demonstrations for the continuing armament of the fasci and the increasingly popular appeal of fascism. Some even expressed explicitly philofascist sympathies, citing the fascists’ successful suppression of disruptive and divisive workers’ demonstrations.

The persistency of general strikes, factory occupations, and workers’ self-defense groups over the 1919–1922 thus turned Italian middle-class liberals increasingly sympathetic to fascism.

Though the liberal middle classes were not unanimous in their philofascist sentiments in the months just before Mussolini’s March on Rome, the writer Renato Simoni was accurate in the declaration he made in his summer 1922 column for the newspaper L’Illustrazione italiana: “the [workers’ demonstration], which was supposed to be a large protest against fascism, has enabled fascism to demonstrate its merits.”¹⁵

Not all middle-class liberals were convinced by these merits—that is, by the way fascists violently challenged the radical labor activity and ceaseless workers’ demonstrations of the biennio rosso—but some certainly were.

[…]

La Stampa emphasized the combativeness of some of the workers who were present; for example, the royal guards had no choice but to arrest “the most quarrelsome and hotheaded” of the demonstrators.⁷²

Additionally, while describing instances of violence involving “a young man struck with a blow to the head falling to the ground” or “a manual laborer struck and [with] his hands on his bloody head,” the newspaper employed the passive voice and thus obscured the direct agency of the policemen and fascist squadristi in the events. It even characterized such incidents as “scuffles” and “skirmishes” rather than as obvious acts of police and fascist violence against demonstrating workers.⁷³

In this way, La Stampa underlined that violence was present at yet another workers’ demonstration while absolving the perpetrating policemen and fascists of their responsibility in that violence. As it had done in its coverage of worker demonstrations in prior years, it presented the outbreak of violence as inherent to the strike rather than the direct consequence of the state and fasci’s violence toward workers.

[…]

La Stampa also held the arditi del popolo at least partially responsible for the fascists’ refusal to immediately disarm. The newspaper asserted that “that which is boiling up, the formation of antifascist forces that took place in Rome a few days ago, and the simultaneous debut of the « Arditi del Popolo », have offered fascism a motive to cry provocation and interrupt their attempts” at peace and disarmament.”

The public exercises of the arditi del popolo in Rome had thus frustrated and angered the fasci into continued armament, which they might have considered stopping had it not been for the 6 July demonstration.⁷⁷

[…]

According to Tasca, despite the fundamentally liberal rhetoric used by the secret action committee in their proclamation of the strikes, the fascists received support from liberal newspapers, many of which had originally “blamed the fascists for contributing towards socialist participation by their excesses.”

However, at this point in what had become a de facto civil war, “the conservative and ‘liberal’ press,” along with the Italian bourgeoisie more generally, “congratulated the fascists who were containing and extending, in the name of the state, the work of destruction” and suppression of workers’ strikes.⁸⁴

[…]

L’Illustrazione, however, went beyond criticizing the striking workers and condemning the economic disruptiveness and violence of the strike, using that criticism as justification for its praise of the actions taken by fascists against the strikes. Explaining how the “the fascist reaction [to the general strike in Milan] produced a broad and immediate consensus in public opinion” that was sympathetic to the fascists, the issue included an entire page favorably depicting “blackshirts [replacing] workers on train platforms and other public services.”⁸⁶

The publication thus not only offered an account of increasing public advocacy for the fascist response to the general strike but itself expressed support for the fascists. It also provided an analysis of the Italian public’s philofascist turn to the Right, declaring that “fascism has protected our right to feel Italian” and that, while “we, the masses, we, the tranquil population […] are threatened with thirst and hunger by the activity of the red organizations […] the fascists focus only on responding to those who cause it.”

Thus, in L’Illustrazione’s conception, with the proclamation of the general strike on the evening of July 31st, “the public [was] called to judge [between] the two disagreeing parties […] the fascists and the socialists”; since “there [was] no government” left to resolve the people’s problems, the public ended up siding with the fascists, who emerged as the ones “who [helped] us, [defended] us” from the industrial sabotage perpetrated by the working-class movement.⁸⁷

The workers’ demonstration, which in the summer of 1921 was perpetuating fascist violence by merely giving existing fascists further reason to be violent, was in August 1922 turning middle-class liberals into explicit supporters of fascism.

Understanding how fascism was often informed by the politics of imperialism and colonialism is of particular importance for historians of fascism and the far right in the former settler colonies of North America, southern Africa and Australasia. Scholars, such as Patrick Wolfe and Lorenzo Veracini, have described settler colonialism as an invasive process involving the violent dispossession of the indigenous population, which shares an affinity with fascism’s need for violent expansion and the ‘cleansing’ of populations for the desired nation.¹⁸

Robin D.G. Kelley and Cedric Robinson remind us that many Black activists in the interwar period saw ‘fascism as a blood relative of slavery and imperialism’.¹⁹ While staunchly anti-fascist, the Communist Party of South Africa noted in the early years of the Second World War that non-Europeans in the Union were not wholly convinced that fascism was much different to the racial hierarchy that existed in South Africa at the time.²⁰

[...]

In its strongest formulations, the idea of ‘decoloniality’ might actually lead one to question the very distinction between fascism and colonialism in the Southern African context. Decolonial thought would stress the undoubted reality that in the colonial era, subjects of all southern African régimes, whether settler-controlled or metropolitan-centred, led lives constrained by racial structures and ideologies and the accompanying denial of democratic rights, high levels of state violence and extremely coercive labour practices (and that this history has long-lasting legacies).

This emphasis would point to the conclusion that there was no significant difference between overtly fascist colonial governments (such as Portugal in Angola and Mozambique) and those which claimed to align with democratic values (Britain in Northern Rhodesia for instance). In both cases the experience of the colonised was, it could be argued from this perspective, much the same.

In South Africa, such a view actually has a precedent in the Second World War politics of an important Black leftist group, the Non-European Unity Movement. The NEUM opposed the pro-British war effort of the government of Prime Minister Jan Smuts, arguing that his régime was itself fascist.

They adopted a rhetoric which portrayed themselves as analogous to the European resistance, for instance referring to Black participants in state structures as ‘Quislings’. Black people, in this view, had nothing to gain from an Allied victory, as South African segregationists were indistinguishable from [German Fascists].

However, there is also a strong Black intellectual history in the region, in which opposition to fascism is a significant theme. Within South Africa, at the same time as the NEUM was emerging, the leadership of the main African nationalist organisation, the ANC, supported the war effort, using the rhetoric of the Atlantic Charter and Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms.

It is true that they thus hoped to bring leverage to bear on the Allies to impose a liberalisation of racial policies on Smuts. But ANC leaders like Dr A.B. Xuma believed that their ends would best served by an Allied triumph than by the success of Hitler and his local allies in the radical wing of Afrikaner nationalism. The distinction between fascism and other forms of rule was seen by them as being a weighty one.

Moreover, during the era of guerilla war against the [anticommunists] in Mozambique and Angola, Ian Smith’s government in Rhodesia and the South African apartheid order, both the insurgent movements and their allies abroad were often anxious to portray their opponents as ‘fascist’. This was rhetorically useful, as a tactic of delegitimisation, but also (although often inconsistently) used as a point of departure for political analysis.

There is thus a serious history of southern African Black intellectual engagement with the topic of fascism, and a closer look at that might be one useful way in which thinking about fascism from a decolonial perspective could be useful.

But, there are broader issues to which the decolonial approach might also usefully point us. One potential application is to insist that the experience of southern Africa needs to be given greater weight in Europe-focused studies of fascism. There is considerable debate on whether the [...] Estado Novo (1934–1974) was ‘technically’ fascist, but it is indisputable that it belonged to the family of prewar European [anticommunist dictatorships].

Its (NATO-backed) colonial wars in Angola and Mozambique from 1960 to 1974 were major military and political struggles. Yet this enormous conflict has not sufficiently registered in the mainstream of European historiography. A decolonial perspective might suggest that this marginalisation reflects a reluctance to integrate the colonial world into historical thought about fascism.

Similarly, [Fascist] overseas operations in the ‘global South’ have seldom been taken seriously as part of the main story of German Fascism. During the 1930s [the Third Reich] ran a vast international organisational operation. This included powerful [Fascist] movements amongst the wealthy German community in South African-ruled Namibia and support to small but vociferous fascist movements in South Africa.

During the Second World War, a mass Afrikaner fascist movement, the Ossewa Brandwag, emerged in South Africa, which had strong clandestine links to [Fascist] intelligence and carried out sabotage operations. Without exaggerating their significance, a lot more could be done to relate these developments to events within the Reich and in the course of the Second World War.

The question of whether they were more significant in the history of [German Fascism] and the world conflict than has generally been allowed, might at least be a useful one to ask.²³

Dimitrije Ljotić’s Yugoslav Nationalist Movement, also known as Zbor (Rally) [...] was a pro-fascistic yet highly conservative political association, which received steady financial and political support from [the Third Reich] dating back its foundation in 1935, and which espoused an extreme anti-Communist, anti-liberal and anti-individualist ideological programme. Zbor was a marginal political phenomenon in the interwar years, and did not succeed in receiving more than 1 per cent of electoral support throughout the 1930s.³⁶

However, Ljotić and his close political associates were to become the decisive political factor during the subsequent [Axis] occupation of Serbia, and assumed important positions in the collaborationist government. Zbor advocated a return to the archaic cultural and religious traditions of the Yugoslav nation, and heavily criticized the political course and influence of Western democracies; unsurprisingly, this ideological stance profoundly shaped its adherents’ contributions to the modernization debates.

[...]

The [Axis] régime in rump Serbia implemented some of the most brutal occupation policies and practices in the entire [Axis occupation of] Europe. The cumulative effects of forced labour, detention and execution of the ‘politically unreliable’, constant economic exploitation and food requisitioning were severely worsened by the harsh reprisals in response to the developing armed rebellion of the Communist and nationalist forces.

The initial [Axis] plan not to set up a collaborationist régime with political and governmental duties needed to be changed as the situation with the guerrilla resistance deteriorated and no further reinforcement of the [Wehrmacht] in Serbia was allowed due to the Eastern front demands. In that context, the originally installed purely administrative body functioning under firm German auspices proved inefficient, and what was suggested was ‘reorganizing and strengthening the Serbian administration so that the Serbs themselves might crush the rebellion’.⁵⁰

The puppet government of General Milan Nedić, a high-ranking pre-war military officer and politician with a favourable popular reputation, was thus established in August 1941. From the very beginning of the [Axis] occupation, Ljotić served as one of the most important men in the collaborationist setting in Serbia: he immediately founded the Serbian Volunteers’ Corps (SDK) which was integrated into the Wehrmacht; members of Zbor joined the collaborationist cabinet, while Ljotić himself became a Commissar for the Rebuilding of the City of Smederevo.

Ljotić’s actual political influence extended well beyond what was suggested by his official title. He had a privileged access to the [Wehrmacht] and occupation authorities in Serbia: although he never formally joined Nedić’s government, he maintained significant influence over its decision-making and plans throughout the war years. Still, the government’s areas of authority were heavily restricted from the very outset, and they only shrank as time went on, as the government failed to secure popular backing, pacify the population or eliminate the military rebellion.

The government functioned under constant [Axis] threats of even more brutal anti-civilian retaliations, executions of the most prominent members of the intelligentsia, and the dismemberment and occupation of Serbia by the other Axis forces, etc. According to Tomasevich:

[T]he Serbian puppet government was so subservient to the [...] occupation authorities [that] it cannot truly be said that it had its own policies in any field of government activity. It was simply an auxiliary organ of the [...] occupation régime.⁵¹

Distrusted by the political and SS elements in the [Third Reich’s] apparatus, the government’s activity was largely reduced to low-level administration, pro-[Axis] propaganda efforts and pointing out to the population the futility of any anti-[Axis] operations.

[...]

From the very beginning of the occupation, wartime writings held on to the rhetoric of participation in an exceptionally significant project, one of building the New European Order. They also constructed Serbia as an important, equal, honourable and respected member of the renovated European family of nations.

In fact, as Nedić’s Minister Olćan noted in 1943, while England’s plans for the post-war reconstruction of Europe relegated the Balkans to the political margins and envisaged an insignificant international position for the region,⁸⁰ Serbia under Nedić had been awarded a ‘dignified place in the European community’, which would, after the war, become a ‘family of harmony and happiness’.⁸¹

(Emphasis added.)

As elsewhere in Axis propaganda, Serbia’s collaborationist government critised the United Kingdom for abusing India:

Numerous lengthy treatises on Indian politics, culture, history, literature and religion criticized the ‘British rhetoric of superiority and detestation’ with regard to the local population, the rhetoric that some of the most prominent pre-war intellectuals had themselves internalized. [...] ‘India’s contacts with the West in more recent times brought to [the country] much misfortune, tragedy, unhappiness’.⁶³

While one could easily gloss over this as nothing but another generic attempt to persuade people into siding against the Western Allies, it is more useful to think of it in comparative terms: the colonisation of India was an example of a 'bad' occupation, whereas the Axis's presence in the Balkans was an instance of a 'good' occupation. In other words, no matter how rough the Serbs might have had it, the Indians had it worse. When seen in this light, Axis propaganda (hypocritically) criticizing British colonialism becomes much easier to understand.

This past summer, Batulin participated in the “Nation Europa” conference, and so did Kristian Udarov, another fighter from the Terror battalion and the Belarusian Volunteer Corps. Yesterday, Udarov’s younger brother died fighting in the National Guard’s Azov Brigade. Earlier this year, Vadin Kitar took a photo with Udarov, who is affiliated with the far-right Ukrainian organization “Tradition & Order,” which was also represented at the neo-Nazi conference in Lviv.

Denis “White Rex” Kapustin, the commander of the Russian Volunteer Corps and one of the most notorious neo[fascists] in Europe, prominently featured in this event, which went unreported by the western media. “White Rex” was one of the only people whose identity wasn’t concealed in photos that the HUR released surrounding the operation to clear the chemical plant, including an awards ceremony led by military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov. Reportedly for his neo[fascist] fighters, this mission was dedicated to avenging the death of Mykola Kokhanivsky, the extremist commander of the rogue “OUN” volunteer battalion, who died this year in the Vovchansk area.

Several years ago, the Security Service of Ukraine arrested Aleksandr Skachkov, a Russian neo[fascist] who served in Kokhanivsky’s unit, for circulating the neo[fascist] manifesto of Brenton Tarrant, the 2019 mosque shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand. The journalist Oleksiy Kuzmenko discovered that Kokhanivsky was an early promoter of the Telegram channel, “Tarrant’s lads,” that Skachkov was accused of running. In my article about Nation Europa, I explained that the HUR Timur unit’s “Team Nobody” is linked to a Telegram channel that has provided its subscribers a “full video in good quality” of the Christchurch massacres.

British military intelligence gave two thumbs up to Budanov’s neo[fascist] special forces, if only after completing their mission in Vovchansk. A public “intelligence update” on October 1 said, “It is likely that Ukrainian control of the plant will facilitate further counter offensives in the north of the city to push the RGF [Russian Ground Forces] back towards the Ukraine-Russia border.”

Although the western media hasn’t given too much attention to the HUR’s achievement in Vovchansk, this British update stirred a few triumphant articles, such as “Ukraine Recaptures Vital Chemical Plant in Latest Blow for Vladimir Putin” (Huffington Post) and “Russian Stronghold Falls” (National Interest). I’m no military analyst and have no idea how important a victory this may have been for Ukraine, but the British seemed to hint at the possibility of more cross-borders from the HUR’s neo[fascist] special forces.

Before Russia’s 2024 offensive in the Vovchansk and Kharkiv directions, the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC) and its allied units carried out a series of incursions into the Belgorod region of Russia. In the spring of 2023, journalist Leonid Ragozin noticed that Aleksandr Skachkov, the alleged circulator of the Christchurch manifesto, participated in the first RVC raid. Skachkov had a KKK patch on his chest, produced by a company commander in the 3rd Assault Brigade.

As some readers may recall, Vadim Kitar’s girlfriend is the main representative of the Azov-linked brand, “Company Group Team,” and last year, Volodymyr Zelensky gave a peculiar shoutout to this “military community” on Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces Day. Indeed, the “CGT” brand, perhaps above all others, appears to unite those in Ukraine’s “autonomous neo-nazi army” — the Azov movement and allied units. For example, in June 2024, when the Azovite commander of the NGU Svoboda battalion’s Paragon company gave an interview to the battalion’s official podcast, he was interviewed by a neo[fascist] CGT enthusiast from the Svoboda unit.

Last year, when Petro Poroshenko visited the aforementioned 36th marine brigade and received a neo[fascist] patch from one of its units, the former president put his arm around a soldier wearing a CGT shirt. These are just a couple examples that I found months ago, before discovering the degree(s) of separation between them and the Vedmedi SS. Seeing the CGT spokesperson fundraise for her boyfriend’s Junger Group in recent days, I looked up the definition of a “company group” again: “a collection of parent and subsidiary corporations that function as a single economic entity through a common source of control.”

As trains carrying writers from around Europe rolled into Weimar on Thursday, October 24 1941, the [Axis’s] articulation of an alternative model of European literature began with, or rather through, these writers themselves.³³ In political terms, the group the Germans assembled in Weimar reflected the map of [the Axis in] Europe. Predictably, it included some invitees distinguished solely by their [...] fascist political commitments.

In literary–political terms, however, it represented regions and trends that the French model of European literature had generally excluded from the upper echelons of international literary exchange. Substantial contingents represented the literatures of Europe’s northern and southeastern periphery, from Norway and Finland to Croatia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. Of course, individual writers from some of these countries had achieved success in Paris.

But the writers the [Axis] called ‘European’ were generally ‘national writers’ ― both in the sense that their readership was largely confined to their nation and in the sense that they placed their talents at the service of the political-cultural project of the nation, rejecting the autonomous status of the ‘international writer’.³⁴

In their national contexts, several were important figures. Veikko Antero Koskenniemi was Finland’s ‘unofficial national poet,’ author in 1940 of new lyrics for the hymn in Sibelius’s Finlandia; historical novelist Fani Popova-Mutafova was a leading intellectual of interwar Bulgaria; Slovakian novelist Jozef Cíger Hronsky led the influential nationalist cultural association Matica Slovenská.³⁵

The focus on national writers accounts for the heavy representation of authors of naturalistic novels set in the rural village or farm — not so much out of ideological linkages to [Fascist] ‘blood and soil’ ideology, but because this was the central literary genre for many of Europe’s predominantly agricultural societies.

Writers in this vein included prominent figures like internationally successful Belgian children’s author (and Flemish nationalist) Felix Timmermans, and Europe’s greatest novelist of ‘the soil’, Norwegian Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun, who communicated his support for the Writers’ Union by telegram.³⁶

Moreover, a significant group among these ‘national’ writers could also be classified as ‘regional’. Works by writers like the Transylvanian-Hungarian Josef Nyirö, Dutch writer and Frisian nationalist Pieter Sybesma, or Norwegian Lars Hansen, whose ishavslitteratur ― travel literature set amid the icy landscapes of the North Pole ― sold well in Germany, all expressed unique forms of life seen to have emerged from the intensely local relationship between people and their regions or landscapes.³⁷

But the predilection for rural themes did not mean the writers were themselves all provincials. The group included many sophisticated, multi-lingual, urban intellectuals, often responsible for translations into their national languages of major works from more established literary languages, above all French and German ― but not for this reason any less nationalist.³⁸

Right-wing Finnish nationalist Koskenniemi, for example, had translated Goethe and Balzac into Finnish. Croatian Antun Bonifačić’, cultural director of the Ustasha régime’s foreign office, had studied at the Sorbonne and published a study on Paul Valéry.³⁹

As these writers mixed and mingled with one another, while being told repeatedly that they were ‘the intellectual select [geistige Auslese] of all European nations,’ they were offered a definition of European writer that built on a [fascistised], antisemitic updating of the traditional German-Herderian model of literature: European literature was composed of national literatures, and only those writers who most authentically expressed their nations’ spirits deserved the title ‘European’.⁴⁰

This was a European literature with no place for cosmopolitan exiles, modernists who appealed to Parisian trends while ignoring the local public, or, needless to say, Jews; nor for those European nationalities now slated for repression, like the Poles, Czechs or Russians, among many others. But with regard to those nationalities it included, this model called on the broad currency of the German model of literature, which after all had stimulated the emergence of some of these national literatures to begin with.⁴¹

Moreover, by including and celebrating regional and rural writers, this vision of European literature capitalized on the international 1930s trend for literary regionalism. Partaking of what Roberto Dainotto calls the ‘metaphysics of place,’ writers and critics across Europe saw in realist texts about specific rural regions a comforting vision of uncorrupted traditions ― cast against the cultural rootlessness and superficiality of urban modernity ― as a basis for literary (and political) renewal and regeneration.⁴²

In Germany this kind of thinking had received its most sophisticated exposition by Martin Heidegger, and had been fully systematized in multi-volume works of völkisch and racist literary theory.⁴³ Thus the writers gathered at Weimar cannot simply be dismissed as ‘applauding pieces of scenery, comparable to the participants in any number of State and Party events’.⁴⁴

On the contrary, this assemblage reflected a careful strategy on the [Axis’s] part: presenting this particular group of authors to the world, to one another, and to themselves as European deliberately labeled national and indeed regional writers as the most European. It turned Larbaud’s definition of the European writer, whereby the ‘European’ was the supra-national, precisely on its head.

(Emphasis added.)

The inclusionary pretensions coupled with the exclusionary practices should sound familiar to some of you: creators (usually white cishet men) who either promote or conform to the status quo are honoured by prestigious institutions while revolutionary socialists are ignored.

The Molot Group, a little known unit in the famous 3rd Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, is associated with the Hitlerite “Nord Storm” (NS, a double entendre, also refers to [so-called] National Socialism), another group affiliated with Ukraine’s most powerful neo-Nazis. The Azov movement created the 3rd Assault Brigade but originated in the notorious “Azov Battalion,” which joined the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU) and became the “Azov Regiment” by 2015 — and the “Azov Brigade” by 2023.

Whereas the NGU Azov Brigade has made an effort to clean up its image, if only to substantiate propaganda about its “evolution” and “depoliticization,” the 3rd Assault Brigade, established in 2022 by NGU Azov veterans, is more open about its [neofascism]. Many of its units use the Black Sun, and at least a couple use Slavic pagan symbols. Many if not most Ukrainian neo-pagans are possessed with the conviction that their country is actually the ancient Aryan homeland and birthplace of “white civilization.” They appropriated the Black Sun years ago, giving neo[fascists] the excuse that it’s just a pagan symbol, as far as they know.

Mix of pagan and [Fascist] symbols in these patches of 3rd Assault Brigade units. On the left (“Myron platoon”), the symbol of the Slavic pagan god “Chur” above an Azov wolfsangel. On the right (“Algiz platoon”), a “life rune” above crossed German stick grenades from the insignia of the notorious SS Dirlewanger Brigade.

In August, a neo[fascist] fighter from the NGU Azov Brigade died in eastern Ukraine’s Serebryansky forest. Ivan Vovchanskyi, 33, better known as Veleslav Shipit, served in its 5th battalion, “Lyubart.” Several years ago on the Russian social media platform VK, he reposted an image of a Black Sun, along with the lyrics of a song: “We don’t regret anything — Hitler for a thousand years! There will be no more of you, the answer is cast in steel…” In 2018, he made his Facebook profile picture one of him wearing a shirt with a [Fascist] eagle, in which an OUN trident replaced the swastika.

Contrary to a popular evidence-free narrative that the NGU Azov unit was eventually “depoliticized” and somehow separated from the broader Azov movement, the latter’s neo[fascist] paramilitary organization “Centuria” formed the Lyubart battalion in 2022. That year, “Veleslav Shipit” read the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Hindu scripture that describes an epic struggle between warring cousins, which reminded him of the Russia-Ukraine war. Shipit was not your typical Azov fighter, but a “pagan theologian” and “priest” from Lviv. One pagan group that mourned his loss makes amulets for the 3rd Assault Brigade.

My favorite blog, “Events in Ukraine” by Peter Korotaev, published a primer on paganism and Ukrainian neo[fascists] this year. As Peter mentioned, in the summer of 2017, the year that some “experts” say neo[fascists] were purged from the unit, the NGU’s Azov Regiment set up an idol to Perun, the Slavic god of thunder and war.

They did this to celebrate the 1053rd anniversary of a medieval Kievan prince’s “great victory” over the Khazar Khaganate, which had a Turkic elite that converted to Judaism. “This grandiose victory over the Jewish state ranks among the most significant events in Slavic and world history,” said the commander of the Azov Regiment. “The invincible spirit and weapons of the descendants of Perun destroyed the parasitic system.”

According to the NGU Azov website, “Khazaria is a state that for many years led a parasitic way of life, destroyed and plundered the southern lands of Kievan Rus, and destroyed the Slavic people.” This Perun idol was erected on the Azov base near Mariupol to be a sacred site, “where before combat tasks, each fighter could consecrate his weapon and worship the deity, gain strength and invincibility from the shrine for the upcoming battle.”

At the risk of stating the obvious, I would like to confirm that I am in no way sharing this information in hopes of either angering or embarrassing neopagans (many of whom not only loathe fascism but also tend to have a better grasp of the lore than these petty bourgeois paskudnyaks). The point here is identifying neofascists by how they misappropriate cultures.

Zionists in particular (be they Jewish or Christian) have a very similar habit of abusing elements from Judaism for their own neoimperialist or ethnonationalist purposes while their understanding of it tends to be unremarkable. So if white supremacists abusing neopaganism makes you cringe, know that at least you aren't alone. Either way, hopefully it motivates you all the more to... inconvenience them.

As the decade advanced, though, it became increasingly evident for Milá and his comrades that carrying on the fight from European soil was not an option anymore. Accordingly, many of the second‐generation activists devoted huge efforts to the strengthening of a fully international strategy which went beyond the borders of Europe. As Ernesto Milá explained in his memoirs:

Although in Europe it had become impossible to work, in other geographical areas there was a much more favourable situation. [...] This web of contacts in Latin America and Africa was enough to establish an international strategy. It was about staying on the defensive in Europe, improving positions in Latin America and Africa in such a way that we were able to establish ‘sanctuaries’ in these areas and, at the same time, the basis for generating the economic means that would allow us later to ‘return to Europe’. Based on this strategy, we intervened directly in some Latin American, Central American and African countries between 1975 and 1985.⁸³

In the context of the 1980s police prosecution, therefore, Milá (and other activists like Delle Chiaie), finally decided to depart to Latin America, where they engaged in collaboration with a number of activists and régimes.⁸⁴ Once again, this was possible thanks to the transnational network, which facilitated some stable money streams, exchanges of information and data between very distant countries, as well as of documentation and media.⁸⁵

In turn, Milá would end up in Bolivia working as a political adviser for the short‐lived dictatorship of Luis García Meza, along with other neofascist ‘comrades’ such as Stefano delle Chiaie and Klaus Barbie. His tasks there were incredibly varied. First, he would regularly meet with the highest echelons of the military or with important politicians and businessmen. Second, Milá used these contacts to collect information about communist guerrilla movements like the Peruvian Sendero Luminoso. Milá would then write reports advising on the best strategies to prevent the expansion of these movements and fight them.

Milá would also create and spread fake news which was sent to the different news agencies in the continent. The idea was to give the impression that these guerrillas were a huge imminent threat for the stability of the region. Finally, Milá would also help in taking care of the different businesses the network had at its disposal there, in this case managing three mines (gold and copper) and several rubber plantations.⁸⁶

However, the activities of Milá on the other side of the Atlantic would not last long, either. As the dictatorships in Latin America began to collapse during the 1980s, the Spanish neofascist was confronted with the need to return to Europe. This, in turn, would mean the end of Milá’s political activism. Indeed, upon his return to Spain in 1983, he was arrested by the police, indicted on firearms and illegal demonstration charges, and eventually sentenced to two years in prison.⁸⁷

On 3 October 1985, El País informed of a new arrest, this time in the streets of Barcelona, and his immediate confinement in the Modelo Prison, in order to execute his pending sentence for the arson of the UCD [Barcelona Union of the Democratic Centre] headquarters in Barcelona that had taken place in 1980.⁸⁸

I remember one boring afternoon in the 2000s when I looked up ‘Jewish Nazis’ online because of the sheer absurdity of the concept. (I had a worse sense of humor as an adolescent.) To my surprise, I found out about something called Patrol 36: a gang of pro‐Axis neofascists who were nevertheless citizens of the Zionist neocolony.

As the bourgeoisie devastated the Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s and throughout the ’90s, neofascism exploded in popularity. Neoliberalization along with harassment from neofascists caused approximately one million Russian Jews to settle in occupied Palestine hoping for a better life. Many of the earlier settlers loathed these newcomers as ‘unworthy’ competitors. Since anybody (except for Palestinians) with at least one Jewish grandparent is eligible for citizenship under the so‐called ‘law of return’, many people who were only legally ‘Jewish’ became citizens, too.

Some legally ‘Jewish’ youths felt more gentile than Jewish; the harassment that they faced from Jews disgruntled them. Hence, in 2005, Patrol 36 was born:

Kuzmin’s family migrated to Israel 10 years ago hoping for a better life free of discrimination. But Ivan still didn't fit in. “There they called me things like dirty Jew... And here they called me stinky Russian.”

Despite having a grandmother who survived the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, Kuzmin joined other young immigrants in a neo[fascist] gang called Patrol 36, which regularly bashed people senseless. They were so proud of their actions they videotaped their attacks.

Pictured: One of the gang members performing a Fascist salute.

As laughworthy as the concept of ‘Jewish neo‐Nazis’ may seem, it is real, and they can be no less dangerous than their gentile counterparts:

The eight suspects, aged 16–21, are all Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union. They were arrested a month ago [August 2007], but the news only emerged on Saturday. Police say searches of their homes yielded [Fascist] uniforms, portraits of Adolf Hitler, knives, guns and TNT.

[…]

The arrests follow a year‐long inquiry which began after a synagogue in Petah Tikva, a city east of Tel Aviv, was desecrated with graffiti of [Fascist] swastikas and the name of [Fascist] leader Adolf Hitler.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed his horror at what he called “violence for the sake of violence.”

“I am sure that there is not a person in Israel who can remain indifferent to these scenes, which indicate that we too as a society have failed in the education of these youths,” he said.

Tattoos

The eight accused, who include the group’s alleged leader, are all from Petah Tikva.

The gang members sported tattoos popular with white supremacists — including the number 88, code for Heil Hitler because “H” is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

“We believe that this is the main gang working in the area… the main gang that exists [under Zionism] that attempts to use Hitler’s ideology,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP news agency. Police say the gang members would target homosexuals, Jews who wore a skull cap and drug addicts, often video taping their attacks. “It is difficult to believe that Nazi ideology sympathisers can exist in Israel, but it is a fact,” Revital Almog, the police official who led the investigation, told Israeli public radio.

Video tapes

The suspects have admitted assaulting a number of people in Tel Aviv, most of them foreign workers. Ms Almog said the gang would pick on someone who appeared unable to defend themselves and then attack. They often filmed or photographed the violence. Footage of the attacks show people lying on the ground whilst being kicked by more than one assailant. In one clip a man is hit around the back of the head with a bottle.

According to the […] daily newspaper Haaretz one video shows gang members surrounding a Russian drug addict as he admits to being a Jew. The youths then order him onto his knees to beg for forgiveness for being Jewish and a drug addict before viciously beating not only him, but also another man who tries to intervene.

(Emphasis original.)

Aside from assaulting innocents, some of the things that these youths said were just plain creepy:

During the investigation, police revealed chilling email correspondences between the cell members. In one message, Buanitov wrote: “Do you celebrate the Fuhrer’s birthday? On his birthday we will read out a few lines, swear allegiance to Hitler and to all the white people. We will guard the white race until the last drop of our blood.”

When one of the members was worried that the event might be spotted by a “[insert slur here]” who may report it to the police, Buanitov replied, “Let him see us, we’ll kill him.”

In a separate conversation Baniatov said, “I will never give up, I was a Nazi and will remain a Nazi. I won’t rest until we kill them all.” In another chat he stated, “I won’t have kids. My grandfather is half [insert slur here], so that this piece of trash doesn’t have ancestors with even the smallest percent of Jewish blood.”

Here is a recording of the gang members going to court, many with their shirts over their faces to hide their identities. (Another suspect, a twenty‐one‐year‐old soldier, fled before somebody could arrest him.) Then, a judge sentenced the accused to 1–7 years in jail. Since that was in November 2008, this means that they are all free now.

Many neocolonial officials and other apologists have glossed over Patrol 36 as nothing more than an isolated case. That may be, but Zalman Gilichinski, an activist who tried to draw attention to pro‐Axis neofascists in the neocolony, was unconvinced:

“There are several hundred neo‐Nazis in Israel, maybe more. Perhaps 100 perpetrate violent attacks,” says Zalman Gilichinski, a Torah instructor in Jerusalem who is not only the leading authority, but probably the only authority on the extent of neo‐Nazism in Israel.

“It’s hard to think of a city with a substantial population of [halachically] non‐Jewish Russian immigrants where there isn’t neo‐Nazi activity,” he says, adding that the leading venues for Nazi graffiti and street attacks are the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, Haifa and its Krayot suburbs, and the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Armon Hatziv, Neveh Yaʻacov and Pisgat Zeʻev.

“We’re now getting about 250 calls a year about neo‐Nazi activity, and a third or more of these complaints have to do with violence,” he adds.

[…]

After Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2005, when a Russian immigrant youth was arrested for spraying [Fascist] graffiti in Beersheba, and an IDF soldier from Ariel was discovered to be wearing swastika tattoos, Gilichinski spoke about the problem on the radio, and Avital’s office contacted him. He showed the MK the material Damir had amassed on neo[fascist] activities here, and Avital convened the first of three Knesset committee hearings on the issue, all of which were attended by police representatives.

“I wanted the police to start dealing with the issue, but they came up with nothing at the meetings, they said there's nothing to the issue, they know nothing, they've heard nothing,” says Avital. She instructed police to put together a report on the extent of neo‐Nazi activities, but this was never done, despite Gilichinski having provided them with “written evidence, names of Web sites, all the material imaginable,” she continues.

As late as last month, Avi Dichter, minister of internal security, sent a letter to Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, with a copy to Avital, in which he insisted that neo‐Nazism in Israel “was not important, that the police did a little research and nothing was happening, it wasn’t a trend, it wasn’t serious,” Avital adds.

In Gilichinski’s files is correspondence with various local police stations over complaints of neo‐Nazi and anti‐Semitic attacks. The police response often refers to the case being closed, with no explanation given; in most of these cases, the likelihood is that the perpetrators weren’t caught. At times, though, the police response is that no investigation was even opened. “Many times I made complaints to the police and got no response from them at all,” he notes.

While the occupation may have no citizens today who are European neofascists (not to be confused with Hebrew neofascists), Zionists have good reasons for ignoring the possibility: various reports in the media about European neofascists harming Jews would ruin the image of the ‘State of Israel’ as a Jewish utopia. Thus, we may never know the real extent of the problem. Whatever the case may be there, three facts remain indisputable: the occupation has welcomed Eurofascists repeatedly, has repeatedly supported Ukrainian neofascists and offers jobs to European neofascists.

It may be tempting to dismiss Patrol 36 as nothing more than a historical curiosity, but comparing how the occupation handled it with how it mishandles Palestinians remains useful: a neofascist gang that assaulted people for being Jewish, drug‐addicted, homosexual, or of colour was entitled to a trial, some anonymity, and only a few years in jail. It took the authorities two years to do anything about them. In contrast, a Palestinian child who never came close to harming anybody has no right to food, shelter, potable water, electricity, or even oxygen. The IOF waste no time massacring Palestinians of any age. Yet according to many Herzlians, Palestinians and Eurofascists are supposedly one and the same!

Let nobody deceive you: the occupation does not treat Palestinians like antisemitic neofascists. It treats neofascists much better than Palestinians!

Once [the Fascists] completed the military occupation of Ethiopia, a large stele from the city of Aksum was plundered by [Fascist] colonial troops and transported to Rome. In antiquity, the Kingdom of Aksum (100 BC – 700 AD) represented the earliest form of Ethiopian civilisation.¹⁴

The city hosted (and still does so in its rôle as a UNESCO heritage site) an impressive number of stelae originally carved and erected to mark the location of underground burial chambers. The theft of the stele and its re‐erection in Rome in 1937 allowed the fascist régime to proclaim itself as the successor of Ancient Roman conquerors.¹⁵

The placement of the stele at the ancient heart of the city was meant to create vistas and axes that would connect the Circus Maximus to the Colosseum and the pyramid of Cestius, as well as creating an artery that would link the city to the newly built EUR42 imperial quarter and the nearby port of Ostia, permitting access to the Mediterranean Sea.¹⁶ The construction, facing the Aksum stele, of a new building to host the Ministry of Italian Africa, was therefore meant to celebrate Italy’s imperial geography.

[…]

The […] 1947 Paris Peace Treaties set the terms for the return of the stele to Ethiopia. Article 37 stipulated the restitution of looted works of art, objects of religious, and historical value to their legitimate owners. But, despite these obligations, Italy kept the restitution on hold until 2002.¹⁷

By then new bilateral agreements were signed between Italy and Ethiopia, focussing around business, infrastructural projects, and development aid. These agreements, and through UNESCO mediation, eventually led to the complete restitution of the stele in Aksum in 2008, thus leaving the square empty and the FAO headquarters in Rome standing alone.

However, after the removal, the apparent sense of emptiness led to a new mutation. On 11 September 2009, the Mayor of Rome, the right‐winger Gianni Alemanno, inaugurated a memorial to the victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York eight years earlier.

The memorial, placed nearby the original location of the stele, consists of a plaque placed between two columns taken from the fountain of Curia Innocenziana in the Piazza di Montecitorio in Rome. This new spatial intervention clearly reproduces the profile of New York’s Twin Towers. Paradoxically, on the plaque are carved the words of the philosopher George Santayana: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’.¹⁸

[…]

The […] substitution in the late 2000s of the Aksum stele with a 9/11 memorial has reinforced the coloniality of power, making room for other memorialisations and new civilisational messages. This latest intervention has triggered the attempted making of new global historical memories that are not necessarily bound to the sense of belonging to the nation or an ethnos, but, on the contrary, they inform the identity of those communities who did not directly experience specific traumatic historical events.⁴⁷

The experience of catastrophe following the Holocaust and the Second World War came to create a global political and moral space where collective trauma is held hostage by an exclusive Western interpretation, providing inspiration and justification for military and non‐military interventions to prevent outbreaks of major threats to the global hegemonic order.

Within this context, 9/11 acted as a historical turning point for the West out of which a transnational sense of ‘vulnerability’ started spreading. This has generated, and continues to generate, justifications of military aggression and war on a global scales a way to protect Western interests and concerns.

(Emphasis added.)

“Jedi,” whose real name is Serhii Rotchuk, or Serhii Grushin, led the delegation. He was one of the Azovites invited to play golf at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington earlier this year. “Jedi” is one of the leaders of the NGU Azov brigade’s medical service. He emphasized that Azov trains according to NATO standards. In his oldest Instagram post, from 2019, he is wearing a “Rock Against Communism” shirt produced by a National Socialist Black Metal brand affiliated with the hardcore neo[fascist] group “Wotanjugend,” which originated in Russia. Last year, he expressed interest in a book by Léon Degrelle, the [Axis] collaborator who led the far‐right Rexist Party in Belgium.

[…]

It’s been said that “if you happen to watch Finnish television now, and are looking at any coverage of the Russian war in Ukraine, you’ll probably see Major General Toveri.” He has argued that “the only way to have lasting peace in Europe” requires the integration of Ukraine “to our economic and defence systems through membership in EU and NATO.” But even if that never happens, Ukrainian neo[fascists] are still on track to be integrated in the U.S.‐led military‐industrial complex and western intelligence services.

The day before the Azov delegation received a warm welcome at the NATO headquarters, the commander of the Azov Brigade paid tribute to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), as far‐right nationalists do every year on October 14. The UPA, the 1940s paramilitary arm of the OUN‐B, or “Banderite” wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, hunted Jews in the forests of western Ukraine and waged a massive ethnic cleansing campaign against the region’s Polish population.

By the early 1950s, the CIA tried and failed to utilize the UPA as a “stay‐behind army,” but it whitewashed Ukrainian [Axis] collaborators throughout the Cold War. “I am sure that the UPA fighters, looking at your daily service, are proud of you and smiling because the defense of Ukraine is in good hands,” Azov commander Denys Prokopenko said in an online post that he wrote in English. “They couldn’t have dreamt of better descendants.”

British papers regarded [Fascist] anti‐Semitism initially as a propaganda show to rouse the support of the discontented. The Times and the Manchester Guardian reported extensively on the aims of the NSDAP, including its blatant Jew‐hatred, but did not seriously believe that Hitler would turn his anti‐Semitism into a policy.³⁵

The Manchester Guardian stated ironically that ‘the great majority of Germans could have nothing but dislike for the hysterical nonsense of Herr Hitler […] who blames impartially the French, the Russians, and the Jews for all his country’s ills’.³⁶ It reassured its readers that a share in political responsibility would have a sobering effect on the [Fascists]. Apparently the paper doubted that Hitler could maintain his political success in the long run if he did not adjust his programme.³⁷

Similarly, The Times trusted that Hitler’s revolutionary movement would come to reason and ‘develop into a constructive force’.³⁸ This attitude is a reflection of the liberal theory of politics which argues that the exercise of power makes politicians inevitably more responsible.³⁹

[…]

The New York Times also drew attention to the implications of [Fascist] Jew‐hatred. Under the headline ‘A Menace to Jews Seen If Hitler Wins’ the paper wrote in December 1931 that the possibility of Hitler assuming power […] should be of great concern to American Jews, as anti‐Semitism was an integral part of his political programme.⁴⁹ In September 1932 it warned that if the [Fascists] attained power in Germany there would be ‘substantial ground for fear that the movement itself might get out of control, producing racial excesses with the worst results’.⁵⁰

Still, Anglo‐American journalists did not discuss the roots of German anti‐Semitism or the possibility that Germans might vote for the [NSDAP] because they were anti‐Semitic.⁵¹ They paid attention to the violent outbursts of [Fascist] anti‐Semitism the moment they happened but quickly closed their eyes when they were over.

More importantly, it seems that they did not believe that a civilised nation could regard anti‐Semitism as an acceptable or even attractive political stance. Nor did they expect the [German Fascists] to turn their Jew‐hatred into practical politics.⁵² The extent of the assault on the Jews after Hitler’s seizure of power therefore came as a shock.

[…]

From the first day of Hitler’s rule the Manchester Guardian was suspicious of his designs. Referring to the [German Fascists’] previous exploitation of anti‐Semitism, the paper asked: ‘What is to be expected of this Government […]? Will Hitler […] drive the Jews out of Germany and distribute the profits and property of capitalism among the impoverished middle class?’ [sic!] Yet the paper believed that it would be difficult for the [German Fascists] to realise their racial ideals in a Cabinet dominated by the conservatives.⁵⁷

The New York Times was initially relieved that ‘Herr Hitler’s attainment of the Chancellorship [had] not provoked any anti‐Semitic outbreaks’. Like the Manchester Guardian it argued that Hitler’s moderation was due to the weakness of the [Fascists] in the Cabinet: ‘[… Hitler] will have to compromise with those who are opposed to isolating the Reich from the rest of the world. He is not expected to carry into effect the rabidly anti‐Semitic part of his program’.⁵⁸

Moreover, the New York Times claimed that ‘perhaps the post of great responsibility which the leader of the German [Fascists] now held might curb his avowed extremist policies and particularly his anti‐Semitism’.⁵⁹ The other three papers reported very little during February 1933. The Chicago Daily Tribune briefly mentioned that the Völkischer Beobachter predicted an exodus of the Jews from Germany.⁶⁰

The Manchester Guardian reported sporadic anti‐Semitic incidents provoked by [Fascist] students.⁶¹ The Times referred to [Fascist] anti‐Semitism only once in passing.⁶² It reiterated its conviction that Hitler deserved a chance to prove his statesmanship and warned that it was too early to judge ‘whether the street‐orator will become an efficient ruler’.⁶³

In early March reports of [Fascist] anti‐Semitism increased in number. […] Yet the New York Times qualified such disquieting reports by printing a statement by James W. Gerard, American Ambassador to [the Second Reich] during 1913–1918, who argued that Hitler would eventually dissociate himself from the anti‐Semitism of his party as ‘Nothing sobers like the attainment of high office.’ Moreover, world public opinion would not tolerate ‘a return to the prejudices and policies of the Middle Ages’.⁶⁶

Both arguments — that the takeover of political responsibility would render the [Fascists] more reasonable and that world public opinion would have a restraining effect on Hitler — mirror once more the liberal understanding of government politics by the journalists.⁶⁷

[…]

The Times’ coverage was marked by the following points: First, the anti‐Semitic outburst was treated as a passing revolutionary side‐effect. Although the paper reported the [Fascist] boycott of Jewish department stores and shops and acknowledged that incidents of violence and intimidation in relation to Jews were occurring daily, it argued that ‘much of this, as Government circles suggest, is inevitable in present circumstances […]; fine distinctions cannot always be drawn in the stress of a national revolution’.⁸³ A leader of 15 March acknowledged that ‘indiscriminate violence and persecution’ was occurring but insisted that ‘no one expects revolutions to be made with rose‐water’.⁸⁴

Second, the paper maintained that Hitler was a ‘moderate’ who initially had difficulties in controlling his radical followers but who would soon restore order.⁸⁵

Third, The Times considered the treatment of the Jews an internal German affair in which Britain had no right to interfere.⁸⁶ The paper was alarmed at Hitler’s unpredictable foreign policy and worried that he might upset the international status quo. It therefore held that ‘the internal excesses of [Hitler’s] regime should not debar foreign statesmanship from examining with an open mind the external claims of the German, as they would of any other, Government’.⁸⁷

In this The Times followed the official line of the British government that strongly favoured a policy of non‐intervention on behalf of the German Jews for fear of worsening diplomatic relations with the new [Fascist] rulers.⁸⁸

(Emphasis added.)

In addition to these, it is worth noting that the Wall Street Journal published an article reading ‘BERLIN VIEWS HITLER CALMLY’; ‘Rise in Stocks Reflects Confidence He Will Not Disrupt Nation’s Affairs’.

(Mirror.)

Dr. Arline Geronimus, professor of Behavioral Health and Health Education at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, proposed the concept of “weathering” to explain why people of color in the United States experience deteriorating health at earlier stages of the life course and premature aging at higher rates than white Americans.

According to Geronimus, “weathering” is “a process that encompasses the physiological effects of living in marginalized communities that bear the brunt of racial, ethnic, religious, and class discrimination […]. Weathering afflicts human bodies—all the way down to the cellular level—as they grow, develop, and age in a racist, classist society […]. Weathering is about hopeful, hardworking, responsible, skilled, and resilient people dying from the physical toll of constant stress on their bodies, paying with their health because they live in a rigged, degrading, and exploitative system” (Geronimus 2023, pp. 20–21).

Human bodies naturally produce stress hormones in response to instances of oppression. Continual exposure to such instances of racial oppression results in prolonged elevated stress levels and has detrimental effects on the body, including muscle atrophy, immunosuppression, and premature aging. Geronimus’ research suggests that while the broad spectrum of coping mechanisms exact a protective function for individuals in the short term, in the long term, such strategies ultimately hasten physical senescence (Geronimus 1992).

When Geronimus first introduced her hypothesis in 1992, challenging traditionally accepted explanations for observable deterioration among marginalized populations, it was met with skepticism. However, subsequent research has produced compelling evidence in support of the theory.¹

Historical evidence from the Łódź ghetto lends further credence to the idea that prolonged exposure to a racist society and violence produces a weathering effect in individuals. Widespread individual weathering in the Łódź ghetto, particularly after 1941, culminated in a process of collective weathering that decimated the Jewish community. The historical case study presented below suggests that a broader application of weathering theory could be instructive for understanding the effects of racism on marginalized communities in contemporary contexts.

[…]

Death became a routine part of daily life. And those left behind suffered from accelerated aging and failing health no matter their age. Łódź ghetto survivor Sarah Selver‐Urbach remembered how her father’s death in the fall of 1941 hastened the decline of her paternal grandfather.

In a postwar memoir, Selver‐Urbach wrote: “Following father’s death, my tall, stately grandfather grew stooped; his hair, which had turned grey by father’s grave, became whiter and whiter till his head and long beard looked snow‐white. The permanent pain etched on his face augments further his naturally dignified appearance; it was sad to see him wasting away, he who had been so hale and so tough” (Selver‐Urbach 1984, p. 75). The cumulative effects of starvation, fear, and death were manifest in the greying of the population.

In the Łódź ghetto, physical weathering emerged as a widespread phenomenon that often occurred at a shocking pace. Among the most vulnerable to accelerated aging were the 20,000 German‐speaking Jews from cities in the Reich who were deported from their native lands and forcibly integrated into the Polish‐ and Yiddish‐speaking native Jewish community of the ghetto.

For the newcomers, the reality of occupied Poland was wholly disorienting. Still used to home‐cooked food and other creature comforts from their former lives, in the beginning, they scoffed at the meager portions of thin, watery soup that passed as food in the ghetto. The deportees from the West quickly realized that the material conditions they had left behind in Berlin, Vienna, and Prague were far superior to those they faced in the Łódź ghetto.

Fellow residents of the ghetto observed that the rate of decline among “foreign” Jews outpaced even the most vulnerable within the native Polish community. In a report for the Daily Chronicle, a collective effort to document [Fascist] injustices against the Jews of Łódź spearheaded by Rumkoswki’s administration, Jozef Klementynowski noted the speed with which Jews from Hamburg, Germany, succumbed to the process of weathering upon arrival in the ghetto.

Klementynowski reported: “Events outpaced time; people changed visibly, at first outwardly, then physically, and finally, if they had not vanished altogether, they moved through the ghetto like ghosts. […] And indeed, it was only half a year, only six months, that had proven to be an eternity for them! Some of the metamorphoses could not be imagined, even in a dream…Ghosts, skeletons with swollen faces and extremities, ragged and impoverished […]” (Dobroszycki 1984, p. 166). Mortality rates among the “foreign” population in the ghetto corroborate anecdotal evidence.

In addition to physical weathering, ghetto residents also reported psychological impacts. Oskar Rosenfeld arrived in the Łódź ghetto in the fall of 1941, a spry and healthy 57‐year‐old. Within just a few months, Rosenfeld noted disturbing changes in his mental faculties in his diary:

I am myself in the grip of the most widespread ghetto disease: dimming of the memory…not being able to remember things just heard, the names just read. There is a flicker in front of the eyes, a drying in the ears, one hits one’s forehead, racks one’s brain, and attempts to conjure up the past. To no avail. (Rosenfeld 1994, p. 93)

“Ghetto disease” became shorthand for the brain fog experienced by so many ghetto inhabitants due to severe, prolonged caloric deficit. Insufficient caloric intake was just part of the problem. Foodstuffs in the ghetto lacked the most basic nutritional value. Jewish doctors working at medical facilities in the ghetto noted with dismay the emergence of “little‐known or disregarded illnesses” in the malnourished ghetto inhabitants, including scurvy, pellagra, and famine edema, which they linked to lack of essential vitamins and minerals in ghetto rations (Ibid., 177–178).

(Emphasis added.)

Aside from showing us how Łódź’s Jews suffered under Fascism, this paper should also be useful for predicting how hundreds of thousands of their Palestinian kin must be suffering under neoimperialism right now: with food, potable water, shelter, sanitation, and healthcare in short supply, it is unfortunately reasonable to suspect that many Palestinians are suffering from the same complications as the inhabitants in the Axis’s ghetti did.

On a minor note, here in Imperial America the word ‘ghetto’ is something that we typically associate with black communities, not Jews. I was almost surprised that the author did not explicitly mention this, but—as Herman ‘Hesh’ Rabkin crudely indicated to us in an early episode of The Sopranos—the at times eerie historic parallels between the experiences of Jews and black gentiles are already well known.

The infamous [Axis] round‐up in the Roman ghetto and its surroundings of 16 October 1943 resulted in 1,023 Jews being deported to Auschwitz, of whom only 17 returned after the war. As it was the first anti‐Jewish round‐up on this scale in Italy the element of surprise certainly contributed to the high number of victims. Though there had been no direct Italian involvement in the round‐up itself, Italian police were ordered to help put together the address lists which the German [anticommunists] used in order to search for their Jewish victims.

This task would have been impossible without the year‐long preparatory work performed by the [Fascist] authorities in registering the personal details of all Italian Jews, which allowed completion in August 1938 of the first census of Jews (thereafter regularly renewed), which would in turn facilitate implementation of the Race Laws, promulgated the following month.

After the traumatic events of 1943 most of the surviving Roman Jews went into hiding. There is an abundance of studies of their fate and of their rescuers which has placed stories of heroic rescue in the public consciousness, further reinforcing the notion of italiani brava gente, whilst parallel episodes of persecution have been neglected (Barozzi 1998; Motto 2000; Wetzel 2004).

The round‐up of 16 October 1943 was followed by a three‐month period of relative peace, during which the [Axis] occupying forces concentrated their efforts on plundering the possessions of the deported Jews, often in cooperation with members of the re‐established Fascist Republican Party (Partito fascista repubblicano, PFR). Though difficult to prove, the persecution of the remaining Jews seems to have been of no central concern to the [Axis] occupiers, as British intelligence reports of January 1945 suggest.

Though anti‐Communist and anti‐Jewish activity must be considered the almost unlimited stock‐in‐trade of any German security force, Abteilung IV (Gestapo) campaigns in Rome appear to have been sporadic and not conducted according to any coordinated plan.³

This lack of initiative was mostly for logistical reasons. With nearly all the remaining Roman Jews in hiding after the October round‐up, the [Axis] occupying forces neither possessed the necessary knowledge of their whereabouts nor the skills required to trace them.

Furthermore, the ‘failure’ of 16 October—Himmler had demanded the deportation of 8,000 Jews—made it obvious that, contrary to other occupied nations, in Italy anti‐Jewish persecution was no area for distinguishing oneself with regard to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (security headquarters) in Berlin. Moreover, after the Allied landing in Anzio on 22 January 1944 the occupying troops were mainly preoccupied with the advancing front as well as the increased threat of partisan attacks.

Nevertheless, any Jew who happened to get into the clutches of the Gestapo was arrested and deported to [an Axis] extermination camp. At the end of 1943, the [Axis] introduced a reward of 5,000 lire for each Jew reported or handed over to the Gestapo headquarters in Rome,⁴ which compares to an average family income of less than 1,000 lire a month in 1943–44. This had been a common practice to which [Wehrmacht] troops in all occupied Western European countries resorted.

Considering the lack of initiative of the occupying troops, how could it happen that during the following months, mainly between February and May 1944, almost another 1,000 Jews were deported from Rome to [Axis] concentrations camps? Picciotto’s assumption that 50% of all arrests of Jews in Italy were performed either by Italians alone or by Italians working with the [Axis] occupying forces (Picciotto 2002, p. 29) clearly applies to the Roman situation as well.

Half of all Jewish victims were arrested and deported as a result of the actions of the Germans alone in October 1943, while Italian perpetrators were involved with the other half. However, in the case of Rome there seems to be a clear distinction between the final months of 1943 and the year 1944. For the roughly 1,000 Jews arrested during 1944 only minimal German involvement is evident.

For context, the Roman ghetto was a (very cramped) spot that the Pope established in 1555. Confinement for Jews was compulsory until the Napoleonic era, compulsory again until 1848, and then compulsory again until Sardinian troops arrived in 1870. This means that there were probably still Jews alive when the ghetto became optional in 1870 only to become reinstated late in the Fascist era.

Only one woman from the ghetto survived internment in Auschwitz. Quoting Robert Katz’s The Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans, and the Pope, page 100:

Of the 1,023 Jews who would be arrested in the October 16 roundup and sent by box car to Auschwitz, [Settimia Spizzichino] would be the only woman among them who would come back. […] She survived in part because she had been selected as a human guinea pig for the infamous Dr. Mengele. And her darkest wish came true. “I made a promise when I was in the camp…” she said toward the end of her life, “I didn’t know whether to curse God or pray to Him, but I said, ‘Lord, save me, save me so that I can return and recount.’”²

From 1945, when she was found by the Allies in a pile of death‐camp corpses, asleep for two days, until she died, she spent her life recounting.³ The story [that] she tells of that Saturday morning under a driving autumn rain is much like the story of all the others who would be taken that day.

The news content and style were similar to those seen in the U.S. tabloid press. […] By the time the reports of the strikes were being published in Paris, the [Fascist] press devoted a large amount of coverage to USSR ‘purges’. The photographs and articles described the USSR as a mass grave. Stalin was presented to readers as the man who allowed and promoted violence, setting the conditions for the spread of moral anarchy. The [Fascist] mass media warned that anarchy would surge up in countries reluctant to join the anti‐communist crusade, as was the case in France.

News coming from Republican Spanish territories was impregnated with the same rhetoric and reports of ‘Republican misdeeds’ helped to further the construction of the socialist enemy in reports of ‘Paris, 1937’. On 18 April 1937, Il Popolo d’Italia published an allegorical cartoon entitled Towards the Bolshevik Heaven, representing the French Republic as a passenger on a roller coaster descending at full speed on a rail called ‘comfort’ before a subsequent arduous climb that represented the strikes.

On a similar theme, Il Popolo d’Italia on 25 April 1937 published a front‐page editorial which reported:

A full‐blown revolutionary scene. A gang of demonstrators stirred up by some angry and disheveled women took to vandalism, looting, attacking the town hall and taking the mayor prisoner, eventually forcing him to resign. One of the most rowdy—while the police were conspicuous by their absence—took the crucifix from above the tabernacle and used it as a baton, conducting a performance of the ‘Internationale’ in the square.

This article contains some recurring elements used in the fascist press as part of the construction of the ‘otherness’ of the French socialists: the unruly crowd; the absence of the police; the weakness of the authorities and the frequent cases of religious worship turning into violence.

[Fascist] journalists emphasised any episode that showed anti‐Catholic behaviour on the part of ‘others’, as was the case with news about Republican Spain. For example, one paradigmatic report of the funeral of a communist described how ‘he died the bourgeois way in his bed’, and how ‘the “comrades” present at the funeral waved a forest of red flags’.

[…]

A reporter wrote that France under the Popular Front ‘lacks national pride, it is a people where the will is missing; nobody is excited by work; nobody remembers the noble traditions of their country, which is now becoming forgetful and apathetic’ (Il Corriere della Sera, 19 June 1937. These opinions in the press, widespread at the time, intended to rhetorically construct a negative relationship between the [pseudo]socialist government, French national pride and the productivity system of the government lead by Blum.

On 23 June 1937, the day after Blum’s resignation, Il Popolo d’Italia printed a cartoon representing the fascist view of the situation: two grotesque characters representing Blum and red Bilbao prancing on a stage with Stalin killing prisoners and a mendicant shown as the international exhibition begging for alms. […] In addition to the reference to the Internationale being played in front of foreign diplomats, Il Popolo presented the French Socialists as ‘Bolsheviks’ in constant internal disagreement and with a total lack of authority.

(Emphasis added.)

Through its vertical integration and aggressive expansion strategy, [the Canadian‐based International Nickel Company] supplied the German market in the 1930s, as evidenced by various agreements with [Fascist] manufacturers. The company wanted to protect the newly developed German market and feared government intervention. INCO drew an important lesson from the experience of the First World War: to prevent government control by influencing both politicians and public opinion.

To protect its business interests in [the German Reich], INCO leveraged its information advantage and sought to influence public opinion by downplaying the rôle of Canadian nickel in [the Third Reich’s] armaments industry.

[…]

In the late 1920s, the nickel market became even more concentrated. INCO became a Canadian‐based company (before U.S.) and incorporated its main competitor, the British Mond Nickel Company, a result of the company’s aggressive expansion strategy. INCO emerged as a virtual global monopoly.⁴² In the years following the [Fascist] takeover in 1933, political tensions with [the German Reich] increased. The question of a nickel embargo resurfaced, as evidenced by various newspaper articles and discussions in the British and Canadian parliaments.⁴³

Robert Stanley claimed at the annual meeting of INCO in 1938 that ‘Canadian nickel is neither essential for war, nor is it essentially a war material’.⁴⁴ Moreover, Stanley stated that the amount of nickel used for war purposes was less than ten percent of the world’s output.⁴⁵ This statement was untrue and was made primarily to avoid public pressure that could lead to an embargo and to secure business interests in the [Fascist] market.

Based on INCO’s 1934 figures, F. E. Lathe and S. J. Cook of the Canadian National Research Council estimated in 1935 that eighteen percent of nickel production was used for war materials.⁴⁶ In the same year, Robert Stanley prepared an essay estimating the proportion to be only ten percent (or even less).⁴⁷ He repeated this [mis]information in official interviews.⁴⁸

Not only was Lathe and Cook’s estimate much higher than Robert Stanley’s, but Stanley’s estimate did not change after 1934. In the years after 1934, the increase in nickel demand was no longer driven by the U.S. automobile industry. Rather, global demand rose due to the increasing nickel import of European countries, the USSR and [the Empire of] Japan. Between 1933 and 1938, Britain and [the Empire of] Japan more than tripled and [the Third Reich] doubled their nickel consumption.⁴⁹

The U.S. maintained its status as the largest importer in the world nickel market. [the Soviet Union] emerged as the second largest importer, followed by the United Kingdom, which narrowly surpassed [the German Reich’s] imports in the fourth position, [the Empire of] Japan secured the fifth place.⁵⁰ In contrast to U.S. nickel consumption, the growth in European and Japanese consumption was largely driven by the armament industry.⁵¹

This shift towards armament was especially true in Germany. By 1934, [Berlin] had already begun to restrict the civilian use of nickel. In the first half of 1939, the Wehrmacht received 47% of [the Third Reich’s] nickel supply for weapons production.⁵² In the midst of these shifts in consumption in the second half of the 1930s, Stanley consistently claimed that war materials accounted for only ten percent of world nickel consumption.

[…]

In April 1934, INCO and IG Farben, the [Fascist] chemical giant, signed a ten‐year contract. As revealed by Scherner and Sandvik, IG Farben developed a high‐pressure technology that could also be utilised for refining nickel. When IG Farben was searching for raw nickel to use this new refining technology, INCO approached the company through Mond Nickel and offered deliveries of intermediate nickel (matte). In return, INCO received a license to IG Farben’s refining process as part of the supply agreement.

Although the nickel matte was sourced from Canada, the contract required IG Farben to make payments in pounds sterling to the British‐based Mond Nickel.⁵⁸ This contract made IG Farben the new leading nickel refiner in [the Third Reich] in just two years. With supplies from INCO, IG Farben’s nickel production increased from 411 tons in 1934 to 4,003 tons in 1938, accounting for one‐third of [the Third Reich’s] total annual nickel consumption.

By the end of the 1930s, INCO supplied almost the entire German nickel market (see Figure 1). The German market was of paramount importance to INCO, accounting for approximately 9% of the company’s total deliveries between 1934 and 1938, just slightly behind the United Kingdom, which accounted for around 11% of INCO’s deliveries.⁵⁹

Of the major [Fascist] nickel refineries, only Krupp (and its affiliate Norddeutsche Hütte AG) and the Sächsische Blaufarbenwerke remained as companies not under contract to INCO. Krupp obtained most of its nickel ore from its own mine at Frankenstein, while the Blaufarbenwerke relied on deliveries from the Burma Corporation. When IG Farben sought to increase its stocks in 1938, presumably to comply with [Berlin’s] stockpiling plan, INCO increased the contractual maximum stock and even agreed to assume the stockpiling risk and cover the costs.⁶⁰

However, INCO disapproved of the 1934 German restrictions on the use of nickel. This disapproval indicates that INCO primarily aimed to sell its product on a large scale and not to meet the demands of [Berlin’s] war preparations. Nevertheless, the [Fascist] authorities were pleased with INCO’s endeavours in [the Third Reich]. By supplying upstream nickel products, INCO served as an important pillar of [Fascist] resource policy, enabling the country to save foreign exchange and build up stocks.

Unsurprisingly, the [Fascist] authorities for metals control (‘Überwachungsstelle für unedle Metalle’) explicitly supported INCO’s agreements with [Fascist] nickel refiners.⁶¹ Moreover, the Administration Office of the Reich’s Ministry of Economics (‘Bewirtschaftungsstelle des Reichswirtschaftsministeriums’) granted approval for the foreign exchange, which allowed a considerable saving in foreign exchange, as only about half the price of nickel metal had to be paid.⁶²

(Emphasis added.)

This is another document where it was hard for me to assemble an excerpt, because it has so much damning material on both the Dominion of Canada and the United Kingdom that I had to select my fragments carefully. The evidence is also quite damning of ‘free trade’ philosophy.

The plan to entirely demolish [Gherardo Bosio’s] stadium was met with swift objection from both opposition politicians and media. Questions were immediately raised by Rilindja Demokratike, the newspaper of the opposition Democratic Party, about how the wholesale demolition of the stadium could go ahead given the protected status of Mother Teresa Square in which it stood.

Architect, academic and Democratic Party councillor on Tirana’s municipal council, Besnik Aliaj, decried the plans in stark terms, arguing that neither the [People’s Socialist Republic of Albania] nor Italy’s […] post‐war governments had demolished Tirana’s fascist‐era architecture.

He accused [Prime Minister Edi] Rama of hypocrisy for having objected strenuously to the proposed demolition a decade earlier of the Pyramid, the museum dedicated to Hoxha built in 1985, and summed up his view on the stadium plans as: “Let us not destroy and Talibanize even the little history and identity we have left!” (“Prishja e stadiumit” 2016).

These and other vociferous objections forced Rama into a U‐turn and just a week after the announcement of the stadium design, he revealed a modified plan that would preserve Gherardo Bosio’s façade and monumental staircase, in his view “the only thing of value in that ruin” (“Akuzat për stadiumin” 2016).

Rama’s initial suggestion that the original fascist‐era façade would be preserved in a museum inside the stadium was soon dropped in favour of disassembling it piece by piece and then reintegrating it, in its original position, into the new design (“Portat e stadiumit do hapen brenda 15 muajve” 2017).

Rama was adamant, however, that the two Communist‐era bas‐reliefs that had been embedded into the façade in 1974 be removed and destroyed, declaring: “Those bas‐reliefs […] shamed even socialist realism. They have fulfilled their mission of ugliness and do not possess any cultural heritage value” (“Rama, përgjegjësi penale për prishjen e fasadës së stadiumit” 2016).

Thus, in the highly charged rhetoric surrounding the plans for the stadium, the fascist architecture of Bosio was set up as an aesthetically pleasing and historically significant counterpoint to the worthless Communist‐era interventions, the implication being that unlike Communist heritage, the legacies of the fascist occupation could be uncontroversially celebrated and preserved as significant elements of Albania’s collective cultural memory.

During the three‐year‐long construction period and notwithstanding the intense public interest in the project’s development, at no point were attempts made to contextualize the original structure by Bosio within the history of the fascist occupation and how this experience of dictatorship might be incorporated into Albania’s national memory building.

[…]

The fate of the National Theatre in Tirana’s city centre, just beside Skanderbeg Square, had been at the centre of considerable debate since 2018 but reached a dramatic climax in May 2020 when, with no advance warning, on the final day of Albania’s restrictions to deal with the first wave of COVID‐19, the theatre was entirely demolished. […] The theatre, overcoming its history as an edifice built by the […] fascist dictatorship, became a symbol of Albanian democracy, or lack thereof, in the eyes of many opposition figures.

[…]

On the whole, the arguments employed by Veliaj to defend his position were somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, he accused those campaigning against the demolition of “neo‐colonialism,” asking why Tirana should be denied a modern theatre in a central location as was the case for other European cities.

On the other, he explicitly praised exactly those who had been responsible for colonialism in the Albanian context and cast the fascists in a favourable light, claiming that, “The last people on the right who did something in Tirana were the fascists. The Albanian right has not done anything” (Veliaj, interviewed by Tonelli 2020).

In the months that followed, the demolition of the theatre continued to be employed by the opposition Democratic Party as a political stick with which to beat the government. Opposition leader Basha used the occasion of International Cultural Heritage Day in September 2020 to draw attention to the “‘barbarism and hatred that this government nurtures for the values and institutions of our nation’ and to cast the ruling party as a ‘régime’ working against the desires of the citizenry at large” (“Basha mesazh” 2020).

[…]

The partial or complete demolition of the stadium and theatre did not prompt reflections on the legacies of fascist colonialism and heritage for […] [pseudo]democratic Albania. Rather, any such consideration has been overtaken by the lived experience of the sites in subsequent decades, overshadowing their origins and establishing them as symbols not of fascist colonialism but of the survival of sport and the arts in Albania despite the years of oppressive Communist dictatorship and, latterly, as symbols of the importance of democratic transparency in contemporary Albania.

(Emphasis added.)

Although the survival of Fascist‐era architecture in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie should be unsurprising, some of you may be rightfully concerned that it was allowed to exist at all in a people’s republic, and the author herself goes so far as to liken this to the widespread reuse of Axis architecture under Italy’s and West Germany’s post‐1945 régimes. Even the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya demolished more Fascist architecture than the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania did. What happened?

The anticommunist author, inevitably, offers no explanation, presumably because she wants us to arrive at a horseshoe theorist’s conclusion on our own, but she did give us this hint:

Albania emerged from the Second World War “as easily the most backward country in Europe” (Vickers 2001, 165). A third of all buildings and livestock had been destroyed, almost all transport and industrial infrastructure was damaged or with very limited functionality, many thousands were homeless and food was in short supply.

Couple this with how the Fascist occupation of Libya was longer (and arguably more traumatic) and we have a possible explanation for why the Albanian lower classes preferred to simply recycle Axis architecture: demolition of these structures was simply a privilege that we could hardly afford here. We gave organized religion a higher priority because it remained an active phenomenon and we frequently associated it with subjugation or oppression.

While the preference for recycling Axis architecture over demolishing it in the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania may be regrettable, I would be more alarmed at how most of it not only survived under Albania’s present anticommunist régime but has received a privileged status as well. Apparently, anticommunists are more protective of Axis structures—even ones that we recycled for whatever reason—than they are of ours.

On October 12th, 1960, Asanuma Inejirō, chairman of the Japan Socialist Party, the government’s main opposition, was fatally stabbed on live TV during an election debate. The perpetrator was a 17‐year‐old ultranationalist called Yamaguchi Otoya. Yamaguchi had been a member of a far‐right group called the Greater Japan Patriotic Party (Dai Nippon Aikokutō), whose leader, Akao Bin, was an open admirer of Adolf Hitler.

Dai Nipon Aikokutō had been involved in various protests and counter‐protests during turbulent 1960, during which Yamaguchi was arrested ten times. He came to believe, however, that the group was not going far enough, and resigned a few months before stabbing Asanuma.[2] Having turned himself in after the murder, Yamaguchi admitted that he’d hoped to kill the founder of the Japanese Communist Party and the chairman of the leftist Japan Teacher’s Union as well.[3]

In the figure of Yamaguchi, international fascism and Japanese myth were combined. He consciously espoused [Fascist] rhetoric, ‘worshipped’ Hitler, and was an avid reader of Mein Kampf.[4] The murder weapon, however, was a samurai short sword stolen from Yamaguchi’s father, a colonel in the Japanese Self Defence Forces. Yamaguchi killed himself in prison on November 2nd, having written in toothpaste on his wall ‘long live the emperor’ and, tellingly, ‘would that I had seven lives to give for my country.’

Yamaguchi seemed to have viewed himself as embodying the legend of samurai Kusunoki Masashige, to whom the latter phrase is attributed, who died in the service of emperor Go‐Daigo in 1336. Just as Kusunoki defended his emperor from the forces of the Ashikaga shogunate, so Yamaguchi saw himself as defending Hirohito from communism. His rhetoric makes overt overlaps between fascism and emperor worship.[5]

Yamaguchi quickly became a martyr for the far‐right. They held memorial services in the same hall where Asanuma had been killed, and extremist groups commemorated his sacrifice every November 2nd for years to come.

Copycat assassinations were attempted, including one instance where Communist Party chairman Nosaka Sanzō was nearly killed when a rightist attacked rushed onto a stage with a dagger. A plot was even uncovered to mobilise hundreds of right‐wing youths to assassinate the entire cabinet — amongst the plotters were several retired military officers, a chilling echo of prewar events.[6]

(Emphasis added.)

Related: Violence, Masculinity, and Fascism in 1960s Japan

On his Rumble show, Peters continued promoting these conspiracy theories with Jeff Berwick, [a neofeudalist] and cryptocurrency promoter.

“For people out there who have still not caught on, that the globalists and whatever you wanna call them — the Jews, the globalists, whatever you wanna call them — the CIA, all these people, they have this technology and they are using it full force now in so many different ways,” Berwick told Peters.

Berwick added that people who “wanna look into weather weapons” should look at Acapulco, where he’s lived for many years, because “it’s now been hit by three hurricanes in less than a year.” And he called the “secret ingredient” to these hurricanes “HAARP and the weather weapons stations that they’ve got all over the world now.”

Peters responded by saying that “the secret weapon is somebody with the last name ‘Stein’ or ‘Cohen’,” and that Jewish people have the “technology to destroy the United States in so many ways.”

Berwick agreed with Peters, saying that he wrote about “how they’re going to be destroying the West.”

He added that “they’re doing it now” by “sending that hurricane up there” to North Carolina and blowing up a chemical plant in Atlanta, GA, calling it “World War III.” In actuality, water from a malfunctioning sprinkler system reacted with chemicals in the plant, which caused the release of chlorine gas and ignited a fire.

But Peters critiqued Berwick’s frequent use of the term “globalist,” saying that he prefers to “call ’em Jews.”

“Everywhere I look it’s a Jewish person,” Peters complained. “I can’t help it. I’m not gonna deny that that’s a fact. A lot of other platforms — maybe you’re being cautious with your speech because a lot of other platforms wanna refer to them as ‘Frankists’ or ‘globalists’ or ‘communists’ or whatever. Communism, by the way, also Jewish.”

Quoting Hayek: A Collaborative Biography: Part III, Fraud, Fascism and Free Market Religion, page viii:

Lieutenant Ludwig ‘von’ Mises (1881–1973), free marketeer; aristocrat; […] employee of the Foundation for Economic Education; Austro‐Fascist (Vaterländische or Patriotic Front) member № 282632; Austro‐Fascist social club (Werk Neues Leben) member № 406183; co‐leader of the third‐generation Austrian School of Economics, known to his disciples as ‘The Last Knight of Liberalism’. In his defining work, Liberalism in the classical tradition, he declared:

It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history.

According to The Last Knight of Liberalism, Mises was FEE’s ‘spiritus rector’ — literally: ‘Führer’ or ‘ruler’.

Some capitalist apologists have claimed that Mises was forced to join the Austrofascists, but we have no good reason to believe this. As much as propertarians may grumble about ‘state interference’ and how it contradicts their idealistic redefinition of capitalism, they have demonstrated time and again that they have no issue with the state when it is oppressing undocumented immigrants, massacring or torturing (suspected) communists in Chile, and protecting private property, to name but a few examples. Hence, the pipeline between propertarianism and fascism is hardly a lengthy one.

Robert Leeson goes on, pages 5–6:

The ‘similar movements’ of ‘bloody counteraction’ that Mises referred to included the French anti‐Semitic Action Française plus ‘Germans and Italians’. ‘Italians’ obviously refers to Mussolini’s 1922 March on Rome; Mises’ (1985 [1927], 44) reference to ‘Ludendorff and Hitler’ means the 1923 Ludendorff‐Hitler‐Putsch (or Munich Beer Hall Putsch).

Mises (1985 [1927], 49) predicted that:

The deeds of the Fascists and of other parties corresponding to them were emotional reflex actions evoked by indignation at the deeds of the Bolsheviks and Communists. As soon as the first flush of anger had passed, their policy took a more moderate course and will probably become even more so with the passage of time.

Misesian liberals and Fascists were allies, but differed in tactics:

What distinguished liberal from Fascist tactics is not a difference of opinion regarding the use of armed force to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental estimation about the role of violence in a struggle for power.

Violence was ‘the highest principle’ and must lead to

civil war. The ultimate victor to emerge will be the faction strongest in number […] The decisive question, therefore always remains: How does one obtain a majority for one’s own party? This however is purely an intellectual matter.

Fascism would have to embrace Mises’ (1985 [1927], 50) liberalism to achieve their common aims; if Fascism ‘wanted really to combat socialism it would oppose it with ideas.’ Mises would provide these ideas: ‘There is however only one idea that can be effectively opposed to socialism, viz, liberalism.’ Mises provided an historicist inevitability justification: ‘Fascism will never succeed as completely as Russian Bolshevism from freeing itself from the power of liberal ideas […] The next episode will be the victory of communism.’

Mises’ political activity was consistent with his ideology: on 1 March 1934, he joined the Austro‐Fascist Patriotic Front and their Werk Neues Leben social club (Hülsmann 2007, 677, n149). Mises may also have been a victim of propaganda: his justification for this tactical embrace was that fascists would protect property — the protection of which he saw as the very essence of liberty.

Meanwhile, tax‐evading fascist kleptocrats were eying Jewish property; in the Anschluss of March 1938, Austria was reunited with Austrian‐led Germany, and the Austrian Adolf Eichmann opened the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. The decree on the Declaration of Jewish Assets revealed fascism to be a conveyor belt along which Jews had their property confiscated before being exterminated or driven abroad.

As The Last Knight of Liberalism bemoaned: ‘Mises family property had become free booty’ (Hülsmann 2007, 728, 677, n149). The Jewish‐born Mises was lucky to escape with his life; he devoted much of the rest of it to describing his opponents as ‘Fascists’.

I’ve noticed that anticommunists who have displayed respect for fascism or neofascism (Winston Churchill, A. James Gregor, Timothy Snyder, Anne Applebaum & alia) seem to be especially fond of trying to equate us with fascists, usually by focussing on whatever superficial and petty similarities that they can find while completely omitting any and all similarities between liberal régimes and fascist ones.

The blockheadedness in these false equivalences should be especially obvious here: if communism was equal to fascism, yet these anticommunists sympathized with fascism or neofascism anyway, then logically they might as well have sympathized with communism since fascism was equal to that according to their half‐baked analyses. Perhaps these anticommunists think that if they keep repetitively equating communism with fascism, no‐one will ever suspect them of sympathizing with the latter and then dig into their embarrassing histories? Who knows.

In any case, Mises’s ties to fascism did nothing to impede his career. Ronald Reagan, who has his own ties to fascism and neofascism, eulogized him four decades ago. Returning to page 6:

Subsequently, U.S. presidents and presidential hopefuls embraced the Austrian School of Economics. President Ronald Reagan (1984, 198) wrote:

von Mises […] rekindled the flames of liberty in new generations of thinkers […] we owe an incalculable debt to this dean of the Austrian school of economics for expanding our knowledge and inspiring a new vision of liberty in our age.

Of course, as we know looking at Timothy Snyder, Jordan Peterson & alia, anticommunist hacks don’t need to accomplish much to be praised to the high heavens by the rest of the upper classes. For example, Robert Leeson describes on pages 141–142 how ‘Mises had a tendency to make stark — and false — predictions’, and his alleged prediction of the Great Depression had nothing to do with the U.S. stock market at all. Hardly impressive.

If it weren’t enough that Mises was an Austrofascist hack, the way that he treated his lover and her young daughter was disturbing. Page 165:

According to Mises (1951 [1922], 87, 104, n1), ‘Waking and dreaming, man’s wishes turn upon sex.’ His fiancée (1976, 28, 23) recalled:

Sometimes I did not see him for weeks. But I knew very well that he was in town. At least twice daily the telephone rang, and when I answered there was silence at the other end of the line — not a word was spoken. I knew it was Lu […] I was so tormented, so torn to pieces that the children must have felt it.⁵⁴

Mises also gratified himself by feeling Margit’s six‐year‐old daughter: ‘I wanted to touch Gitta’s hair and think of you.’

While arguably no fault of Mises’s own, we should be unsurprised that an Austrofascist’s works would become popular in the Empire of Japan. Quoting Osamu Yanagisawa’s The impact of German economic thought on Japanese economists before World War II in The German Historical School: The Historical and Ethical Approach to Economics, page 179:

Accepting the opinion of Sombart and Schmalenbach on the development of capitalism, Mukai and Hon‐iden concluded that a reasonable future system would be a partly organized economy, somewhere between socialism and laissez‐faire capitalism. [sic]

On the other hand, they regarded socialism (perfect planning of the economy without money) as difficult and inhuman, paying special attention to the criticism of Ludwig von Mises, who had believed that a socialist system of planning, which lacked a market price system based on private ownership, could not work. Mukai (1933:276–86) summarized von Mises’s Kritik des Interventionismus (1929), which attracted many contemporary [Imperial] intellectuals.⁶

(Emphasis added in all cases.)