Chip’s Diaries

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries, 1918–38
Edited by Simon Heffer.
London: Hutchinson, 2021

In his 2008 book Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War[1] Pat Buchanan suggests that with a bit of prescience and a steadier hand at the tiller Britain could have avoided World War II. If the policies supported by American-born MP and diarist Henry ‘Chips’ Channon had been adopted, that devastating European war would have been averted and Soviet communism might have been destroyed half a century before its fall.

Channon was born in Chicago in 1897 to a wealthy American family. His grandfather had started a Great Lakes shipping company. The young Channon spent two years at the University of Chicago before going to France to help with the war effort as a volunteer with the American Red Cross. He fell in love with Europe and never spent much time in America thereafter.

After the war he enrolled at Christ Church, Oxford where he received a degree in French and the nickname ‘Chips.’ Being a gentleman of that era Channon had no need to work for a living. As editor Simon Heffer notes “until he became a Member of Parliament in 1935 Channon seems to have had no job that paid him a salary” (XI). Not only did he have a family fortune, in 1933 he married money—Honor Guinness, an heiress to the brewing company.

Although very wealthy, Channon was not idle. He published three books between 1929 and 1933, two novels and a history, and was one the leading diarists of the twentieth century. The book considered here, 950 pages with thousands of footnotes supplied by editor Simon Heffer, is the first of a three-volume set of Channon’s journals. It covers the years 1918–1938. The second volume will cover the war years, and the third the post-war period until Channon’s death in 1958. There are three main areas of interest within these diaries. In ascending order: Chips’ personal life, his political ideology and views on Jews, and his involvement in British foreign affairs, especially with regard to relations with Nationalist Socialist Germany.

One puzzling aspect of Channon’s character was his sexuality. Editor Heffer describes him as bisexual. This is troubling because the authentic Right considers sexual deviance to be a serious social problem. There is little in this edition to indicate that Chips was other than heterosexual. He had an eye for feminine beauty and expressed that he was physically attracted to women. “Honor’s appearance was really fantastic . . . like a tousled Garbo” (656). He was deeply in love with his wife, at least during the early years of their marriage. He adored his son and wanted more children, though Honor did not. It is alleged that later in life, after his marriage failed, that he had several homosexual relationships. That period is not covered in this volume.

His sexuality aside, Channon’s diaries convey a lifestyle of European high society that is as gone with the wind as that of the antebellum South. It was a nearly all White, Eurocentric world populated by princes and princesses, lords and ladies. Even in the French Third Republic and the German Weimar Republic aristocrats and former royalty still used titles as part of their legal name. Though these titles conveyed no official privileges, those who possessed them formed a distinct social class. Money from commerce, if it was several generations old, could—but would not necessarily—permit one to enter. One example is Chips’ wife, Lady Honor Guinness daughter of Rupert Guinness, 2nd Earl of Iveagh. Though divided by politics and personalities, this was a society united by a general agreement on cultural norms. It was also a society of endless formal luncheons, dinner parties, elite entertainment, and trips aboard. Incidentally, if one has the means, entertaining is a great way to win friends and influence people. These people were privileged. It is ludicrous for the Left to speak of today’s struggling middle-class White families as privileged.

Channon’s political and social views were probably typical of right-wing Tories between the wars. He did not harbor an animus towards Blacks or Jews He occasionally socialized with Jews and had some commercial relationships with them, but he had a strong ethnic/cultural identity that viewed them as other. The expression of this consciousness was enough to cause consternation for those involved with the publication of these diaries. “The Trustees, editor and publisher deliberated at length whether to include or exclude such passages from this edition. After careful consideration, and consultation with external authorities [who might they be?] it was decided to leave them in, while seeking through the footnotes, to contextualize them” (XIV).

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon

The dreaded N word does appear once. In 1927, during one of his infrequent trips to America, Channon witnessed firsthand the so-called Harlem Renaissance. He writes, “New York is black mad.” He attends the new Broadway play “Porgy,” later turned into the musical “Porgy and Bess.” Chips notes, “a wonderful cast, all negroes.” In a footnote editor Heffer writes that the play portrayed the “culture of black Americans with what for the time was unusual sympathy and respect” (289). The play was based on a book by the same name written by a White southerner Edwin DuBose Heyward. Channon also mentions a book, Nigger Heaven that was published about this time. Also written by a White man, Carl Van Vechten, it did much to publicize the new urban Black culture of the 1920s. Certainly none of this suggests a deep antipathy towards Blacks.

There are examples of Channon’s mild “anti-Semitism” sprinkled throughout his diaries.  For instance, in January 1935 he remarks that Hannah Gubbay, ‘old black Hannah,’ had “hitched her wagon to cousin Philip Sassoon’s star—they are inseparable and always up to God knows what plots and plans and social schemes. A mysterious dark brace of Semites” (378). Three years later: “Poor Professor Loewenthal called here this afternoon to give us the crystal medallions of [his wife and son] Honor and Paul. He is dreary, gloomy, but the greatest artist since Benvenuto Cellini. He looks like one of the Pharaohs and carves in metals and precious stones. He is a refugee Jew” (900). As we will see below, Channon’s disapproval of Jews was principally political, but also cultural and aesthetic.

So what were Channon’s politics?  Today he might be considered a paleoconservative, but reactionary may be a better description. He was a vehement anti-communist at a time when Soviet-styled communism posed a real threat to Europe. He admired German culture, but was definitely not a Nazi. National Socialism was a revolutionary ideology and Channon supported the monarchy and aristocracy. This is why Chips was a firm Tory, not swayed in the least by Oswald Mosley’s fascism. Channon knew Mosley personally. He was a guest at a Channon dinner party in January 1935. The host writes, “Tom [Oswald Mosley] was charming and gentle and affectionate as he always is, except on the platform where he becomes the demagogue” (379).  Mosley’s ideology was too populist for Channon’s taste. Editor Heffer believes Channon simply “discounted as ineffectual” Mosley’s Blackshirts (543).

Channon was a strong believer in national sovereignty. Thus he had a poor opinion of the League of Nations, “a cursed body of busybodies” (486). He attended a League session in Geneva in September 1938. He saw the assembly as “an anti-German organization. The bars and lobbies of the League building are full of Russians and Jews who intrigue and dominate the press” (920). One of the Jews that Chips was referring to was Comrade Litvinov. “Meir Henoch Wallach-Finkelstein, who later took the nom de guerre Maxim Maximovich Litvinov (1876–1951), was the Soviet Union’s People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs from 1930 to 1939. . . From 1941 to 1943 he was Soviet Ambassador to the United States” (780n).

Channon considered Litvinov a loathsome creature, but later that month he dines “at Maurice de Rothschild’s, a dinner of seventeen—a rich congestionné house. . . . He lives with a young Jewess who is either his daughter, or adopted child, or mistress or all three!! [She was his mistress] . . . Everyone a touch tipsy with Rothschild wine . . . Even Maurice, our fat, sensual, slobbery, lecherous host is relieved that war is off! Or at least postponed” (924).

It is obvious that the common Jewish phenotype does not appeal to Channon’s aesthetic. While visiting his friend and former classmate at Oxford Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, he dines with the King of Bulgaria. “He looks a Jew, but is really trés Coburg, trés Orleans with the unpleasant traits of both houses” (931).  So in appearances, manners and politics, Channon and his crowd find Jews objectionable, but they offered little resistance to their growing wealth and power.

During the mid to late 1930s, British elites and the public generally were divided in their attitudes toward the Third Reich. The pro-German group that Channon supported became known as appeasers. Appeasement was an unfortunate label. It implies weakness and acquiesce. Rapprochement, realignment, readjustment, or reconciliation would have been better terms. As today, the Left possesses greater language skills and have been able to weaponize words, while the Right often has little feeling for language. In any case by the mid-30s many on the Right saw a powerful, prosperous Germany in central Europe as an asset. Channon believed that an alliance with Germany would be the best policy for Britain and for Europe. In September 1935 he wrote: “My secret [poorly kept secret] sympathies are ever with autocracies, and I’d rather have the Nazi-ism and Fascism on my side than Russian Soviets or tense, nervy croaking French Frogs. We seem not to know where our interests lie” (470). It is a bit ironic that Channon, who spent 1917–18 in France aiding the Allied war effort and who majored in French at college, had become anti-French by the mid-30s.

The era of good feeling between Britain and the Third Reich perhaps peaked during the Berlin Olympic Games in August 1936. The Channons and a number of other MPs and their wives were guests of the German government. Chips was not much of a sports fan, but he loved the lavish parties and the mass spectacles the regime provided. On August 6, their first day at the games, the crowds at the stadium were enthusiastic—ecstatic when Hitler arrived. Although the Fuhrer was physically unimposing, “One felt one was in the presence of some semi-divine creature” (557).

That evening the Channons attended a state banquet at the Berlin Opera House. The official hostess “Frau Göring, a tall, nearly naked, handsome woman was the principal figure and moved about amongst an obsequious crowd of royalties and ambassadors” (558). Two days later, Chips and Honor were the guests of Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador to Great Britain, later foreign minister. Attendees at the large luncheon included Lady Chamberlain, wife of the future prime minister.

On August 10, Channon’s trip included a visit to a “labour camp.”  As far as I can tell, this is the only instance where editor Simon Heffer’s scholarship fails him. Heffer, a well-known British journalist and historian, is considered a conventional conservative by UK standards. His thousands of footnotes are indispensable in identifying the people and events referred in the diaries. In a footnote Heffer suggests that Channon visited a Nazi prison camp that had been fixed up, a sort of Potemkin village, for the benefit of foreign visitors. It is obvious from Chips’ description that what he visited was a Reich Labor Service camp. Such a camp was comparable to a Civilian Conservation Corps camp established during the same period in America.

Channon writes that “the camp looked tidy, even gay, and the boys, all about 18, looked like the ordinary German peasant boy, fair, healthy, and sunburned. They are taught the preliminary military drills, gardening, etc., and health and strength are built up. They were all smiling and clean. . . . For 6 months they lived there, and all classes are mixed, which is an excellent system, its purpose is to wipe out class feeling, which has become practically non-existent in Germany” (563). Heffer claims that “The impression Channon had from his visit was entirely manipulated and bogus” (footnote, 562). Incredibly, none of the mainstream reviews picked up on Heffer’s editorial mistake.

Channon is in love with the new Germany. The next day, after another excursion to the countryside, he writes: “In Germany joys are simple, sun and water bathing, Wurst and beer, all pleasant, all attainable for little. What a country. It stirs me so sharply” (563). He has a “preference for the Teutonic races. . . . There is a common blood affinity between us and the Germans and Austrians. I like their lusty warm-blooded love of country, children, dogs, power—and a thousand other reasons” (563). In the following days the Channons attend formal dinners at the Ribbentrops, the Görings (with 700-800 guests), and Dr. and Magda Goebbels’ Sommerfest. The closing ceremonies were on August 16. “The crowds were enormous, and really amazingly well controlled . . . there were processions, the orchestra played, Hitler rose, the great torch faded out, the crowd 140,000-strong sang ‘Deutschland über Alles’, with arms uplifted. There was a shout, a speech or two, night fell and the Olympic Games, the great German display of power and bid for recognition, was over. Mankind has never staged anything so terrific, or so impressive “(569).  Exhausted from all parties and ceremonies the Channons left Berlin on August 18th and headed for the Austrian Alps for a quiet vacation.

While Chips was wowed by National Socialist Germany what he really wanted was a Hohenzollern restoration! The ideal scenario for him was for Hitler to be given a green light to move east and smash Bolshevism. Then, after the Fuhrer’s death or retirement, Channon’s friend Fritzi, Friedrich of Prussia, Grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II, would become ruler of an enlarged German empire.

It is not possible to tell from the diaries how strong and widespread pro-German sentiments were at the time. Obviously Winston Churchill and some other MPs were opposed to a resurgent of Germany. From 1936 onward Channon notes Churchill’s increasing animosity towards the Third Reich. Was he working for Jewish interests as some have charged? Or did he simply not want a strong state in central Europe to rival British influence on the continent? In May 1936, after attending a play the Channons, Churchill, and some French and German guests had “sandwiches and drinks. The French Ambassador, Durckheim [a German diplomat] and Winston Churchill had a conversation which was really rather unpleasant, as Winston attacked Germany” (516). In July of 1937 Channon writes that Churchill’s “fear and dislike of [Germans] amount to an obsession, and threaten to seriously to undermine his judgement” (728). It is not an exaggeration to say that by 1938 Churchill wanted war.

A few additional words on Churchill: Already in early 1936 Channon identifies him as a prime mover in the anti-German group. Pat Buchanan, in the work cited above, also sees Churchill as the one most strongly pushing for confrontation with Germany. Churchill, of course, was not a man on the Left. He was a Tory, a conservative, an aristocrat, and an imperialist. Despite his skillful rhetoric he, at times, exercised monumentally poor judgement as the graves at Gallipoli attest. Channon wrote in 1938: “Is my world collapsing? Winston as PM would be worse than war. The two together would mean the destruction of civilization” (933). To paraphrase Buchanan, Churchill’s Pyrrhic victory over Germany in 1945 lost Britain its empire and lost the West the world. It is poetic justice that in 2020, a woke mob that he helped make possible, vandalized his statue in Parliament Square.

In March 1938 Channon “had a sparring match with [fellow MP] Harold Nicolson who was in a rage. Like all old women, he is having a change of life. His hatred of Germany is fanatical” (832). Several months later Channon reports that “Simon Harcourt-Smith [a career diplomat] tells me the Foreign Office is red, is trying to sabotage Halifax” who is trying to accommodate Germany. More about Lord Halifax below. At one point, Channon sees more grassroots support for Germany than elite support. “The Foreign Office, the ‘intelligentsia’, London society, Bloomsbury and a very large section of the [House of Commons] are pro-French, but the country as a whole is pro-German” (543).

The diaries record many pro-German contacts Channon had during the 1935–1938 period. To start at the top, Channon was friends with King Edward VIII who had a very positive attitude toward the new Germany. Unfortunately, he also had a very short reign, and abdicated in December 1936 in order to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice divorced American woman—another instance of a royal insisting on marrying an unsuitable mate. Earlier that year Chips had lunch with Joachim von Ribbentrop and his wife at a “pan-German festival” (519). He notes that Frau von Ribbentrop wore no makeup in the new German style. A few weeks later: “The Londonderrys [Charles Stewart, 7th Marquis of Londonderry] are very pro-German; and, indeed who isn’t?—except the Coopers [Alfred Duff Cooper, 1935 Secretary of State for War, 1937 First Lord of the Admiralty]” (519).  Another of Chips’ friends, Arthur Charles Wellesley, 5th Duke of Wellington, “was a committed pro German, and a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship” (528n).

In November 1937 Edward Wood, Lord Halifax, attended the International Hunting Exhibition in Berlin hosted by Hermann Göring. Incidentally, the racial ecologist and sportsman Madison Grant was also invited and planned to attend this event, but sadly fell ill and died shortly before the opening.  Although born with only one hand, Halifax, with the help of a prosthetic, became a skilled equestrian and marksman. He went to Germany as unofficial deputy foreign secretary (he became Foreign Secretary the following year). After the exhibition, he met with Hitler at Berchtesgaden. There he told the Führer that Prime Minister Chamberlain would not be opposed to Anschluss with Austria or to the transfer of Sudetenland and Danzig to Germany as long as it was accomplished peacefully. A couple weeks after his return Halifax told Chips that “he liked all the Nazis, even Goebbels! whom nobody likes. He was much impressed, interested, and amused by the visit” (786).

The diary identifies a number of other pro-German personalities of the time. Neville Meyrick Henderson, who was British ambassador to Germany (1937–1939) was supportive of the new Germany. Channon writes: “He is pro-German, anti-French, anti-Jew, pro-Italian, and, indeed thinks along the lines I do” (746). There was also some support from the British press such as George Ward Price, foreign correspondent for the Daily Mail, and Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times. From the pulpit there was Dean William Ralph Inge of St. Paul’s Cathedral and former professor of divinity at Cambridge. “He was a strong advocate of eugenics and nudism and rejected democracy, fearing it would bring mob rule” (877n).They don’t make clergy like that anymore!

So what happened? Why did Britain declare war on Germany in September 1939? This journal ends on September 30, 1938 with the signing of the Munich Accords. The next volume is due out later this year. A very rough sketch of the path to war sees Germany occupying Prague in March 1939. In response, Britain pledges to guarantee Poland’s sovereignty. Britain knew they did not have the means to protect Poland, but they hoped to deter German expansion. If not, the treaty would be a tripwire for war. Hitler wagered that his invasion of Poland would not trigger a wider war which he did not want.  Both sides gambled, both sides lost.

Channon, as mentioned earlier, wanted Britain to ally with Germany, giving the latter a free hand in the east. But he was a backbencher with little official authority. He did, however, have connections. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, was his wife’s uncle. Chips was also parliamentary assistant to Rab Butler, Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Butler opposed war in September 1939 and was willing to sacrifice Polish independence to avoid a wider conflict. On the other side, Hitler’s mistake was to force the pace of events, to press forward too far too fast, and to risk everything on one roll of the dice. Commentators as diverse as Sir Arthur Keith and Henry Kissinger believe that if the Fuhrer had had a little more patience and played the long game he would have achieved his goals.

Although many academic historians would disagree, most laymen believe that the study of history should have some utility. So what is useful in reading Channon’s diaries? Besides moaning about what the leaders of the time should have done to avoid a disastrous internecine struggle, we can see from these journals that the values espoused by National Socialist Germany resonated with a significant segment of British society. Today the establishment considers these values be to so reprehensible as to be indications of extreme moral depravity.

As for a recommendation: These diaries are most suitable for serious students of interwar Britain. Much of the partisan politics of the era are of limited interest today. There is quite a bit of material on Edward’s abdication for royal watchers. A good deal of the text is taken up with Channon’s personal and social life. At times his relationship with Honor has a soap opera quality. As for Henry Channon the man, I found it hard not to have a certain affinity and admiration for him. Sure, he was a snob, a social climber, a name dropper, but he was no dilettante. He knew history and was a perceptive observer of people and events.


[1] Patrick J. Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World (New York: Crown Books, 2008).

When Jews Define Fascism

Concluding one of America’s more infamous obscenity trials in 1964, Justice Potter Stewart absolved a controversial French motion picture with an opinion that has since passed into common parlance: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.” The opinion was celebrated at the time as a victory for freedom of expression, and paved the way for a later deluge of Western cultural degradation. Of greater significance, however, is the fact that almost 60 years later “I know it when I see it” has become a political philosophy in its own right, adopted and pursued by a radical Left intent on curtailing that very same freedom by claiming an exclusive and unaccountable ability to define Fascism. This was the starkest message from The Burkean’s unprecedented recent Irish Antifa Project, which was designed to infiltrate and expose self-styled Antifa networks in mainstream Irish academia and politics.

In my view, the most predictable revelation from the Irish Antifa Project was the extent of historical and cultural ignorance among the profiled activists. None of the intellectually and professionally mediocre individuals exposed by The Burkean appeared capable of articulating what Fascism was, or is alleged to be today. Fascism instead seems to have been adopted by these non-entities as a vague catch-all for anything touching upon capitalism, conservatism, religion, or tradition. Equally vague are the proposed activist methodologies of these individuals, which range from the compiling of databases with the names of those deemed to be Fascists, to tentative but deniable support for violence. With the exception of a small number of fanatical Jews like Trinity College student Jacob Woolf, “anti-Fascism” has evidently been adopted by the majority of those concerned as a kind of half-hearted virtue signaling hobby or political side gig, albeit one with sinister potential.

Unfortunately, the problems posed by an uninformed, unaccountable, and unhinged “anti-Fascist” radical Left aren’t helped by the fact confusion about the nature of Fascism is endemic in society as a whole. There are essentially three traditions when it comes to explaining Fascism. One can be found within Fascism itself, and demonstrates how self-defined Fascists see themselves. This material is overwhelmingly historical. Another tradition can be found in contemporary mainstream academia and, although biased, it is at least academic in style, serious, and relatively comprehensive. The work of the late Roger Griffin is perhaps the best available in the English language in terms of this tradition, and is also largely concerned with history. The third tradition, on the other hand, is popular, highly politicised, always concerned with contemporary politics, and is abridged to the point of being a pop-Left caricature of serious studies of Fascism. It is particularly problematic because it has tremendous traction among the masses and, despite being propaganda for extremist politics of its own sort, always presents itself as objective and neutral.

The individuals profiled by The Burkean are unquestionably disciples of the latter tradition, a recent example of which is Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (2018). Stanley, a Jewish professor at Yale whose background is in language and epistemology and not history or politics, hasn’t published any peer-reviewed material on Fascism or anti-Fascism, but his 2018 book proved a moderate publishing sensation because it represented a thinly veiled attack on the Trump administration. The same administration provoked similar ill-conceived and unhelpful monographs on Fascism from Cass Sunstein (Can it Happen Here?), Madeleine Albright (Fascism: A Warning), and Harvard duo Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (How Democracies Die). All of these individuals are Jews, and this is not a coincidence. In fact, since the production of Leon Trotsky’s Fascism: What it is and How to Fight It (compiled between 1922 and 1933) and the Frankfurt School’s project on the “Authoritarian Personality,” Jews have been at the forefront of paving the cultural, as well as political, path to Antifa activity. They do so by bastardising public understanding of the nature of Fascist politics, thereby shaping “anti-Fascism” as a vehicle for the undermining of the White nation. When it comes to Fascism, “Jews know it when they see it,” a pronouncement we are all encouraged to accept without question.

Jewish Definitions of Fascism

A common theme in influential books like Stanley’s, destined for a modicum of success in the paperback mass market thanks to dramatic titles and relentless marketing, is their incredibly—and deliberately—vague definition of Fascism. These Jewish activists know this, of course, but they push ahead regardless. Stanley, for example, excuses the gaps and logical leaps inherent in his dubious study by arguing that “generalization is necessary in the current moment.” But if he is defining the “current moment” as Fascist under his generalized definition, isn’t he simply using generalization to excuse the same generalization? Isn’t this tantamount to saying to his readers: “The present moment is so obviously Fascist that we really don’t need to define Fascism”? Such considerations don’t slow Stanley down for a second, and this celebrated Yale professor slips off the hook to pronounce, even more unhelpfully, “I have chosen the label “Fascism” for ultranationalism of some variety.” What variety? What’s his definition of “ultranationalism”? It doesn’t matter. What is clear in texts like Stanley’s is that you aren’t here to be encouraged to think or ask questions, but to absorb a discourse and accept a dogma. The authority behind such demands stems predominantly from emotional blackmail — Stanley cashes in his card as the son of “Holocaust survivors,” and explains that “My family background has saddled me with difficult emotional baggage. But it also, crucially, prepared me to write this book.” His lack of education and reading in the subject is therefore apparently more than compensated for in the fact he is emotionally distressed by it. Right.

Jason Stanley: Bravely struggling with his emotional baggage

Not only are Jewish definitions of Fascism deliberately inadequate and disingenuous, they’re often completely wrongheaded. Stanley in his first chapter “The Mythic Past,” for example, describes Fascist propaganda as relying on a unique blend of mythic, romanticised, and normally rural evocations of the past, and that the same propaganda offers a future return to this idyll. It goes without saying that this provides an extremely convenient way for Jewish and Leftist activists to attack almost all genuine conservatives as Fascists. But is such propaganda even inherently Fascist or even right-wing? We might consider the following quote from a well-known historical figure: “The position of the English agricultural labourer from 1770 to 1780, with regard to his food and dwelling, as well as to his self-respect, amusements etc., is an ideal never attained again since that time.” The ideologue behind this quote proposed a future in which the national community of citizens enjoyed something like a return to this pastoral idyll, filling their days with productive work, music, and leisure (“hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise [literature] in the evening”). It really is quite a vision. But the problem is that these proposals aren’t from the works of Sir Oswald Mosley, but from Karl Marx’s Capital and The German Ideology, and they were a key aspect of the early promotion of Communism. The idea that Fascism uniquely appeals to notions of making one’s country “great again” is an unsophisticated trope and, ultimately, a political weapon.

The truth of the matter is that politicised nostalgia and visions of national rebirth are common to ideologies of all stripes, and are useless as tools for examining the specific nature of genuine political and cultural manifestations of Fascism. The only possible exception is Roger Griffin’s highly nuanced theory of palingenetic ultrationationalism, which is corrupted and glossed in Jewish treatments of the subject in order to indict all expressions of White discontent in modernity. Presentations of ideal pasts and futures are quite obviously utilised by all political actors keen to exploit the public instinct to reject the status quo. Barack Obama’s campaigns based on “Hope,” “Change,” and “Progress,” and Trump’s “MAGA” are not substantially different in style or method, the only significant dissimilarity being the demonising of the latter and the feverish and irrational presentation of its ethos as an early symptom of an impending Fascist takeover. The preoccupation of Cultural Marxist anthropologists with describing putatively utopian modes of life in primitive societies can also clearly be seen as a call to “make society great again” by demolishing capitalism, the family, etc. The oldest and most profound political expression of resurrecting a glorious past rooted in the land is, of course, not even to be found in European Fascism at all, but in the quintessential palingenetic ultranationalism of Zionism, a subject strangely never covered by our Jewish authors, presumably because of other “difficult emotional baggage.”

Similar definitions of Fascism, this time refracted through a lens of Leftist pop-culture garbage, can be found in Cass Sunstein’s 2018 Can It Happen Here? Sunstein’s expertise is ostensibly law, though his most successful work is apparently The World According to Star Wars (2016). In another time and context, someone like Sunstein would cut a ridiculous figure, in much the same way that the Romans found it hilarious that the people squatting in the hovel that was 1st century Judea regarded themselves as a superior nation. Sunstein has shaped his career as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School around such efforts as inaugurating a “celebrate tax day” and ending all government recognition of marriage. But Star Wars books and outlandish schemes aside, Sunstein is a deeply sinister individual. He is particularly concerned by “conspiracy theories,” and has developed policy suggestions that governments engage in the “cognitive infiltration of extremist groups” by entering “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.” In other words, Sunstein is a major contributor to the concept of “thought crime” and a high-profile advocate for the same kind of law enforcement online disinformation and entrapment activity that regularly snares exuberant White teenage gamers and presents them to the media as right-wing terrorists.

Cass Sunstein: “We need a cognitive infiltration of extremist groups”

Sunstein edited, and contributed to, Can It Happen Here?, along with a motley of other Jews, including Eric Posner, Jack Balkin, Tyler Cowen, Jack Goldsmith, Tom Ginsburg, Noah Feldman, Jonathan Haidt, Bruce Ackerman, Jon Elster, Martha Minow, David Strauss, and Geoffrey R. Stone. In fact, of the 17 essays comprising the volume, 13 are written by Jews. One of the non-Jews is Sunstein’s Irish-American wife, the shabbos goy and ADL darling Samantha Power, and two are Muslims. Can It Happen Here?, subtitled Authoritarianism in America, is therefore little more than an exercise in Jewish paranoia and a glaring example of the way in which Jews invoke vague caricatures of Fascism in order to attack the traditional structures of White nations. Posner, for example, cites Trump’s hostility to elements of the press and the fact his initial success occurred somewhat outside the two-party structure of American politics as sufficient evidence of a Fascist threat. In other words, Jews, who dominate the press and have very significant financial interests in the trajectories of both major parties, regard anything not fully within their control as tantamount to Fascism.

The same fearmongering yet vague template is followed by Levitsky and Ziblatt in How Democracies Die (2018), which opens with the authors declaring that authoritarianism has been for them an “occupational obsession.” Levitsky and Ziblatt “feel dread … We worry.” What has them most worried is “intimidation of the press” and the fact some politicians “view their rivals as enemies.”  Trump terrifies due to his “clear authoritarian tendencies.” He is said to follow in an American tradition of “extremist demagogues” that includes “Henry Ford, Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, and George Wallace.” America “failed the test” when it elected Trump in November 2016.  Like Sunstein and Posner, Levitsky and Ziblatt are especially concerned by “extreme partisan polarization,” which is another way of saying that they are very worried that the two main political parties may actually diverge in a meaningful way from one another and therefore run the risk of engaging in a genuine politics. Since the same complaint is made by Stanley and Sunstein, we might assume that Jews are most comfortable with two-party systems in which the parties and their policies are almost indistinguishable and in which there is a high level of ideological consensus. Anything outside this comfort zone is Fascism.

Levitsky and Ziblatt: “We feel dread … We worry.”

Equally terrified is Madeleine Albright, whose Fascism: A Warning (2018) is derived from an identical playbook to that employed by Stanley, Sunstein, Levitsky, and Ziblatt. Albright opens the 2019 edition of her book with a new preface in which she poses as a benevolent granny, writing with detachment and objectivity, she claims, at her “farm” in Virginia. Granny Albright, who once declared the Serbs to be “disgusting” and opined that starving half a million Iraqi children via UN sanctions was “worth it,” now spends her days tending to her tomatoes and pondering with great bemusement why a reporter recently branded her a “war mongering ghoul.” As she observes the serenity of the evergreens around her, it is quite the mystery why multicultural America seems to be “at each other’s throats.” We might think that Granny Albright could answer such a question by leaving rural Virginia and moving to America’s multicultural heartlands. But no, from her safe and isolated vantage point she has it all figured out. Her answer is simple, and has nothing to do with the fact multiculturalism is itself a poisonous doctrine —  multiculturalism isn’t working because Donald Trump and Fascism are on the verge of a devastating takeover. But what is Fascism? This is never clear anywhere in the book. Albright vaguely explains that Fascism is a “spread of anti-democratic trends.” [Translation: “The controlled two-party system has been weakened”] Fascist “attitudes” develop when “the perception grows that everybody lies.” [Translation: “The goyim know”] Fascism is “a doctrine of anger and fear.” [Translation: “I’m worried. Shut it down.”]

Andrew Rawnsley, Guardian journalist, aware of the this glaring weakness in the book, interviewed Albright prior to writing his review: “I suggest to her that the book struggles to offer a satisfactory definition of fascism. ‘Defining fascism is difficult,’ she responds. ‘First of all, I don’t think fascism is an ideology. I think it is a method, it’s a system’.” In other words, Fascism is a label that can be applied to any kind of politics that unsettles Jews and offers authentic alternative political methodologies. By refusing to acknowledge Fascism as a specific historical political ideology with identifiable and fixed traits, Albright and the other Jewish activists mentioned here can free it up as a system of mere “methods” that can then be interpreted in general terms in order to attack those elements of White society deemed oppositional to Jewish interests. So-called Antifascism, which draws all of its cultural power from this kind of Jewish propaganda, is therefore not against Fascism at all, but against any “methods” or “trends” that aren’t conducive to Jews.

Madeleine Albright: Wrote a book about something she can’t define

Stanley’s book is an excellent guide to Jewish paranoia about the “methods” hinted at by Albright. His text is divided into chapters titled “The Mythic Past,” “Propaganda,” “Anti-Intellectual,” “Unreality,” “Hierarchy,” “Victimhood,” “Law and Order,” “Sexual Anxiety,” “Sodom and Gomorrah,” and, since Jews inevitably view all dissent from their interests as leading ultimately to outlandish forms of mass murder, the final chapter is headed “Arbeit Macht Frei.” Each of these chapters deals with entirely subjective material and ideas, and there is no serious engagement with any scholarly literature on historical Fascism.

As discussed above, “the mythic past” is only a problem for Jews like Stanley when the past in question isn’t conducive to Jewish goals. Fictional multicultural pasts where ancient “Cheddar Man” Britons had dark skin, Africans lived in England before the English, and Whites demonstrated unique evil, are currently the height of intellectual and cultural fashion. These are the versions of “the mythic past” that Jews celebrate and promote. On the other hand, conceptions of the past as involving mono-ethnic cultures, celebrations of European racial glory, and acknowledgement of White group achievement are branded Fascist and beyond the pale. In the Jewish vision, the histories of Europeans are irredeemably shameful and therefore any attempt to make one’s nation “great again” is both irrational (“they were never great in the first place!”) and threatening. In this reading, all positive reflections on the European past are part of the Fascist methodology and should therefore be ruthlessly opposed. When Jews like Stanley and Albright include references to “the mythic past” in their “warnings” about Fascism they are in fact warning and shaming Whites against asserting their own interests and group pride.

The same framework is employed in discussing the alleged propaganda and “anti-intellectual” qualities of Fascism. Stanley argues that Fascists “attack and devalue education, expertise, and language.” This argument is, at best, entirely subjective and at worst complete nonsense. The idea that Fascists have been against intellectualism in general is simply ridiculous. As John Whittam writes in his Fascist Italy:

Fascism suffered not from the lack of ideas but from too many. Despite their rhetoric and pronounced hostility towards the intellectuals of the old liberal establishment, Futurists, syndicalists, ex-socialists, and even the ras professed an ideology and invariably had access to a newspaper where their views could be expressed. After the conquest of power one of the major problems was the formulation of an ideology from the bewildering array of distinctive ideologies within the Fascist movement.[1] [emphasis added]

Underlying Stanley’s accusatory statement is the simple fact that Fascists oppose liberal, left-wing, and Jewish intellectualism. Jewish activists like Stanley believe, of course, that theirs are the only legitimate and authentic intellectual activities in the public sphere. An attack on their position is therefore seen as an attack on all genuine intellectualism. The accusation that Fascists are anti-intellectual thus speaks of a profound arrogance in the accuser.

Equally revealing are Stanley’s chapters on “Sexual Anxiety” and “Sodom and Gomorrah.” These chapters are more or less an apologetic for Weimar-style sexual degeneracy, and insinuate that all attempts to prevent descent into such an abyss are pathological and Fascist. Some interesting context in this regard can be found back in 2016 when Stanley became embroiled in controversy after a Facebook exchange with fellow Jewish academic Rebecca Kukla, of Georgetown University, was widely disseminated. The pair had been discussing Richard Swinburne, an Orthodox Christian philosopher, and were incensed after Swinburne addressed the Society of Christian Philosophers and lectured on Christian ethics, including the religion’s stance on homosexuality. Swinburne made the argument that homosexuality could be understood as an illness, even a form of disability, since it acted against the otherwise natural imperative to reproduce. Stanley, in a conversation with other Jewish academics, accused Swinburne of “promoting homophobia,” paving the way for another Holocaust, and then finished his tirade with “Fuck those assholes. Seriously.” The charming Dr. Kukla, presumably equally engaged in employing vigorous intellectualism against the Fascist encroachment of Prof. Swinburne, added, “Those douche tankards can suck my giant queer cock.”

Rebecca Kukla: Stunning and brave intellectual fighting against Fascist anti-intellectuals

When the exchange went viral, both Stanley and Kukla scattered like cockroaches under torchlight, hiding under pity narratives and accusations of anti-Semitism. In a remarkable piece worth quoting here at length, Stanley wrote shortly afterwards:

I wanted to address the situation that has arisen from the series of articles in right-wing media outlets about me, and then me and Professor Kukla, that resulted from a private Facebook exchange being published and taken out of context … I was almost always the only Jewish person in my classes growing up. In my high schools in tenth and eleventh grade, I was the first Jewish person to attend. I am very familiar with the isolation that is involved, even when there is no overt discrimination (though I grew up being asked if I had horns and such like, this was ignorance and not malice). It is woven into the tapestry of my existence what it is like to be in a minority faith among a majority … My central concern right now is entirely about our gay colleagues in academia who have been watching this episode in horror, rightly concerned that any complaints about discrimination they may raise, even in private spaces, will result in the kind of incredibly intense retribution that Rebecca Kukla and I have been singled out and subject to over the past week. And those concerns would be legitimate. I need to end with the issue of anti-Semitism. On my public post, someone posted a disturbing comment about Swinburne’s death. I contemplated deleting it but then wanted to wait to see if anyone would ‘like’ it before addressing its horrors (no one did). It is hard to avoid the suspicion that the media discussion starting with the September 28th piece in The American Conservative, and then the Washington Times, is straightforwardly anti-Semitic. How did a non-story about the complexity of communication that results when screenshots from private conversations are made public, become a national story about two leftist Jewish professors and the dangers they pose? At first, the story was solely about me. Then, the other Jewish philosopher who posted on that thread, Rebecca Kukla, was also targeted. What ensued was a terrible anti-Semitic narrative, channeling a virulent 20th century form of anti-Semitism.

When I first read this piece, I have to confess without exaggeration that I laughed so hard I was literally gasping for air. It positively drips with a comic level of Jewish stereotype. Consider the speed with which Stanley morosely explains how he felt as “the only Jew in the class.” Observe the fake worry about the “Other,” in this case his “gay colleagues.” And reflect on the final, truly beautiful, example of the shameless Jewish recourse to the protective embrace of the anti-Semitism accusation — and not just any anti-Semitism but that infamous “virulent” kind. Every ingredient of “crying out as they strike you” is present here in perfect, distilled form. All my differences with him aside, Stanley is to be congratulated on being an excellent student of his people’s craft.

When we therefore read Stanley’s chapters on “Sexual Anxiety” and “Sodom and Gomorrah” we know precisely the kind of attitudes that our esteemed Yale professor brings to the table. He advances a theory that Fascists merely pretend to be upset about the rape of White women in order to reinforce the patriarchy. Take, for example, his outlandish claim that “The crime of rape is basic to fascist politics because it raises sexual anxiety and an attendant need for protection of the nation’s manhood by the fascist authority.” For Stanley, all rhetoric with the purpose of supporting stable, growing White families is Fascist, along with any attempts to challenge the “liberation” of women into sterility, promiscuity, vacuous careerism, grooming gangs, and abortion. But the deeper problem here is that there is no serious literature on any such fixation on rape within Fascism, and Stanley seems to pluck his concept of rape as “basic to fascist politics” from thin air. In reality, antifascist propaganda has been noted many times in the scholarly literature for its reliance on rape metaphors to attack the psychological appeal of Fascism (e.g. “Fascism rapes the mind of the masses”[2]). We can quite easily surmise that Stanley is probably aware that his argument is nonsense, and that he simply prefers to stigmatise any attempt to protect White women. The same methodology is employed when Stanley proposes that homosexuality and race-mixing are inherently good, being valiant sins “against Fascist ideology.” This is what now passes for an education at Yale.

Conclusion

Stanley, Sunstein, Levitsky, Ziblatt, and Albright have produced quite typical examples of Jewish propaganda disguised as “anti-Fascist” literature. The key features of such works are invariably a vague definition of Fascism, an attempt to relate “warnings” to some aspect of contemporary politics, melodramatic admonitions about a putative future violent catastrophe that must be avoided, and maudlin appeals to personal family history and “emotional baggage.” Underlying the surface veneer, these works are highly focussed efforts to pathologise aspects of White culture and politics deemed oppositional to Jewish interests. These efforts, and their framing, are quite obviously derived from Cultural Marxism, especially Adorno’s work with the Frankfurt School on The Authoritarian Personality, and from earlier forms of Jewish activism witnessed from the end of the 19th century and culminating in Weimar Germany (e.g. the work of Magnus Hirschfeld). The family, the acknowledgement of heterosexuality as culturally and biologically normative and preferential, the desirability of mono-ethnic cultures, and the acknowledgement of inequality among human beings are reframed in this kind of “warning literature” as inherently Fascistic.

It is very worrying that our culture has bequeathed a great deal of respect and legitimacy to Jewish intellectuals, especially in relation to the subject of Fascism. We have allowed them to assert that “they know it when they see it.” The fundamental crisis of our civilization is that they see it everywhere, and they won’t rest until this phantom of their paranoia, and us with it, are abolished.


[1] J. Whittam, Fascist Italy, (New York: Manchester University Press, 1995), 81-2.

[2] See, for example, S. Chakotin, The Rape of the Masses: The Psychology of Totalitarian Political Propaganda (1940).

 

Biocentric Political Thought in the Third Reich: A Review of Johann Chapoutot’s The Law of Blood

The Law of Blood
Johann Chapoutot
La loi du sang: Penser et agir en nazi
Paris: Gallimard, 2014
(English translation by Miranda Richmond Mouillot
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018, in press)

“I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.” — Walter Sobchak

In today’s culture, any nationalist activist, or really anyone who is politically incorrect, is liable to be labeled a “Nazi” and compared to Adolf Hitler. This is so even when the comparison is patently absurd and the person in question is obviously not a “Nazi”: whether the conservative French patriot Jean-Marie Le Pen, the anti-Zionist mixed-race Franco-Cameroonian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, or indeed the populist civic nationalist Donald Trump. Comparisons to fascism are also de rigueur whenever the Western politico-media Establishment wishes to demonize a foreign leader who refuses to kneel, such as Slobodan Milošević or Vladimir Putin.

The reason such individuals are called “Nazis” and compared to Hitler is typically not because of any formal ideological similarities — none of those above have ever championed a totalitarian dictatorship or any kind of systematic racial or anti-Semitic politics — but for more emotional, civil-religious reasons.[1] In the current culture, “Nazi” or “Hitler” is simply the meanest name one can call someone (hence the phenomenon of Godwin’s law) — the designated term for anyone violating the orthodoxies of political correctness. Political correctness, in turn, has steadily shifted leftwards and radicalized over the years. This means that, today, if people adopt the opinions of prominent anti-Nazis like Charles de Gaulle or Winston Churchill (who were both racialist proud of their White identity and moderately Judeo-critical), they will, however absurdly, be sure to be called “Nazis.”

However, eventually a reaction sets in. Nationalists and free-thinkers will tend to become curious: what did Hitler and the National Socialists actually think? Am I, the so-called Nazi heretic, really like them? Were they — the designated worst evil of human history —  really that bad? These questions — as writers such as Irmin Vinson and Greg Johnson have noted —  are irrelevant to the legitimacy of ethnic Europeans’ right to live and prosper in their own homelands.[2] Furthermore, and quite obviously for anyone who examines the topic, the fact is that there are innumerable differences between historical German National Socialism and contemporary European nationalisms and White advocacy.

Nonetheless, National Socialism remains a historically and politically important subject, the genesis and downfall of which remains crucial to understanding the development of Western civilization in the twenty-first century. We can then salute the French historian Johann Chapoutot who in his La loi du sang: Penser et agir en nazi has provided a formidable intellectual history of official thought in the Third Reich.[3] Chapoutot, who had previously written a somewhat less fair-minded but still useful book on National Socialist Germany’s infatuation with Greco-Roman civilization,[4] can be credited for showing why and how so many Germans found National Socialism to be both intellectually and emotionally compelling. Read more

The Notion of Racial Diversity in German Academia and National-Socialist Legislation, Part 1

Introduction

What follows below are the translations of several excerpts from rare books and essays on race published by prominent German legal scholars, biologists, and medical doctors who were also high ranking members of the National Socialist Party in before and during World War II. The focus of the translated passages is on verbal, legal and sociological analyses of race. It is not TOO’s, or for that matter my intent, to whitewash National Socialism or glorify the works of its academic or military spokesman. The fact that after the NS seizure of power the number of NS  party members skyrocketed from the modest 800,000 to 8 million members by 1943, a number which also included a large number of world-known German scientists and academics, proves time and again that opportunism and intellectual duplicity among scholars is nothing new. Dominant ideas, however bizarre, or dangerous they may ultimately sound, as long as they are shielded by the ruling class and its police, will always attract cheerleaders among herds of glory-hungry academics, limelight searchers, and a host of circumstantial sycophants. Many of them will quickly disavow their beliefs when different cultural or ideological trends start lurking on the political horizon.

The great danger, however, lies in the fact that dominant political ideas invariably have an impact on the definition of natural science — and never the other way around. Hence it is a waste of time today trying to convince the political adversary on racial differences by inundating him/her with empirical data, especially if dominant ideas espoused by elites are hostile in advance to any discussion about race. Facts are seldom important—what counts is the interpretation of facts.

The sole intent of these essays is to point out significant semantic and conceptual errors arising today with the usage of former German political and legal concepts related to the issue of race which, while common in higher education and politics in NS Germany, often turned after World War II into demonic misnomers. Following Donald Trump’s election to US presidency, accompanied by the ongoing language distortions in the media and higher education, aka “fake news”, and in light of the mass arrival of non-White migrants to the US and EU, as well as the increased racialization of political discourse, some parallels in intellectual climate between Weimar and NS Germany and the EU and the US today can be drawn. Read more

“The Book and the Rifle”: Cultural and Racial Policy in Fascist Italy, Part 3

difesa_della_razza

Eugenics and Racial Policy

Tarquini devotes substantial attention to race and eugenics in Italian culture under Fascism. She notes that the Fascist government gave Italian eugenic scientists support and attention which they had never enjoyed under previous regimes:

From 1922 to 1945 Italian scientists contributed to racial culture and policy. These included anthropologists, statisticians, demographers, and doctors who were already well-known in the scientific world in the early years of the century, when demography and eugenics — the science which studies the methods to perfect the human species by favoring the proliferation of individuals deemed best (positive eugenics) or through the suppression of individuals considered harmful (negative eugenics) — brought their attention to the demographic decline present in many Western countries. … With the advent of fascism these scientists played a role which they did not have in previous regimes. In exchange they offered the totalitarian and racist policy their own generous support. (pp. 201–202)

Demographic issues were given particular attention in the aftermath of the massive bloodletting of World War I and a significant fall in the birth rates of Western countries. Read more

“The Book and the Rifle”: Cultural and Racial Policy in Fascist Italy, Part 2

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Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini

Go to Part 1.

Intellectual Debate in Fascist Italy

Tarquini emphasizes that culture in Fascist Italy was by no means monolithic, but allowed considerable stylistic variation and intellectual debate so long as these respected core Fascist principles. Indeed, Fascists emphasized that being a Fascist was more about a certain manly mindset than about theoretical abstractions. As Nietzsche did, the Fascists rejected the bourgeois spirit with its satisfaction with mediocrity, its skepticism and compromise, its concern with careers, and its death-fearing selfishness.

Fascism was born out of diverse groups dissatisfied with Italy’s small gains during World War I, frustrated with liberal impotence, and disturbed by the rise of communism. These included military veterans, self-sacrificial arditi soldiers, futurist artists, revolutionary syndicalists, socialistic republicans, and others. Fascism emerged organically as “a militia in the service of the nation,” a political movement, and finally a government, rather than as a preset set of ideas.

The “spirit of the trenches,” the spirit of hierarchy, discipline and community, which had shown its awesome destructive power in wartime would be used by the Fascists to constructively develop the nation in peacetime. Indeed, Fascism developed a “secular liturgy” (p. 43) and “a conception of the nation elevated to a sacred entity” (p. 51). Fascism rejected internationalism, egalitarianism, and materialism, embracing aristocracy, spirituality, and nationalism. Some Fascists even credited their movement with the potential to save Europe from decadence and degeneration.

Fascism was unabashedly communitarian. Economics and culture were to respect community interests. The Fascist doctrine of corporatism reflected “the relevance to the state [statalità] of every economic phenomenon” (p. 157). Fascists similarly argued that writers had “a political, moral, and educational role” and culture had to support “the struggle for civilization” (p. 184). Read more

“The Book and the Rifle”: Cultural & Racial Policy in Fascist Italy, Part 1

tarquini

Storia della cultura fascista (Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2011)
by Alessandra Tarquini

Since World War II, the very word “fascism” has always conjured up images of evil in the cultural and political mainstream. This is largely because the fascists lost that war and, as we know, the victors write the history books. It is also because the most famous fascist regime, National Socialist Germany, did in fact have an official doctrine of disregard for the lives of many non-German groups, thus providing ample material for the Allies’ atrocity propaganda.

It is interesting then to note that the original fascist regime, that of Fascist Italy, also been widely demonized despite the fact that this government was far more moderate. Indeed, the deaths attributable Fascist Italy are perhaps an order of magnitude lower than those of the Western Allies or the Soviet Union. Italian Fascism, having ruled for over 20 years, longer than National Socialist Germany and mostly in peacetime, then provides another example of what the West might have been had history taken a different course.

Here at The Occidental Observer, we are obviously extremely interested in culture and its impact on evolutionary adaptiveness and reproduction, that is to say gene-culture coevolution. Italian historian Alessandra Tarquini has provided a useful summary of cultural policy and life in Fascist Italy in her Storia della cultura fascista (History of Fascist Culture). Tarquini’s study is scrupulously neutral and empathetic, even as she dedicates her book to “the memory of the first anti-fascist I knew” (presumably a close relative).

Perhaps the most striking theme in the book is the absolute importance the Fascists gave to culture understood as the systematic education of the people. This meant especially the youth, but also the working masses and women who had been neglected by previous regimes. Tarquini observes: “From 1922 to the end of 1943, one of the main objectives of Fascism’s cultural policy was the education of the young generations” (p. 231). The National Fascist Party (PNF) “for the entire Ventennio [two decades of Fascist government] invested all its energy in the mobilization of the new generations” (p. 232). Furthermore, “from the earliest years, the Fascists showed the will to educate women and workers” (p. 233). This was not done in the lackadaisical way characteristic of liberal regimes — a bit of schooling, perhaps some cultural subsidies, but otherwise leaving young people’s minds in the hands of often hostile television oligarchs —  but systematically, through schooling, sports, Party activities, holidays, film, radio, etc. Read more