Jean Thiriart and his followers
An example of "anti-imperialist" fascism
In Europe, a far right exists which aims to manipulate global anti-imperialist sentiment in the interests of the creation of a European superpower. A consistent public advocate of this line is Luc Michel, head of the Belgian-based Parti communautaire National-européen (PCN).
Michel is a disciple of Jean Thiriart, a Belgian collaborator with the Nazis, who spent the 1960s and 70s developing a pan-European "anti-imperialist" platform on which to relaunch fascism, with special emphasis on the Middle Eastern struggle. [
1] More recently, this current has sought support on an anti-Semitic basis in the former Soviet Union, even claiming (with what validity I can't say) Gennadi Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, as a "comrade". Michel and the PCN advocate an anti-American/anti-Zionist "anti-imperialist" front "without political distinctions".At the recent WTO summit in Cancun, the agenda of the rich Western bloc (the US and European Union), was rejected by a group of developing nations, including the largest ones (China, India and Brazil). The Cancun debate reflected a crucial fault line in the world: on the one side, the dominant "West" (plus Japan), sustained throughout the past sixty years by US power; on the other side, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Luc Michel's group, however, does not want the global debate to run along the Cancun fault line. They are not opposed to continued Western hegemony. What they want is for Europe to replace the US as leader of the West. To this end, they have to argue that Europe is not part of the rich world, but itself a victim of "US imperialism" and therefore the natural leader of the Third World. [
2] They claim that Europe, "defeated in 1945", has been "colonised" by the USA and its "abject anti-civilisation of McDo, Coca-Cola and Hollywood." [3] Existing European regimes, in their eyes, do not make their own decisions, but act as passive agents of the American occupiers. They explain that "Arab friends" "have to understand that 'European' policy is entirely controlled by the Americans. "Let our Arab friends read and study carefully the whole European press. The American-Zionists have both the European right and the European left in their hands." [4]The riposte to US-Zionist imperialism must, they argue, be to "coordinate the anti-imperialist forces of the four continents (the essential task of Europe [
5], the USA's main colony since 1945, the second lung of its economy)" and "create a united front in the face of the enemy, open to all forces fighting against USA, NATO and the system, without political distinction". [6] Since the Third World has no real reason to prefer European to US hegemony - quite the contrary - the traditional delusional "common enemy" - the Jews, or "Zionists" - has to be invoked to cement the proposed "quadricontinental" [7] alliance. Thus, we are told, "like us Europeans, the Arabs have no greater enemy than the American-Zionists". "American-Zionist imperialism must be destroyed". [8]The object of this bogus "anti-imperialist" front is to (1) use radical movements in the Third World as weapons able to blast a hole in American hegemony big enough to allow a European superpower to emerge through, and (2) create a massive diversion in the Third World to prevent the US-European conflict from ushering in a crisis of the whole system.
Both to create the front and take the opportunities it offers, Thiriart and his disciples believe in the need for a disciplined revolutionary vanguard party. This will be the founder of the European state and form its "collective dynasty", "since the Decision [
9], requires a homogeneous and small body of men with an ambitious political outlook and a readiness to exercise power". One source of Thiriart's organisational philosophy, we learn, are the "metaphysical considerations of Ernst Jünger on the appearance of a new human type (the worker, or, to use Ernst Niekisch [10], the 'Third Imperial Figure'); Thiriart, for his part, preferred to talk more simply, using the vocabulary of science fiction or TV shows, of 'mutants' or the 'superman'". [11]The distinction between revolutionaries and reformists was, according to the PCN, clearly exposed by reactions to September 11. The revolutionaries "among which the PCN was the only organisation to say so openly, welcomed a decisive stage in the war undertaken by the peoples of the world for freedom and dignity". [
12] Conspiracy theories about 9/11 are denounced as "an insult to the sacrifice of the freedom fighters who struck the military, political and economic centres of imperialism". [13]The current rhetoric of the more militant sections of the antiwar and anti-globalisation movements reeks of Thiriartism.
Colin Meade, 30 September 2003
FOOTNOTES
According to a sympathetic biography, "sentenced to three years in prison at the 'Liberation' (quotation marks in original), Thiriart only resurfaced politically in 1960 when he participated, at the time of the decolonisation of the Congo, in the foundation of an Action and Defence Committee for the Belgians of Africa, which later became the Civic Action Movement (Mouvement d'Action civique)." He hoped that the violent reaction against decolonisation might lead to fascist seizures of power, especially in France. At this time, "a meeting was organised in Vienna on 4 March 1962, at which Thiriart represented the MAC and Belgium. Present from Italy was the MSI, the Socialist Empire Party from Germany and Oswald Mosley's Union Movement from Britain." www.voxnr.com/cgi-bin/cogit_print/pf/cgi. It was after the failure of this "anti-decolonisation" platform for a fascist relaunch that Thiriart started seeking allies in the Third World.