Abstract:

While it is generally held that between Fascism and post-Leninist USSR there is an ideological divide that cannot be bridged, not all Fascists and even neo-nazis upheld the conventional anti-Soviet position. Certain types of fascist contended that the elimination of Trotsky by Stalin was the first sign that the USSR was changing direction from what they saw as ‘Jewish bolshevism’ (sic) into a type of collectivist Russian imperialism which had adapted the symbols and rhetoric of Communism for its own national – as opposed to international – purposes. They pointed to the destruction by Stalin of the Comintern, the purging of many of the old Bolshevik veterans, and the call for ‘socialism in one country’ as distinct from international proletarian revolution. Foreign communist parties became instruments of Soviet foreign policy and espionage rather than organs for fomenting revolution. One eccentric and very active figure in the immediate post-war period, until his death in 1960 was the American, Francis Parker Yockey. His belief that the USA was the principal enemy of European culture brought him to a conclusion that the USSR could be used by those who wished to see occupied Europe ‘liberated’ (sic) from foreign influences. This unorthodox perspective, from the viewpoint of the ‘Right’, got surprisingly wide support among veteran hitherto anti-communist activists, including neo-nazis and neo-fascists such as Maj. Gen. Otto Remer in Germany. Such German extreme Rightist veterans, having fought the USSR, saw no reason why Germany should now align itself against the USSR as a subordinate of the USA during the Cold War. This essay examines the development of the pro-Soviet outlook of one of this faction’s most active and philosophical exponents, Yockey. The attitude is again gaining interest among certain extreme Right factions, including the Western admirers of Russian academic Alexander Dugin.

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