Third Position

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The Third Position is a set of neo-fascist political ideologies that were first described in Western Europe following the Second World War. [1] [2] [3] Developed in the context of the Cold War, it developed its name through the claim that it represented a third position between the capitalism of the Western Bloc and the communism of the Eastern Bloc.

Contents

History

The term "Third Position" was coined in Europe and the main precursors of Third Position politics were Italian fascism, Legionarism, Falangism, Prussian socialism, National Bolshevism (a synthesis of far-right ultranationalism and far-left Bolshevism) and Strasserism (a radical, mass-action, worker-based form of Nazism, advocated by the "left-wing" of the Nazi Party by brothers Otto and Gregor Strasser, until it was crushed in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934). Neo-fascist, neo-Nazi author Francis Parker Yockey had proposed an alliance between communists and fascists called the red-brown alliance (Red being the color of communism and Brown being the color of Nazism). Yockey lent support to Third World liberation movements as well.

Germany

Querfront ("cross-front") was the cooperation between conservative revolutionaries in Germany with the far-left during the Weimar Republic of the 1920s.

Ernst Niekisch and others tried to combine communist and anti-capitalist nationalist forces to overthrow the existing order of the Weimar Republic. He called this merger "National Bolshevism". During his early years in Nazi Party as SS-Gauführer , Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler worked briefly as a deputy of Gregor Strasser, then head of party propaganda department. Influenced heavily by Strasserist ideas, Himmler attacked capitalism and viewed socialism as "the natural economic system" during the 1920s. [4] Germany's Chancellor, General Kurt von Schleicher (in office 1932–33), attempted to induce the more left-wing Strasserist segment of the Nazi Party to merge with the trade unions as way of forcing Hitler to support his government, but his plan failed. [5]

The term is also used today for mutual entryism or cooperation between left and right-wing groups. For example, at a Berlin peace rally on February 24, 2023, called by Sahra Wagenknecht, at the time a leading figure of Germany's socialist Left Party, and feminist Alice Schwarzer in support of their manifesto calling for negotiations and stop of military support of Ukraine, far-right factions and pro-Russian supporters were in attendance. [6]

France

During the 1930s and 1940s, a number of splinter groups from the radical left became associated with radical nationalism. Jacques Doriot's French Popular Party (from the French Communist Party) and Marcel Déat's National Popular Rally (from the French Section of the Workers' International). Third Position ideology gained some support in France, where in 1985 Jean-Gilles Malliarakis set up a "Third Way" political party, Troisième Voie (TV). Considering its main enemies to be the United States, communism and Zionism, the group advocated radical paths to national revolution. Associated for a time with the Groupe Union Défense, TV was generally on poor terms with Front National until 1991, when Malliarakis decided to approach them. As a result, TV fell apart and a radical splinter group under Christian Bouchet, Nouvelle Résistance, adopted National Bolshevik and then Eurasianist views. [7]

Italy

In Italy, the Third Position was developed by Roberto Fiore, along with Gabriele Adinolfi and Peppe Dimitri, in the tradition of Italian neo-fascism. Third Position's ideology is characterized by a militarist formulation, a palingenetic ultranationalism looking favourably to national liberation movements, support for racial separatism and the adherence to a soldier lifestyle. In order to construct a cultural background for the ideology, Fiore looked to the ruralism of Julius Evola and sought to combine it with the desire for a cultural-spiritual revolution. He adopted some of the positions of the contemporary far-right, notably the ethnopluralism of Alain de Benoist and the Europe-wide appeal associated with such views as the Europe a Nation campaign of Oswald Mosley (amongst others). Fiore was one of the founders of the Terza Posizione movement in 1978. Third Position ideas are now represented in Italy by Forza Nuova, led by Fiore; and by the movement CasaPound, a network of far-right social centres.

United Kingdom

Nick griffin bnp from flickr user britishnationalism (cropped).jpg
Joseph Pearce speaking into a microphone.jpg
In 1983, the National Front was taken over by a Strasserist faction led by Nick Griffin (left) and Joe Pearce (right), who presented themselves as Third Positionists.

In the 1980s, the National Front, a British fascist party that had experienced the height of its success in the 1970s, was taken over by a Strasserist faction that referred to themselves as Third Positionist. [8] The Strasserist-led National Front was also characterised by Baker as National Bolshevist in ideology. [9] Reflecting the Nouvelle Droite's influence, [10] the Strasserist Official NF promoted support for "a broad front of racialists of all colours" who were seeking an end to multi-racial society and capitalism, [8] praising black nationalists like Louis Farrakhan and Marcus Garvey. [11] Their publication, Nationalism Today, featured positive articles on the governments of Libya and Iran, presenting them as part of a global anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist third force in international politics; [12] its members openly acknowledged the influence of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his Third International Theory. [13] This may have had tactical as well as ideological motivations, with Libya and Iran viewed as potential sources of funding. [10] This new rhetoric and ideology alienated much of the party's rank-and-file membership. [14] It experienced internal problems, and in 1989 several of its senior members—Nick Griffin, Derek Holland, and Colin Todd—split from it to establish their International Third Position group. [14] One of its leaders was Roberto Fiore, an ex-member of the Italian far-right movement Terza Posizione. [15]

United States

In the United States, Political Research Associates argues that Third Position politics has been promoted by some white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups such as the National Alliance, American Front, Traditionalist Worker Party, Patriot Front, and White Aryan Resistance, as well as some black nationalist groups, such as the Nation of Islam, since the late 20th century. [16] In 2010, the American Third Position Party (later renamed American Freedom Party) was founded in part to channel the right-wing populist resentment engendered by the financial crisis of 2007–08 and the policies of the Obama administration. [17]

See also

Related Research Articles

Neo-fascism is a post-World War II far-right ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. Neo-fascism usually includes ultranationalism, ultraconservatism, racial supremacy, right-wing populism, authoritarianism, nativism, xenophobia, and anti-immigration sentiment, sometimes with economic liberal issues, as well as opposition to social democracy, parliamentarianism, Marxism, capitalism, communism, and socialism. As with classical fascism, it occasionally proposes a Third Position as an alternative to market capitalism.

Right-wing politics is the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position based on natural law, economics, authority, property, religion, biology, or tradition. Hierarchy and inequality may be seen as natural results of traditional social differences or competition in market economies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eurasia Party</span> Political party in Russia

The Eurasia Party is a neo-Eurasianist Russian political party. It was registered by the Ministry of Justice on 21 June 2002, approximately one year after the pan-Russian Eurasia Movement was established by Aleksandr Dugin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Front (UK)</span> British fascist and white supremacist political party

The National Front (NF) is a far-right, fascist political party in the United Kingdom. It is currently led by Tony Martin. A minor party, it has never had its representatives elected to the British or European Parliaments, although it gained a small number of local councillors through defections and it has had a few of its representatives elected to community councils. Founded in 1967, it reached the height of its electoral support during the mid-1970s, when it was briefly England's fourth-largest party in terms of vote share.

International Third Position (ITP) was a neo-fascist organisation formed by the breakaway faction of the British National Front, led by Roberto Fiore, an ex-member of the Italian far-right movement Third Position.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Strasserism</span> Economic strand of Nazism

Strasserism is an ideological strand of Nazism which adheres to revolutionary nationalism and to economic antisemitism, which conditions are to be achieved with radical, mass-action and worker-based politics that are more aggressive than the politics of the Hitlerite leaders of the Nazi Party. Named after brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser, the ideology of Strasserism is a type of Third Position, right-wing politics in opposition to Communism and to Hitlerite Nazism.

The Official National Front (ONF) was one of two far-right groups to emerge in the United Kingdom in 1986 following a split within the National Front. Following ideological paths that were mostly new to the British far-right, the ONF stood opposed to the more traditionalist Flag Group.

The Nouvelle Droite, sometimes shortened to the initialism ND, is a far-right political movement which emerged in France during the late 1960s. The Nouvelle Droite is the origin of the wider European New Right (ENR). Various scholars of political science have argued that it is a form of fascism or neo-fascism, although the movement eschews these terms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National-anarchism</span> Radical right-wing nationalist ideology

National-anarchism is a radical right-wing nationalist ideology which advocates racial separatism, racial nationalism, ethnic nationalism, and racial purity. National-anarchists syncretize ethnic nationalism with anarchism, mainly in their support for a stateless society, while rejecting anarchist social philosophy. The main ideological innovation of national-anarchism is its anti-state palingenetic ultranationalism. National-anarchists advocate homogeneous communities in place of the nation state. National-anarchists claim that those of different ethnic or racial groups would be free to develop separately in their own tribal communes while striving to be politically horizontal, economically non-capitalist, ecologically sustainable, and socially and culturally traditional.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fascism and ideology</span> History of fascist ideology

The history of fascist ideology is long and it draws on many sources. Fascists took inspiration from sources as ancient as the Spartans for their focus on racial purity and their emphasis on rule by an élite minority. Researchers have also seen links between fascism and the ideals of Plato, though there are key differences between the two. Italian Fascism, in particular, styled itself as the ideological successor to Rome, particularly the Roman Empire. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's view on the absolute authority of the state also strongly influenced fascist thinking. The 1789 French Revolution was a major influence insofar as the Nazis saw themselves as fighting back against many of the ideas which it brought to prominence, especially liberalism, liberal democracy and racial equality, whereas on the other hand, fascism drew heavily on the revolutionary ideal of nationalism. The prejudice of a "high and noble" Aryan culture as opposed to a "parasitic" Semitic culture was core to Nazi racial views, while other early forms of fascism concerned themselves with non-racialized conceptions of their respective nations.

The far-right tradition in France finds its origins in the Third Republic with Boulangism and the Dreyfus affair. In the 1880s, General Georges Boulanger, called "General Revenge", championed demands for military revenge against Imperial Germany as retribution for the defeat and fall of the Second French Empire during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). This stance, known as revanchism, began to exert a strong influence on French nationalism. Soon thereafter, the Dreyfus affair provided one of the political division lines of France. French nationalism, which had been largely associated with left-wing and Republican ideologies before the Dreyfus affair, turned after that into a main trait of the right-wing and, moreover, of the far right. A new right emerged, and nationalism was reappropriated by the far-right who turned it into a form of ethnic nationalism, blended with anti-Semitism, xenophobia, anti-Protestantism and anti-Masonry. The Action française (AF), first founded as a journal and later a political organization, was the matrix of a new type of counter-revolutionary right-wing, which continues to exist today. During the interwar period, the Action française and its youth militia, the Camelots du Roi, were very active. Far right leagues organized riots.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">René Binet (neo-Fascist)</span> French Trotskyist and neo-fascist activist

René Binet was a French fascist political activist. Initially a Trotskyist in the 1930s, he espoused fascism during World War II and joined the SS Charlemagne Division. Soon after the end of the war, Binet became involved in numerous neo-fascist and white supremacist publications and parties. He wrote the 1950 book Théorie du racisme, deemed influential on the European far-right at large. Binet died in a car accident in 1957, aged 44.

Derek Holland is a figure on the European far-right noted for his Catholic Integralism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Bolshevism</span> Political ideology

National Bolshevism, whose supporters are known as National Bolsheviks and colloquially as Nazbols, is a syncretic political movement committed to combining ultranationalism and Bolshevik communism.

The Ideology of the National Front comprises the beliefs held by the National Front, a far-right political party in the United Kingdom. These beliefs, including nationalism, racism, and opposition to Marxism, have been compared to fascism, although the party rejected the term as a description of its political stance.

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Griffin, Rogers (3 July 2023). "Fascism's new faces (and new facelessness) in the 'post-fascist' epoch". Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte. 27 (1): 45–92.
  2. ↑ Shaffer, Ryan (23 January 2018). "Pan-European thought in British fascism: the International Third Position and the Alliance for Peace and Freedom". Patterns of Prejudice. 52 (1).
  3. ↑ Spektorowski, Alberto (2003). "The New Right: Ethno-regionalism, ethno-pluralism and the emergence of a neo-fascist 'Third Way'". Journal of Political Ideologies. 8 (1): 111–130.
  4. ↑ Longerich, Peter (2012). "5: The Party Functionary". Heinrich Himmler. New York, USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 89–92. ISBN   978-0-19-959232-6.
  5. ↑ Turner, Henry Ashby Hitler's Thirty Days to Power, New York: Addison-Wesley, 1996, pp. 24–29.
  6. ↑ Hallam, Mark (2023-02-27). "Germany: Left Party, Wagenknecht clash after 'peace' rally". DW. Retrieved 2023-02-28.
  7. ↑ "annuaire de l'extrême droite en France". www.france-politique.fr. Retrieved 2021-02-25.
  8. 1 2 Sykes 2005, p. 126.
  9. ↑ Baker 1985, p. 30.
  10. 1 2 Eatwell 2003, p. 341.
  11. ↑ Durham 1995, p. 272; Eatwell 2003, p. 341; Sykes 2005, pp. 126–127.
  12. ↑ Sykes 2005, pp. 126–127.
  13. ↑ Sykes 2005, pp. 119–120.
  14. 1 2 Sykes 2005, p. 127.
  15. ↑ Ryan, Nick (2004). Into a World of Hate: A Journey Among the Extreme Right. Routledge. p. 62. ISBN   0-415-94922-X.
  16. ↑ Berlet, Chip (20 December 1990). "Right Woos Left: Populist Party, LaRouchite, and Other Neo-fascist Overtures To Progressives, And Why They Must Be Rejected". Political Research Associates. Retrieved 2010-02-01. revised 4/15/1994, 3 corrections 1999{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  17. ↑ Southern Poverty Law Center (Spring 2010). "Prof Has New Job Running Racist Political Party: Academic Anti-Semitism". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2010-04-28.

Bibliography

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