Midnight in the century

"Black Sun" by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke feels like the unofficial sequel to "The occult roots of Nazism", another book by the same author.

"Black Sun" gives a broad overview of the post-war Nazi underground. American and British Nazism are covered, including Lincoln Rockwell and Colin Jordan. So are Julius Evola, Savitri Devi and Miguel Serrano. There are also chapters on black metal music, Nazi Satanism and neo-paganism, and the bizarre Christian Identity and Creativity groups.

What's particularly striking are the cultic, occultist and pseudoreligious traits of post-war Nazism. In many ways, neo-Nazism looks like a strange blend of original Nazism and interwar Ariosophy (which was scorned by Hitler). Even Nazi leaders I assumed were purely secular, such as Lincoln Rockwell, had a pseudoreligious, Satanistic streak. Sometimes, the "spiritual" aspect is downright bizarre, as when Savitri Devi proclaimed Hitler to be an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, or when other neo-Nazi groups expressed a belief in UFOs. Yet, Devi was a leading member of the neo-Nazi international network WUNS. Another example of the religious connection is the neo-pagan group Wotansvolk, whose leader David Lane was involved in the Nazi terrorist group The Order.

While this is nauseating, even scary, it's also strangely comforting. After all, the reason why Nazism became a network of political and religious cults after the war, was that secular Nazism had failed, and that a secular (or "Christian") Nazi mass movement was no longer possible. In post-war Europe, fascist groups must mimic right-wing populism or conservatism to gain a mass following - witness the Front National in France, the Alleanza Nazionale in Italy, or Jörg Haider's "Freedom Party" in Austria. Groups which openly proclaim their Nazi or fascist affinities remain small. And, almost by natural law, weird people are drawn to such groups. During my childhood, the most notorious Nazi group in Sweden, the NRP, was very small and consisted of people who dressed in Nazi garb even in private, attempted to mimic "Mein Kampf" in their own writings, and so on. In Denmark, a similar group insisted on vegetarianism, etc. Today, Swedish Nazi groups are terroristic and hence more dangerous, but they remain minuscule, and many members are behind bars (one of them a Black African!).

It seems that Nazism is experiencing its midnight in the century.

Let's all hope this situation is here to stay...