When fascists were the rearguard

"Fascism idag" is an old anti-fascist classic from 1979, written by journalist Hans Lindquist and published by Federativs, a small left-wing press in Stockholm. The book is only available in Swedish.

The subtitle means "Vanguard or rearguard", and when the book was published, fascism (except for the National Front in Britain) really did look like a rearguard. Most of the groups mentioned in Lindquist's survey of European and North American fascism were small and frequently bizarre. Many were openly neo-Nazi. Curiously, the author never answers his own question, and has a tendency to portray even small Nazi groups as more significant than they really were. Despite this, "Fascism idag" is remarkably free from tabloid sensationalism and overwrought rhetoric. Indeed, Lindquist might not even have been a left-wing radical, but a more regular liberal.

In 1979, there were only three well-known fascist groups in Sweden, none of which were particularly threatening. There was the "nationalist" SNF, essentially an old boys club for well-heeled paleo-conservatives with covert Nazi affinities and somewhat less covert sympathies for Pinochet's brutal military junta in Chile. Further, there was the openly neo-Nazi NRP, a small band of kooks who lived in symbiosis with the tabloid press, always ready to give interviews dressed in full Nazi regalia. The group's actions sometimes bordered the comic. The NRP's "storm troopers" at one point wanted to attack the synagogue in Stockholm, but for some reason backed down. Instead, they threw a smoke bomb at a cinema showing an anti-Nazi comedy starring Mel Brooks! Finally, there was Per Engdahl's Nysvenska Rörelsen, the closest thing to a "respectable" fascist group in Sweden, with an elaborate corporatist philosophy.

All this changed already during the 1980's, when various fascist groups did recruit new followers and established a permanent, visible presence on the Swedish far right. It seems fascism might still prove to be the "vanguard", after all...

Unless we do something about it, of course.