Fascists for Che
White supremacists infiltrate the anti-globalization
movement
By Nick Mamatas, In These Times, September 13, 2002
Neo-Nazi rallies in America's urban centers are most often
the tiny affairs of a few racists, and are often drowned out
by massive counter-protests. But on August 24, hundreds of
followers of the National Alliance and other neo-Nazis,
under a front called Taxpayers Against Terrorism, held their
fourth and largest anti-Israel event in Washington since
September 11. The racist National Alliance and other white supremacist and
neo-Nazi groups are piggybacking on anti-globalization and
anti-Israeli occupation movements with a new enthusiasm by
adopting anti-corporate and pro-Palestinian rhetoric, hoping
to recruit young activists drawn to the post-Battle of
Seattle political milieu.
Neo-Nazis "are definitely gaining confidence," says Zein
El-Amine, who helped recruit progressive Arabs to the
rally's counter-protest. "They are getting more
sophisticated with their organizing. . . . They had Arabic
signs at this demo that said 'Zionism is terrorism.'"
The confidence shows in numbers. The rally of more than 300
on August 24 was significantly larger than its counterpart
on May 11, thanks to online organizing and a new tactic of
holding a "Rock Against Israel" concert featuring hate rock
acts Brutal Attack, Celtic Warrior and Intimidation One at a
"secret location" after the protest. Only those who attended
the rally were allowed entry to the show, which was held at
a National Guard armory in White Marsh, Maryland.
The progressive-sounding Web site http://www.g8activist.com
is home to the so-called Anti-Globalism Action Network
(AGAN), another front for the National Alliance. At first
blush, the group sounds legit. The URL is designed to
resemble http://www.g8activist.ca , a real
anti-globalization site, and AGAN claims to stand against
the Bush administration‚s imminent war on Iraq. The site has
reposted an article by David Finkel from the socialist
magazine Against the Current that criticizes Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon. National Alliance members like Bill
White often post to the boards at http://www.indymedia.org
to hype forthcoming events; others make dubious free speech
pleas "towards a broadening of the anti-globalism movement
to include divergent and marginalized voices," as the AGAN
Web site puts it.
While the tactics are new, the strategy isn't. According to
Finkel, a longtime pro-Palestinian activist: "Fascists and
racists of all stripes usually strike a pose of
'anti-globalism' and sometimes even 'anti-capitalism,' and
anti-Semites in particular pose as friends of the
Palestinian people when they feel it will advance their real
agenda of promoting hatred of Jews."
In the United States, groups like the White Aryan Resistance
and followers of Lyndon LaRouche tried to join coalitions
against the Gulf War in 1991, and modern-day "Third
Position" groups who claim to be "neither left nor right"
simultaneously claim both Che Guevara and Benito Mussolini
as inspirations. A few dozen members of Nazi and
white-supremacist groups skirted the edges of the anti-WTO
protests in Seattle in 1999, managing to conflate themselves
with the anti-racist anarchist militants of the "black bloc"
in the minds of mainstream anti-hate organizations like the
Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.
Implying cooperation between the two groups, the SPLC asked
in a 2000 report, "How is it that members of the far 'left'
and 'right' found themselves facing down police together?"
The ADL continues to list the circle-A symbol of anarchism
as a "general racist symbol" on its Web site.
The National Alliance is also working to exploit continuing
fear of terror attacks with a new community-based
"terror-free zone" campaign, which calls for an end to U.S.
aid to Israel alongside a return to pre-1965 U.S.
immigration regulations. The National Alliance leaflet,
being distributed in working-class neighborhoods, says the
group will collect names of neighborhood signatories and
pass them on to nations in the Middle East. This will
ensure, the group claims, that communities signing on will
be "declared terror-free zones" and will "not be targeted
for reprisals."
Of course, the pro-Palestinian gloss is just that. Before
his death earlier this summer, William Pierce, the leader of
the National Alliance, told Michelle Cottle of The New
Republic: "My primary concern is not really for Palestinian
freedom or how they run their lives over there--or for the
Iraqis." The National Alliance sees Arabs in France and
Germany as little more than subhumans who need to be removed
from the continent. The post-9/11 shift represents nothing
more than the dovetailing of interests of white supremacists
and the most extreme Muslim fundamentalists: the elimination
of multiculturalism, extreme nationalism and vicious
anti-Semitism.
It is unlikely the Nazis will be able to recruit sizable
numbers with this latest scheme. "These loathsome neo-Nazi
cults are small in numbers and influence," Finkel says,
"which is why they act in this parasitic fashion."
