Graham Macklin

Co-opting the counter culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction

ABSTRACT Formed in 1996 by former National Front activist Troy Southgate, the National Revolutionary Faction (NRF) is a ‘national-anarchist’ groupuscule. In contrast to the International Third Position, the reactionary Catholic fascist sect from which it emerged, the NRF promotes a radical anti-capitalist and anti-Marxist ‘anarchist’ agenda of autonomous rural communities within a decentralized, pan-European framework. While the NRF retains an ideological core that is readily identifiable as fascist, that ideology is far from a mimetic atavism. As a result of its increasing radicalization the NRF has attempted to move ‘beyond left and right’, transcending the traditional limits of national-Bolshevism, to forge a seemingly incongruous synthesis of fascism and anarchism. Through its print and online publications, the NRF seeks to utilize its unique ideological position to exploit a burgeoning counter culture of industrial heavy metal music, paganism, esotericism, occultism and Satanism that, it believes, holds the key to the spiritual reinvigoration of western society ready for an essentially Evolian revolt against the culturally and racially enervating forces of American global capitalism. A detailed examination of its history, activism, structure and continued ideological morphology reveals the NRF as an ideological crucible for a growing international network of dissident ‘national-revolutionaries’ who are currently recalibrating their ideals in order to overcome their acute marginalization.

‘Onward Blackshirts!’ Music and the British Union of Fascists

ABSTRACT Macklin explores the role of music in British fascisms ‘palingenetic’ project for national rebirth. Taking as his starting-point the cultural production and criticism of music emanating from within the British Union of Fascists (BUF), he argues that music played an integral part of the fascist experience, representing far more than mere ‘entertainment’. Macklin examines how the BUF used music to underpin party mobilization strategies, to anchor choreographed set-pieces like meetings and marches, and to reinforce ‘collectives of emotion’ among participants as well as unaligned spectators. Having discussed the integrative mechanisms through which the BUF sought to capitalize on musics emotive appeal, and particularly the ideological content of ‘Fascist songs’, Macklins article moves to examine the partys reaction to jazz. Not only did it offend British fascisms conservative cultural aesthetic but it served as a cipher for the wider sense of degeneracy British fascists believed had afflicted race and nation.

Interpreting “Cumulative Extremism”: Six Proposals for Enhancing Conceptual Clarity

The concept of “cumulative extremism”—described in 2006 by Roger Eatwell as “the way in which one form of extremism can feed off and magnify other forms [of extremism],” has recently gained considerable traction in academic, policy, and practitioner discourses about extremism. Yet in spite of the growing usage of the term, particularly in analyses of the dynamic between extreme Islamist and extreme Right-Wing or anti-Muslim protest groups, there has to date been scant interrogation of the concept itself or of its application. In this article, we make a series of six proposals as to how we might enhance the conceptual clarity of these conversations about “cumulative extremism.” Our aim in doing so is to increase the likelihood that the concept might become a useful addition to the debates on extremism rather than becoming, to borrow a term from John Horgan—something of an “explanatory fiction”—an idea that appears to enable us to explain a great deal, but whose explanatory value is largely lost because there is insufficient scrutiny of the claims that it is used to make and whose liberal application becomes increasingly conducive to poor science.

The missing spirals of violence: four waves of movement–countermovement contest in post-war Britain

Since the Second World War, Great Britain has witnessed a recurring escalation and de-escalation of confrontations between extreme right-wing or anti-minority protest groups on the one hand and, on the other, militant anti-fascist or anti-racist groups, and latterly also a number of extreme Islamist groups. In this article, we trace the outline of four waves of these movement–countermovement contests in order to engage critically with ideas of what some academics have called “cumulative extremism (CE)”. Contrary to the tenor of much of the public, policy and academic debate around such contests, we draw attention to what we describe as the missing spirals of violence. In order to better explain and accommodate these empirical findings, we argue that it is important to resist the temptation to reduce “CE” to a process of “tit-for-tat” violence. We outline four factors that have been particularly important in shaping patterns of interactive escalation, de-escalation and non-escalation in the case studies described: the broader strategic aims of activist groups; dynamics of intra-movement control and leadership; the actions of and activists interactions with state actors; and emergent movement cultures and identities.

‘Hail Mosley and F’ Em All’: Martyrdom, Transcendence and the ‘Myth’ of Internment

Abstract This article examines the varying experiences of British fascists interned without trial in May 1940. As Arthur Koestler noted in his 1952 Arrow in the Blue, ‘to be converted or convinced is a more or less sharply defined act; to lose a conviction is a long process of wear and tear’. By understanding internment to have represented just such a ‘watershed’, the experience of British fascists is revealed as a fascinating case study of political religion and by extension as a prime example of the binding power of ‘coterie charisma’. By conceptualising the experience of internment in such a manner, this article also explores the psychological processes that prevented the ideological death of British fascism. Focusing upon British fascism’s interpretation of internment as a cleansing crucible that intensified the political fanaticism of those who passed through it, it reveals the pivotal role that political religion played in the ideological transmission of the ‘sacred flame’ of British fascism into the immediate post‐war period and beyond. By examining internment as a transcendent, faith‐based experience, this article will argue that the reaffirmation of commitment to British fascism and, in many cases, to Sir Oswald Mosley personally, together forged a necessary ‘myth’ of internment through which the defeat and privation experienced by individual fascist activists during the Second World War could be reinterpreted and rationalised not as defeat but as the harbinger of a new dawn, after which fascism would emerge triumphant.

‘A quite natural and moderate defensive feeling’? The 1945 Hampstead ‘anti-alien’ petition

In October 1945 an ‘anti-alien’ petition was launched in the London Borough of Hampstead that, under the pretext of securing homes for returning ex-servicemen, campaigned for the removal of the districts predominantly Jewish refugee population. By examining the nature of support and opposition to the petition Macklins local case study provides further evidence to suggest that reactions to those who had fled Nazi terror remained complex. Those who did find sanctuary were characterized by the local press not as ‘deserving victims’, but as the cause of the problems created by their Nazi persecutors. A detailed examination of the rhetoric of the petition movement reveals how this defence of local amenities against ‘alien‘ encroachment can rightfully be defined as ‘antisemitic’. Following an analysis of the role of the local press, Macklin examines its impact on, and interaction with, local and central government policy regarding reconstruction and immigration, which continued to be dominated by the dogma that harmonious race relations necessitated the strict control of immigrants, regardless of the desperation of their plight. He concludes by examining the medias symbiotic relationship with extremist and fascist politics.

The two lives of John Hooper Harvey

ABSTRACT Macklins article documents the two lives of noted architectural historian John Hooper Harvey, focusing on the inextricable link between his fêted academic career and his involvement during the 1930s with the most extreme antisemitic and pro-Nazi group in Britain, the Imperial Fascist League, led by Arnold Leese. Macklin argues that Harveys virulent antisemitism and his academic writing were part of an interconnected totality with one informing the other throughout his career. In examining the link between his gutter antisemitism and his vast erudition and learning Macklin also highlights the importance of neo-mediaevalism to fascist and Nazi ideology. His article stands slightly apart from the other articles in this special issue in that it deals with a tradition of historicized ‘folk’ history and cultural aspects of race rather than explicitly ‘scientific’ or anthropological racism. Given the recent resurgence of ‘heritage’ and ‘cultural traditions’ studies in the academy Macklins article on these neglected aspects of thinking on race and nation is particularly timely.