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Europe
David Duke 's message in Spain
2007-11-23
US historian and former congressman for Louisiana David Duke is touring Spain this week to promote his latest book, 'Jewish Supremacism. My Awakening on the Jewish Question', which has recently been translated into Spanish and released by Ojeda Publishers.
He's not a former member of Congress, he's a former member of the Louisiana State House of Representatives. Doesn't anyone fact-check anymore?
This former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, who founded the white supremacist group National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP) in 1980, visited Valladolid on Monday and Zaragoza on Wednesday to give conferences organized by the Spanish far-right political and social movements National Alliance and National Democracy.

Speaking on Monday before a packed auditorium in Valladolid, Duke denied being a white supremacist, and spoke up in favor of freedom of speech. "No people or nation should oppress others. Every country has the right to be independent and to preserve its heritage" in areas such as art and cultural and artistic development, argued Duke.

The former Congressman also explained that when he speaks "of Jewish supremacism" he is not referring to all Jewish people. Instead, he insisted that his words only target "Jewish extremists and those who try to impose their supremacy."
Uh-huh, sure. Bigot.
Duke's arrival in Spain coincides with a growing debate on the rising presence of extremist far-right groups with a racist agenda in the country.

During his Valladolid lecture, Duke specified that he is not visiting Spain to speak up "against anybody in particular," and stressed that he simply aims to "remind people that Spain has the right to continue fighting to preserve its essence" and its identity, within the realms of human rights and freedoms. Nonetheless, he then warned that "Spain is suffering the greatest threat to its people's heritage and freedom since the Moorish invasion of 711."

On Monday Duke also spoke of the "crisis" Europe is going through due to the gradual destruction of its cultural heritage, and criticized the current Socialist government in Spain for its overly relaxed immigration policies. "Unless this massive immigration" stops, "all of the planet's identities" will be diluted in places like Spain, Europe and the United States, he said.
Posted by:lotp

#22  Soft antisemitism and moral blindness pave the way for the fierce open haters of the far right and far left to gain ascendancy in public discourse. Well said.

Anonymous5089, thanks for the links, I'll enjoy reading later tonight.

Posted by: Woozle Grereck5422   2007-11-23 23:16  

#21  #13 So, how's he different from Europe leading intellectuals talking about "neo-cons"?
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2007-11-23 07:49|| Front Page|| ||Comments Top

#14 For that matter, how's he different from US sec-State comparing "Plaestinian Struggle" to the USA civil rights struggle & Abbas to MLK?
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2007-11-23 07:51

The more I think about these posts, the more I have to agree. Soft antisemitism and moral blindness pave the way for the fierce open haters of the far right and far left to gain ascendancy in public discourse.
Posted by: Ulomoque Protector of the Hatfields2940   2007-11-23 22:32  

#20  In 1930s Europe, Socialism was very fashionable and popular amoungst the moneyed classes. A lot like today in fact. The opposition to Socialism/Hitler, as today, came from the working and middle classes.
Posted by: phil_b   2007-11-23 21:18  

#19  I like to compare Germany to Mexico in that regard.

For example, in Mexico, it could be a death sentence to be a communist. But at the same time they hosted Trotsky, were very friendly to Cuba, and were full of revolutionary rhetoric and art. Mexico was even ruled by the PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

In Germany, Munich was heavily dominated by the communists before the rise of the Nazis. And as with Mexico, Hitler in power had a love/hate relationship with communists.

The bottom line is that fascists always thought of themselves as "socialist-fascist"; which today we might call "socialism lite". Fascist economics didn't try to nationalize industry and run it, like the socialists, but to co-opt its purpose to supporting the state through "private-government partnerships". It saw individualism as a threat, as did the socialists; but Nazism was powerless against group action. They never suppressed any mob that protested them, once they were in power, only individuals.

Stalin's Soviet Union, at first, was of the same mind towards the Nazis. Stalin even thought of them as a buffer to capitalism and liberal democracy; an insulation of another oppressive authoritarian regime being preferable to dangerous liberty.

So yes, Hitler was a leftist. But not as left as those who embrace socialism. The only way he could have been a right winger or reactionary in Germany would have been if he was a monarchist.

Think of him as a "socialist-fascist", or "socialist lite."
Posted by: Anonymoose   2007-11-23 13:38  

#18  For that matter, how's he different from US sec-State comparing "Plaestinian Struggle" to the USA civil rights struggle & Abbas to MLK?

No difference Troll, we hate Joooooooooooooooooos!

There feel better now?
Have a TrollHouse Cookie.
Posted by: Thomas Woof   2007-11-23 13:16  

#17  People can describe Hitler as a "leftist" until they are blue in the face. This never explains why it was Germany's conservative parties - not its socialist parties - that put him into power.

Corporate interests might be described as "leftist", they certainly mitigate against personal freedom, but it is a stretch. Old patrician families and their aristocratic interests - including the land owning Church - supported Hitler and his ideological cousins in Spain and Italy; no gymnastics makes those people "leftists".
Posted by: Excalibur   2007-11-23 10:30  

#16  Need a clean up in aisles 13 and 14.
Posted by: phil_b   2007-11-23 08:01  

#15  NS, reminds me of a friend of mine, who was what I would now call a faux rightist, who sent postcards from Belfast talking about the Front for the Liberation of West Britain (FLOB). Special Branch arrived at his door in pretty short order. My point being, there are plenty of fanticist pretenders out there.
Posted by: phil_b   2007-11-23 07:52  

#14  For that matter, how's he different from US sec-State comparing "Plaestinian Struggle" to the USA civil rights struggle & Abbas to MLK?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2007-11-23 07:51  

#13  So, how's he different from Europe leading intellectuals talking about "neo-cons"?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2007-11-23 07:49  

#12  Apparently attendance for this event held the same week was very good this year because of immigrations concerns and Zappy planning to rewrite Spanish history more to his socialist liking. Nothing is ever settled in Europe, or any other third world area. I would not be surprised to see a Plantagenet Liberation Front emerge in England soon.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble   2007-11-23 07:32  

#11  a5089, I share your concern about the Right's antisemiticism. It's almost like ' we don't have the energy to fight the new real threat, so we will fight the old phoney threat, i.e. the Jews'.

As Lubos Motl pointed out recently, Jews dominated physics in the 20th century and the science of physics shaped the 20th century in ways unimaginable to our grandparents. In a very real sense, we owe our modern world to the Jews who and whose decendants died in Hitler's holocaust. And the tradegy isn't that 6 million Jews died, it's that 6 million people and their decendants, lost to us, would have changed the world further and in ways we can't imagine, because Hitler deprived us of that future.

And that's why I detest these people.
Posted by: phil_b   2007-11-23 07:13  

#10  Just remember that the Nazis were actually the National Socialist party of Germany.

Hitler was a Leftist
Rethinking History: Were the Nazis Really Nationalists?
Posted by: anonymous5089   2007-11-23 07:07  

#9  Just remember that the Nazis were actually the National Socialist party of Germany. The extremes are more representative of each other than the centers.
Posted by: Jack is Back!   2007-11-23 07:02  

#8  For those who can read french, a very interesting article on the deep roots of that "red-brown" line :

L'invention d'une doxa néo-fasciste : le rôle de l'avant-garde nationaliste-révolutionnaire
Posted by: anonymous5089   2007-11-23 06:40  

#7  Why I Started This Website

The Insanity of David Duke

From the very interesting Inverted World.
Posted by: anonymous5089   2007-11-23 06:28  

#6  Btw, my reading of the evolution of the rightwing here in France, at least from what's I've seen online, since I'm definitively a customer for their websites, is a "leftization" of the discourse, anti-US, anti-imperialist (pépé le pen decries the upcoming french "surge" in afghanistan, is favorable to iran getting the Bomb,...), anti-capitalist, true to that to a continuing "red-brown" line since WWII, the most evident example being the Front National's new orientation.

And while there was already a definite antisemite side to the french white nationalists, I'm reading more and more comments, posts, etc, etc,... about the joooooooooos, about sarko (whom I clearly don't like, but not for THAT) who is of course a joooooooooo (while I'm pretty sure he's a nominal catholic), a stooge of the international jooooooory, etc, etc.

In fact, the tendancy (that probably existed mostly online, to be frank) that was pro-US, pro-Israeli, anti-islam, has disappeared, and now, you've got pure old-school euro-antisemites, USA-haters like hervé ryssen that have become local internet beacons, the free-markets & pro-US show hosts of the only conservative french radio who have been evicted after a putsch, a converging of the tiny national-bolsheviks, national-revolutionaries, and far-leftist groups,...

This p*sses me off, because this is stoopid, and suicidal, what we need here is a REAL right, to break off with the "french model", not some "gaucho-lepenisme" which is actually in full continuation of it, and drags along all the two-bits losers of the ideological war.
Posted by: anonymous5089   2007-11-23 06:25  

#5  This is really dangerous stuff. This is the offical meeting of the far right and the far left.

Again, Alexandre Del Valle's The Reds, The Browns and the Greens or The Convergence of Totalitarianisms
Posted by: anonymous5089   2007-11-23 06:13  

#4  This is really dangerous stuff. This is the offical meeting of the far right and the far left.

People used to say that when the "European Street" becomes inflamed, it will be really ugly. I just couldn't see it. But clearly this is the form and shape it will take. Mark my words this is going to get ugly at a very fast pace.

I suspect that the Muslim immigrants will be the first to become victims of this rising mob pogrom. Radical (and moderate) Muslims will quietly cheer these groups initially because of their anti-semetic rhetoric, but all of this zionist stuff is just the cloak that allows this left/right convergence to pass go and collect 200 angry, torch bearing Europeans. No, I'm not underplaying the threat to jewish Europeans which is self-evident. Everyone will get burned if this fire isn't put down.

Frightening stuff.
Posted by: Woozle Grereck5422   2007-11-23 05:24  

#3  He's not a former member of Congress, he's a former member of the Louisiana State House of Representatives. Doesn't anyone fact-check anymore?

They probably don't know that there is a difference.
Posted by: Woozle Grereck5422   2007-11-23 04:57  

#2  In 1968 Duke was photographed in a Nazi uniform. He changes rhetoric but not his sick ideology.
Posted by: McZoid   2007-11-23 03:36  

#1  "Doesn't anyone fact-check anymore?"

Just bloggers and Pajama News, lotp.

You expected it from the MSM? Silly you.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2007-11-23 01:09  

00:00