Portrait of an activist

A long article by Tim Johnstone - almost 3,500 words - has been posted at Welf Herfurth’s New Right Australia/New Zealand blog on Welf himself.  This “standard-issue, 21st century German nationalist” has led an interesting life, including a stint in One Nation Party politics trying to “break the barriers to left-right thinking, attract people of different political camps, and unite them on the issues that concern them.”

After the Australian federal election of 1998, when One Nation “won a million votes but not one seat” and began to self-destruct, Welf withdrew from the political coalface.  Instead, he:-

began to look around for an alternative. He had long been interested in the ideas of Third Positionism and National Anarchism, and now began to apply them to his own activism

To add to the complexity of Welf’s thinking, there is this on the German nationalist model:-

Another part of Welf’s world view is what I consider to be left-wing radicalism. This may be surprising to a few, even in nationalism, who are used to viewing nationalism in the West as being ‘Extreme Right’ or ‘Far Right’. (And, indeed, the liberal democratic politicians, media and academia classify nationalism as such). Without a doubt, there are many conservatives, politically on the Right, in the nationalist movement - particularly in the populist parties. But I would call the NPD a left-wing party, and Mahler, for one, has no problems in reconciling the ideals of the NPD and modern German nationalism with those of the radical German student movement of the late 1960s (and the Red Army Faction). And it is a radical left-wing view which informs Welf’s thinking - in its opposition to capitalism, globalisation, American imperialism, consumer culture, liberal democracy and liberal individualism.

... There is more to Leftism, and socialism, than a few anti-capitalist slogans - but an attempt to reach a definition of ‘leftism’ and ‘socialism’ would be beyond the scope of this article. But part of the problem with seeing the likes of the NPD and the Freie Nationalisten as being on the Left, politically, is that communism, in the 20th century, successfully hijacked the term, and manage to convince a good part of the world that anything non-Marxist and non-communist is not truly ‘left-wing’ at all.

... Communism’s rigid adherence to the Marxist dogmas, and its refusal to accept the existence of alternative forms of leftism and socialism, was one of the reasons for its success in the 20th century. But in the 21st century, it has been left floundering. Its inability to adapt to changing social conditions - indeed, Marxism is a theory that the future development of humanity has been worked out in a few books written 150 years ago - has meant that non-Marxist socialists like Hugo Chavez and Subcomandante Marcos have taken centre-stage. (Chavez calls his project Socialism for the 21st century). A big hole exists in the West, left by the implosion of Marxism and the decline of mainstream social democracy, which can be filled by nationalism. The German nationalists, and Welf, understand this perfectly, and attempt to persuade other nationalists that phenomena such as immigration are due to globalisation and neoliberalism.

That will give you an idea of the man.  But it’s very much better to read Tim Johnstone’s whole article.

I will close with a few words of my own ...

Anyone, absolutely anyone, who begins to see the world as it is, to wake up from the decades of political indolence and complacency and grow disgusted at the present and fearful of the future, anyone like that has begun the process of detachment from the standard liberal left/right narrative.  For there’s no redress to be found there.  Such a one will quickly come to unfamiliar places peopled by original and interesting thinkers - not standard issue at all - like Welf.  If the labels on the views there are at first too challenging, well, keep on listening.  Expand your field of tolerance.  Discovering new ideas includes discovering old ones you only thought you knew.  Try them all.  Glut yourself.

If we ever succeed in breaking open and pulling down our liberal Bastille, a new left and a new right will be founded.  In this new dispensation I feel that Welf would be drawn decisively leftward.  I also think he might turn out to be a pillar of the new political Establishment, while someone like me would likely remain a rebel by constitution.  But none of us can know unless we actually get there, something we can only do sans misunderstanding and division.

Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, August 10, 2007 at 06:50 PM in Political Philosophy
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