ABSTRACT
A constant dilemma for fascists since 1945, in Britain as elsewhere across Europe, has been the extent to which they should be open and honest in their propaganda about what they actually stand for. Understandably, the Nazi industrialization of mass murder during the Second World War meant that there was little electoral cache in labelling your party or movement ‘fascist’. This basic fact of political history has meant that there are two discursive strategies open to parties and movements of the far and the extreme right in Britain, as in other European countries: dissociation from, or the rehabilitation of, Nazism (Sykes, 2005: 95). Parties that opt for the former strategy go to considerable lengths to deny any link to fascism, utilising a range of nominal, predicative and argumentative tools to (re)define the terms of reference and to differentiate their movement from those considered beyond the pale. Such a discursive accommodation is also in evidence in countries that constituted the Axis powers during World War II, though usually for specific legal reasons in addition to pure political expediency (see chapters on Austria, France and Germany in this volume). Texts from credentialized outsiders, which can be co-opted in an attempt to gloss over ideological commitments, are a boon to such extremist parties. Take the following example about the British National Party:
BNP HAS ‘GREATEST POTENTIAL’: Colin Cross Analysis of British Right Wing (COMBAT, Issue 34, July-August 1965, p. 3)
By argument, by logic and by analysis of election results we have endeavoured to show COMBAT readers that of all the movements on the Right in Britain today, it is the BNP alone that has the potential of saving Britain from racial suicide and to lead a resulting national resurgence. Now comes confirmation from the pen of Mr Colin Cross who, in his book on the pre-war Fascist movements in Britain and by newspaper articles has become the accepted authority amongst establishment political commentators on Right-Wing politics.
In an article headed ‘Britain's Racialists’, which appeared in the weekly magazine New Society of June 3rd, Mr Cross gave an analysis of the different approaches, strengths and potential growth of a number of Right-Wing movements….
After dealing with the hopes and failures of the other two movements, Mr Cross then said: ‘It is possible, however, that the true future of British racialist politics lies with the British National Party, which is the only organisation formally to have broken away from the Fascist tradition of the 1930s’….
After summarising the basic fundamentals of BNP policy, Mr Cross then says: ‘The break with pre-war Fascism is almost complete. The BNP has no Leader whom it puts forward as a potential dictator and it avowedly works within the Parliamentary framework, declaring that it seeks power in just the same way as the orthodox political parties seek power.’
