IDEOLOGY. Klas Lund writes about the relationship between reactionary nationalists and National Socialists and why National Socialism is the only way forward.
This article was formerly published in ”Attack!” nr. 8, 2010. ”Attack!” is an internal membership bulletin published 12 times a year for the activists and members of the Nordic Resistance Movement.
National Socialism and nationalism might be related, but there are a lot of differences between National Socialism and what we usually mean by nationalism. These differences, that might not be clear to everyone, are of decisive significance for a victorious struggle. In this article I will not attempt to define these differences, but rather I will try to describe how the ideological confusion between these beliefs inhibits National Socialism from becoming a clear worldview in our time and thus prevents it from becoming the force that it could be.
Evolution is a necessity
You might say that life in this world survives by conquering death through the miracle of rebirth. By reproduction and evolution life can overcome death, which is omnipresent. A life form which does not reproduce and evolve is doomed to extinction. Some organisms have a very short lifespan while other organisms, seen from our perspective, have a very long lifespan. These individual organisms are part of a larger life form, race or species. This principle of life can also be applied to ideas and worldviews as being expressions of the existential struggle for races of humans. A worldview suitable for India in the Bronze Age could hardly be suitable for the needs of modern man and would not survive unchanged in today’s world. The need for evolutionary development is also valid for the National Socialist worldview.
“Things used to be better”
Reactionary nationalism to a great extent means trying to maintain old ideas in the face of new ones. The reaction is based on the idea that ”things used to be better” (this is not always wrong, since a certain reservation concerning changes in many cases might be reasonable because not all changes are good ones). But the main problem concerning the reaction is probably that it is defensive by its very nature: it defends the past and the established and as a rule it lacks visions and a strong will to change. If the reaction is allowed to define and dominate an ideological trend, these ideas run a risk of degenerating into backward orthodoxy without the will or means to change what must be changed. An example of reactionary nationalism is the exaggerated reverence for events and the idealization of people in the past. One should always honour one’s ancestors, of course, but it must not be allowed to happen at the expense of the future. The past must never be allowed to limit the future.
The will to change
Old customs and ways must be changeable to suit new conditions. And what is important is that this will to change must come from within, not from without. If an ideological trend is dominated by reactionary forces, it will transform into a craze for the past, and the will to change is assigned to our enemies. We then automatically become a reactionary force that only defends its position against an outer enemy which has taken the initiative and will continue to attack us until our defence falls apart. A war can only be won by attacking. Defence is only used to fend off enemy attacks and then attacking them yourself. In our political/ideological ”war”, we will win only by taking the initiative out of our enemy’s hands and then pushing them back.
Renewal but loyal to the principles
We National Socialists understand that the new must always come out of the old, just as life can only be carried on from parent to offspring. It is important in this context that, as in everything else, a balance is created which means that the old is designed to give birth to the new, not ossify and die. But the new must be loyal to the old. We must understand that the old stately oak which has grown for a thousand years also must die and that the small insignificant plant growing alongside it represents the future once those thousand years have passed. We understand that renewal is necessary in the existential struggle and therefore that we can never let our National Socialist worldview ossify in an old form. But we also have to realise that the renewal must be loyal to the principles; it must be loyal to its own nature.
Aiming for the future
We National Socialists are revolutionaries unlike the nationalists, who by their nature are reactionaries. We want to change society and we have a vision of how the future society will look. We must not let nostalgia for the past create ideological confusion. We National Socialists are on the offence. We realise that the Swedish nation state that once existed will never exist again and we do not intend to try to apply band-aid to save something that is past its time. Instead we must, if we wish for our kind to continue living, create a new vision for the future and then purposefully fight for its realization. As National Socialist revolutionaries we must look forward, to the future – not look backward all the time and bewail what is lost and will never come back.
Clarity and consistency gives strength
In order for National Socialism to become a vital worldview in our time, we must distance ourselves from ossified nationalism. We must bring clarity. We must show that we are not stuck in old ways but are a part of something new and budding. The confusion between revolutionary National Socialism and reactionary nationalism has meant that we have lost very valuable time and that National Socialism still has liberated itself from this inhibiting factor. We must state that we cannot reach our full strength unless we bring clarity and are consistent first. We must realise that the reaction is without a future but that we have a future and that we therefore cannot allow for the reaction to pull us down into the abyss. Thus we must relentlessly separate reactionary thinking from our struggle.
We are building the future
The race can only survive if it takes the initiative out of the hands of our enemies and starts attacking on all fronts. We must embrace the ideas of the future without becoming poisoned or corrupt, without bargaining our principles away. We must understand that we cannot stop anything until we have a buoyant worldview which can motivate us. You could say that we must be able to separate our reactionary will to stop the construction of a building from our revolutionary will to create a building of our own. For example: The reaction wants to stop the building of a mosque in a city, and we sympathise with this. But here we must understand that this struggle is meaningless so long as the struggle against this is not based on a worldview with a vision of its own about what should be built there in its place, an idea about the future that can compete with, in this case, a doctrinaire and well-organised movement like Islam. Because without a vision, what is the alternative if a mosque is not constructed there? Will the grounds instead be used to build another McDonalds or a gay club? Without a strong and clear worldview, the resistance will always be too weak.
The confusion
The inability of Nordic National Socialism to separate from reactionary nationalism has meant that a lot of time has been lost. Because so long as nobody understands what really separates National Socialism from nationalism, no real evolution of the worldview can take place and no fundamental work can be done. In reality, reactionary nationalism has dominated National Socialism for the last 90 years in Scandinavia, and under such circumstances not much positive development has been able to take place.
The reaction took over
This can be traced all the way back to the 1920s and 1930s, when National Socialist ideas first got their foothold in Scandinavia. Unlike Germany where Hitler and his men, trained in the trenches of the First World War, formed the revolutionary and pioneering National Socialism, the National Socialist ideas were taken over by strongly reactionary forces here in Scandinavia. An example of this, although they were good-hearted, were the men surrounding the wealthy Carl-Ernfrid Carlberg and his publishing house, Svea rike (Swedish Realm), which came to dominate the intellectual evolution of the nationalist ideas of the time in Sweden. Just as in Norway there were strongly conservative, reactionary and Christian forces in Sweden which mixed National Socialism with ideas taken from bourgeois nationalism.
Christianity as an example
This confusion between National Socialism and reactionary thought has taken place across the entire spectrum of ideas, but Christianity could serve as an illustrative example here. The German National Socialists were, for tactical reasons, careful about denouncing Christianity even though everybody in a leadership position agreed that there was no place for Christianity in the future National Socialist order. They had cherished the National Socialist doctrine in its totality and understood that Christianity was essentially alien and by principle had to be excluded from the people’s fellowship, even though they viewed this as a longer process in which the youth in particular were to be liberated from Christianity by education in natural sciences. There were similar opinions in Sweden, but it was never a firm position among the leading nationalists in Sweden. And here is an important point: During this period, the Social Democrats and others were fighting to de-Christianize the Swedish people – in the name of science – while Swedish National Socialism instead became a mouthpiece for a conservative position where they stated that they wanted to preserve something that the revolutionary forces wanted to abolish. What I want to say is that it is obvious why National Socialism never became a revolutionary force in Sweden – it was heavily infiltrated by the reaction.
National Socialism, not nationalism
At the same time these reactionary forces felt that it was important that the indigenous form of the ”National Socialist” ideology was rooted in the nation state. They went to great lengths in speeches and in writing to distance themselves from the German variety. The largest nationalist party under the leadership of S.O. Lindholm went so far that they changed their name from NSAP (National Socialist Workers’ Party) to Svensk socialistisk samling (Swedish Socialist Unity). By doing this they were no longer National Socialists; they were Swedish Socialists. For some reason the nation state was seen as sacred, and ethnicity was more important than the race. Here we can also see the tragic consequences of this reasoning: Liberals were instead fighting for the idea of a united Nordic republic when Swedish National Socialists were busy venerating royalties such as Charles XII and praising an ethnic polity which was unsuitable for the demands of the future.
Bastardization of the ideology
Things did not go better for National Socialism after the war. There was neither the will nor the ability to discern. Our National Socialism, which from the beginning had been mixed with reactionary nationalism, later came to be bastardized even further by negative influences from Judeo-American cultural imperialism. The post-war period also led to the rise of nostalgic reactionaries who dreamed their way back to the Third Reich etc. Because nobody has sorted out this ideological chaos which is the ”nationalist movement”, nobody has created any clarity, nobody has tried to liberate National Socialism and define and clarify it, even less placed it in a context of realpolitik. Instead we can see that petite bourgeoisie elements all the time, from 1945 until now, have compromised and attempted to take shortcuts, shortcuts that lead to nowhere. During this time the only idea that could have been able to lead us forward has remained undeveloped like a noble plant running the risk of suffocating in a conglomeration of weeds.
Reactionaries calling themselves National Socialists
There are reactionaries even among those who call themselves National Socialists. These are people who have an exaggerated veneration of the past, who cannot let go of the old, people who have stuck to the outer form and attributes of earlier National Socialism. These people are per definition not National Socialists, even if they think so themselves. Worshipping the dead and at the same time rejecting the ones now living and struggling must be seen as a cardinal sin of National Socialism.
National Socialism in time and space
National Socialism is a worldview which has been founded on a number of true principles, which have been observed and laid down by men like Adolf Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg, among others. It’s important to understand that we are not striving for some ”orthodoxy”, and we are not claiming that everything should be as it was in the Third Reich. We are not the German NSDAP; we are not in any way bound to their party program. One of our most important tasks must be to establish what foundational principles can be discerned in the works of National Socialism and use them to further develop the National Socialism of our time. We must stay true to the inner truth of National Socialism and retain that part of the doctrine which is necessary for us not to be confused or corrupted. But at the same time we must shape National Socialism into a powerful worldview in the present and future. It is absolutely not about adapting to the anti-culture or the weak public opinion of the day, but about adapting to our time, our geographic, geopolitical and racial situation without mixing ”water in the wine”. Our goal is and remains the creation of a National Socialist state, but in our case it is not about re-establishing the Third Reich or any of its institutions or outer forms. Our goal is to create a Nordic National Socialist republic.
Never too late to do the right thing
Unless Swedes, Norwegians, Danes or Finns can be made to see things from a wider perspective and stop convulsively holding on to the idea of the nation state and other dead forms, then we are doomed to lose and our peoples will go extinct. Only the greater vision can create change and cause us to retake the initiative. Because we cannot just react; instead we must create the ideas of the future and reclaim the initiative from our enemies. In my article ”The Regime of the Future” I have presented the foundations for such a vision.
I will finish this piece with the words of Adolf Hitler:
But precisely in the seeming futility of our enormous struggle lies the greatness of our task and the possibility for success. Our battle cry, which will terrify those small in spirit, will be the signal which gathers together all true essences of the struggle.
