Wednesday, January 11, 2006

More from Fringe Watch

Fringe Watch has a third post about the Neo-Conned series of anti-war books, published by John Sharpe (through his IHS Press/Light in the Darkness imprint). The third installment focuses on Derek Holland and Roberto Fiore, noted "extreme nationalists," and their ties to Sharpe. Some members of the anarcho-libertarian contingent at LewRockwell.com ("anti-state, anti-war, pro-market") have contributed to and touted the Neo-Conned books (see here, here, and here). That is disturbing, given the provenance of the Neo-Conned series. Here, with permission, is what Fringe Watch has to say about Holland, Fiore, and Sharpe:

John Sharpe's Ties to Holland and Fiore

In my last post I looked at the anti-Semitic propaganda of John Sharpe, whose IHS Press has published two anti-war books: Neo-Conned and Neo-Conned Again!, which are being heavily promoted in paleo-conservative and paleo-liberterian circles by the uninformed.

My own experience bears directly on this subject. Starting in the 1980s, I became acquainted with the British National Front (NF), the premier "revolutionary nationalist" and racialist movement before its implosion in 1989. Out of that collapse emerged an even more radical outfit called the International Third Position (ITP) headed by Derek Holland and Roberto Fiore.

Both Holland and Fiore have received considerable treatment in works on European extremist nationalism, including Fascism: A History by Roger Eatwell (1997) and Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (2002).

As Chairman of the NF, and later the ITP's chief ideologue, Holland exerted a decisive influence. He authored The Political Soldier, which is the Koran of militant nationalists throughout Europe. In many places it invokes the imagery of Muslism fanatics as nationalist "martyrs." He has been a supporter of radical Arab regimes, visiting Libya in 1988 and Iraq in 1990 (photo and information on the Libyan trip is available online).

Given these credentials it is hardly surprising that Holland should back the Neo-Conned anti-war series as a director of IHS Press. Some people may be misled by the fact that Holland now operates under his Irish Gaelic name, Deric O'Huallachain (having relocated to Ireland from the UK a few years ago). However, earlier copies of the Virginia SCC certificate for IHS Press shows it as Derek Holland.

From the moment that IHS Press was established in 2001, people expressed concern, but were reassured (as was this writer) that Holland had put his extremism "behind him." Apparently that didn't stop him from being guest speaker at the February 2002 racial nationalist Nationaldemokratisk Ungdom (NDU) in Sweden. In March of that year the German neo-nazi Deutsche Stimme (German Voice) featured his essay, "Theory and Strategy: The Path of the Political Soldier." An overnight transition from political radicalism to religious orthodoxy seems improbable. And his activities in Ireland have covered as recently as 2005 in the Brandsma Review.

Roberto Fiore, Holland's close collaborator, was a member of the political wing of the Armed Revolutionary Nuclei which claimed responsibility for the 1980 Bologna bomb attack which claimed 85 lives. In 1997 Fiore came out of hiding in the UK to head the openly fascist Forza Nuova party in Italy.

What is the link to Neo-Conned? Fiore, as part of the ITP, helped set up the St. George Educational Trust (more here) which is the UK counterpart to, and collaborator with, Sharpe's pseudo-Catholic Legion of St. Louis.