Article

Far right's opposition to war is no surprise

Bombing of Kosovo has whipped extremists into fury

by Warren Kinsella

IT IS not merely the far left, the New Democratic Party, and assorted tenured university professors who oppose the war against Slobodan Milosevic. The far right -- neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Holocaust deniers and their apologists -- strenuously object to the conflict, as well. Given the latter group's well-documented fondness for destabilizing conflicts, and the usage of force, this may come as a surprise.

But it should not, as we will see.

A quick tour through some of the 1,600 Web sites that far-right groups maintain on the World Wide Web shows near-total unanimity on Nato's action. From far and wide, skinheads and Klansmen and their ilk have been whipped into an indignant fury about the war.

Ernst Zundel, for example, is a Toronto-based pro-Nazi publisher. On his much-visited Web home -- called the "Zundelsite" and maintained for him by a follower in California -- Zundel recently offered up his views on the conflict: "[The war is] a chance for the proponents of multiculturalism to enforce their liberal chimera with guns and bombs . . . If Nato wins, the military-industrial complex can rub its blood-stained hands with glee, while the mothers weep and babies die."

Zundel's Web site manager struck a similarly melodramatic tone, sympathetically likening Milosevic's position to that of Hitler, and referring to Nato as "the warlords of the New World Order." As was the case with Nazi Germany, the Zundelsite proclaims, the Serbs merely wish to fashion "policies according to their own cultural traditions and needs, not the needs of liberal pipe dreamers and one-world globalists!"

David Irving, a British Holocaust denier who refers to himself as a "moderate fascist,"[1] has frequently used his slick Web site to denounce the war. Just last week, for example, Irving reproduced a critical column by Canadian journalist Michael Harris, stating that it highlighted what he called "Nato's half-truths, lies and bloody murder in the Balkans."[2]

Elsewhere, between advertisements for posters of Hitler[3] and Irving's much-reviled books, the British writer provides a direct e-mail link to the "Letters to the Editor" section at the National Post. Irving's followers are encouraged to write to the Post, applauding an anti-war column that appeared here by Prof. Michael Bliss, and supplied with tips on how to compose their letters.

The principal Web address for Canadian neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups such as the Heritage Front is called the Freedom Site.

At the four-year-old Web location, former Armed Forces reservist Marc Lemire provides a platform for the like-minded to heap opprobrium on multiculturalism, immigration, the Holocaust and "censorship" of the Internet. (Parenthetically, Messrs. Zundel and Irving have expressed tremendous affection for the CRTC's recent decision to refrain from preventing the circulation of hate propaganda in cyberspace.)[4]

A very recent essay on the Freedom Site is headlined: "Why Christians should oppose the War on Serbia." Among other things, the correspondent objects to the fact Nato is "bombing Christian women and children on behalf of Muslims!" If anyone deserves to be bombed, the Freedom Site columnist suggests, it is the Muslims for their faith.

There is much more of this sort of offal for those with the stomach for it. But, suffice to say, the far right remains steadfast in its opposition to the war in the Balkans. Why so?

The war against Milosevic's regime, most agree, is a long-overdue and co-ordinated international response to a humanitarian crisis. The fact Western leaders have pointed to the lessons of the Holocaust as a historical rationale for the Nato effort has rendered the far right apoplectic. Just as they know the reputation of National Socialism cannot be rehabilitated while a crime as monstrous as the Holocaust continues to be associated with Naziism, the leaders of the far right are certainly aware that oratory that draws parallels between Adolf Hitler and Slobodan Milosevic is unhelpful to their cause.

Similarly, the far right generally supports the genocidal program devised by Milosevic, and called ethnic cleansing: The forced separation of certain races, creeds and ethnic groups has been a core belief of the far right, after all, since the establishment of the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee in 1865. As the passage from the Zundelsite makes clear, the far right also possesses a lively paranoia about "One World Government" and its assorted manifestations -- the United Nations, the global banking system, gun control and black helicopters.

On the rare occasions when the international community actually joins forces to prevent a pogrom -- as was the case eight years ago during the Persian Gulf War -- the far right (like the far left) will be seen agitating against the effort. To the adherents of the Freedom Site, the Serbs are regarded as modern-day Christian Crusaders, once again ridding Europe of unwanted ethnic impurities.

If a cause may be judged by the character of those who support it, so too may it be judged by the quality of those who do not.

By that measure, the war against the regime of Slobodan Milosevic is a very noble cause, indeed.

Warren Kinsella corner

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Notes on Mr Kinsella's untruths:

1. This is a lie spread since 1959 by agents of the international Jewish community and the traditional enemies of free speech
2. The assessment "Nato's half-truths, lies and bloody murder in the Balkans" was by journalist Harris, not Mr Irving or his Website.
3. Characteristically Kinsella does not mention the poster of Winston Churchill
4. Mr Irving has expressed no view on the CRTC decision on this Website or elsewhere.

Other items on Nato's the Balkan war cited by David Irving's AR-Online during May 1999:

1. Robert Fisk calls the Nato bombing of a hospital a tragedy
2. Nato's Barbarism by Ambassador James Bissett
3. Who is Judge Louise Arbour and how can we get rid of her? asks Canada's national newspaper
4. Prof. Mandel reminds Canada that Nato's leaders are also under investigation as War Criminals
5. Spies tell China: Embassy Attack was no Accident
6. Michael Harris of the Toronto Sun, sick of NATO's half-truths, offers thoughts on Clinton's New World Order
7. French philosopher and writer Regis Debray writes A traveller's letter to the French President exposing the Nato lies on Yugoslavia
8. The name of Rambo appears in Rambouillet, observes hard-hitting Serge Thion
9. "It all went very well," said the Nato General, writes Robert Fisk. "Another effective day" | Weapons Makers Seek Rise in Pentagon Spending, reports N.Y. Times
10. Open Letter to Prof. Alan Dershowitz, an unlikely supporter of ethnic cleansing
11. In Aug 1997 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn already denounced double standards in international morality -- from Britain's bombing of Dresden to the tragedy in Yugoslavia
12. Nato: Post-war disillusionment ahead predicts Professor Michael Bliss in the National Post
13. Perhaps, writes George Will, somewhere near Brussels there is a warehouse stuffed with ballpoint pens, stationery, ash trays and other things emblazoned with Nato's logo. . .
14. Listen closely: Definitive analysis of the Yugoslavian Crisis. . .