More on Derek Holland and IHS Press

This blog has examined the extremists connected with John Sharpe’s Legion of St. Louis (LSL) and IHS Press. Already mentioned is the fact that the LSL offers anti-Semitic titles, and that International Third Position (ITP) leader Derek Holland, a sympathizer with anti-American Arab governments – who traveled to Libya in 1988 and Iraq in 1990 – is a member of IHS Press’s board of directors.

It was not simply that Derek Holland and John Sharpe found themselves to be kindred spirits when they met up in Europe in the late 1990s. The ITP has long been involved in a scheme of Marxist style “entryism” – with the aim of co-opting groups which profess non-mainstream views (not extremist per se) in the hopes of bringing them under their neo-fascist umbrella. For years they made little headway.

But a breakthrough came with the ITP’s St. George Educational Trust (SGET) set up in the early 90s as a “Catholic charity” organization (an investigation of the group by the UK Charity Commission took place in 1997). It has to be understood that within European “revolutionary nationalism” there are two trends: one, professedly neo-pagan and even anti-Christian; the other, espousing a selective religiosity (not unlike the Klan and “Christian Identity” racialists in the US). But when push comes to shove, all such extremists put aside personal differences to unite in their hatred of Jews, non-whites and the United States. It is the totalitarian tendency which trumps everything else.

The problem with Sharpe’s activities is not just a question of overlapping ideas, but of overlapping resources. A look at my library shows that the SGET, whose books are sold by the LSL, has the same mailing address as the ITP’s Legion Books at Forest Place in Hampshire, England.

The SGET/LSL pamphlet Catholic Action: Uses, Abuses and Excuses is written by Derek Holland under the pen name of “Liam Connolly.” The article “Why Catholics Are Cowards” by Liam Connolly was published by the LSL and SGET in the booklet Faith and Fear. It first appeared in the Christmas 1998 issue of Candour, an anti-Semitic newsletter run by the ITP (now operating in the UK as “England First“).

Another fact that puts Sharpe’s Neo-Conned anti-war series (put out by IHS Press/Light in the Darkness publications) into perspective is that Derek Holland, through the ITP, is associated with the neo-nazi German NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands). Holland spoke at their events in 1999 and 2000. It turns out that the NPD is also linked to al-Qaeda via Ahmed Huber, a Swiss extremist who converted to Islam in the 1960s (see Financial Times story). The ITP and its cronies actively sympathize with violent activity against the US.

The Third Position: The New Nationalism and the New Racialism

Key to understanding the post-war political fringe re developments that took place in Britain in the 1980s. Specifically, these developments grew out of the British National Front (the activities of NF leaders, Derek Holland and Roberto Fiore, have been noted earlier). These developments helped set the “new nationalists” apart from the Nazi political dinosaurs who, to the young Turks of the movement, droned on endlessly about immigration and the cranial capacities of difference races. The achievement of the intellectually inclined nationalists seemed meager at first. In terms of sheer numbers, the NF membership plummeted. But over time the self-styled national revolutionary elite proved the most successful in breaking into new circles, especially those with religious affiliations.

The Third Positionists of the National Front wanted the student youth support hitherto monopolized by the Marxists. “Social Justice, Ecology and Racial Purity” were called the three pillars of the “new nationalism.” The NF even took up the cause of militant “animal liberation.” The party advanced a remarkably eclectic program drawn from such sources as the Distributism of Chesterton and Belloc, the agrarian utopian-socialism of William Morris, Muammar Qaddafi’s Green Book, the Romanian fascist Iron Guard, and Strasserite National Socialism. Despite the confusing permutations over the years, certain key concepts have remained in steady use—”national revolution,” “against capitalism and communism,” “beyond left and right,” etc.

NF theorists formulated strategies that have become commonplace amongst other far right groups. They can be largely credited with the “new racialism” whereby neo-fascists sought to shed an overtly Nazi racist image. They no longer advocated “race hate” but “racial separatism.” In 1987, under the direction of the triumvirate of Derek Holland, Nick Griffin and Pat Harrington, the NF provoked shock and interest with headlines proclaiming solidarity with “black nationalists” like Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. Little came out of it and the NF could only garner the backing of some insignificant, three-man organizations like the Pan-African International Movement. Part of the problem was that black separatists could be as bigoted as their white counterparts, and they may have felt white nationalists were just angling for good copy.

By the mid-1980s the NF had gone through a number of purges. In 1980, NF Chairman John Tyndale was ousted, and over time the old-guard neo-Nazis were eliminated in favor of the more radical revolutionary nationalists. The period 1985-6 saw a further split between the “ideologues” and the “street activists.” For a time this led to a confusing state of affairs in which there were actually two rival NFs. But the smaller and more elite “Political Soldier” wing eventually came out on top. Even after the NF collapsed in 1989, giving rise to the International Third Position (ITP), the Political Soldiers set the tone for neo-fascist subversion in the years to come.