REVIEWSrnMad Cows andrnEnglishmanrnby Paul GottfriedrnDreamer of the Day:rnFrancis Parker Yockey and thernPostwar Fascist Internationalrnby Kevin CooganrnNew York: Autonomedia; 644 pp., $16.95rnCool Croatiarnby Tomislav SunkrnGlastonbury, England: Vineyard Books,rn60 pp., £2.5rnStandardbearers:rnBritish Roots of the New RightrnJonathan Bowden, Eddy Butter, andrnAdrian Davies, editorsrnKent, England: Bloomsbury Forum,rn176 pp., £6.00rnIn recent months, several works havernappeared that throw Hght on the attitudesrnand concerns of various rightistrnmovements lacking the imprimatur of anrnestablished right. While it is hard to generalizernabout the disparate thinkers andrngroups featured in these books, they arernalike in having no relationship to thernAmerican right.rnAlso characteristic of these movementsrnis their indifference to the obsessive anticommunismrntypical of postwar Americanrnconservatism. Although admittedlyrnan emotionally distraught loner with arnmorbid attraction to Hitler, Francis ParkerrnYockey, the subject of Kevin Coogan’srnbook, combined anti-egalitarian and antimaterialistrnopinions with a favorablernview of the Soviet Union. For Yockey, arndisaffected Catholic drawn to Spengler’srnvision of a despiritualized modern civilization,rnthe Soviets were all that stood inrnthe way of an American empire markedrnby consumerism and the leveling of culturalrnand social distinctions. Despite thernfact that Yockey, who died as an FBI prisonerrnin 1960, was a Soviet agent whosernsocial criticism was laced with offensivernantisemitic tirades, his comments on thernAmerican world order, although writtenrnin the 40’s and 50’s, sound entirely contemporary.rnBoth the English musings of TomislavrnSunic, a multilingual Croatian man ofrnletters, and the unsettling ideas expressedrnby the conhibutors to the Standardbearersrnanthology exemplify other thoughtsrnout of season, many of which could havernbeen written by Nietzsche. Most of thernviews expressed by these authors, criticizingrndominant political and culturalrnforces, lead me to conclude that circumstancesrnare not very different in Europernfrom what they are here in the UnitedrnStates. Sunic is conspicuously upset thatrnthe American mania for global democracyrnhas spread to Europe, and that the entirernWestern world, while acquiringrnwealth and succumbing to multiculturalism,rnhas become morally degenerate. Hernhas little use for either European orrnAmerican culture in its present form, andrnhis meditations emphasize the family resemblancesrnbetween communist andrn”moribund capitalist” societies.rnThe Standardbearers anthology, producedrnby British New Right members ofrnthe Bloomsbury Forum, is a focused attemptrnto forge a defense of “English historicalrnnational identify.” Basing theirrnappeal to identify politics on historicalrnmodels, the contributors offer pointed biographiesrnof great Englishmen of thernpast. Some names (such as SamuelrnJohnson, Lords Salisbury and Palmerston,rnEdmund Burke, Hilaire Belloc,rnG.K. Chesterton, Benjamin Disraeli,rnand John Maynard Keynes) should be familiarrnto Chronicles readers; others (inrnparticular, William George Penney andrnSir Arnold Bax) will likely draw blankrnstares. What is most striking about thernStandardbearers project, ably intioducedrnby Antony Flew, is the editors’ decision torncreate an eclectic pedigree for their intellectualrnposition. Being adversarial isrnwhat the contributors are about, andrnwhat unites the socialist pah:iots, old-fashionedrnTories, unconventional playwrights,rnand libertarians depicted in thisrnanthology is their hostility to the worid ofrnTony Blair, whom Flew properly callsrn”the most radical Prime Minister that thernUnited Kingdom has ever had.”rnA point of reference for most contiibutorsrnis Hal Colebatch’s Blair’s Britainrn(Claridge Press, 1999), a sketch of thernpresent prime minister’s project for modernizingrnand internationalizing his country.rnAlthough Colebatch does not providerna detailed or particularly coherentrntreatment of his subject, he marshalsrncompelling evidence to underscorernBlair’s radical cultural and social views.rnHe also discredits the whistling-in-thedarkrnthat British Tories, including MargaretrnThatcher, have engaged in. (BecausernBlair is fiscally more restrainedrnthan earlier Labour leaders, he mustrntherefore be a closet conservative.) Byrncontrast, Colebatch and the contributorsrnto Standardbearers take seriously Blair’srnstatements that he hopes to make Englandrnmulticultural, strip it of its uniquernnational heritage, weaken further thernmonarchy and the House of Lords, andrncriminalize “insensitive” speech andrnthought.rnAgainst this revolutionary attemptrnto dispossess a nation, the BloomsburyrnForum raises the standard of English nationalrnparticularify. Whether the “standardbearers”rnwere socialists or free-marketeers,rnwhat distinguished them fromrnBlair’s “Cool Britannia” was their pridernin belonging to a distinct nation. It is preciselyrnthe hatred of England’s identityrnthat marks those whom these patriotsrnwould have opposed were they still alive.rnThe general point is well taken: Despiternthe supposed fiscal centrism that leadsrnAmerican “conservative” Ben Wattenbergrnto characterize today’s Eurosocialistsrnas Thatcherites and Reaganites, Blairrnand French Prime Minister LionelrnJospin are far more radical than were earlierrngenerations of European left-of-centerrnpoliticians. Their cultural goals, notrntheir unwillingness to nationalize privaternindustries, betray their hatred of theirrnown peoples. What defines today’s radicalrn(or, perhaps, establishment) politics isrnits combination of multiculturalism andrnthought control. Derek Turner of RightrnNOW! and his friends see this clearly.rnWhat is uncertain, however, is that werncan turn any of this around by invokingrn”standardbearers.”rnPaul Gottfried, a professor of humanitiesrnat Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown,rnPennsylvania, is the author, mostrnrecently, of After Liberalism: Mass Democracyrnin the Managerial State (Princeton).rn32/CHRONICLESrnrnrn