So I was looking up nazbols because I’ve been curious about them. Wikipedia (everyone’s favourite website) considers the movement to a brand of fascism.
So of course whilst searching “nazbol” I saw the National Bolshevik Party’s official page. Clicked on it, when to “questions” and then “concerns” and proceded to laugh my arse off after reading this:
Aren’t you just Commie-Nazis?
The National Bolshevik Party is not a “commie-nazi” organization. We reject both communism and nazism.
So they don’t think they’re “commie-nazis,” and they also make it 100% clear repeatedly that “NO, WE’RE NOT RELATED TO LENIN, OR THE BOLSHEVIKS OR THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTIONS!”
So what are they related to? It’s clear they don’t think they’re communists, but the Wikipedia page says early on they claimed to adhere to Marxism. The Serbian Radical Party (apparently another nazbol shitfest) apparently support a socialised economy and glorification of their communist past, as well as anti-imperialism (which, granted, is not actually inherently a left-wing stance) and support for left-wing leaders like Maduro and Gaddaffi.
So I ask: What the fuck is a nazbol? What is National Bolshevism? Why does a party that claims to have nothing to do with the Bolsheviks called the “National Bolshevik Party,” why is their logo a hammer and sickle if they’re not communists, what is their history, what is the best analysis of them, are they scum or misunderstood comrades (I fucking doubt it)? Why are they such a fucking meme?
Nazbols and associated ideologies are reactionaries in action. They like Marxism for the economical and philosophical analyses, but they have not yet shed their reactionary views about nationality, race, gender, etc.
Nazbols in Russia form a particular group because of their Soviet past. I suppose they must reject communism and “nazism” because they see themselves as neither – but as we know, what you think you are versus what you really are can be two very different things.
It’s sometimes summed up as “left on labour, right on values”. Because they still fight for these reactionary views, they can never be communists. If their planned economy comes at the expense of minorities then I don’t want any of it. Because their primary fight (and as such contradiction to resolve) is one of identity, not of class, they are not communists.
There is not one expression of national-bolchevism only and no, it’s not a meme ideology. Strasserists are nazbols too, in a way, and they existed since the 1930s.
What do nazbols believe in? That Jews and other minorities (but mostly Jews) are holding the country back, and that they are found in the “higher strata” of society, i.e. politics and business – which as marxists we recognize as a class problem. They also believe the average worker can join their fight regardless of their origins, as long as they identify in national values. If you consider yourself to be from their country, if you do everything to assimilate yourself, then the nazbol will mostly accept you. They believe in nations to the extreme, and as such are not very far from ethnonationalists. Except it’s not the ethnic background that matters, but that you follow their nationalist line. That means converting to the “historical” religion, speaking the local language perfectly, respecting the traditions (and that should ring some bells). It means shedding everything that has accompanied you in life until that point to fit in a completely alien society.
Economically they generally believe in planned economies, giving power to the workers, etc. but again, the antagonism to them is not with the bourgeois but with the Jew.
While they remain a very small force in the world, they are still dangerous because they wield marxism so well in some instances.
Thanks for the answer. Although the page itself says they’re not an anti-semetic organisation, I suppose there’s more evidence to the contrary?
I’m using “nazbol” as a general term for these “left on economy, right on values” ideologies, for lack of a better term. It’s entirely possible that some nazbol parties, such as the Russian one, are not anti-semitic – I don’t know enough about them specifically.
It’s questionable which nazbol site you found exactly though, because this one last updated their copyrights in 2018 and lists no address anywhere. All I can find is that it was created in 2016 and is hosted by dreamhost, one of those cheap US website hosts. Though in their policies they talk of a 15$ minimum wage, so it’s probably an Amerikan party (or honeypot lol). They also show a clear Nazi symbol (the black sun) on their homepage. If you click on “Platform” (not the sublinks), they also talk about “Dasein”, a German philosophy propagated by Heidegger, a Nazi philosopher. While they pretend they are the “fourth way” (liberalism is first, communism is second, fascism is third), their ties are very clear.
But outside of this weird website, these people exist and achieve followings in the world; Alain Soral for example is a famous French nazbol who became famous because he’s so unhinged and makes 0 sense (kinda like Jordan Peterson in that way), which made him memeable. Otherwise people don’t really take him seriously.
I have no clue, but it seems to me like someone took Bolshevism/Marxism-Leninism, and took out all the theory, leaving only the “branding”.
They always seemed to me like a meme ideology. How can you have national bolsheviks when the bolsheviks were explicitly internationalists and we’re against national chauvinism.
Nationalism certainly plays a big role in oppressed nations, and its very different from nationalism in imperialist countries. Carl Zha has a good video where his Indonesian wife talks about that.
I don’t typically think of modern Russia as an oppressed nation.
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