As the decade advanced, though, it became increasingly evident for Milá and his comrades that carrying on the fight from European soil was not an option anymore. Accordingly, many of the second‐generation activists devoted huge efforts to the strengthening of a fully international strategy which went beyond the borders of Europe. As Ernesto Milá explained in his memoirs:
Although in Europe it had become impossible to work, in other geographical areas there was a much more favourable situation. […] This web of contacts in Latin America and Africa was enough to establish an international strategy. It was about staying on the defensive in Europe, improving positions in Latin America and Africa in such a way that we were able to establish ‘sanctuaries’ in these areas and, at the same time, the basis for generating the economic means that would allow us later to ‘return to Europe’. Based on this strategy, we intervened directly in some Latin American, Central American and African countries between 1975 and 1985.⁸³
In the context of the 1980s police prosecution, therefore, Milá (and other activists like Delle Chiaie), finally decided to depart to Latin America, where they engaged in collaboration with a number of activists and régimes.⁸⁴ Once again, this was possible thanks to the transnational network, which facilitated some stable money streams, exchanges of information and data between very distant countries, as well as of documentation and media.⁸⁵
In turn, Milá would end up in Bolivia working as a political adviser for the short‐lived dictatorship of Luis García Meza, along with other neofascist ‘comrades’ such as Stefano delle Chiaie and Klaus Barbie. His tasks there were incredibly varied. First, he would regularly meet with the highest echelons of the military or with important politicians and businessmen. Second, Milá used these contacts to collect information about communist guerrilla movements like the Peruvian Sendero Luminoso. Milá would then write reports advising on the best strategies to prevent the expansion of these movements and fight them.
Milá would also create and spread fake news which was sent to the different news agencies in the continent. The idea was to give the impression that these guerrillas were a huge imminent threat for the stability of the region. Finally, Milá would also help in taking care of the different businesses the network had at its disposal there, in this case managing three mines (gold and copper) and several rubber plantations.⁸⁶
However, the activities of Milá on the other side of the Atlantic would not last long, either. As the dictatorships in Latin America began to collapse during the 1980s, the Spanish neofascist was confronted with the need to return to Europe. This, in turn, would mean the end of Milá’s political activism. Indeed, upon his return to Spain in 1983, he was arrested by the police, indicted on firearms and illegal demonstration charges, and eventually sentenced to two years in prison.⁸⁷
On 3 October 1985, El País informed of a new arrest, this time in the streets of Barcelona, and his immediate confinement in the Modelo Prison, in order to execute his pending sentence for the arson of the UCD [Barcelona Union of the Democratic Centre] headquarters in Barcelona that had taken place in 1980.⁸⁸
(Emphasis added. Click here for more.)
The geography used by Thiriart to delineate his ‘Third Force Europe’ also showed a particular understanding of international relations and, more specifically, of the ongoing decolonization process. In this regard, the Belgian neofascist conceded that re‐structuring the basis of relations between the colonized and the colonizers was necessary, but always without harming the interests of Europeans.
Thiriart was thus able to wave the anti‐imperialist flag while advocating for a different strategy than the one defended by the United Nations. At the same time, Thiriart portrayed himself as a champion of Western supremacy and a firm defender of Europe’s civilizing mission, arguing that Europeans needed to keep a strong presence in Africa and the Middle East as a way to help other ‘peoples’ progress, despite the growing ‘anti‐white‐racism’. In his own words, ‘We have been colonisers and not colonialists, as you try to make us believe. We have taught [black folk] everything, including the techniques they are turning against us today.’⁴⁷
Linked to his views on decolonization, Thiriart also presented a different perspective on the racial dimension of his ‘Third Force Europe’, which, in his view, could not be built around one single privileged race. Accordingly, Thiriart condemned the conception of an ethnically Germanic continent as harmful and dangerous, thus taking distance from the more biological racist theories predominant in Northern European neofascist groups, especially Germany. Instead, the Belgian neofascist envisaged a Europe in which Slavs, Latins and Germans were ‘of equal value’.⁴⁸
The very existence of the diversity of races in Europe, Thiriart argued, ‘makes us substantially and irrevocably condemn racism as a political argument’.⁴⁹
At the same time, though, the Belgian neofascist defended the importance of keeping the various races separate, especially the ones from outside of Europe, such as blacks and Arabs, that threatened to corrupt the European whiteness. In this way, Thiriart was creating a certain hierarchy of races in order to avoid what he labelled as the ‘confusion created by a theoretical, abstract and unrealistic egalitarianism’.⁵⁰
In essence, Thiriart was using an anti‐racist rhetoric to present a new form of racism which would be very influential in the following decades.
[…]
In order to accomplish these goals, neofascist activists first needed to destabilize the state by rendering normal public life intolerably dangerous. If the parliamentary régime of capitalist interests was pushed hard enough through an increasingly violent struggle, the younger militants reasoned, the moderate and conservative parties in government would eventually lose control of the situation, thus leaving the existing far‐right parties in control.
In other words, an escalation of violent actions (which ranged from attacking bookstores to full‐on terrorist attacks) would exacerbate the vulnerability of democratic institutions and rally societal support behind the military or police forces, which, in turn, would ally with these neofascist groups to attack enemies of the government. The ideal outcome of this strategy would be the elimination of left‐wing actors and the constitution of authoritarian régimes with corporatist economies, headed by those far‐right parties which were still part of the system.⁶
As a way to carry out that strategy, the emergent neofascist groups decided that it was better to create a series of malleable horizontal structures, instead of the more rigid single vertical organization. The outcome was the network baptized by the press of the time as the ‘Black International’.⁶⁷
This web was flexible by necessity, allowing the individual members to work on single campaigns in their own countries or to come together and concentrate their combined strength on a single episode across borders. The pliability of this form of collaboration was confirmed by Ernesto Milá in his memoirs:
The network of international relations constituted at that time was, above all, an informal network of relationships based on past experiences and collaborations formed around a relatively small group of people who maintained common bonds and ties for more than a decade. It was not only a militant structure, but also and above all a network of informal relations that crystallised at certain times and for certain actions. Its gestation had been long, and, in fact, it added different networks.⁶⁸
The ensuing violent actions throughout Western Europe were thus the outcome of a unique strategy, carried out by a constellation of groups, movements and underground cells, which cooperated with each other and coordinated their actions on the basis of their belonging to an imagined space of solidarity. In terms of membership, these networks were clearly transversal, including people from very different social backgrounds, ranging from politicians and journalists, to military personnel and policemen, and others.⁶⁹
It is worth noting that the transnational and malleable network was the place where the three spaces described in this special issue eventually merged. First, the violent actions which neofascists carried out collaboratively within the web provided them with a clear space of social experience and concrete political engagement.
Moreover, the members of these networks used the already existing spaces of knowledge circulation to exchange insights about the best way to carry out those violent actions. This was crucial because many of the young militants were born after the Second World War and, therefore, had no combat experience.
In desperate need of military training from those ‘comrades’ who had been fighting ‘the war against communism’ since the 1940s, the younger militants thus set up a number of training camps across Western Europe to learn the basics: how to make a bomb, fire a gun or even follow a potential ‘target’.⁷⁰
This military training not only represented a space of social experience and concrete political engagement, but also contributed to expanding and strengthening the imagined spaces of belonging and solidarity. The fact that the militants volunteered to go to these camps clearly showed that they shared the desire for a different type of Europe.⁷¹
Furthermore, training to carry out violent actions together only intensified that sense of belonging. As Junio Valerio Borghese used to tell the young activists who would join the network: ‘Only action unites.’⁷²
As regards the physical contours of this transnational activism, the CIA noted in a report issued in May 1983 that the violent actions of the neofascists, although generally spread across all of Western Europe, had quickly become ‘more prominent in countries with a fascist or Nazi past such as Italy, West Germany, and Spain, and in countries like France that have deep historical cleavages between left and right’.⁷³
Specifically, the U.S. intelligence services concluded, after conducting a careful analysis of the different strikes, that Italy emerged as one of the main epicentres between 1969 and 1974.⁷⁴ After the dissolution of the Portuguese and Greek régimes, though, this initial focus shifted slightly to include Spain; with ETA’s assassination of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, Franco’s right‐hand man and potential successor, the defence of the Francoist régime had become the main neofascist active cause in Europe.⁷⁵
In this way, the years between 1974 and 1978 witnessed a considerable flow of neofascist militants from different parts of the world (mainly Italy, France and Argentina) coming to Franco’s Spain in order to ensure that, after the imminent death of the dictator, the country did not fall into communism.
Partly as a result of the internationalization of neofascists in Spain after 1974, the far‐right strategy became increasingly violent, reaching its climax in the years 1976–77, with the clashes in Montejurra which ended with two dead and several wounded, and the assassination of five labour activists from the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and the workers’ federation Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO) in the centre of Madrid.
This last action, also known as the Atocha massacre, caused a considerable backlash in Spain, eventually facilitating the legalization of the PCE and the approval of the [pseudo]democratic constitution in 1978.⁷⁶
(Emphasis added.)
Click here for events that happened today (October 22).
1936: The Belgian Rexist Party announced its intention to march on Brussels in a conscious imitation of Mussolini’s March on Rome in order to ‘sweep out the Paul van Zeeland government and its corruption’ despite a government order prohibiting the march.
1937: The Duke of Windsor and his wife met Adolf Schicklgruber at the Berghof. As they departed Schicklgruber made the Fascist salute, which the Duke returned!
1940: Per Aktion Burckel, the Axis deported 29,000 Jews in Alsace‐Lorraine, Saarland, and Baden to Southern France. As well, Adolf Schicklgruber and Pierre Laval met for the first time at Montoire‐sur‐le‐Loir, around the same time that the Reich commissioned the submarine U‐108. Additionally, Rome set the date of the invasion of Greece to October 28, 1940. The government had decided to attack Greece without informing the Germans, as the German Reich had a history of starting wars without sharing advance information with the Kingdom of Italy.
1941: An explosion at the Romanian Command Headquarters in Odessa killed sixty‐seven bipeds, including Axis General Glogojeanu and four Kriegsmarine officers. The explosion was caused by a time‐delayed bomb left by Soviet Coastal Army personnel during the evacuation. Antonescu ordered the extermination of one hundred Jews and Communists for each enlisted man and three hundred for each officer killed in this explosion.
Coincidentally, the Axis executed French resistance member Guy Môquet and twenty‐nine other hostages in retaliation for the death of a German officer. Marshal Philippe Pétain and Admiral François Darlan broadcast an appeal to the French nation calling restraint from any actions against the occupying Axis troops which could bring down reprisals on hostages.
Axis submarine U‐68 sank Allied oiler RFA Darkdale off St. Helena in the South Atlantic at 0142 hours, destroying 3,000 tons of fuel oil, 850 tons of aviation fuel, and 500 tons of diesel oil; forty‐one humans died, yet four survived including the captain. Afterwards, Panzergruppe 2, resupplied with fuel and ammunition, continued the northeastward advance on Moscow, and the 4th Panzer Division resumed the attack on Mtsensk, Russia.
1942: The Axis took over most of the Red October and Barricade factories in northern Stalingrad. The Axis also transferred seven Allied commandos to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, where they would soon face execution.
1943: Block 11 of Auschwitz I concentration camp held a trial that sentenced seventy‐six men and nineteen women to death; they had transferred from the prison in Myslowitz. The trial was presided by the new head of the Kattowitz Gestapo, SS‐Obersturbanfuehrer Johannes Thümmler, who was never punished after the war and passed away from old age in May 2002.
Axis submarine U‐68 sunk HMS Orfasy off Freetown, Sierra Leone, and the Axis submarine U‐357 established Weather Station Kurt. As far as we know, this was the Third Reich’s only military installation on North American land. Meanwhile, in the second firestorm raid on the Third Reich, the RAF conducted an air raid on the town of Kassel, massacring ten thousand and rendering fifteen times as many homeless.
1944: In a private conversation between Otto Skorzeny and his Chancellor, Skorzeny narrated the kidnapping of Miklós Horthy, Jr. and the attack on Castle Hill in Budapest on October 15, 1944. Later in the same conversation, the Chancellor revealed to Skorzeny the plans for the Ardennes Offensive and asked him to plan a commando operation behind enemy lines in captured uniforms. When questioned the legal concerns of wearing enemy uniforms, the Chancellor told him that German intelligence informed him that the Americans had done the same in the Aachen area. Berlin ordered Skorzeny to complete the planning by December 2, 1944.
The Western Axis’s 485 Mobile Artillery Detachment, responsible for launching V‐2 rockets, arrived at the Hague, the Netherlands. It immediately began to set up their equipment for a renewed rocket campaign against London. Coincidentally, the blast of a V‐1 flying bomb killed two folk and wounded sixty‐nine at the Orsett Road‐Derby Road junction in Grays, Essex, England. Additionally, Axis fleets set sail for the Philippine Islands in search of a decisive confrontation with an Allied navy.