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The ‘Natural Leaders’ and Their World

One of the big questions facing every historian of Fascism (particularly historians of Fascist culture) is this: given that British Fascist activism and (especially) ideas remained marginal and largely politically unsuccessful, are they worthy of study? Ryan Schaffer’s new book answers this question ably. At first, Fascist music might seem an odd entry point, but, as Schaffer shows, the music subculture developed by the National Front and other groups came to dominate Fascist activism. Postwar British Fascism was, in fact, far more successful as a subculture than as a political movement. Schaffer’s re-examination of the history of British Fascism challenges us to re-evaluate our measures of political influence. Music, Youth and International Links in Post-War British Fascism tells the story of how, when election after election saw Fascist candidates lose their deposits, youth outside Britain, from Germany to the United States, were engaging with Fascist ideas through British neo-Nazis’ music. Overall, the book details the importance of culture to the political project of late twentieth-century British Fascism. Although British Fascism never constituted a serious electoral threat, for anti-Fascists and British people of color, it has often been an existential threat. As Schaffer shows, neo-Nazi music appealed to a hard core of supporters unmoved by electioneering but radicalized by the rough rhetoric and images of Fascist music subculture. Violent extremists of this kind were involved in sometimes fatal assaults; for instance, Schaffer refers to the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 by Combat 18 activists. In addition to Fascist publications from the time, Music, Youth and International Links in Post-War British Fascism is based on an impressive body of interviews carried out by the author with some of the main figures of British anti-Fascism and Fascism. Alongside these major players, Schaffer interviews other individuals who have previously never gone on the historical record about their experiences. These new interviews mark the book as a valuable contribution to the field, next to other wellestablished studies of postwar British Fascism by scholars such as Nigel Copsey and Graham Macklin. Occasionally, Schaffer’s overreliance on Fascist sources is a concern; on a number of occasions, for instance, he takes the word of Fascist newspapers about matters such as attendance at rallies, concerts, and meetings. Although using Fascist sources when studying Fascism is essential, it is worth bearing in mind that Fascists are rarely entirely reliable narrators, and their claims need to be corroborated, where possible, with nonFascist sources. Schaffer’s work even forces us to revise our conceptions of the electoral performance of Fascism. Alarmingly, the latter half of the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s emerge as periods of unprecedented Fascist electoral success. In particular, the years of 2005 and 2009 stand out as the high points of British Fascism, with victories in local councils across Britain and even in EU Parliament elections. Though Schaffer is careful not to inflate British Fascism, his work is a timely reminder that it is only in very recent history that it has ever looked like it really could happen here. Even at its high point, though, the British radical right was still a long way off from victory. Today, with the BNP in pieces and the recent collapse of the UKIP vote, the electoral fortunes of the radical right in Britain are comfortingly bleak. As Schaffer shows, though, there are more mediums for the transmission of these political ideas than just electoral politics. Perhaps the most interesting part of Schaffer’s book comes toward the end, when he covers the recent disintegration of the BNP and the increasing trasnsnationalization of the British radical right. Social media has facilitated the free flow of radical right ideas across America and Europe (especially Eastern Europe and Russia). In a sign of how the radical right is changing, Schaffer ends by discussing the recent transnational activism of Nick Griffin, veteran Fascist and former leader of the BNP. Recently, Griffin has met with Fascists in Hungary, has visited Putin’s Russia (which he admires immensely), and has multiple times been a guest of the Assad regime in Syria. Although the electoral fortunes of British Fascism remain unfavorable, it is hard not to be alarmed by the image Schaffer conjures of this crossborder convergence of the world’s reactionaries.