De Fabel van de illegaal on internet
september 1999


Millionaire Goldsmith supports the Left and the extreme Right

All over Europe New Right ideologists are seeking contact with Left wing activists to build together on a movement against, for instance, the destruction of nature or against "globalisation". (1) In this way the extreme Right also hopes to become accepted again. The British ecologist Edward Goldsmith supports them at that. He sponsors and works together with dozens of progressive organisations and is one of the driving forces behind the international campaign-networks against "free trade". At the same time he is becoming a more important factor within the extreme Right.

Being mentioned together with Leftist intellectuals and activists, is the first step in the New Right strategy. This spring the extreme Right celebrated the many Left wing signatures on their nationalist petition against the Kosovo war. (2) Around the same time Goldsmith also joined the Left and the extreme Right on a petition: his "Ecologist's declaration on climate change". (3) In the Netherlands the petition was signed by members of organisations like A SEED, Aktie Strohalm, Corporate Europe Observatory en Stichting Aarde.

By signing they came out shoulder to shoulder with co-signer Philippe de Villiers, the leader of the French extreme Right party Mouvement Pour la France (MPF). This rigidly catholic of noble blood is a prominent member of the French New Right. He wants to completely close all borders, forbid abortion and reintroduce the death penalty. The MPF was founded in 1994 with 3,5 million dollar donated by the late James Goldsmith, Edwards extremely rich brother. (4) De Villiers succeeds in making the extreme Right attractive to the rich, who still consider it somewhat indecent to vote for Le Pen's Front National. At the Euro-elections in 1994 and 1998 De Villiers got around 13% of the votes. Nowadays De Villiers shares his party leadership with ex-minister Pasqua, famous for his completely inhuman anti-migration policy making. (5)

Goldsmith regularly introduces extreme Right activists in all kinds of initiatives, as if they represent one of the accepted political ideologies. He actively breaks through the anti-fascist cordon sanitaire that has in many countries been laid around the extreme Right. Two recent examples.

Goldsmith is owner and chief-editor of the magazine The Ecologist, which organized a congress on the May 26th, 1999, together with the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC). Goldsmith allowed the British New Right ideologist Roger Scruton to join the recommending committee. Scruton is the editor of the New Right magazine Salisbury Review, which this spring published an article by Alexandra Colen. (6) She is a leader of the Belgium extreme Right party Vlaams Blok.

The Ecologist also monthly prints an advertisement for the Australian antisemitic conspiracy fanzine Nexus. There is even a "special offer" for Ecologist readers subscribing to Nexus. (7) This spring Nexus published a very long article on "jewish capital" and the powerful position it is supposed to have had in the history of Europe. (8)

Visiting the New Right

Edward Goldsmith not only promotes the New Right, he also likes to visit them. He is by now a very welcome guest in New Right circles in Belgium and France. On November 27th, 1994, he gave his first lecture at a colloquium organized bij GRECE, the think tank connected to the French Front National. (9) This 28th GRECE-colloquium was in fact a 25th birthday party of the organisation, and Goldsmith was the guest of honour. GRECE-director Alain de Benoist and Goldsmith really got along well and the British millionaire became a regular visitor to De Benoist's meetings. (10) "A good guy, this Benoist, there's nothing wrong with him", says Goldsmith. (11) He read a lot of Benoist's "very interesting" books and articles and believes the ideas of GRECE "have changed very much these last dozen years". (12) With this type of comments Goldsmith actively supports the extreme Right aspirations to be accepted.

On November 11th, 1997, Goldsmith was the main guest on the third TeKoS-colloquium in Antwerp, Belgium. TeKoS is a daughter organisation of GRECE, and closely connected to the Vlaams Blok. "How are we going to survive decadence?", the discussion was named. Fellow lecturers were De Benoist and TeKoS chief editor Luc Pauwels. Pauwels was among the Founders of the Vlaams Blok.

Goldsmiths lecture was translated for TeKoS magazine by Guy de Martelaere, probably Belgiums biggest Goldsmith fan. Before he already translated a lot of Goldsmiths articles published in The Ecologist, and even Goldsmiths magnum opus The Way. In his own New Right ecology magazine Gwenved De Martelaere publishes often on Goldsmith. (13) In the spring of 1998 the millionaire also gave an interview to De Martelaeres collegues of the Flemish-nationalist and ecologist magazine Vrijbuiter. (14)

Visiting the Bushmen

On January 11th, 1998, Goldsmith gave a lecture in Paris at the first colloquium of the New Right ecology organisation Le recours aux forêts, titled: "L'ecologie contre le progr s?" Among the other lecturers were again Alain de Benoist and also members of De Villiers' MPF. (15) "Le recours aux forêts" means "return to the forest". Many extreme Right ideologists believe that "the Indo-Germans" (meaning: Aryans) are "by nature forestdwellers", whereas "the Semites are desert peoples". Le recours aux forêts was founded by GRECE. The think tank wants to use the ecology and neo-pagan movements to make Blut-und-Boden (Blood-and-soil) popular again.

Le recours aux forêts-director Laurent Ozon is also head of the ecology branch of GRECE, called La nouvelle écologie. (16) Just like Front National leader Mégret, Ozon is a product of De Benoist's New Right education institute La nouvelle école. He regularly writes in De Benoist's magazines Krisis and Elements. (10) Ozon has become a faithful follower of Goldsmith and quotes him continuously in his own writings. (17) He also interviewed Goldsmith and published numerous articles of the millionaire in the Le recours aux forêts-magazine. Every issue of this magazine also contains articles by De Benoist and several members of the Front National. (18)

Laurent Ozon and Goldsmith became good friends. Together they regularly visit the meetings organized by De Benoist. (10) Ozon asked Goldsmith to run at the European elections in june 1999 by way of the Mouvement Ecologiste Independante (MEI), a Right wing ecological party with about 1.000 members. (9) Goldsmith made Ozon his spokesman en let him handle the negotiations with the MEI on his participation. Goldsmith voiced only one condition: his old pal Antione Waechter was to head the party's list.

Goldsmith and Waechter go back a long time. They have known each other since a meeting in 1973, when Waechter started Les Verts, the French Green Party. (19) He left the party again in 1994, finding it too much turned to the Left. His new habitat became GRECE. He wrote several articles in Le recours aux forêts (15) and was one of the lecturers on the second Le recours aux forêts colloquium on January 24th, 1999. (9)

The governing board of MEI quickly gave in to Goldsmiths plans, hearing that the millionaire would bring a lot of money. (10) Goldsmith swiftly delivered an European electionprogramm. (19) However, after some turmoil in the French press on Waechter's extreme Right ideas, Goldsmith withdrew from the party on February 16th, 1999.

"A compelling speaker", the editors of the Dutch New Right magazine Studie, Opbouw, Strijd (study, organize, struggle, SOS) wrote, after witnessing a lecture by Ozon at the 1997 GRECE summer university. In the next issue they published an article by Ozon and advised their readers to get to know his other works, and that of Waechter and Goldsmith, and also the magazines Le recours aux forêts and The Ecologist. (20)

An European wide fanclub

For some 30 years Goldsmith has been promoting the same totalitarian ecological worldview. (21) The last couple of years more and more prominent New right ideologists are embracing his ideas, including Robert Steuckers. This Belgian is the driving force and secretary general of the European network of New Right think tanks called Synergies Européennes (SE). Starting in 1981, Steuckers was assistant and assumed successor to De Benoist. In 1993, after an internal disagreement he left GRECE together with a small group of followers and founded SE. Steuckers thinks that the New Right should not only discuss ideology, but also engage in the reality of politics and power. (22) Nowadays he is trying to break, European wide, the cordon sanitaire by stimulating alliances between nationalist groups and old communist parties and trade unions. SE already build sections in France, Belgium, Portugal, Russia, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Italy and Germany. The political projects of De Benoist and Steuckers seem to really enhance each other, and their organisations do work together regularly. SE member Robert Cousty, for instance, was cofounder of Le recours aux forêts, which is mainly a GRECE project. (23)

The international sections of SE are really getting into Edward Goldsmiths thinking. (24) His book The Way is becoming almost compulsary in those circles. (25) All sorts of ecological, regionalist and spiritual groupings are also merging into the SE network these days. (26) Examples are the ecofascist Unabhängigen ökologen Deutschlands and the Arbeitskreis Grüne Trommel from Hamburg. They also see Goldsmiths work as fundamentally important. (23) Steuckers is also very active in the pagan movement and also feels attracted to Goldsmith because of his propaganda for pagan religions. "The time of the cross has gone. The sun wheel will return, and we will be liberated from the jewish God, and our people will get back its honour", says Steuckers. (27)

Eric Krebbers

Notes:

  • (1) Krebbers, Met "nieuw-rechts" tegen de globalisering?, October 1998. In: De Fabel van de illegaal 31.
  • (2) Krebbers, Nieuw-rechts anti-oorlogscomité verleidt linkse intellectuelen, July 1999. In: De Fabel van de illegaal 35.
  • (3) The Ecologist, Declaration on Climate Change, March 1999. (4) Van der Velpen, Zwarte horizonten, 1995.
  • (5) Bresson, Pasqua et Villiers unissent leurs maigres bataillons. In: Liberation, April 10th, 1999.
  • (6) Colen, A cry for help. In: Salisbury review, spring 1999.
  • (7) Special offer to Nexusreaders. In: The Ecologist 3, May 1998. Nexus-adds are also in The Ecologist 3 & 4, May and July 1999.
  • (8) Carmack, Central Banking and the private control of money, part 1, December 1998-January 1999. In: Nexus 1. Part 2, February-March 1999. In: Nexus 2.
  • (9) Silence, Waechter, Goldsmith etc, April 1999. In: Silence 243.
  • (10) Chombeau, La dérive extrémiste d'Antoine Waechter. In: Le Monde, February 18th, 1999.
  • (11) Remark from Goldsmith, speaking to the author by telephone.
  • (12) Letter from Goldsmith to Silence, July 6th, 1999.
  • (13) De Martelaere, Nieuws en korte beschouwingen, January 1998. In: Gwenved 23.
  • (14) Van den Broele, Edward Goldsmith: menselijk, al te menselijk, spring 1998. In: Vrijbuiter 3.
  • (15) M.P., L'autre sensibilité écologiste, January 1999. In: Silence 240.
  • (16) Schmid, Der Krieg der Petitionen, April 1999. In:Jungle World 15.
  • (17) Ozon, Ecologie et liberalisme, December 1998. In: Silence 238.
  • (18) Lipietz, Virage nouvelle droite?, February 1999. In: Silence 241.
  • (19) MEI internet-site.
  • (20) Ozon, De inzet van de ecologie, 1997. In: S.O.S. 12.
  • (21) Krebbers, Goldsmith en zijn Gaiaanse hiërarchie, August 1999.
  • (22) Speit, Schicksal und Tiefe, March 1999. In: Jenseits des nationalismus.
  • (23) A.K., Waechter le vert-brun, November 17th, 1998. In: Charlie Hebdo.
  • (24) Cremet, "Neue" Rechte: jetzt generationenübergreifend, June 1997. In: AK 403.
  • (25) De Zutter, Terug naar de "racistische" natuur. In: De Morgen, May 27th, 1999.
  • (26) Cremet, Für eine Allianz der "Roten" und der "Weissen", March 1999. In: Jenseits des Nationalismus.
  • (27) De Zutter, "Politieke soldaten tegen de multi-raciale maatschappij". In: De Morgen May 26th, 1999.

  • Back