Colin Jordan and Britain's Neo-Nazi Movement: Hitler's Echo by Paul Jackson (review)

Paul Jackson's recent monograph is a detailed study of the political career of British neo-Nazi Colin Jordan (1923–2009), whose activism, writing, and persona continues to reverberate in global fascist circles. Rather than a full-scale biography of Jordan, Jackson formulates an "ideal type" model to understand fascist intellectuals and the culture of post-World War II neo-Nazism (13).

The first chapter, "A Working Definition of Neo-Nazism," is a robust methodology chapter that sets up Jackson's chronological narrative of Jordan's activism (chapters 2–7). Although the ideal type includes a lengthy definition of neo-Nazism, one that cannot be completely unpacked here, it is worth emphasizing several key features of Jackson's model that might be useful for studying radical movements and radical thinkers. Jordan's political career was mostly pockmarked by bursts of media attention in the midst of many political failures, but his ability to navigate diverse fascist networks at home and abroad enabled him to grow his personal influence and promote a number of neo-Nazi groups. Jordan participated in, formed, and reformed many organizations, publications, and transnational associations, putting his particular stamp on the global neo-Nazi fringe.

Echoing recent academic approaches to fascism, Jackson does not account for neo-Nazism as simply as an idealization of the past. Instead, he shows that many neo-Nazi ideologues are motivated by a "futural" vision of a postliberal, supposedly pure society (15). When Jordan was at Cambridge University, after serving in World War II, he started publishing his radical political views, albeit his rhetoric was more reserved and many ideas still nascent. Regardless, he began "to offer a narrative of social redemption," based in large part on removing 'others' from British society (247). His thought and writing shifted as he started intersecting other fascist circles. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, he solidified his transformation into a full-fledged neo-Nazi ideologue, asserting the overt antisemitism of Arnold Leese's coterie. Jordan's extreme antisemitic conspiracy theories became staples of his political writing for the rest of his life. Even in the years of his supposed retirement, a period when Jordan vacated his leadership positions, his antisemitism and his idealized, pure society found expression through a neo-Nazi revolutionary novel, entitled The Uprising (2004), which depicted the violent overthrow of the political system and the establishment of a new age.¹ Throughout, Jackson assesses Jordan's developing futural vision as a part of neo-Nazi "political religion" (27). Jordan, Jackson states, was one variant of a "larger neo-Nazi cultic milieu" that constituted this shared political religion (15, emphasis in original). Jordan resurrected old fascist and Nazi concepts, invented his own conspiracy theories, and synthesized ideological streams, repackaging them for the postwar world.

In terms of neo-Nazi diversity, Jackson performs a herculean task in parsing the many divisions of neo-Nazism's postwar branches, as well as when, where, and how these branches often intersect. Jackson's analysis is astute in showing how Jordan's activism connected him with fascists and neo-Nazis who were sometimes his allies and sometimes his enemies. Fascists and neo-Nazis who were allies or enemies largely depended upon moment and circumstance. One example is John Tyndall, who was the one-time national secretary of Jordan's National Socialist Movement (NSM; 1962–68). Once an ally, Tyndall and several others in the movement tried usurping Jordan's headship over the NSM in order to install their own neo-Nazi visions. Instead, Tyndall found himself on the outside looking in. Jordan eventually let the National Socialist Movement collapse to gain "political power through the ballot box" (149). That is, he initiated his more "respectable" British Movement (1968–75). Even in his "respectable" British Movement, where he strategically toned down his antisemitic rhetoric, internal strife and high-profile defections pierced the group. Jordan, a usually uncompromising ideologue, also...