Customer Reviews

Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a huge 600 plus page book, a very well written book about American Aryanism and uses Yockey as a focusing point. There is a lot of great history and most of it is correct from the author's worldview point. About 70 or more of the people in the book I know or have known. Every one from the little old lady who got Rockwell into National Socialism and her husband, who use to talk about their days in the Silver Shirts, to Keith Stimely who about force fed me Yockey, and Boyd Rice who played a part in my wedding. It's like reading a high reunion letter.
This is an interesting book for anyone who wants to understand Yockeyism. The only problem I had with the book is that Yockey is like Deva. Only a tiny sect of movement people have ever read Yockey. Only the elite, not the rank and file, most have never heard of Yockey. So any influence he has is through a trickle down effect.
Also, I think Yockeyism is basically an American concept. Few European Nationalists, even the leaders I've talk to know little about Yockey.
It's a very good book on a very limited subject.

Francis Parker Yockey's IMPERIUM is a fascinating and highly readable book. It combines a Nietzschean-Spengerian vitalist philosophy of history and culture, fascist political philosophy, and a very realistic assessment of the prospects for fascism after the second world war. It is not really an original book, but it is a brilliant synthesis. It is a big book, but easy and exciting to read. It gives even the most skeptical reader a sense of how plausibly the world can be viewed from Yockey's perspective, thus it is a particularly valuable tool for understanding fascism "from the inside." Yockey also had an interesting life. That said, however, Yockey is not a particularly important or influential figure. Like Ayn Rand, he can have a profound impact on young readers, but if they are lucky they grow beyond him.

Coogan's book is even longer than IMPERIUM. It is readable, and I learned a lot from it. His discussion of Yockey's life was quite fascinating.

But there is something deeply inane and kooky about this book. Coogan tries to write a virtually complete history of post-war fascism around Yockey. But this just does not work. One can, of course, find many people in the post-war right who have read Yockey's work. Some of them knew him personally. But very few were decisively influenced by Yockey, and most of those who were found him useful for leading them to the more subsantive thinkers Yockey himself depended upon. At best, Yockey should receive a footnote or a couple of paragraphs in the history of the post-war right. Anything beyond that is leaning on a bruised reed.

Coogan evidently does not read French, German, Italian, or Spanish. His discussions of books available only in these languages appear to depend entirely upon English-language literature. This is a serious handicap for any scholar of the post-war right and further diminishes the value of the book.

As I slogged through Coogan's book, an image from Camille Paglia came to mind. Coogan's discussion of Yockey is like a tiny marshmallow rolling around the floor collecting lint and dog hair. DREAMER OF THE DAY is a five star biography of about 250 pages buried under 400 pages of extraneous material. Nobody should read more than 600 pages ABOUT Yockey until they read 600 pages BY Yockey: IMPERIUM.

When we think of Fascism, it seems to me that we recall the rise of the most notable leaders of Fascism during the 20th century; namely Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. We also tend to consider the most recent examples such as the rise of discontent that now exists within the industrialized nations of the west as well as the regimes in South America. Until I completed Dreamer of the Day, it never really occured to me that there could be such a widespread appeal for this type of political doctrine which left Europe in ruins and the surviving perpetrators of the world war on the run. The world was on a witch hunt for the people responsible and they themselves were occupied with successfully trying to escape the wrath of the world. Dreamer of the Day was an excellent book to explain to me that there were forces still at work to keep the perennial doctrine of Fascism alive and well. Francis Parker Yockey was a white nationalist of extraodinary intelligence and ambition. His goal was unite all of Europe under a new form of Fascism which was to include the Soviet Union. His belief was that the true utopian nature of communism simply could not exist in the world where human nature prevails. The totalitarian regimes of the Soviet Union and the satellite states of Eastern Europe would have eventually formed into a new form of National Socialism unique to postwar Europe. The influence of the United States was considered to be detrimental to the racial, social and economic health of Europe. All of this transpired during the 1950's when Europe was rebuilding and America was enjoying a new found prosperity. The survival of Fascism during this time has led to the flourishing Fascist movements that exist in Europe and America today. This book is an excellent eyeopener to the activities of the leading members of the Fascist underground which does much to explain the underlying forces of Fascism today and its growth in the future.

Yockey's admittedly intriguing, but this account grows tiresome. As other reviewers have noted, this book's a third Y., a third his influences (Evola, Spengler, occult and geopolitik tomes), and a third relationships or hunches with realms as varied as S&M, ADL informants, a supposed Auschwitz survivor, pan-European fascists, occult and Indo-European adepts, and more Communists and anti-semites with Jewish spouses than you'd assume.

His research is exhaustive, his footnotes beyond the most diligent striver for tenure, and his style starts out journalistically charged but descends for most of the 600 pages into turgid analysis and energetically formulated but often thematically dull reporting. After preparing the reader halfway through for a breakthrough into the New Fascist Order of which Yockey was a harbinger, the rest of the work's anti-climactic.

Hard to believe such ideas, expressed so opaquely by their innovators and popularizers, gained any audience at all. Still, I learned about Spengler, Evola, and the Ahnenerbe investigations under Himmler which labored to find pre-Christian foundations for Aryan and European culture. The letters extracted from Yockey's Belgian lover, Elsa Dewette and the antics of Mana Truhill make entertaining reading, and the appendices exploring how Yockey's influence may have echoed into many other niches all record worthwhile information.

But Coogan's thoroughness makes for a daunting read, and I fought sleep more than once. It's a useful reference for the very few needing such a work, but I wish the popular biography had been scaled down and more left to the footnotes. I applaud Coogan's skill in managing to summarize so much recondite and often mind-numbing material for a wider audience, and recognize that much of the difficulty with his book comes from the sheer impenetrability of much of this primary material for us dolts.

_Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International_ by Kevin Coogan is an encyclopedia of the far right before and after WWII. The focus here is on the more esoteric, occult groups. Some of these fascist, white-racist and anti-Jewish groups also had complicated ties to one another, a plethora of ideologues, and some unusual ties to other radical political groups. These strange underground, "conspiratorial" connections are examined through the lens of the life of Francis Parker Yockey, best known for his lengthy neo-Nazi treatise, _Imperium_. _Imperium_ was written under the name "Ulick Varange," a connotation of pan-European unity, "Ireland to Russia." Yockey, it appears, tried to form an alliance with fascists and neo-Nazis in Europe with the Soviet Union to overthrow the American military domination of Europe. There is some speculation that the Soviet Union was promoting the activity of the radical right after WWII for its own purposes. Yockey is especially noted for being a magna cum laude graduate of Notre Dame law school, a considerable credential for an American fascist sympathizer. _Dreamer of the Day_ starts by narrating the incident of Yockey's arrest for passport fraud and his subsequent suicide in a San Francisco prison. Coogan goes on, tracing Yockey's early life and the philosophies he imbibed that led him to his life of intrigue. Oswald Spengler was the reactionary author of _The Decline of the West_, _Man and Technics_, and _The Hour of Decision_, which looked towards the future of the West as one of eventual cultural decay and death as part of an ongoing organic process. Yockey differed from Spengler in that regression towards Caesarism (like Hitler's Nazi regime) would give the West a renewed vitality. The book then goes on to recount Yockey's travels around the world, meeting with fellow fascists. It is very had to follow his trail (Coogan researched FBI records) and his political connections, not to mention his numerous mistresses.

One of Coogan's strong points is that he goes to extreme length to carefully define the differences between the different theories on the right-wing, especially how they differed from the Hitler/Alfred Rosenburg official Nazi line on geopolitics and race. Spengler, and fellow Sicilian "Conservative Revolutionary" Julius Evola did not hold onto the Nazi ideal of the superiority of the German Nordic race. Evola presented in his work a more "spiritual" notion of race. Evola found "Aryan" elements in all the world's ancient traditions, and Spengler rejected the idea of a master race. Yockey's interest in pornography and S/M is also covered in detail. Otto Weininger, an obscure Viennese Jewish author heavily influenced the occult right with his book on sexual polarity and the need for a patriarchal domination of society, _Sex and Character_. Yockey's work has found its greatest exponent in Willis Carto, the founder of Liberty Lobby, who published _Imperium_ in America in 1961. The National Alliance has also promoted _Imperium_. In spite of these endorsements, the most famous American neo-Nazi, George Lincoln Rockwell viewed Yockey highly with suspicion. Even the issue of homosexuality among the Nazi movement is brought to attention (see _The Pink Swastika_, a book which refutes itself). Even several Satanist and Norse-pagan groups and "Black Metal" bands have taken attention to Yockey's work and the pessimistic theories of Oswald Spengler. What is the most interesting is the praise some in the radical right gave towards the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Moammar Qaddafi and other third world dictators. One Nazi theorist, Strasser, looked at Nazi Germany not as part of the West, but as part of an anti-Western irrational barbarian movement aligned with Russia, China, India, Latin America and Africa. The common thread that all extremist movements spin is that of anti-Americanism, anti-Globalism, a defense of traditional tribal boundaries, and a revolt against consumerist bourgeoisie society. Jews appear the strongest group in such a world order, hence the common animosity towards them from neo-Nazis, the Nation of Islam and the Taliban alike. Yockey saw the hanging of eleven Zionist Jews in Prague by the Communist regime in Prague as a harbinger of a possible alliance between Soviet military power and neo-Nazi subversion of the American-Zionist-capitalist world order. In all, _Dreamer of the Day_ breaks boundaries between "right" and "left," and shows just how "conservative" the radical right actually is. This makes more sense considering that this book is published by Autonomedia, who appear to want as much cultural anarchy as possible looking at their other titles. As far as a resource book goes which links books, personages and crazy theories, _Dreamer of the Day_ is the most comprehensive volume that I've read.

This is a huge book that chronicles a mostly unknown part of the history of white nationalism. It mainly focuses on Francis Parker Yockey but also has a lot of interesting info on Evola, Spengler, Viereck and other lesser known figures in the post ww2 fascist underground.

Yockey was an (arguably) insane genius type who led a cloak and dagger existance throughout Europe and America. This book does its best to piece his movements and activities together. Yockey was best known for his book Imperium which very few people actually read while Yockey was alive. Yockey is much like Julius Evola and Savitri Devi in that more people read their works now than when they were living. It seems to be all the rage in certain quarters to claim to be into Yockey, Evola and Devi as of late.

From what I understand a good portion of the research for Dreamer of the Day was done by a so called "right wing" type who was very much into Yockeys ideologies and turned over his info to Coogan shortly before his death. Coogan, although a leftist, is a very fair and impartial writer and did a great job with this book. This is certainly one of the best books written to date that covers any section of white nationalist history.

Coogan's book is a bit choppy, BUT it's a very good reference book for those of us "on the right." The first 1/3 of the book talks about Yockey in some detail, but the middle-third talks about everything EXCEPT Yockey (for me, it was a positive), and the rest threw in just about everything else. Coogan's analyses are pretty accurate, and the mud slinging is kept to a bare minimum (ie... it's pretty a-political and objective), but of course, it's there.

Overall, I recommend this book as a 5 star'er :-) Those on the "right" will find it as a great resource tool, those on the "left" will find it "interesting," and those in the "middle" will get a glimpse into the great minds that have made up "our" side of the battle. Kudos for Coogan, even if it could have been better.

With Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan has managed to shed more light on the complex (and vexed) subculture of neo-fascism than just about any other writer on the subject. The book is half a biography of Francis Parker Yockey, an alienated sociopath with hopeless dreams of reuniting Europe under a post-WW II fascist regime, and half a detailed history of continental permutations of fascism, with special attention given to the ever-puzzling figure of Julius Evola.

Coogan's research is exhaustive, if not exhausting - his footnotes nearly constitute a small book on their own. I've been living with this book for two weeks now and it is well worth the time invested. My only gripe, if gripe it be, is that Yockey himself is such a disturbed and disturbing individual that I became seriously depressed in reading about him at such length. But he is the perfect, if obscure, lens with which to see this milieu more clearly. Highly recommended.

I found this book to be quite useful in presenting background on so many Fascists and National Socialists and those of related mind, their connections to each other, the different organizations and publications they ran or participated in and the evolution and development of these over many decades.

The book's focus is on the 'postwar' period but really its information digs deep into the 1920 and 1930s, and the war itself, again as background but really in presentation of a more thorough history.

Unfortunately the author, like so many others, confuses Fascism with National Socialism, arbitrarily presenting the latter as a sort of variant on the former. The differences between the two are dramatic at the philosophical level, and the main reasons they seem to coalesce are their opposition to the present world establishment and to communism and left-'progressive' forces as a major component of that establishment.

Fascism is essentially a reactionary force responsive to communism and capitalism, whereas National Socialism is more of a genuinely revolutionary, racially eugenic philosophy of life.

Interestingly, the author demonstrates the weakness of 'Fascists' in sometimes falling into the communist 'temptation' in their seekings after power and change, and the various real or abortive alliances sought therein.

I think that the biggest strength of this book is its documentation of so many obscure publications, books, authors, and organizations, all interlaced to one degree or another with each other. Thus the book is a great resource for further reading and study.

_Dreamer of the Day_ is much more than simply a biography of the neoNazi Francis Parker Yockey, it contains an abundance of material, resource information, and footnotes for all those who are interested in the obscure forces moving the fringe political reaches where the radical right meets the radical left. Yockey, who dedicated his book _Imperium_ to "the Hero of the Second World War", was a mysterious individual who was taken in one day by the FBI and just as mysteriously died. Kevin Coogan tells this story of the supergenius mystery man who set out to create a European Imperium uniting forces from the far left and far right. But, more than that, this book contains entire sections on such heroes as Oswald Spengler and Julius Evola. In fact, the book is chock full of information on the secret forces behind Yockeyism, far right politics, neoNazism, and everything from Satanism and death metal music to Russian fascists. You won't be disappointed, and although you may spend several late nights reading intently, you will certainly be entertained.