Nationalist Party (Iceland)

The Nationalist Party ( Icelandic: Flokkur Þjóðernissinna ) was a small Icelandic fascist party before and during World War II .

The party was founded in March 1934 through the merger of the "Icelandic Nationalist Movement" (an association of anti-communist and anti- democratic agitators) and the "Icelandic Nationalist Party" (a politicized splinter group of the former).

The aim of the openly anti-Semitic party was to protect the ethnic identity of the Icelanders and the predominance of the Aryan “ master race ”. It was guided by corporatist ideas and called for agricultural reform and state investments for further industrialization of Iceland. She also advocated the abolition of the Althing in order to replace it with a corporatist parliament. The Nationalist Party rejected the political "left-right dichotomy " and presented itself as a radical alternative for the politics of Iceland . Overall, it was closer to the ideology of the DNSAP leader Frits Clausen than that of Adolf Hitler , especially since there was no evidence either a German influence on the Nationalist Party still exists for a reference by the Icelandic fascists to the NSDAP .

The party regularly abused May Day rallies to march its party members in gray shirts and armbands with a red swastika and both the Icelandic and swastika flags.

The party was the editor of the Iceland newspaper and the periodical Mjølnir (named after Thor's hammer ). The leader principle , which was very strongly developed under National Socialism , was not really adopted by the party; during its relatively short existence the movement had four different " leaders ". The influence of the Nationalist Party remained marginal, only in the student union of the University of Iceland it was represented with a seat for four years. The party attracted attention in 1936 when it came across a copy of the Finance Minister's diary and published parts of it in its newspaper Island . As a result, the party offices were stormed by the police and party leaders were arrested, although no evidence was initially found.

For the Nationalist Party, which never had more than 450 members, this incident marked the beginning of its end. After 1938, the party no longer marched on Labor Day, the “Goals of the Nationalist Party” was the last major publication, apart from sporadic editions of the party newspaper Iceland . In the winter of 1939 a debating club was set up in Reykjavík , but it found no response. From then on there were only local meetings of individual party cells. The party was formally dissolved in 1944 when the defeat of the Axis Powers was foreseeable.

literature

• Stein Ugelvik Larsen (Ed.): Who Were the Fascists: Social Roots of European Fascism . Universitetsforlaget, Oslo 1980, ISBN 82-00-05331-8 .