[Preston Cole]

This issue's been bugging me and I haven't had much time to read about it, and I was wondering if any people here could help out.

To what extent did the Strasser brothers and the Black Front support the scientific racialism of traditional Hitlerist National Socialism, if at all? Even though they were anti-Semitic, I'm not aware of them having waved the racial struggle banner, and Otto Strasser even collaborated with some Jews in his Black Front. I find it particularly intriguing that their lack of support for racial supremacy wouldn't really place them in the National Socialist camp anymore, but in a new, self-made social nationalism similar to the Italian Social Republic.

I would really appreciate confirmation on this. Thanks.

[Jackal]

I have no links to provide but what I've gathered in past research is that Otto Strasser wasn't ripe with the anti-Semitism of many other Nazi Party members. However, the extent of his racialist ideas I am not sure of but I would still assume he believed in a somewhat German nation. It is true that he did collaborate with "Jews" (however, the extent of this collaboration I do not know), but keep in mind that a "Jew" could mean anything from a full blooded Jew, to "half-Jew" to a "quarter-Jew" under the German racial laws. So it is very likely he was very much anti-Semitic but did not consider quarter-Jews, or perhaps even half-Jews, to be Jews (so long as they were not practicing) as they were in German law at the time.

I find it particularly intriguing that their lack of support for racial supremacy wouldn't really place them in the National Socialist camp anymore, but in a new, self-made social nationalism similar to the Italian Social Republic.

In my opinion, the RSI was just an extension of Nazi Germany so, to me, it was pretty much National Socialism (or as much as National Socialism could develop in it within the time period given the circumstances).

I've considered Strasserism something closer to Prussian Socialism (though perhaps even a bit more Leftist than that), especially that espoused in Spengler's Prussiandom and Socialism.

[Orestes]

I only know about Otto.

He generally acknowledged that all the peoples of Europe are amalgams of 4 or 5 biological substrates, so pursuit of purity here is politically counterproductive, and a shared cultural Western "rhytm of History" has more actual significance.

In connection with this he saw an important role for Western Slavs and Baltics to play in the future European Federation (but not to the point of supporting any teritorial concessions on the part of Germany, like concerning the Danzig Corridor), from which he excluded Russia, altough not on racialist grounds, but rather following Spengler's notion that it constitutes a distinct civilisation with a destiny of its own.

As for Jews, they were to be treated like all other minorities, for whom he envisioned a separate State Department of National Minorities, with branches headed by representants of each.
Alternatively, those who wished so would be allowed to assimilate.

This is one pretty clear statement from his Germany Tomorrow (1940) :

Antisemitism is dead. Long live the idea of the People!

This advocacy of the idea of the People logically implies the disavowal of any valuation of peoples or nations as good or bad, as better or worse, since they all have equal rights, equal needs, and equal duties, in accordance with the will of the Creator, who gave each of them its own kind, its own nature, and its own tasks.

It should be said on the other hand that this view didn't probably extend to non-White nations, as he advocated the prospect of Pan-European colonies in Africa, where young pioneers could gain a vitalising "Faustian" experience through facing martial challenge.

Strasser also had some Evolian intuitions in thinking that spiritual will can ascend over facts of biology and critisizes somewhere "Hitler and his materialistic racism". Another quote relevant to this :

Although we do not deny our biological subordination to blood, race, and nationality, we must emphatically proclaim that the human spirit is privileged and competent to over-come this subordination

So perhaps you're right, overall.