Politics of The Far Right
He was editor of the magazine Youth from 1923, when still a student. It had been founded in 1920, and at that point was left-leaning and supported guild socialism. In Gardiner's time it became internationally oriented and Germanophile, and his own political interests turned to Social Credit. He also published articles by John Hargrave with whom he had associated in the Kibbo Kift. After its split from the Woodcraft Folk, Kibbo Kift was in transition, en route for the Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland ("Green Shirts").
It has been suggested that Gardiner moved from the ideas of guild socialism and social credit, current in the circle of A. R. Orage, towards a search for a masculine brotherhood, through his involvement in the "folk revival". His views of folk music and dance have been called "fundamentalist". In any case he took up with and formed small groups, rather than political organisations.
Gardiner later broke with Hargrave, of whom Lawrence disapproved. In 1929 Gardiner was writing with approval in the Times Literary Supplement of the Jugendbewegung (German Youth Movement) and its anti-scientific outlook. He debated the German Youth Movement in 1934 with Leslie Paul, in the pages of The Adelphi.
In a series of publications from 1928 he articulated racial theories (Baltic peoples versus Mediterranean peoples) and the need for national reversals of "impoverishment" of the stock. It has been said that he was an "ecocentric" looking for a united and pagan England and Germany, and a supporter of Nazi pro-ruralist policies. He expressed anti-Semitic views from 1933, writing first in German.
He was a member of the English Mistery, and then of the English Array, formed in 1936. Writing in the Array's Quarterly Gazette, Gardiner was an apologist for German "leadership" in Central Europe, dictatorships, and "racial regeneration". He later wrote for the periodical New Pioneer set up in December 1938 by Lord Lymington and John Beckett, as a pro-German and anti-Semitic organ.
After World War II, he kept in touch with Richard Walther Darré, an SS man and NSDAP agriculture minister of the Nazi era.
Read more about this topic: Rolf Gardiner
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