The “Other Third Worldism” and its Afterlives

It can only be difficult to present to an Anglophone audience a work that is massive, yet to be translated to English, and provincial in scope—as it concerns itself primarily with intellectual currents in France, Italy, and Germany—by an author as obscure as his editor. However, it would be a mistake to ignore Philippe Baillet’s L’autre tiers-mondisme: Des origines à l’islamisme radical (The Other Third Worldism: From its Origins to Radical Islamism) as he examines the genealogy of strains of thought dominant within contemporary radical right movements—particularly varieties of so-called “Third Worldism”—and the extent of their influence. The narrative in L’autre tiers-mondisme begins with the short-lived Free State of Fiume, founded in the aftermath of Italy’s defeat in World War I, by the charismatic Gabriele D’Annunzio. In this ephemeral polity, Baillet argues, one sees the first concrete manifestation of a nonleftist Third Worldism—most acutely in the Lega di Fiume, D’Annunzio’s proposed international alliance comprising the “League of Oppressed People” under Western colonial rule, as well as racial minorities in Europe and America, who would all partake in a revolutionary struggle against the order represented by the League of Nations. Regarding India, Baillet identifies “a true Paleo-Third Worldism” at work in Fascist Italy’s relations with leaders of the Indian independence movement, especially Subhas Chandra Bose. Here was a first attempt at a broad anticolonial internationalism coalescing against a victorious America, Great Britain, and France. D’Annunzio summed it up, in October 1919, when he announced a “new crusade of all poor and free men, against the nations usurping and hoarding all riches, against the races of predators and against the caste of usurers who exploited the war yesterday to exploit peace now” (translations throughout are the reviewer’s own). Around the same time in Germany, National-Revolutionary voices, some of them core members of the “Left” wing of the NSDAP such as Gregor Strasser in 1925, advocated participation in the anti-imperialist initiatives of the Lega di Fiume.

Nonetheless, mainline fascist movements would not follow this line in their foreign policy—aiming to supplant the British Empire’s position rather than calling into question the legitimacy of imperial rule or colonialism. Just like the Italian Fascists, the National Socialists would soon clarify their hostile stance to this new doctrine, with Hitler even calling the idea of a League of Oppressed Nations nothing but an incapable “coalition of cripples” in Mein Kampf. Although this trend was marginalized in Germany after the purge of SA leaders, this did not stop some from pursuing its ideas in think tanks, publications, and congresses, establishing relations with not only Third World nationalists but also communists.