National-anarchism

This article is specifically about the National-Anarchist movement. See Anarchism and nationalism for general information about fusions of nationalist and anarchist ideas.

The National Anarchist Star, or purple star of sovereignty, one of several emblems used by national-anarchists.

National-Anarchism (or Tribal Anarchism) is a radical right synthesis of neo-völkisch tribalism and green anarchism.

It was developed in Europe during the 1990s by former Third Positionists to promote the radical anti-capitalist agenda of a pan-national network of politically meritocratic, economically secessionist, and ecologically sustainable village-communities, which practice racial, ethnic, religious and sexual separatism as a means to achieve "authentic cultural diversity".

Although its synthesis of left-wing and right-wing politics makes its classification problematic, those scholars who have examined national-anarchism generally consider it to be on the far right of the conventional left–right political spectrum.

National-anarchism has ideological roots primarily in the theories of intellectuals within the Conservative Revolutionary movement, Traditionalist School, Third Positionism, Nouvelle Droite, and green anarchism. It claims anarchist pioneers Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Leo Tolstoy and Max Stirner among its influences.

In its current usage, the term was coined more or less contemporaneously by Troy Southgate in England, Peter Töpfer in Germany, and Hans Cany in France, and was used by a British far-right groupuscule, the National Revolutionary Faction, to describe its ideology.

Position in the political spectrum

While the synthesis of left-wing and right-wing politics in national-anarchism makes its classification problematic, scholars who have examined national-anarchism generally consider it to be on the far right of the conventional left–right political spectrum.

Roger Griffin argues that national-anarchism is a segment of the gropuscular right which has evolved toward a complex synthesis between classic fascism, Third Positionism, neo-anarchism and new types of anti-systemic politics born of the anti-globalization movement.

Graham D. Macklin argues that national-anarchism retains core fascist values and therefore can be described as a synthesis of anarchism and fascism, specifically Evolian fascism.

Alan Sykes argues that national-anarchism represents a further evolution in the thinking of the radical right rather than an entirely new dimension, a response to the new situation of the late 20th century in which the apparent triumph of materialist capitalism on a global scale requires a greater assertion of the centrality of anti-materialist nationalism.

Spencer Sunshine argues that national-anarchism is a synthesis of Third Positionism, Nouvelle Droite, and ecofascism. He asserts that it represents what many anti-fascists see as the potential new face of fascism. Sunshine argues that national-anarchism is a form of crypto-fascism which hopes to avoid the stigma of traditional fascism by appropriating symbols, slogans and stances of the left-wing anarchist movement, while injecting core fascist values into the anti-globalization and environmental movements. He further argues that national-anarchists hope to draw members away from traditional white nationalist groups to their own synthesis of ideas, which they claim are "neither left nor right".

History

The term national anarchist dates back as far as the 1920s, when Helmut Franke, a German conservative revolutionary writer involved with the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten paramilitary group, used it to describe his political outlook. In the United Kingdom during the early 1980s, the Black Ram group described their viewpoint as being national anarchist and anarcho-nationalist. However, the present usage derives from Hans Cany, editor of the French Nazi Satanist magazine Requiem Gothique, who first used this term in the early 1990s, along with the related terms national-libertarian and anarcho-identitarian. Around the same time, British editor Richard Hunt left the editorial board of Green Anarchist magazine, due to a disagreement over political strategies, and formed his own journal, Alternative Green. Due to Alternative Green's policy of publishing articles from across the political spectrum, the remaining Green Anarchist staff constantly accused Hunt of supporting fascism, while British left-wing writer-activist Stewart Home accused both Alternative Green and Green Anarchist of supporting ecofascism.

In the mid-1990s, Troy Southgate, a Strasserite former member of the British National Front and International Third Position, began to move towards Hunt's primitivist form of green anarchism, and fused it with neo-völkisch tribalism and racial separatism (which Hunt did not support) to create a newer form of national-anarchism. For a period, he was a member of Alternative Green's editorial board. In 1998 Southgate formed the National Revolutionary Faction (NRF), officiating as its national secretary. He claims that the NRF took part in anti-vivisection protests in August 2000 alongside hunt saboteurs and the Animal Liberation Front by following a strategy of entryism, but its only known public action under the "national-anarchist" name was to hold an Anarchist Heretics Fair in October 2000, in which a number of fringe groups participated. However, after a coalition of green anarchists and anti-fascists blocked a second fair from being held in 2001, Southgate and the NRF abandoned this strategy and retreated to purely disseminating their ideas in Internet forums. Later, Southgate disavowed the concept of a clandestine cell system for leaderless resistance as an insurrectionary anarchist strategy to achieve his aims, and in 2003 the NRF disbanded, shortly after he and other NRF associates had become involved with a UK-based countercultural forum, the Cercle de la Rose Noire, of which Southgate is president. Southgate is also an organizer for New Right, a pan-European conservative revolutionary study group in the UK which is inspired by the French New Right movement, Nouvelle Droite.

The national-anarchist meme has spread around the world over the Internet. The United States hosts only a few web sites, but there has been a trend towards a steady increase. Although national-anarchism in the U.S. remains a relatively obscure movement, made up of probably fewer than 200 individuals, led by Andrew Yeoman, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a couple of other groups in northern California and Idaho, organizations based on national-anarchist ideology have gained a foothold in Russia and sown turmoil in the environmental movement in Germany. There are enthusiasts in England, Spain and Australia, among other nations. On 8 September 2007 in Sydney, Australia, the anti-globalization movement mobilized against neoliberal economic policies by opposing the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. During the street protests, national-anarchists infiltrated the left-anarchist black bloc but the police had to protect them from being expelled by irate activists. Since then, national-anarchists have joined other marches in Australia and in the U.S.; in April 2008, they protested on behalf of the Tibetan independence movement against the Chinese government during the Olympic torch relay in both Canberra, Australia, and San Francisco. Now, national-anarchists in the U.S. are carefully studying the successes and failures of their more prominent international counterparts as they attempt to similarly win converts from the radical environmentalist and white nationalist movements in the U.S..

Views

The conservative revolutionary concept of the Anarch, as articulated by German writer Ernst Jünger, is central to national-anarchism. National-anarchists see the artificial hierarchies inherent in government and capitalism as systematically oppressive and environmentally destructive. They distance themselves from fascism and communism as statist and totalitarian, and reject Nazism as the discredited ideology of a failed dictatorship. National-anarchists see modernity, liberalism, immigration and multiculturalism as the primary causes of the social decline of nations and cultural identity. They stress a strategic and ideological alliance of racial separatists in the Western world, neo-Eurasianists in Russia, Islamists in the Muslim world, and autonomist and secessionist movements in the least developed countries to denounce "globalization as an instrument of Zionism and American imperialism" inevitably leading to global economic collapse and ecological collapse.

National-anarchists advocate collective action organized along the lines of identity and tribe, and aim towards a decentralized social order where like-minded individuals maintain a distinct village-community, as an organic unity, which is politically meritocratic, economically secessionist, and ecologically sustainable. National-anarchism echoes most strains of anarchism by expressing a desire to reorganize human relationships, with an emphasis on replacing the hierarchical structures of government and capitalism with local, community decision-making. Southgate has stated:

We believe in political, social and economic decentralisation. In other words, we wish to see a positive downward trend whereby all bureaucratic concepts such as the UN, NATO, the EU, the World Bank and even nation-states like England and Germany are eradicated and consequently replaced by autonomous village-communities."

On certain battleground issues in the "culture wars", Southgate's national-anarchist views differ drastically from those of left-wing anarchists due to his strong antifeminist, heterosexist and pro-life stance. Appealing to nature, he has stated:

The most important thing for us is the Natural Order. It is natural for men and women to procreate. Anything which threatens the harmony of Nature must be opposed. Feminism is dangerous and unnatural ... because it ignores the complimentary relationship between the sexes and encourages women to rebel against their inherent feminine instincts ... Homosexuality is contrary to the Natural Order because sodomy is quite undeniably an unnatural act. Groups such as Outrage are not campaigning for love between males - which has always existed in a brotherly or fatherly form - but have created a vast cult which has led to a rise in cottaging, male-rape and child sex attacks. Nature is about life and health, not death and AIDS. But we are not trying to stop homosexuals engaging in this kind of activity like the Christian moralists or bigoted denizens of censorship are doing, on the contrary, as long as this behaviour does not affect the forthcoming National-Anarchist communities then we have no interest in what people get up to elsewhere ... As far as abortion is concerned, this process violates the sanctity of life and once again the killing of an unborn child is flying in the face of Nature.

National-anarchists are ethnopluralists and racial separatists, who oppose miscegenation, but they do not seek to impose their racialist views on others because they reject universalism and embrace particularism. National-anarchists advocate a model of society in which communities that practice racial, ethnic, religious or sexual nepotism and separatism are able to coexist alongside mixed or integrated communities without requiring force. They claim that "National Autonomous Zones" could exist with their own rules for permanent residence without the strict ethnic divisions and violence advocated by other forms of "blood and soil" ethnic nationalism. National-anarchists argue that areas without significant human development and borderlands would be maintained collectively, and that free zones allowing trade and sharing between communities would be established with the agreement of all parties involved.

Influenced by the perennial philosophy of Italian esotericist Julius Evola and the Traditionalist School, many national-anarchists defensively affirm their ethnic identity against modernity, reject Judeo-Christianity as a slave morality and embrace various ethnocentric and ecocentric currents of neopaganism or occultism as an antidote to the socially alienating effects of Americanized consumer culture.

According to American pan-secessionist Keith Preston, national-anarchism and classical American ideals are reconcilable, despite the anti-Americanism and anti-Christianity of European national-anarchists and the patriotism and Christianity of American paleoconservatives, because of their common values: regionalism, localism, agrarianism, and traditionalism.

Criticism

National-anarchism has critics on both the left and right of the political spectrum. Both left- and right-wing critics find it difficult to digest hearing white nationalists promoting Third Positionist, Islamist, communist, and anarchist thinkers.

Left-wing critics argue that the danger national-anarchists represent is not in their marginal political strength, but in their potential to show an innovative way that neo-fascist groups can rebrand themselves and reset their project on a new footing. Even if the results are modest, this can disrupt left-wing social movements and their focus on social justice and egalitarianism; and instead spread elitist ideas based on naturalistic fallacy, racism, homophobia, antisemitism and antifeminism amongst grassroots activists.

Far-right critics argue that neo-Nazis joining the national-anarchist movement will lead to their "anti-Zionist" struggle being co-opted by left-wing anarchists. They further argue that national-anarchists want the militant chic of calling themselves anarchists while avoiding the historical and philosophical baggage that accompanies such a claim, such as the link with 19th-century Jewish anarchists who engaged in propaganda of the deed.

See also

• National Bolshevism
• National communism
• National Socialism
• National syndicalism
• Red-green-brown alliance

Bibliography

• Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2003). Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-3155-4
• Griffin, Roger (March 2003). "From slime mould to rhizome: an introduction to the groupuscular right" (PDF 285.9 KB). Patterns of Prejudice. 37 (1): 27–63. doi:10.1080/0031322022000054321. ISSN 0031-322X. Retrieved 2008-12-18.
• Macklin, Graham D. (September 2005). "Co-opting the counter culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction". Patterns of Prejudice. 39 (3): 301–326. doi:10.1080/00313220500198292. ISSN 0031-322X. Retrieved 2009-02-17.
• Southgate, Troy (2007), Tradition and Revolution: Collected Writings of Troy Southgate, Aarhus: Integral Tradition Publishing, ISBN 978-8792136022