This article needs references that appear in reliable third-party publications. Primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject are generally not sufficient for a Wikipedia article. Please add more appropriate citations from reliable sources. (January 2009)

The purple star of sovereignty, one of many proposals for a contemporary National-Anarchism emblem.^[1]

National-Anarchism is a syncretic political current that was developed in the 1990s by former Third Positionists to reconcile anarchism with nationalism and in some cases racial separatism.^[2] The founder of the Bay Area National Anarchists, Andrew Yeoman, offers a succinct definition: "National Anarchism is a political tendency that allows different communities to form a political structure according to their own values."^[3]

It has philosophical roots in the writings of Julius Evola and the neo-Spenglerian Francis Parker Yockey,^[4] and claims Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Leo Tolstoy, and Max Stirner among its influences.^[4]

In its current sense and usage, the term was coined more or less contemporaneously by Troy Southgate (England), Peter Töpfer (Germany) and Hans Cany (France), and was used by the now defunct National Revolutionary Faction to describe its ideology.^[5]

[edit] History

Historically the term national anarchist dates back as far as the 1920s, when Helmut Franke, a German writer involved with the Conservative Revolutionary movement, used it to describe his political outlook.^[5] In the United Kingdom during the early 1980s, the Black Ram group promulgated ideas which it described as national anarchist and anarcho-nationalist.^[6] However, the present usage derives from the French National-Anarchist Hans Cany, who first made use of this term in the early 1990s, along with the related terms national-libertarian and anarcho-identitarian.^[5][7] Around the same time, Richard Hunt left the editorial board of Green Anarchist, due to a disagreement over political strategies, and formed his own journal, Alternative Green.^[8] 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 the left-wing writer/activist Stewart Home accused both Alternative Green and Green Anarchist of supporting ecofascism.^[9]

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 green anarchism, and fused it with racial separatism (which Hunt did not support) to create a newer form of National-Anarchism.^[10] In 1998 Southgate formed the National Revolutionary Faction (NRF), officiating as its national secretary.^[11] For a period, he was also a member of Alternative Green's editorial board.^[11] Later, Southgate disavowed the concept of the revolutionary cell-group 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.^[11][12] Southgate is also an organiser for the New Right, a group which is inspired by the French Nouvelle Droite movement.^[13]

[edit] Views

National-Anarchists see the hierarchies inherent in government and capitalism as oppressive. They advocate collective action organized along the lines of nationality, identity, and tribes, and aim towards a decentralised social order where "like-minded individuals" maintain distinct intentional communities.^[2]

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. Troy 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.^[14]

The Revolutionary Conservative concept of the Anarch as written about by Ernst Jünger is central to National-Anarchism.^[11]

The groupuscular right... is a constantly growing, mutating, protean counter-culture... segments of which [do] seem to be evolving towards a synthesis of neo-anarchism.

—Roger Griffin^[15]

National-Anarchists view liberalism as a primary cause of the social decline of nations and cultural identity.^[16] Southgate has also distanced himself from fascism and communism as statist and totalitarian,^[4] and rejects National Socialism as a failed dictatorship of a totalitarian government.^[4]

On certain battleground issues in the "culture wars" National-Anarchist views differ drastically from those on the left, including the anarchists that they claim to be influenced by. For example, Troy Southgate 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.^[10]

[edit] Autonomy and separatism

According to Keith Preston, National-Anarchists advocate a model of society in which communities that practice separatism along the lines of ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation are able to coexist alongside mixed or integrated communities without requiring force.^[17] He claims that "National Autonomous Zones" could exist with their own rules for permanent residence in a community without the strict ethnic divisions and violence advocated by other forms of nationalism.^[17] National-Anarchists consider genocide, murder, and social conformity to be unnecessary, tyrannical and an affront to "libertarian minded people".^[17]

Proponents of National-Anarchism claim that racial separatism can be achieved without racial hatred or racial supremacy.^[18] Southgate states that National Anarchists are racial separatists who oppose miscegenation but do not seek to impose their views on others.^[14] Southgate writes, "we are seeking our own space in which to live according to our own principles".^[4]

In terms of the practical implementation of these views, National-Anarchists believe that areas without significant human development and borderlands would be maintained collectively, and the existence of free zones allowing trade and sharing between communities would be established with the agreement of all parties involved.^[19]

The Bay Area National Anarchist (BANA) network based in California foresees the development of National Autonomous Zones (NAZ) and promotes them as a model of administration suggesting that National-Anarchists can achieve "autonomy amidst adversity." NAZ theory "makes no specific demands...that [these communities] adhere to a particular political ideology" or organize in a particular way.^[20] A NAZ may contain one or more of the following characteristics:

• a homogeneous representation of spoken language, culture, religion, and ethnicity.
• the organized delegation of tasks and economy.
• a pre-defined relationship regulating behavior with outsiders of the NAZ.
• a system of standard operating procedures for self-defense.
• collective and informal decision making processes.^[20]

A mature NAZ is considered to have one or more traits of the Vietnamese military fortress concept for national defense. ^[21]

[edit] Criticism

National-Anarchism has critics on both the Right and Left wing of the political spectrum and their arguments are quite different.^[22] Left wing critics argue that they are deceptive and practice crypto-fascism while pretending to be anarchists.^[23][24] Green Anarchist published an article accusing the National-Anarchists of being fascists with the goal of discrediting mainstream anarchism.^[25]

Anarchist "Nick Griffin" (not to be confused with BNP leader Nick Griffin) argues that National-Anarchism's concept of racial separation is the same as race hatred.^[23][26]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• 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. http://ah.brookes.ac.uk/resources/griffin/slimemould.pdf. 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. http://www.new-right.org/?p=53. Retrieved 2009-02-17. 
• Southgate, Troy (2007), Tradition and Revolution: Collected Writings of Troy Southgate, Aarhus: Integral Tradition Publishing, ISBN 978-8792136022