Contested Terrain

National Anarchism - Trojan Horse for White Nationalism

This article was written for Green Anarchy magazine. It was written under the name, “Nick Griffin,” which is obviously a pseudonym. The “other” Nick Griffin is the head of the far-right British National Party, who by coincidence was being brought to trial on charges of ‘incitement to racial hatred’ when this article was first published. However, apparently multiple unscrupulous North American radicals used this opportunity to publicly accuse Green Anarchy of printing an article by the BNP’s Griffin - a ludicrous notion to anyone who has read the article themselves. However, because of this, it should be noted that the “Nick Griffin” of this article is not the same as the BNP’s Nick Griffin, but rather is a psuedonym of an anti-fascist monitor with a wry sense of humor. Go figure.

Recently a man who hung out in Eugene around green anarchists started promoting the idea of National Anarchism. A few years ago he had written a well-known essay from a green anarchist perspective, and he was a familiar face to many. [2007 note: “Chris” wrote the article “Against Mass Society,” which can be found on the cover of ‘Green Anarchy’ #6 (Summer 2001) and is reprinted in Our Enemy Civilization: An Anthology Against Modernity.] His new belief system advocated that people of different ethnic backgrounds should live in different villages, and he later wrote a letter to Green Anarchy in an attempt to propagate his views about supposedly “natural” hierarchies. [GA Note: We were going to print his letter, but it is almost as long as this article, and we did not want to provide a forum for his ideas on “natural hierarchies” and “National Anarchism”. If people are interested in the letter, and who wrote it, you can contact us.] Fortunately his attempt to spread this racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic (so-called) “anarchism” were quickly unveiled. But what is National Anarchism? How did it arise, and what does it stand for, and why are these racist Right-wingers attempting to recruit anarchists?

Radical politics of all kinds took a new turn after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and this accelerated after the demonstrations against the WTO in Seattle in 1999. Decentralized and networked political forms started becoming the predominant types of resistance. In the last few years, we have seen anarchism replace marxism as the dominant radical movement in the U.S., but changes have also occurred elsewhere. Parts of the white power movement started advocating “leaderless resistance” as early as the 1980s; the Islamic jihadists Al Qaeda are a state-less, transnational entity; and even marxist groups like Left Turn have rejected the tight “vanguard party” model in favor of a more network-based structure.

But anarchism itself has also became a magnet for the racist radical right, and a tiny fringe group in the UK called the National Revolutionary Faction has re-christened itself as National Anarchists. They are attempting to use anarchist symbolism and rhetoric to recruit both “White Nationalists” (WN, a catch-all term for the various kinds of white racists) as well as anarchists – especially green anarchists – to their strange belief system. They advocate a decentralized economic and political system which features ethnically-pure villages which are defined by racial separatism, anti-semitism and homophobia.

Continue reading this article in Green Anarchy magazine website

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 12th, 2005 at 10:37 am and is filed under U.S., social movements, racism, left-right overlap, anarchism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.