Troy Southgate | |
---|---|
Born | Troy Southgate 22 July 1965 London, England |
Education | University of Kent at Canterbury (1994–97) |
Occupation(s) | Far-right activist and publisher |
Years active | 1984–present |
Known for | Founding national-anarchism |
Troy Southgate (born 22 July 1965) is a British far-right political activist and a self-described national-anarchist. He has been affiliated with far-right and fascist groups, such as National Front and International Third Position. He co-created the think tank New Right alongside Jonathan Bowden and is the founder and editor-in-chief of Black Front Press. Southgate's movement has been described as working to "exploit a burgeoning counter culture of industrial heavy metal music, paganism, esotericism, occultism and Satanism that, it believes, holds the key to the spiritual reinvigoration of western society ready for an essentially Evolian revolt against the culturally and racially enervating forces of American global capitalism." [1]
Southgate joined the National Front in 1984 and began writing for publications such as National Front News and Nationalism Today.[ citation needed ] According to Searchlight magazine, in 1987 he joined the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). [2]
In 1998, he and other ENM members founded the National Revolutionary Faction.[ citation needed ] In 2001, Southgate and the NRF were the subject of a Sunday Telegraph article, in which the NRF was accused of being a neo-Nazi organisation infiltrating animal rights groups to spread fascism. [3]
Southgate's national-anarchist ideology has been described as an opportunistic appropriation of aspects of leftist counter-culture in the service of a racist, far-right ideology. [1]
Black Front Press was established in 2010 by Southgate to print his biography of Otto Strasser, and has subsequently become a publisher of historical, political, philosophical and esoteric texts. [4]
Southgate, who graduated in history and theology from the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1997, comes from a non-religious background—although he converted to Catholicism in 1987 and was in that same year, according to Searchlight , associated with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). [2] Southgate later joined the International Third Position (ITP), believing it to be ‘the legitimate heir to the National Revolutionary Movement in Britain’, though he eventually broke with it in 1992, accusing its membership of gross financial impropriety, hypocrisy, racial miscegenation and of practising a ‘bourgeois’ form of reactionary ultra-Catholic fascism incompatible with the ‘revolutionary’ nationalism that, he claimed, they had betrayed. [1]
According to Searchlight, [2] in 1998 Southgate was partly the subject of a smear piece by former colleagues in the ITP, in the booklet Satanism and its Allies – The Nationalist Movement Under Attack, published by Final Conflict, and linking him and others that left the ITP to Satanism, with which he has never been involved. [5] Graham D. Macklin refers to this slander as an "attack" due to leaving the "staunchly Catholic ITP" although he points out that it was only later, after the original publication of the booklet, that the ITP decided for some reason to produce an update that "singled out Southgate as a 'Satanist' and 'pro-faggot'". [1]
Southgate, to further his ideology of "revolutionary nationalism", subsequently formed the English National movement, which denounced Hitler and Mussolini as "reactionary charlatans" whilst praising fascists he felt had represented the Third Position more sincerely, such as Otto Strasser, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, and José Antonio Primo de Rivera. [1] Around this time he began to justify British ethnic homogeneity, which he claimed was "not racist", by recourse to the European New Right concept of Ethnopluralism. [1]
Southgate rejected Catholicism in 1997, and gravitated towards the extreme-right interpretation of traditionalism espoused by Julius Evola, particularly Evola's "spiritual racism", and synthesized this with Carl Jung's notion of the collective unconscious in order to push the idea of a "primeval Aryan psyche". [1] The multiplicity of his influences led to his espousing an idiosyncratic form of palingenetic ultranationalism that divorced itself from the "artificial" concept of the nation-state. [1]
Southgate subsequently incorporated green-anarchism into his perspective in order to counter the 'corrosive influence of urbanism and decay', and embraced neo-pagan and heathen groups. [1] Along with like-minded musicians, he sought to diffuse the ideals of Mithraic paganism and Nordic folk myths into music-orientated youth cultures. [1]
Southgate was influenced by Evola's view that feminism had led to a breakdown in what the feminine and masculine roles had to offer. [6]
Southgate has edited in excess of 100 books, chiefly through Black Front Press, but the following is a list of titles published under his own name.
Giulio Cesare Andrea "Julius" Evola was an Italian philosopher. Evola regarded his values as aristocratic, monarchist, masculine, traditionalist, heroic, and defiantly reactionary. An eccentric thinker in Fascist Italy, he also had ties to Nazi Germany; in the post-war era, he was an ideological mentor of the Italian neo-fascist and militant Right.
The Iron Guard was a Romanian militant revolutionary fascist movement and political party founded in 1927 by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu as the Legion of the Archangel Michael or the Legionary Movement. It was strongly anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, anti-communist, and anti-Semitic. It differed from other European right-wing movements of the period due to its spiritual basis, as the Iron Guard was deeply imbued with Romanian Orthodox Christian mysticism.
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, born Corneliu Codreanu according to his birth certificate, was a Romanian politician of the far right, the founder and charismatic leader of the Iron Guard or The Legion of the Archangel Michael, an ultranationalist and violently antisemitic organization active throughout most of the interwar period. Generally seen as the main variety of local fascism, and noted for its mystical and Romanian Orthodox-inspired revolutionary message, Iron Guard gained prominence on the Romanian political stage, coming into conflict with the political establishment and the democratic forces, and often resorting to terrorism. The Legionnaires traditionally referred to Codreanu as Căpitanul, and he held absolute authority over the organization until his death.
Patrick Antony Harrington is a far-right British political activist and writer of Irish Catholic family origins, who has published pamphlets by the Social Credit advocate and former editor of the Liverpool Newsletter, Anthony Cooney, about prominent Catholic writers such as G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien and Hilaire Belloc. He is currently general secretary of Solidarity – The Union for British Workers and a director of the Third Way, a think tank.
Political Soldier is a political concept associated with the Third Position. It played a leading role in Britain's National Front from the late 1970s onwards under young radicals Nick Griffin, Patrick Harrington and Derek Holland of the Official National Front. The term was used to indicate an almost fanatical devotion to the cause of nationalism, which its supporters felt was needed to bring about a revolutionary change in society.
International Third Position (ITP) was a neo-fascist organisation formed by the breakaway faction of the British National Front, led by Roberto Fiore, an ex-member of the Italian far-right movement Third Position.
Strasserism is a strand of Nazism which adheres to revolutionary nationalism and economic antisemitism. It calls for a more radical, mass-action and worker-based movement than what was advocated by the leadership of the Nazi Party. Strasserism derived its name from Gregor and Otto Strasser, two brothers initially associated with this position. Otto Strasser originally led a faction within the Nazi Party, but was expelled from the party in 1930 and created the Black Front as a rival organization. He fled Germany in 1933 and returned after World War II. Strasserism allegedly had a considerable degree of support among the SA, which led to Strasserists being purged by Adolf Hitler during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, with Gregor Strasser being murdered. In the 1980s, Strasserism again began to play an active role in politics after it found support among some leading members of the National Front party in the UK.
David Wulstan Myatt, also known by the pseudonym Abdulaziz ibn Myatt al-Qari, is a British author, religious leader, far-right and former Islamist militant, most notable for allegedly being the political and religious leader of the White nationalist theistic Satanist organization Order of Nine Angles (ONA) from 1974 onwards. He is also the founder of Numinous Way and a former Muslim.
The Official National Front (ONF) was one of two far-right groups to emerge in the United Kingdom in 1986 following a split within the National Front. Following ideological paths that were mostly new to the British far-right, the ONF stood opposed to the more traditionalist Flag Group.
The Third Position is a set of neo-fascist political ideologies that were first described in Western Europe following the Second World War. Developed in the context of the Cold War, it developed its name through the claim that it represented a third position between the capitalism of the Western Bloc and the communism of the Eastern Bloc.
The Nouvelle Droite, sometimes shortened to the initialism ND, is a far-right political movement which emerged in France during the late 1960s. The Nouvelle Droite is the origin of the wider European New Right (ENR). Various scholars of political science have argued that it is a form of fascism or neo-fascism, although the movement eschews these terms.
National-anarchism is a radical right-wing nationalist ideology which advocates racial separatism, racial nationalism, ethnic nationalism, and racial purity. National-anarchists syncretize ethnic nationalism with philosophical anarchism, mainly in their support for a stateless society, while rejecting anarchist social philosophy. The main ideological innovation of national-anarchism is its anti-state palingenetic ultranationalism. National-anarchists advocate homogeneous communities in place of the nation state. National-anarchists claim that those of different ethnic or racial groups would be free to develop separately in their own tribal communes while striving to be politically horizontal, economically non-capitalist, ecologically sustainable, and socially and culturally traditional.
Anarchism and nationalism both emerged in Europe following the French Revolution of 1789 and have a long and durable relationship going back at least to Mikhail Bakunin and his involvement with the pan-Slavic movement prior to his conversion to anarchism. There has been a long history of anarchist involvement with nationalism all over the world as well as with internationalism.
The Combat League of Revolutionary National Socialists, more commonly known as the Black Front, was a political group formed by Otto Strasser in 1930 after he resigned from the Nazi Party (NSDAP) to avoid being expelled.
Jonathan David Anthony Bowden was an English far-right activist. Initially a Conservative, he later became involved in far-right organisations such as the British National Party. Bowden has been described as a "cult Internet figure" in the far-right, even after his death.
Richard Lawson has been a member of various far right groups in the United Kingdom.
Graham Keith Williamson is a long-time political activist in the United Kingdom, having been active at the top levels of various far right groups including the National Front, the Third Way and Solidarity.
Derek Holland is a figure on the European far-right noted for his Catholic Integralism.
National Bolshevism, whose supporters are known as National Bolsheviks and colloquially as Nazbols, is a syncretic political movement committed to combining ultranationalism and communism.
Proletarian nation was a term used by 20th century Italian nationalist intellectuals such as Enrico Corradini to refer to Italy and other nations that they regarded as having the characteristics, through analogy with the proletariat, of being productive, morally vigorous, and inclined to bold action. Corradini admired revolutionary proletarian movements such as syndicalism for their tactics, although he opposed their goals, and he wanted to inspire a radical nationalist movement that would use similar tactics in service of different goals: a movement that would advocate imperialist war in place of class revolution, while maintaining the same methods of "maximum cohesion, concentration of forces, iron discipline and utter ruthlessness." Corradini associated the concept of proletariat with the economic function of production, arguing that all producers are in a moral sense proletarian, and he believed that all producers should be at the forefront of a new imperialist proletarian nation.