Interview with National Anarchist, Troy Southgate
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You have been involved in and helped to form several political groups such as: the National Front, International Third Position, English Nationalist Movement, National Revolutionary Faction and and the New Right. Did you become dissatisfied with where various of these groups were going, or were your own views evolving into new directions?
Both, actually. The National Front (NF) was already evolving into a revolutionary organisation when I joined it in 1984-5, but due to personality issues it became fragmented in the Autumn of 1989 and myself and a few others – among them Derek Holland, Nick Griffin, Roberto Fiore and Colin Todd – left to form the International Third Position (ITP). The NF, meanwhile, changed its name to Third Way in March 1990 and sadly exchanged its earlier revolutionary nationalist impetus and support for Khomeini’s Iran and Qathafi’s Libya for a self-proclaimed ‘radicalism of the centre’. The ITP also changed, however, and by September 1992 I left to form the English Nationalist Movement (ENM) because several ITP figures such as Roberto Fiore and Derek Holland were trying to promote a form of clerico-fascism. I was also a Traditional Catholic at that time, but was not prepared to sacrifice my own revolutionary ideology for a backward-looking dependence on the likes of Mussolini, Petain and Franco.
Most people joined us in the new ENM venture and the ITP became irrelevant and ineffectual in the British Isles from that moment on. The ENM, I felt, both reflected and reclaimed the uncompromising principles that we had developed in the NF during the mid-to late-1980s. Apart from the name itself, the group was also distinctly English in terms of advancing the ideas of men such as William Cobbett, Robert Blatchford, Robert Owen and William Morris. However, we eventually changed the ENM into the National Revolutionary Faction (NRF) because we were being closely monitored by Special Branch and MI5 and wanted a security-conscious movement based on an underground cell structure. For this purpose we used an organisational manual that had been developed by Hamas. This, combined with our entryist strategy of infiltrating other groups and organisations, worked very effectively indeed.
At the beginning of the 1990s we became aware of Richard Hunt’s ‘Alternative Green’ magazine and that began to influence the way we continued to evolve during that crucial and fomative decade. Hunt had been the founder of Green Anarchist, but eventually resigned once his views on patriarchy began to conflict with the interests of other members. The NRF was shelved when we finally embraced Anarchism ourselves, forming a new current – rather than a party or movement – known as the National-Anarchists. The New Right soon followed, in January 2005, when we saw the need for two groups. The former being political and active, and the latter metapolitical and intellectual.
Would you describe yourself as a “White nationalist” as such? If so,or if not, why is that?
I am no longer a nationalist because I do not recognise the boundaries of the existing nation-states. The nation is always defined by the ruling class, too, so we end up with a contrived entity which does not reflect the ethnicity of those who happened to form the nation in the first place. England, for example, has changed so drastically over the last 50 years or
so that it cannot seriously be regarded as the nation that it was half a century ago. If you change the demographic identity of a nation’s people, therefore, the nation becomes a total nonsense. As far as we are concerned, a nation is constituted by blood, not wholly by territory and certainly not by a governmental administration (state). But neither do I describe myself as ‘white’. This term is actually very unscientific, because whilst it refers to skin colour (phenotype) it does not take into consideration the underlying genetic factors. Race, as Baker tells us, is chiefly based on skeletal considerations. Black Ethiopians, for example, are completely different to other Blacks in Africa and make up part of the racial category known as Europid. So being ‘white’ is really only part of the story. Another danger with ‘white’ nationalism is that it tends to centralise huge sub-racial and tribal swathes that actually have their own distinct cultural and behavioural attributes. Many Americans use the term to identify themselves with other ‘whites’, but it really is a fairly spurious form of terminology given the things that I’ve just mentioned.
Is it likely, do you feel, that the UK will, in the next few decades, lose territory to Islam (with government collusion in this) and that there will be an armed struggle during this process?
Yes, I do believe that racial conflict is inevitable in many parts of the country. But I don’t believe the government will help the Muslims in any way. In fact the only type of Islam that the government here respects or favours is the watered-down, liberal version such as that fronted by the Muslim Council of Britain. The British Establishment does not tolerate
religious ‘extremism’ of any kind, so has its own court imams, rabbis and priests. These are often ecumenicalist and have a strong multi-faith agenda that concords with the objectives of the existing multi-cultural society that we live in. But I do believe that as the British State weakens, ‘fundamentalist’ Muslims themselves will seize power in certain areas. The State believes that it can still eradicate traditional Islamic communities by indoctrinating their children with Americanised values, but its running out of time. Personally, my view is that Islamic groups and communities will be assisted by the worsening economic situation. They already have their own banking, trading and educational structures.
To what extent do you feel that the White birth rate (standing on average at one child per woman, thus halving each generation) is a key problem?
It’s a problem if people of Indo-European stock with to have an influence in the nations in which they presently reside, but in the long term I believe that ‘whites’ will have to leave the multi-racial cities and towns of Europe and North America and set up new areas elsewhere. But I don’t usually make an issue of bemoaning the declining population levels, thereare far too many people in the world today as it is and I would like to see a drastic fall everywhere.
Is it too late now to up the birth rate enough to avoid civil war? Or do you tend to think that there will be no major clash and that the White British (and Europeans generally) will simply fizzle out slowly if our people do not unite to protect their survival?
I think there will be clashes between the immigrant communities and those who – for a variety of reasons – have remained in the same area as these relative newcomers. Some people are already becoming absorbed and have completely lost their identity altoegether. But, on the whole, I believe that economic decline will lead to a huge increase in social problems and that large numbers of Europeans will move away from these areas as a direct result of that. I once knew someone who constantly praised a young woman for being the last remaining English resident in her street, the rest were Pakistani and despite them breaking her windows on a regular basis she refused to leave. But I don’t consider that to be admirable at all, it’s pure stupidity and she – like many other people – need to start facing reality by reading the writing on the wall and forming new communities elsewhere. Europe in her present form is finished, but on a more positive note our people have migrated before and must do so again. Adapt and survive.
Do you feel that the disintegration of families as stable units (loss of family values) has a destructive effect on society?
Families lie at the bedrock of any community, but I don’t take the bourgeois view that everything must be based upon family values. Communities begin with the individual and then extend to the family, the tribe and, ultimately, the nation. But there is still a place for the outsider, so it’s not all about families. Communities need families, yes, but they are not the be-all-and-end-all of our existence. Some people are monogamists, others are polygamists. Some will be celibate, others will be downright ‘anti-social’. That’s all part of being human.
Would you say that it’s advantageous for a nation to have more than one ethno-nationalist movement, so long as this does not mean competing for votes that could be required for the electoral victory of the most successful of these parties? Cooperation rather than rivalry?
I don’t agree with voting, so that doesn’t really apply to the National-Anarchist worldview. We want to reach the stage where people are completely disillusioned with politicians and the charade of party politics. Any cooperation would involve uniting against the System itself.
What is your view on the Green Party, in terms of how genuine or phony their stance is on the environment?
I think it’s members have a genuine concern for the environment, but they refuse to discuss the effects of immigration. Large numbers of people, regardless of what colour they happen to be, are extremely destructive for the natural environment and surely it follows that opposition to immigration should be a logical part of their programme? But again, as a revolutionary I don’t support any party or movement that participates in the parliamentary system.
 Your enthusiasm for Julius Evola seems somewhat at odds with your anarchist ideas. Given that Evola advocated caste systems based on natural hierarchies, how do you reconcile Evola’s ideas with an anarchistic view?
We are not ‘anarchists’ in the sense that the term is usually understood. There is also an ‘anarchism of the Right’ that has its roots among people like Ernst Junger and Gustav Landauer. Friedrich Nietzsche, too, in my opinion , was also an important anarchist thinker and his views on the corrupting nature of morality and the role of the free-spirited individual
are very important. But Evola, too, realised that the nihilist – for example – has a very crucial role to play in the greater scheme of things. Following Nietzsche, the Italian thinker appreciated that a sterile, bourgeois society must be swept away by a new, dynamic force that will help to regenerate and replenish the society in general. This is the pendulum of Ancient Greek civilisation that swung between the poles of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Mikhail Bakunin tells us that ‘destruction is also a creative urge’, so again, we can see the positive role that anarchy can have in the period leading up to a new Golden Age (Satya Yuga). Out with the old and in with the new. The caste system of the traditional society, which Evola discussed at some length, is not at odds with the kind of organic, tribal communities that National-Anarchists wish to establish. But our communities will be voluntary, rather than enforced.
To what extent do you feel politics by itself is sufficient to inspire a people to victory against strong religiously driven forces arrayed against them?
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by ’strong religious forces’, but I believe that political factors are best assisted by cultural factors. In Nazi Germany, for example, the reason National-Socialism became so immensely popular is a result of the tidal wave of culture that had been growing since the 1880s. The Nazis knew how to tap a vein, so to speak, and this is why they adopted the hiking fraternities, mannerbunds, old soldiers’ clubs, ecological societies, occult groups and various other cultural facets for themselves. In many ways, of course, they jumped on the bandwagon. So I don’t think that politics ever succeed on their own, it’s necessary to work on all levels: music, film, theatre, economics, schools and universities. The key, too, is to establish alternative revolutionary structures that will eventually come to replace the infrastructure of the State itself. I am a strong believer in the power of counter-culture and the effect it can have on politics.
Would you agree that, while ethno-nationalist politics can gather disaffected masses, there is a need for a strong common ideology encapsulating common identity and based on a positive vision of something to create, rather than merely a backlash against all that is angering people?
Again, we must work on various levels. As the ‘destructive’ nihilists are helping to eradicate the last vestiges of Western civilisation (‘That which is falling must be pushed’ – Nietzsche), so then will the great cultural innovators begin to create an atmosphere in which the ideas and spirit of the future can grow and flourish. As a musician who is also political, I have seen for myself how these ideas can take shape within the cultural sphere and gradually begin to attract like-minded people with similar political views. Eventually, the key is to get everyone moving in the same direction. I think that’s happening already in parts of the musical underground that includes bands of the ‘Industrial’, ‘Gothic’ and ‘Neofolk’ genres. Things are beginning to merge, very carefully, and these are the areas where you will find some of the exciting revolutionary initiatives that will – I hope – serve as the cultural impetus that eventually assumes a more political and intellectual form. This explains the increasing interest in figures such as Evola, Guenon, Codreanu, Junger and Mishima, all of whom are being promoted extensively through a whole range of music projects, labels and concept albums. We may be living in very depressing times, but there is a still a great deal that we can be optimistic about.