Nationalist anarchism
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Nationalist anarchism (also called anarcho-nationalism) is a political view which seeks to unite cultural or ethnic separatism with anarchist views rejecting hierarchy, capitalism, and the state. Its adherents propose that those preventing ethnic groups (or races) from organizing in separate autonomous groupings should be resisted. This separation may go as far as living in separate areas. Anarchists have traditionally rejected nationalism, as many equate nation with state. Most anarchists therefore consider nationalist anarchism to be a contradiction.
The most well-known, and also most controversial, form of nationalist anarchism is National anarchism, a position developed by the National Revolutionary Faction, an organization with links to the British far right. Other contemporary combinations of anarchism with nationalism include some strains of Black anarchism.
However, a concept of 'anarcho-nationalism' independent of either black or far-right input surfaced briefly in the British anarchist movement in 1982 when the Black Ram Group (formerly Derby Anarchist Group) published the first and only edition of its journal Black Ram. This publication had begun to make connections between anarchism, neo-paganism and völkisch nationalist ideas (in particular, the German-Jewish völkisch anarchist Gustav Landauer), with further exploration of these themes promised. The group disbanded in the following year and it is not known whether it influenced the formation or development of other anarcho-nationalist movements.
An evident precursor to Black Ram's concept of völkisch-anarchism can be found in the Alternative Socialist Movement, an alliance of British radicals formed during the 1970s in which Keith Paton (a.k.a. Keith Motherson) and the controversial artist Monica Sjöö were key members. Alternative Socialism sought to synthesise a range of seeming contraries: dissident Marxism with anarchism, socialism with libertarianism, Christianity with paganism, and reformism with revolution. It espoused the love of homeland and country from a nonviolent and feminist perspective which Paton dubbed 'matriotism', and drew upon an interpretation of German völkisch thought as an essentially cosmopolitan current of ideas celebrating ethnic and cultural diversity. The movement rejected every form of patriarchal machismo from the left as well as the right, and therefore it advocated countering fascism through dialogue instead of dehumanising vilification.
[edit] External links
- Anarchists against nationalism and anarchists and nationalism at flag.blackened.net
- Are anarchists against nationalism? at spunk press
- Anarchist Integralism
- Beyond Nationalism, But Not Without It Nationalism and Anarchism from a Black anarchist perspective, from Anarchist Panther by Ashanti Alston
