thumb|upright=1.0|National-Anarchist star

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 anarchism, mainly in their support for a stateless society, while rejecting anarchist social philosophy.

History

Origins

The term national-anarchist dates back as far as the 1920s. However, it would be the writings of other members of the conservative revolutionary movement such as Ernst Jünger which would later provide the philosophical foundation of the contemporary national-anarchist movement. Southgate claims that the NRF took part in anti-vivisection protests in August 2000 alongside hunt saboteurs and the Animal Liberation Front by following a strategy of entryism, but its only known public action under the national-anarchist name was to hold an anarchist heretics fair in October 2000 in which a number of fringe groups participated. After a coalition of anti-fascists and green anarchists blocked three further events from being held in 2001, Southgate and the NRF abandoned this strategy and retreated to purely disseminating their ideas in Internet forums. Although Southgate disbanded the group in 2003, the NRF became part of the Euro-American radical right, a virtual community of European and American right-wing extremists seeking to establish a new pan-national and ethnoreligious identity for all people they believe belong to the "Aryan race". In the United States, only a few websites have been established, but there has been a trend towards a steady increase. Töpfer has been noted for his correspondence with the neo-Nazi Christian Worch, to whom he complained about threats he had received from the Autonomous Nationalists when he showed up at an NPD-demonstration in 1998 with a black-and-red anarchy flag. Töpfer has also cooperated with the National Bolshevik Michael Koth, at the time of the Combat League of German Socialists, and associated himself with the convicted holocaust denier Horst Mahler, at whose events he and his followers apparently distributed leaflets. Leaflets, under the title "Tornado Runter" were also distributed at the 1999 in Hamburg, which protested the Kosovo War, by a group called "National-Anarchists in the People's Liberation Struggle" (), apparently associated with Töpfer. In 2004, Töpfer published a book that consisted of a collection of his national-anarchist writing from 1997 to 2000 named nationale Anarchie.

Töpfer's ideology has apparently developed separately from that of Troy Southgate, although Töpfer did later associate somewhat with the National-Anarchist Movement. He notes his ideology to be an expression of radical anti-modernism that combines radical individualism, inspired by Max Stirner, with radical collectivism, inspired by figures like Mikhail Bakunin, combined in the will to ultimate self-determination. Töpfer contrasted his "German national-anarchism" with that of other contemporaries by declaring its roots to be pacifist, "post-left-hegelian" (), and "radical-enlightened" (); as well as noting his movement to be anti-political in nature. Töpfer also contrasted his ideology with that of an at-the-time emergent group of "Anarcho-Nazis" in Spain and Portugal by stating that he opposes Hitlerlism. In his 2004 national-anarchist manifesto, Töpfer writes, among other thoughts, of spontaneous action and the belief that anarchism mustn't inherently mean statelessness, but only freedom from authority, an idea that has been criticized as nonsensical.

In Töpfer's sense there apparently existed two groups in Germany, one in Berlin, where Töpfer resided, and one in Hamburg, although the latter apparently did not last long.

Thilo Kabus

The neo-pagan and former National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) politician Thilo Kabus independently created an ideology he termed "Anarcho-Nationalism" () which he explicitly contrasted to the national-anarchism of Peter Töpfer. Kabus was a member of the NPD for almost 20 years until ending his membership in 2003 once he started calling himself an Anarcho-Nationalist and seeking employment with the Brandenburg state parliament faction of the German People's Union (DVU); first working in the DVU's faction's press office and later being proposed as a member of the parliamentary youth welfare committee, for which he was declined by the parliament. Kabus noted that his employment was separate from his ideological convictions, stating that he would also work "for the PDS or the CDU" and that he was highly critical of the DVU, calling it bourgeoisie and reactionary. He was an ideological lone wolf, declaring himself to be the only true Anarcho-Nationalist. Kabus was a member of the Odinic Rite Germany where he helped organize events along with his wife. Kabus however stayed in the organization and later became the Berlin speaker of the organization, claiming to have left behind some of his views in a 2019 interview.

In the United States

Bay Area National Anarchists

National-anarchism in the United States began as a relatively obscure movement made up of probably fewer than 200 individuals led by Andrew Yeoman of the Bay Area National Anarchists (BANA) based in the San Francisco Bay Area and a couple of other groups in Northern California and Idaho. Organizations based on national-anarchist ideology have gained a foothold in Russia and have been accused of sowing turmoil in the environmental movement in Germany. Since then, national-anarchists have joined other marches in Australia and in the United States.

According to Matthew N. Lyons, "freedom from government tyranny has always been a central theme of right-wing politics in the United States". Lyons cites "the original Ku Klux Klan that denounced 'northern military despotism'" and the Tea Party movement, "who vilify Barack Obama as a combination of Hitler and Stalin", as examples of the radical right, of which national-anarchism is part of, that has invoked "the evil of big government to both attract popular support and justify their own oppressive policies". National-anarchists claim that "national autonomous zones" (NAZs) could exist with their own rules for permanent residence without the strict ethnic divisions and violence advocated by other forms of "blood and soil" ethnic nationalism. This analysis argues that it is a form of crypto-fascism which hopes to avoid the stigma of classical fascism by appropriating symbols, slogans and stances of the anarchist movement while engaging in entryism to inject some core fascist values into the anti-globalization and environmental movements.

Sources

Books and journal articles

News articles

  • National Anarchist Movement