- Oh yeah, see also Anti-German Translation, “A blog about the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and anti-globalization movements, analysing the convergences between right-wing thought and false forms of anti-capitalism, drawing on the German “anti-German” communist current”. Typical Kraut nonsense.
“In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community — and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion… The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind… It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm… nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state. Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings. These deaths bring us abruptly face to face with the central problem posed by nationalism: what makes the shrunken imaginings of recent history (scarcely more than two centuries) generate such colossal sacrifices? I believe that the beginnings of an answer lie in the cultural roots of nationalism.” ~ Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1991)
“But it’s not just violent and brutal nazi-skins; the regular German throws bloody shadows back to the early 1930s. Their attitude “what’s not regular, has to be erased” makes political and inter-cultural coalitions against nazi violence impossible. Nazis seem to express exactly what the regular German wants: a Germany just for Germans. [Böhse Onkelz (Bad Uncles)] a fascist band which could hardly manage to play a year ago and whose records are illegal, has sold-out concerts all over Germany and sold more than 50,000 records under the table this fall. Left hardcore is out and “nazi”-punk is the future (nobody wants to be a “wimpy, degenerate, red scumbag”). ~ ‘Nazis Raus Aus Deutschland!’, Love & Rage, Sep/Oct/Nov 1992, p.9.
“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” ~ George Orwell, ‘Notes on Nationalism’ (1945)
“Nationalism is the opposite of imperialism only in the realm of definitions. In practice, nationalism was a methodology for conducting the empire of capital.” ~ ‘The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism’, Fredy Perlman (1984)
- …and solidarity to the comrades. October 15th Solidarity is “a new online project organised by a small group of people spread around the world. We hope to provide a platform to help support those affected by the raids and their wider communities. We also hope to strengthen the networks of existing and future support groups”. See also afterg20.org for information on the situation of the dozens of individuals facing charges as a result of excessive uppityness in the face of the G20.
Ahoy-hoy @ndy,
Do you know anything about these characters, self-proclaimed ‘National Anarchists’?
http://www . bayareanationalanarchists.com/
Hola Happy,
Yeah, a little. Another UK export. The Bay Area mob is some bloke with a sore head. You can read more about them on my blog. For example:
Anarchist statement on the New Right
Anarchist statement on New Right (cont.)
All Heil the New Reich*
APEC : New Reich / “National Anarchists”
The local mob made their debut under the watchful eye of the APEC police state.
The short version is that ‘national anarchism’ is an attempt by the far right to appropriate some of the cachet associated with anarchism; ideologically speaking, it’s a shallow as it’s seemingly contradictory name suggests. I first encountered it maybe six or seven years ago, but it’s only really emerged Down Under in the last year or two, almost entirely as a result of the efforts of a German-born yuppie named Welf Herfurth. He lives in Sydney, works as some kind of businessman, and is — alongside of Dr James Saleam — about as close as we get to a fascist intelligentsia.
(Why do you ask?)
“Typical Kraut nonsense.”
Nice to see you practice what you preach @ndy, an ‘anti-racist’ using derogatory names for Europeans? Who would’ve heard of it!?
We should all use you as an example of ‘tolerance’ mate!
You must be a Pommie bastard.
Thanks @ndy.
Inexplicably, one of these national anarchists popped up on a blog I visit, bemoaning the terrible ‘oppression’ caused by political correctness. I was curious to see how this sort of far-right nonsense could have found itself married to anarchism.
Hey THR,
There’s a neat little article about the dingbats:
Graham D. Macklin, ‘Co-opting the counter culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction’, Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2005 [PDF].
Ok, I’ve a last – and final question before I hit the showers: What is it you oppose about Europeans wishing to have their own White, non-imperial, homogenious society?
I mean, you kill 2 birds with one stone.
Mick,
My desire is for anarchy: a classless, non-hierarchical society. I view such a society as being both ‘just’ — that is, ethical — and in accord with ecological and social imperatives. In other words, I think that such a society — a society in which the principle of ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’ is realised in practice — is most conducive to human survival, as well as being in conformity with important aspects of our species-being (that is, our ability to form co-operative, as opposed to exploitative, relations).
This forms the core of my world-view.
Beyond that, I’m more interested in social structure than I am social composition. That is, I don’t care if a society is composed of people of European or of some other descent. To put it another way, I did not choose to be born, and I did not choose my parents. The same is the case for every other person. Therefore, attaching some kind of ethical or political importance to one’s ancestry — at least in this context — is irrational.
As far as I’m concerned, the relevant question is not “What is it you oppose about Europeans wishing to have their own White, non-imperial, [homogenous] society?” but ‘What do I want?’ and ‘What do I think is right?’. Insofar as I’m able, in addition to addressing these questions, in what I write, I express the reasons for my opposition to what I consider to be irrational prejudices, of which racism is one form. Such questions and such ethical and political considerations do not take place in a vacuum, and so I also attempt to place them within a social and historical context. For example, what is the history of attempts to create a ‘White’ society? What does it mean? What kind of a society is Australia, and what is its history?
In answering these other, secondary but related questions, I find such ambitions to be not only uninteresting (to say the least) but contradictory. Thus the land on which (you and) I live was and continues to be, in part, the result of imperialist expansion and colonial expropriation. This realisation makes the idea of a ‘non-imperialist’ society a fiction, just as much as the doctrine of terra nullius was. What, then, to do? To begin with, I think that there needs to be some kind of treaty process entered into with indigneous peoples, one which, at minimum, recognises these expropriations to have taken place, and seeks to redress the many (other) injustices which continue to flow from it. I see this process taking place on multiple levels, but that’s another story…
Regarding homogeneity, there are certain kinds I support, and others which I don’t. For example, I happily endorse the creation of a society in which all of its members have regular access to food clothes and shelter, some form of meaningful work, the capacity to form meaningful relations with others, and all the other things which make up the good life. There are barriers to the creation of this kind of a society (one which must necessarily be global). Or as the IWW expressed it:
PS. As a vegetarian, I don’t eat chicken, and I’m not interested in killing birds, with either stones or sticks.