STATEMENT OF NEW RIGHT ON NATIONAL-ANARCHISM AND AUSTRALIAN NATIONALISM
by the New Right Australia New Zealand Committee
1. Introduction
This statement is in response to a recent article on the New Right Australia/New Zealand, “An error in New Right Australia/New Zealand: is there an effective acceptance of multiculturalism and multiracialism in Australia?” by Dr James Saleam, one of Australia’s leading nationalist intellectuals. (The article can be found at: home.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/defendnationalism/defend12.html
Readers of this article are urged to read Dr Saleam’s article first.
Normally, the New Right does not respond to comments, criticisms, attacks or anything of that kind, on the Internet or anywhere else: the New Right is not a reactive organisation. But in this case, it was decided that an exception would be made, because nationalists and people who subscribe to other ideologies may be asking the same questions as Dr Saleam.
In his article, Dr Saleam has asked for a clarification from New Right on several points – the main one being (as the title of his article suggests) whether or not New Right accepts the existing government policy of unrestricted, non-European immigration into Australia and the ideology of multiculturalism. Which is not to say that Dr Saleam has the right, prima facie, to demand such clarifications. The New Right represents metapolitics – which means looking at political problems from different perspectives, and unconventional perspectives at that. It is not Australian nationalism, and does not view every political problem through the prism of Australian nationhood. In other words, we in the New Right are not accountable, in any way, to Australian nationalism.
To return to Dr Saleam’s article: his questions are: does the New Right accept multiculturalism and multiracialism as a historical inevitability? Does New Right advocate moves to lessen the numbers of immigrants arriving into this country (through government action) and a policy of repatriating immigrants already here? Dr Saleam notes that New Right seems to give the impression that nothing can be done, via government action, to prevent immigration; and that, so long as the immigrant communities are separate from the Anglo-European, nothing should be done – the two separate communities can live side by side, in peace.
As well as that, in Dr Saleam’s view, it seems that New Right endorses the notion that, over time, the Australian nation, and the Australian State itself, shall disappear, becoming a decentralised patchwork of ethnic communities (whether immigrant or Anglo-European). This doctrine Dr Saleam finds objectionable: and a good many other nationalists in Australia likewise will have problems with it.
It should be noted here, from the outset, that the New Right is not a monolithic organisation: it is comprised of many people of many different views. Some are National-Anarchists; others, Christians; others, white nationalists (of the David Lane/David Duke/William Pierce school); others, sympathisers with traditional Australian nationalism (e.g., Jack Lang, William Lane). Some come from skinhead backgrounds, others from conservative political backgrounds (i.e., have traditionally voted Liberal), others from the Left.
Secondly, New Right does not have a communist, or corporate, or fascist, or in any way dictatorial, system of imposing a party line on its members. In a Marxist-Leninist communist party, the leadership makes a decision on what the communist party position is on such-and-such a topic (China, Russia, gays, immigration, abortion) and then uses discipline to make sure that every member adheres to that position, in statements to the media, and in party publications. In contrast to this, New Right has a decentralised structure, and the metapolitical approach mentioned earlier. Some members may make statements, and pursue certain lines of thought, at nationalist conferences, which are, for instance, National-Anarchist; as well as that, some New Right propaganda and display material (which has been reproduced on the Internet) such as posters, banners and the like, may use National-Anarchist slogans and symbols. Whether or not the New Right member chooses to use National-Anarchist symbols, or animal liberationist symbols, or white nationalist symbols, when producing New Right material, is up to him or her. The same applies when that member is making a presentation to other nationalists and other political groups. There is no ‘head office’ for New Right which censures individual activists for ‘going against the party line’.
Third, in Australia, immigration levels are higher than ever before, and Australian identity is gradually being eroded, not only because of immigration, but because of American and globalist pop culture. Nationalism in Australia has, so far, failed to counteract this – and failed completely. One could say that nationalism in Australia has been failing for thirty years. It has no influence whatsoever on Australian political, or for that matter, intellectual, life. That is why the New Right Australia New Zealand is looking for a different approach.
Fourth, New Right, as Dr Saleam points out, is a new movement, a developing movement: so many of the ‘concrete’ positions, or ‘core values’, are still being formulated. That is because the New Right is a response to thirty years failure of Australian nationalism, and, as stated before, is looking for new solutions.
Now, a critic may say in response to this: ‘It sounds as though you in the New Right are all over the place: what exactly do you all believe in? And what are your positions on the questions Dr Saleam has raised in his article?’. Here we will attempt to answer both of these questions.
2. The Nouvelle Droit
The ideas of New Right have their roots in the European Nouvelle Droite, an informal, Europe-based intellectual grouping. I can find no better capsule summary of their ideas than that found in the publication by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, the “Annual Report 2005 on the Protection of the Constitution”. I shall reproduce it here:
Neue Rechte (New Right)
The New Right first emerged as a movement among French
intellectuals in the 1970s which sought to raise the intellectual
standards within the right-wing extremist camp. Among other things it
invokes anti-democratic thought propagated by representatives of the
“conservative revolution”, a political current in the Weimar Republic.
The activists of the New Right want to abolish or at least impair the
democratic constitutional state. To this effect, they try to gain influence
within the area of cultural politics in order to finally delegitimise the
democratic constitutional state and radically change the political
system [...]
This is a perfect description of the Nouvelle Droit’s methods and intentions – and New Right Australia/New Zealand’s.
The second core element of Nouvelle Droit ideology comes from the thinking of Alain de Benoist, one of the founders of the Nouvelle Droit.
De Benoist’s work has a vast range. But one of his main ideas is that of the organic community: a homogenous organism, which has a life of its own, has developed naturally, over a period of time, without outside pressure, and which tends to segregate itself from other communities, maintaining its own homogeneity, and keeping its own customs and traditions separate from the others. State-sanctioned multiracialism attempts to break up such communities by force, in order to ‘integrate’ them with other ethnic communities in the same country. An example of this is America in the 1950s, where President Eisenhower ordered the National Guard to force integration on Southern schools, against the wishes of the Anglo-American majority. (The Anglo-American opponents of integration advocated ‘State’s rights’ - that is, the rights of the Southern states to resist integration and desegregation forced upon them by a centralised federal US government which did not share their concerns).
De Benoist is an instinctive federalist: that is, he believes that the ethnically-homogenous communities should be autonomous (but not independent from and separate) in relation to the State, that they have a right to maintain their own homogeneity and customs, and that the ideal State should be as decentralised as possible (e.g., giving those individual states (in a federal structure, like in Australia or the United States) or communities as much leeway as possible in ordering their own affairs. De Benoist is against nationalism, or nation-statism, to the extent that it imposes a phoney nationalism on its population which erases the real and existing ethnic (and racial) differences. De Benoist would deplore the communist government of the former Yugoslavia for using force to impose a phoney ‘Yugoslav’ national identity on its Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Slovenian inhabitants where no such ‘Yugoslav’ identity had previously existed.
De Benoist’s ideas have to be understood in a French political context. There is no reason, however, why De Benoist’s model cannot be transposed to other countries – namely, Australia, or the US.
The question is, however: does de Benoist oppose repatriation through State action? Does he advocate anarchism? Are his ideas (and those of the Nouvelle Droit) National-Anarchism?
There is no clear answer to the first question, whether or not de Benoist supports repatriation. He has distanced himself in the past from Jean-Marie Le Pen and the FN (which supports repatriation), but his views on that subject in particular are not exactly clear. He avoids it, so far as we can tell, in his writings.
As to whether or not he advocates anarchism, or the abolition of the nation-state itself, the answer is no. In his essay, “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft: A sociological view of the decay of modern society” (1994), de Benoist writes:
Nationalists are proponents of holism. Nationalists see the individual as a kinsman, sustained by the people and community. which nurtures and protects him, and with which he is proud to identify. The individual's actions represent an act of participation in the life of his people, and freedom of action is very real because, sharing in the values of his associates, the individual will seldom seek to threaten the basic values of the community with which he identifies. Societies which lack this basic sense of national unity are inherently prone to suffer from repeated situations wherein the opposing values of its egotistical members conflict with each other.
Furthermore, proponents of nationhood contend that a society or a people can survive only when: a) they remain aware of their cultural and historical origins; b) when they can assemble around a mediator, be it individual, or symbolic, who is capable of reassembling their energies and catalyzing their will to have a destiny; c) when they can retain the courage to designate their enemy. None of these conditions have been realized in societies that put economic gain above all other values, and which consequently: a) dissolve historical memories; b) extinguish the sublime and eliminate subliminal ideals; c) assume that it is possible not to have enemies [...]
Now, such remarks by de Benoist are not exactly ‘statist’ or ‘fascist’: but they are not exactly anarchist either.
Where does the New Right Australia/NZ stand in relation to de Benoist? In broad agreement. But most nationalists, and Dr Saleam himself, would agree with the de Benoist doctrine as stated here. It is hard to imagine that a real controversy could exist, in the nationalist movement in Australia and outside, about de Benoist’s ideas: most nationalists agree with the basic principles.
3. National-Anarchism and its relation to New Right
On the other hand, National-Anarchism is a controversial topic among nationalists, and Left organisations. So we should make clear, here, what National-Anarchism is and what its relation to New Right is.
National-Anarchism, as conceived by Troy Southgate, believes in what Marx called ‘The withering away of the State’: that, following a series of economic (owing to the instability of the capitalist economic system) and even ecological crises, that Western nation-states will break up into separate, ethnically homogenous communities, concentrated in the rural and semi-rural areas. These communities shall be small, and practice self-sufficiency. Mr Southgate’s vision is not so different from that of the ‘eco-primitivists’, Richard Hunt and the ‘green anarchists’: he does not repudiate 21st century technology, but he does believe that a system where people live in small communities away from the overcrowded cities, with plenty of arable land, in a country with a much-reduced population, is desirable. In Mr Southgate’s new anarchist order, the State shall cease to exist, and possibly the capitalist economy will be replaced by a system of barter. As for defence functions, the small town militia will replace conventional military forces.
In practical terms, National-Anarchism means a cessation of party politics, electoral politics, ballot-box politics: no participation in the life of the State or the liberal democratic system which forms the basis of the State in the Western world today. The best thing a nationalist can do is isolate himself and his family from multiculturalism and multiracialism as it exists in Western societies (and makes itself felt through the Western media and popular culture). For that reason, Mr Southgate advocates home schooling (to shield one’s children from forced ‘integration’ in schools), better education, the protection of the family unit, and the consumption of little of the Western mass media as possible.
Mr Southgate believes that the nationalists who pursue a ‘white revolution’, who engage in political activism designed to stir up the masses against multiculturalism and immigration, who participate in party-politics (e.g., join the British BNP and the French FN) and who seek to bring about a government policy of repatriation, are chasing fool’s gold. His view is that the non-indigenous communities in Britain are thoroughly entrenched, through having been there for so long (some of the immigrant communities first appeared in the 1950s) and through racial mixing with the indigenous British population. So repatriation is virtually impossible, and it is unrealistic of British nationalists to believe that somehow the British people will ‘rise up’ and repatriate those immigrants, with all the dislocation and turmoil that would entail. The only solution is to create a ‘parallel society’, here and now, that is, work to build an ethnically-homogenous community – or rather, improve relations between the disparate and separate individuals who make up that community, and encourage them to think of themselves as a community, and not individuals – which will exist in total isolation from the State, and from political parties.
Where does the New Right Australia/New Zealand stand in relation National-Anarchism?
Firstly, it is not a National-Anarchist group, but some members are National-Anarchists. As for the relation between National-Anarchist theory and New Right ideology, it was stated (erroneously) in the article, “The New Right Manifesto” (published on the Internet in 2007) that the National-Anarchists represent the application of de Benoist’s ideas, that ‘New Right is the theory, National-Anarchism the practice’. This was debatable, as the reader can see for himself when comparing the two doctrines (Nouvelle Droit and National-Anarchism) as expounded here. Many of the street activists for the New Right are not National-Anarchists (many of them are not Christians, either, or animal liberationists).
The fact that Mr Southgate is one of the organisers of the annual New Right conference in Britain may seem to give the impression that National-Anarchism and the New Right (in Britain, or Australia) are the one and the same thing, or at least closely tied together. So may the fact that members of the New Right Australia/New Zealand have given lectures on National-Anarchist ideas at nationalist events, or given sympathetic expositions of National-Anarchism to other nationalists in private conversations or in correspondences.
To clear up these misunderstandings: Mr Southgate does maintain an interest in the ideas of the Nouvelle Droit, and has contributed articles to the British New Right’s magazine, “Scorpion”. But Mr Southgate is also interested in many theories which are not related to New Right/Nouvelle Droit ideas: for instance, Evolian Traditionalism, and Wodenism. He is also very much interested in classical anarchist thinkers such as Bakunin and Kropotkin.
Secondly, as stated before, New Right Australia/New Zealand is not a monolithic organisation. If someone does detect an inconsistency between a speech made by a member of the New Right, and an article on one of the New Right websites, so be it.
Some confusion may arise in nationalist observers about the issue (the precise relation of National-Anarchism to the New Right) simply because the New Right is a developing organisation. The New Right Australia/New Zealand was originally conceived (by Mr Welf Herfurth) as a nationalist think-tank like the ‘Dresdner School’, the German nationalist think-tank which is related to the NPD. As time progressed, the New Right Australia/New Zealand expanded into street activism (while still maintaining its original function as a think-tank). Probably, in organisational terms, it is necessary to split the New Right into two separate departments – a think-tank and a street activist wing. Because a few of the prominent New Right activists do believe in National-Anarchism to a greater or lesser degree, one proposal has been that the National-Anarchists could be the street arm of the New Right. This would not be feasible, because National-Anarchist ideology is not totally commensurate with the intellectual positions of the New Right or the aims of the New Right over the long term. But there is a need – organisationally – for a street activist wing, and perhaps, in the (very) distant future, a political party as well. The problem is really an internal organisational one, which will be addressed in due course, not uncommon to rapidly growing political groups.
4. New Right and repatriation
So what is the New Right position on repatriation, and does it believe that repatriation can be achieved through the State, e.g., through a State controlled by a nationalist party? Does it believe that political activity, and elections, and parties, are futile? Is the isolationism, and ‘parallel society-ism’, of National-Anarchism, the answer?
Most nationalists in Australia want to reclaim Australia’s unique Anglo-European identity by a) putting a halt to the current immigration policy, which aims at bringing as many non-European migrants as possible to our shores, to stay, permanently; and b) by encouraging the non-European immigrants already living here (some for thirty years) to return to their homelands. New Right Australia/New Zealand agrees with these aims.
It should be pointed out that the above objectives can be reached by community action, as opposed to State action: one only has to look at the recent events in Tibet, where the Tibetan population has revolted against Beijing’s policy mass Han-Chinese immigration into Tibet; or in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where the Palestinians have revolted against Israeli policy of settlement-building for Jewish Israelis on Palestinian land; or Kenya, which has seen intertribal, inter-communal unrest, and the expulsion of ethnic communities from villages.
However, probably the best, most efficient (and most humane) way of achieving the two objectives is politically, through the State. The Australian State can put forward legislation halting non-European immigration immediately, and then use its financial resources to provide the inducement for non-European immigrants to resettle in their homelands.
In the conventional scenario, posited by nationalist groups in Australia and elsewhere, nationalists only need to form a party, get elected to office, and then start carrying out the two policies mentioned above. Theoretically, nationalists are not restricted to that option: there is always the possibility of the seizure of power through a coup d’état, or a protracted period of insurgency. In Western liberal democracies, such options are not usually considered, and in some Western countries (such as Australia) it is illegal even to contemplate, on paper, such possibilities.
Where does New Right stand? A party with mass-based, popular support, winning power through an election is the best way – and the only legal way. Perhaps it is not feasible, not realistic: perhaps any win, by nationalists in Australia, is not possible, given the obstacles faced (including the preferential voting system). But, in any case, a party (and the electoral process) is really part the way of representing Anglo-Europeans across the entire nation.
New Right differs from Australian nationalists insofar as that it makes a thoroughgoing intellectual and sociological analyses of what it is that makes some nationalist parties win and others fail. It has held the NPD up as an example because it believes that the NPD, with its ‘three pillars’ strategy, is going about electioneering the right way. New Right has stated, many times, that the essential thing for a nationalist party to do is to a) build trust and support among the community and b) win over the intellectuals and the students. New Right looks forward to the day when nationalists can use the same tactics, with similar success, as the NPD here in Australia (although success is never guaranteed in any endeavour).
New Right believes that power can be won – if it can be won – by a series of sustained ‘shocks’ to the liberal democratic system. In other words, a ‘state of exception’ (to use Carl Schmitt’s phrase) needs to be created in Australia, a disruption of the day to day constitutional functions of the Australian State, when the constitution itself becomes in temporary abeyance (as, for instance, during the period of the sacking of the Whitlam government in 1975). It is only during that disruption – which will break up the normal order of things – that Australian nationalists can go ahead and ‘seize power’.
So how will those ‘shocks’ be brought about? Those shocks need to be induced practically (at the street level); intellectually; and emotionally. At the street level, there needs to be a political confrontation, carried out publicly (and with maximum media publicity) against the Left, who, more than any other group, seek to oppose nationalists’ presence on the street. Intellectually, nationalist intellectuals need to make the case to the public that the liberal democratic system is not working, has not worked, and never will, to make them stop believing in the worthwhileness of the liberal parliamentarian system. Emotionally, nationalist propagandists need to induce a state of permanent emotional agitation in the general public, through media and propaganda organs (Internet radio, party newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, posters, stickers, fliers, home-produced DVDs). Such propaganda aims at keeping the public’s nerves permanently on edge, and directing public animosity against the enemies of nationalism.
These are the same techniques as those used by the German National Socialists and the Italian Fascists in the 1920s and the 1930s, and by the British National Front in the 1970s. It is the New Right’s belief that they can be used, successfully, in Australia. They are means, not ends in themselves, and the end is, in the long-term, the successful ‘seizure of power’.
This concludes our statement on National-Anarchism and Australian nationalism. Hopefully, it has cleared up any confusion which has arisen among nationalists as to New Right’s aims and methods.
It should be noted that this document, of course, is not ‘legally binding’ on all members: to be a member of New Right, one does not have to agree with every word. We do not seek a communist party system where a party-line is imposed on every member, whether they agree with it or not, from the top down. (Indeed, it could be said that the ideas of the New Right come from the bottom up).
The New Right Australia New Zealand accepts many nationalist and other political and social activists of many different shades of political ideology and beliefs as long as they are willing to work together on today’s problems and issues that concern our society.
It is inclusive, not exclusive.
by the New Right Australia New Zealand Committee
1. IntroductionThis statement is in response to a recent article on the New Right Australia/New Zealand, “An error in New Right Australia/New Zealand: is there an effective acceptance of multiculturalism and multiracialism in Australia?” by Dr James Saleam, one of Australia’s leading nationalist intellectuals. (The article can be found at: home.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/defendnationalism/defend12.html
Readers of this article are urged to read Dr Saleam’s article first.
Normally, the New Right does not respond to comments, criticisms, attacks or anything of that kind, on the Internet or anywhere else: the New Right is not a reactive organisation. But in this case, it was decided that an exception would be made, because nationalists and people who subscribe to other ideologies may be asking the same questions as Dr Saleam.
In his article, Dr Saleam has asked for a clarification from New Right on several points – the main one being (as the title of his article suggests) whether or not New Right accepts the existing government policy of unrestricted, non-European immigration into Australia and the ideology of multiculturalism. Which is not to say that Dr Saleam has the right, prima facie, to demand such clarifications. The New Right represents metapolitics – which means looking at political problems from different perspectives, and unconventional perspectives at that. It is not Australian nationalism, and does not view every political problem through the prism of Australian nationhood. In other words, we in the New Right are not accountable, in any way, to Australian nationalism.
To return to Dr Saleam’s article: his questions are: does the New Right accept multiculturalism and multiracialism as a historical inevitability? Does New Right advocate moves to lessen the numbers of immigrants arriving into this country (through government action) and a policy of repatriating immigrants already here? Dr Saleam notes that New Right seems to give the impression that nothing can be done, via government action, to prevent immigration; and that, so long as the immigrant communities are separate from the Anglo-European, nothing should be done – the two separate communities can live side by side, in peace.
As well as that, in Dr Saleam’s view, it seems that New Right endorses the notion that, over time, the Australian nation, and the Australian State itself, shall disappear, becoming a decentralised patchwork of ethnic communities (whether immigrant or Anglo-European). This doctrine Dr Saleam finds objectionable: and a good many other nationalists in Australia likewise will have problems with it.
It should be noted here, from the outset, that the New Right is not a monolithic organisation: it is comprised of many people of many different views. Some are National-Anarchists; others, Christians; others, white nationalists (of the David Lane/David Duke/William Pierce school); others, sympathisers with traditional Australian nationalism (e.g., Jack Lang, William Lane). Some come from skinhead backgrounds, others from conservative political backgrounds (i.e., have traditionally voted Liberal), others from the Left.
Secondly, New Right does not have a communist, or corporate, or fascist, or in any way dictatorial, system of imposing a party line on its members. In a Marxist-Leninist communist party, the leadership makes a decision on what the communist party position is on such-and-such a topic (China, Russia, gays, immigration, abortion) and then uses discipline to make sure that every member adheres to that position, in statements to the media, and in party publications. In contrast to this, New Right has a decentralised structure, and the metapolitical approach mentioned earlier. Some members may make statements, and pursue certain lines of thought, at nationalist conferences, which are, for instance, National-Anarchist; as well as that, some New Right propaganda and display material (which has been reproduced on the Internet) such as posters, banners and the like, may use National-Anarchist slogans and symbols. Whether or not the New Right member chooses to use National-Anarchist symbols, or animal liberationist symbols, or white nationalist symbols, when producing New Right material, is up to him or her. The same applies when that member is making a presentation to other nationalists and other political groups. There is no ‘head office’ for New Right which censures individual activists for ‘going against the party line’.
Third, in Australia, immigration levels are higher than ever before, and Australian identity is gradually being eroded, not only because of immigration, but because of American and globalist pop culture. Nationalism in Australia has, so far, failed to counteract this – and failed completely. One could say that nationalism in Australia has been failing for thirty years. It has no influence whatsoever on Australian political, or for that matter, intellectual, life. That is why the New Right Australia New Zealand is looking for a different approach.
Fourth, New Right, as Dr Saleam points out, is a new movement, a developing movement: so many of the ‘concrete’ positions, or ‘core values’, are still being formulated. That is because the New Right is a response to thirty years failure of Australian nationalism, and, as stated before, is looking for new solutions.
Now, a critic may say in response to this: ‘It sounds as though you in the New Right are all over the place: what exactly do you all believe in? And what are your positions on the questions Dr Saleam has raised in his article?’. Here we will attempt to answer both of these questions.
2. The Nouvelle Droit
The ideas of New Right have their roots in the European Nouvelle Droite, an informal, Europe-based intellectual grouping. I can find no better capsule summary of their ideas than that found in the publication by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, the “Annual Report 2005 on the Protection of the Constitution”. I shall reproduce it here:
Neue Rechte (New Right)
The New Right first emerged as a movement among French
intellectuals in the 1970s which sought to raise the intellectual
standards within the right-wing extremist camp. Among other things it
invokes anti-democratic thought propagated by representatives of the
“conservative revolution”, a political current in the Weimar Republic.
The activists of the New Right want to abolish or at least impair the
democratic constitutional state. To this effect, they try to gain influence
within the area of cultural politics in order to finally delegitimise the
democratic constitutional state and radically change the political
system [...]
This is a perfect description of the Nouvelle Droit’s methods and intentions – and New Right Australia/New Zealand’s.
The second core element of Nouvelle Droit ideology comes from the thinking of Alain de Benoist, one of the founders of the Nouvelle Droit.
De Benoist’s work has a vast range. But one of his main ideas is that of the organic community: a homogenous organism, which has a life of its own, has developed naturally, over a period of time, without outside pressure, and which tends to segregate itself from other communities, maintaining its own homogeneity, and keeping its own customs and traditions separate from the others. State-sanctioned multiracialism attempts to break up such communities by force, in order to ‘integrate’ them with other ethnic communities in the same country. An example of this is America in the 1950s, where President Eisenhower ordered the National Guard to force integration on Southern schools, against the wishes of the Anglo-American majority. (The Anglo-American opponents of integration advocated ‘State’s rights’ - that is, the rights of the Southern states to resist integration and desegregation forced upon them by a centralised federal US government which did not share their concerns).
De Benoist is an instinctive federalist: that is, he believes that the ethnically-homogenous communities should be autonomous (but not independent from and separate) in relation to the State, that they have a right to maintain their own homogeneity and customs, and that the ideal State should be as decentralised as possible (e.g., giving those individual states (in a federal structure, like in Australia or the United States) or communities as much leeway as possible in ordering their own affairs. De Benoist is against nationalism, or nation-statism, to the extent that it imposes a phoney nationalism on its population which erases the real and existing ethnic (and racial) differences. De Benoist would deplore the communist government of the former Yugoslavia for using force to impose a phoney ‘Yugoslav’ national identity on its Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Slovenian inhabitants where no such ‘Yugoslav’ identity had previously existed.
De Benoist’s ideas have to be understood in a French political context. There is no reason, however, why De Benoist’s model cannot be transposed to other countries – namely, Australia, or the US.
The question is, however: does de Benoist oppose repatriation through State action? Does he advocate anarchism? Are his ideas (and those of the Nouvelle Droit) National-Anarchism?
There is no clear answer to the first question, whether or not de Benoist supports repatriation. He has distanced himself in the past from Jean-Marie Le Pen and the FN (which supports repatriation), but his views on that subject in particular are not exactly clear. He avoids it, so far as we can tell, in his writings.
As to whether or not he advocates anarchism, or the abolition of the nation-state itself, the answer is no. In his essay, “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft: A sociological view of the decay of modern society” (1994), de Benoist writes:
Nationalists are proponents of holism. Nationalists see the individual as a kinsman, sustained by the people and community. which nurtures and protects him, and with which he is proud to identify. The individual's actions represent an act of participation in the life of his people, and freedom of action is very real because, sharing in the values of his associates, the individual will seldom seek to threaten the basic values of the community with which he identifies. Societies which lack this basic sense of national unity are inherently prone to suffer from repeated situations wherein the opposing values of its egotistical members conflict with each other.
Furthermore, proponents of nationhood contend that a society or a people can survive only when: a) they remain aware of their cultural and historical origins; b) when they can assemble around a mediator, be it individual, or symbolic, who is capable of reassembling their energies and catalyzing their will to have a destiny; c) when they can retain the courage to designate their enemy. None of these conditions have been realized in societies that put economic gain above all other values, and which consequently: a) dissolve historical memories; b) extinguish the sublime and eliminate subliminal ideals; c) assume that it is possible not to have enemies [...]
Now, such remarks by de Benoist are not exactly ‘statist’ or ‘fascist’: but they are not exactly anarchist either.
Where does the New Right Australia/NZ stand in relation to de Benoist? In broad agreement. But most nationalists, and Dr Saleam himself, would agree with the de Benoist doctrine as stated here. It is hard to imagine that a real controversy could exist, in the nationalist movement in Australia and outside, about de Benoist’s ideas: most nationalists agree with the basic principles.
3. National-Anarchism and its relation to New Right
On the other hand, National-Anarchism is a controversial topic among nationalists, and Left organisations. So we should make clear, here, what National-Anarchism is and what its relation to New Right is.
National-Anarchism, as conceived by Troy Southgate, believes in what Marx called ‘The withering away of the State’: that, following a series of economic (owing to the instability of the capitalist economic system) and even ecological crises, that Western nation-states will break up into separate, ethnically homogenous communities, concentrated in the rural and semi-rural areas. These communities shall be small, and practice self-sufficiency. Mr Southgate’s vision is not so different from that of the ‘eco-primitivists’, Richard Hunt and the ‘green anarchists’: he does not repudiate 21st century technology, but he does believe that a system where people live in small communities away from the overcrowded cities, with plenty of arable land, in a country with a much-reduced population, is desirable. In Mr Southgate’s new anarchist order, the State shall cease to exist, and possibly the capitalist economy will be replaced by a system of barter. As for defence functions, the small town militia will replace conventional military forces.
In practical terms, National-Anarchism means a cessation of party politics, electoral politics, ballot-box politics: no participation in the life of the State or the liberal democratic system which forms the basis of the State in the Western world today. The best thing a nationalist can do is isolate himself and his family from multiculturalism and multiracialism as it exists in Western societies (and makes itself felt through the Western media and popular culture). For that reason, Mr Southgate advocates home schooling (to shield one’s children from forced ‘integration’ in schools), better education, the protection of the family unit, and the consumption of little of the Western mass media as possible.
Mr Southgate believes that the nationalists who pursue a ‘white revolution’, who engage in political activism designed to stir up the masses against multiculturalism and immigration, who participate in party-politics (e.g., join the British BNP and the French FN) and who seek to bring about a government policy of repatriation, are chasing fool’s gold. His view is that the non-indigenous communities in Britain are thoroughly entrenched, through having been there for so long (some of the immigrant communities first appeared in the 1950s) and through racial mixing with the indigenous British population. So repatriation is virtually impossible, and it is unrealistic of British nationalists to believe that somehow the British people will ‘rise up’ and repatriate those immigrants, with all the dislocation and turmoil that would entail. The only solution is to create a ‘parallel society’, here and now, that is, work to build an ethnically-homogenous community – or rather, improve relations between the disparate and separate individuals who make up that community, and encourage them to think of themselves as a community, and not individuals – which will exist in total isolation from the State, and from political parties.
Where does the New Right Australia/New Zealand stand in relation National-Anarchism?
Firstly, it is not a National-Anarchist group, but some members are National-Anarchists. As for the relation between National-Anarchist theory and New Right ideology, it was stated (erroneously) in the article, “The New Right Manifesto” (published on the Internet in 2007) that the National-Anarchists represent the application of de Benoist’s ideas, that ‘New Right is the theory, National-Anarchism the practice’. This was debatable, as the reader can see for himself when comparing the two doctrines (Nouvelle Droit and National-Anarchism) as expounded here. Many of the street activists for the New Right are not National-Anarchists (many of them are not Christians, either, or animal liberationists).
The fact that Mr Southgate is one of the organisers of the annual New Right conference in Britain may seem to give the impression that National-Anarchism and the New Right (in Britain, or Australia) are the one and the same thing, or at least closely tied together. So may the fact that members of the New Right Australia/New Zealand have given lectures on National-Anarchist ideas at nationalist events, or given sympathetic expositions of National-Anarchism to other nationalists in private conversations or in correspondences.
To clear up these misunderstandings: Mr Southgate does maintain an interest in the ideas of the Nouvelle Droit, and has contributed articles to the British New Right’s magazine, “Scorpion”. But Mr Southgate is also interested in many theories which are not related to New Right/Nouvelle Droit ideas: for instance, Evolian Traditionalism, and Wodenism. He is also very much interested in classical anarchist thinkers such as Bakunin and Kropotkin.
Secondly, as stated before, New Right Australia/New Zealand is not a monolithic organisation. If someone does detect an inconsistency between a speech made by a member of the New Right, and an article on one of the New Right websites, so be it.
Some confusion may arise in nationalist observers about the issue (the precise relation of National-Anarchism to the New Right) simply because the New Right is a developing organisation. The New Right Australia/New Zealand was originally conceived (by Mr Welf Herfurth) as a nationalist think-tank like the ‘Dresdner School’, the German nationalist think-tank which is related to the NPD. As time progressed, the New Right Australia/New Zealand expanded into street activism (while still maintaining its original function as a think-tank). Probably, in organisational terms, it is necessary to split the New Right into two separate departments – a think-tank and a street activist wing. Because a few of the prominent New Right activists do believe in National-Anarchism to a greater or lesser degree, one proposal has been that the National-Anarchists could be the street arm of the New Right. This would not be feasible, because National-Anarchist ideology is not totally commensurate with the intellectual positions of the New Right or the aims of the New Right over the long term. But there is a need – organisationally – for a street activist wing, and perhaps, in the (very) distant future, a political party as well. The problem is really an internal organisational one, which will be addressed in due course, not uncommon to rapidly growing political groups.
4. New Right and repatriation
So what is the New Right position on repatriation, and does it believe that repatriation can be achieved through the State, e.g., through a State controlled by a nationalist party? Does it believe that political activity, and elections, and parties, are futile? Is the isolationism, and ‘parallel society-ism’, of National-Anarchism, the answer?
Most nationalists in Australia want to reclaim Australia’s unique Anglo-European identity by a) putting a halt to the current immigration policy, which aims at bringing as many non-European migrants as possible to our shores, to stay, permanently; and b) by encouraging the non-European immigrants already living here (some for thirty years) to return to their homelands. New Right Australia/New Zealand agrees with these aims.
It should be pointed out that the above objectives can be reached by community action, as opposed to State action: one only has to look at the recent events in Tibet, where the Tibetan population has revolted against Beijing’s policy mass Han-Chinese immigration into Tibet; or in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, where the Palestinians have revolted against Israeli policy of settlement-building for Jewish Israelis on Palestinian land; or Kenya, which has seen intertribal, inter-communal unrest, and the expulsion of ethnic communities from villages.
However, probably the best, most efficient (and most humane) way of achieving the two objectives is politically, through the State. The Australian State can put forward legislation halting non-European immigration immediately, and then use its financial resources to provide the inducement for non-European immigrants to resettle in their homelands.
In the conventional scenario, posited by nationalist groups in Australia and elsewhere, nationalists only need to form a party, get elected to office, and then start carrying out the two policies mentioned above. Theoretically, nationalists are not restricted to that option: there is always the possibility of the seizure of power through a coup d’état, or a protracted period of insurgency. In Western liberal democracies, such options are not usually considered, and in some Western countries (such as Australia) it is illegal even to contemplate, on paper, such possibilities.
Where does New Right stand? A party with mass-based, popular support, winning power through an election is the best way – and the only legal way. Perhaps it is not feasible, not realistic: perhaps any win, by nationalists in Australia, is not possible, given the obstacles faced (including the preferential voting system). But, in any case, a party (and the electoral process) is really part the way of representing Anglo-Europeans across the entire nation.
New Right differs from Australian nationalists insofar as that it makes a thoroughgoing intellectual and sociological analyses of what it is that makes some nationalist parties win and others fail. It has held the NPD up as an example because it believes that the NPD, with its ‘three pillars’ strategy, is going about electioneering the right way. New Right has stated, many times, that the essential thing for a nationalist party to do is to a) build trust and support among the community and b) win over the intellectuals and the students. New Right looks forward to the day when nationalists can use the same tactics, with similar success, as the NPD here in Australia (although success is never guaranteed in any endeavour).
New Right believes that power can be won – if it can be won – by a series of sustained ‘shocks’ to the liberal democratic system. In other words, a ‘state of exception’ (to use Carl Schmitt’s phrase) needs to be created in Australia, a disruption of the day to day constitutional functions of the Australian State, when the constitution itself becomes in temporary abeyance (as, for instance, during the period of the sacking of the Whitlam government in 1975). It is only during that disruption – which will break up the normal order of things – that Australian nationalists can go ahead and ‘seize power’.
So how will those ‘shocks’ be brought about? Those shocks need to be induced practically (at the street level); intellectually; and emotionally. At the street level, there needs to be a political confrontation, carried out publicly (and with maximum media publicity) against the Left, who, more than any other group, seek to oppose nationalists’ presence on the street. Intellectually, nationalist intellectuals need to make the case to the public that the liberal democratic system is not working, has not worked, and never will, to make them stop believing in the worthwhileness of the liberal parliamentarian system. Emotionally, nationalist propagandists need to induce a state of permanent emotional agitation in the general public, through media and propaganda organs (Internet radio, party newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, posters, stickers, fliers, home-produced DVDs). Such propaganda aims at keeping the public’s nerves permanently on edge, and directing public animosity against the enemies of nationalism.
These are the same techniques as those used by the German National Socialists and the Italian Fascists in the 1920s and the 1930s, and by the British National Front in the 1970s. It is the New Right’s belief that they can be used, successfully, in Australia. They are means, not ends in themselves, and the end is, in the long-term, the successful ‘seizure of power’.
This concludes our statement on National-Anarchism and Australian nationalism. Hopefully, it has cleared up any confusion which has arisen among nationalists as to New Right’s aims and methods.
It should be noted that this document, of course, is not ‘legally binding’ on all members: to be a member of New Right, one does not have to agree with every word. We do not seek a communist party system where a party-line is imposed on every member, whether they agree with it or not, from the top down. (Indeed, it could be said that the ideas of the New Right come from the bottom up).
The New Right Australia New Zealand accepts many nationalist and other political and social activists of many different shades of political ideology and beliefs as long as they are willing to work together on today’s problems and issues that concern our society.
It is inclusive, not exclusive.
