Troy Southgate

Troy Southgate
Born Troy Southgate
(1965-07-22) 22 July 1965
Crystal Palace, London, England
Education University of Kent at Canterbury (1994–97)
Occupation Author, editor, musician, publisher, cultural commentator, and National-Anarchist activist
Years active 1984–present
Website national-anarchist.net

Troy Southgate (born 22 July 1965) is a British author, editor, musician, publisher, cultural commentator and National-Anarchist activist. He is the author of the "what if" alternative history fiction novel Hitler: The Adjournment, the political analytical exposé Nazis, Fascists or Neither: Ideological Credentials of the British Far Right, 1987–1994 and the founder and editor-in-chief of Black Front Press, a publisher of alternative and revolutionary texts. His writing deals with topics relating to history, anarchism, culture, society, politics, environmentalism, music, and race relations in the contemporary West.

He has been involved in revolutionary politics as both an activist and underground journalist for over 30 years, and is Organising Secretary of the New Right.

Elsewhere, he has been involved with almost 20 different music projects, most notably HERR, Seelenlicht, Von Thronstahl and Horologium.

Background

His father is from East Dulwich and mother from Upper Norwood in South London. He had a Swedish grandfather who settled in London.

His father is descended from the Clan Maclean, who lived in Rothes and Old Deer, Scotland, with further ancestors in the Gilmour and Grant families.[1]

On his mother's side, he is related to the famous architect and inventor, Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723).[1]

From 1 November 1856 to 30 January 1857, his great, great, great uncle on his mother's side, James Bull, left his native Chelsea and sailed from Liverpool to Wellington on the Indian Queen, going on to establish a successful timber mill. He also founded the town of Bulls in New Zealand, returning to London several decades later.[1][2]

He has a degree from the University of Kent at Canterbury in history and theology with religious issues, awarded in 1997.

He has had articles published in Pravda.[3]

Early life

Southgate was born on 22 July 1965 in Crystal Palace, South London, and attended Rockmount School, Upper Norwood.

In his teenage years, Southgate moved with his parents "from a council estate in Crystal Palace, South London, to a small bungalow in the country town of Crowborough, in East Sussex". In 1983, at the age of eighteen, Southgate voted Labour in the general election, following his father's example."[4]

Having found himself in such a rural environment it meant that he

had to travel up to London on a regular basis to see the rest of my family or to buy clothes and records. The fact that I always kept in touch with my South London roots, therefore, eventually led to me discovering the National Front (NF). I had heard of the NF on various occasions, not least because they were regularly denounced at many of the Two Tone and 'Rock against Racism' events that I was attending several years earlier. But there was a great deal of crossover between the skinheads of the Ska movement and those who attached themselves to racialist causes, so during a visit to East Croydon to watch Bad Manners in 1984 a chance meeting with an old friend led to me accompanying him to the 'NF pub' across the road. Consequently, I ended up buying a copy of 'NF News' and reading it on the train home. The first thing that struck me was how incredibly anti-Capitalist and pro-socialist the Movement was, particularly the articles about the Mondragon Co-operative in Northern Spain, the distributist views of Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton, and Otto Strasser's defiant struggle against Hitler and Big Business. Before long, I found myself travelling up to South London twice a week in order to socialise with members of Croydon NF like Chris Marchant, Gavin Hall and John Merritt. They were a few years older than I was and, in between pints of ale, I spent the evening picking their brains about the history of the NF and various ideological issues. I was astonished to discover that the stereotypical media image relating to a group of alleged race-hating, neo-nazi thugs was complete and utter hogwash.[4]

National Front (1984–89)

Southgate joined the National Front in 1984 and began writing for publications such as National Front News and Nationalism Today. He also became a regional NF organiser for East Sussex and was an associate of Derek Holland and Patrick Harrington, who were on the NF National Directorate. Southgate was also closely associated with members of the Croydon branch of NF. Southgate has said that "Eventually I was made East Sussex Regional Organiser, given the role of taking 'NF News' to the printers and joining the likes of Derek Holland, Nick Griffin, Graham Williamson and Patrick Harrington in the Movement hierarchy. It was a very exciting and formulative period and I look back on that period with a good degree of fondness and nostalgia."[4]

In 1986, Southgate and a handful of others were attacked by 200 communists of the Revolutionary Communist Party and in 1987 was charged with actual bodily harm (ABH) and affray and sentenced to Lewes Prison for eighteen months the following year.[4]

According to Searchlight magazine, in 1987 he joined the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).[5]

International Third Position (1989–92)

In 1990, the National Front changed its name to Third Way "after a bitter personality clash had driven a wedge between those in the leadership." Many of its members left to

form the International Third Position (ITP), but by 1992 a large group of us became disenchanted with the fact that certain individuals like Roberto Fiore (now Forza Nuova) and Derek Holland had betrayed the genuinely anti-fascist principles of the late-80s NF by forming alliances with conter-revolutionary elements in the Catholic Church and neo-fascist groups overseas. As someone who has always been extremely suspicious of Right-wing reaction, this was not what I wanted at all.[4]

In autumn 1989, he joined the International Third Position (ITP), a breakaway group, and became editor of several local ITP publications, including The Kent Crusader, Surrey Action and Eastern Legion.[3]

English Nationalist Movement (1992–98)

He left the ITP in September 1992 and founded the English Nationalist Movement (ENM). The ENM claimed to have strong units in the Burnley, Bradford and south-east Kent areas.

National Revolutionary Faction (1998–2003)

In 1998, he and other ENM members founded the National Revolutionary Faction, which he describes as "a hardline revolutionary organisation based on an underground cell-structure similar to that used by both the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the IRA", operating on the principle of leaderless resistance.[3] The NRF also had a camping/hiking fraternity known as the Greenshirts, based on Corneliu Zelea Codreanu's Romanian Iron Guard. Members performed torchlight ceremonies and distributed small bags of earth.

In 2001, Southgate and the NRF were the subject of a Sunday Telegraph article, in which the NRF was accused of being a neo-Nazi organisation infiltrating animal rights groups to spread fascism.[6]

Synthesis (2000–2009)

In 2000, Southgate and a close associate, Michael Lujan – a former member of America's White Order of Thule and editor of Crossing the Abyss magazine – established the Synthesis website. This resource is said to be fronted by a study group and occasional salon called Le Cercle de la Rose Noire, blending politics, music and the occult.. The website was registered in December 2001.[7] It was last updated in 2009.[8]

Alternative Green

Southgate and other NRF associates were on the editorial board of the journal, Alternative Green, for two issues. When Hunt suffered a stroke, Southgate took over as editor for a few issues, with help from Wayne John Sturgeon and Adrian White. Southgate has also commented that "Richard was a great inspiration to me personally and if it wasn't for his booklet, THE NATURAL SOCIETY (1995), and his book, TO END POVERTY: THE STARVATION OF THE PERIPHERY BY THE CORE (1997), I would not have become an Anarchist in the mid-1990s and National-Anarchism as we know it would not exist,"[9] and on 6 June, "Wayne Sturgeon has written a perfect tribute to our old friend and comrade, Richard Hunt."[10][11] The magazine was published with the support of the founder of the Green Anarchist, Richard Hunt, the Brighton anarchist Wayne John Sturgeon and Adrian White. The magazine appeared in left-wing bookshops in and around London.

New Right (2005–present)

On 16 January 2005, Southgate and other associates launched a new vehicle, New Right, with a meeting in central London. This followed an initial meeting the previous month. New Right, which has much more in common with the French Nouvelle Droite than with New Right politics in the Anglo-American sense, describes itself as a "dynamic and strictly metapolitical group [that] seeks to unite the disparate strands of the British Right and get everybody pulling in the same direction". It publishes a journal, New Imperium.

Southgate has also written for the website of the Russian newspaper, Pravda, on the metaphysical radical work of Julius Evola.[12] Traditionalist political philosophy of the sort developed by Evola and supported by Southgate has been gaining currency amongst conservative Russian parties.

National-Anarchism

The official National-Anarchist Movement symbol and flag, featured here on a Black flag which is, among other things, the traditional anarchist symbol.

Southgate is today the main figurehead of National-Anarchism, which sees the artificial hierarchies inherent in government and capitalism as oppressive. It advocates collective action organised along the lines of nationality, identity and tribes, and advocates for a decentralised social order wherein "like-minded individuals" maintain distinct communities. National-Anarchism echoes most strains of anarchism by expressing a desire to reorganise human relationships, with an emphasis on replacing the hierarchical structures of government and capitalism with local, communal decision-making.

The revolutionary conservative concept of the Anarch is central to National-Anarchism and its supporters view liberalism as a primary cause of the social decline of nations and cultural identity. National-Anarchists also reject fascism and communism as statist and totalitarian, and reject National Socialism as a failed dictatorship of a totalitarian government. However, Southgate's National-Anarchism has been criticised as an opportunistic appropriation of aspects of leftist counter-culture in the service of a racist, right-wing ideology.[13]

On 19 September 2010, Southgate launched the National-Anarchist Movement (N-AM) and unveiled a 15,000-word manifesto which included a detailed membership system based around a revolutionary cadre structure. The group also launched a magazine called Tribal Resonance and, in January 2012, published a 300-page book entitled National-Anarchism: A Reader. He has since published five other volumes by Black Front Press on National-Anarchism.

Black Front Press (2010–present)

Black Front Press was established in 2010 by Southgate as a publisher of alternative and revolutionary texts.[14][15] Originally only established to print his biography on Otto Strasser, it has since released over 40 publications.

Catholicism and heathenism

Southgate, who, in 1997, became a history and theology graduate at the University of Kent in Canterbury – comes from a non-religious background, although he converted to Catholicism in 1987 and was in that same year, according to Searchlight, associated with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).[5]

Southgate is now a Wodenist and has been criticised by his former Catholic associates for changing his religious beliefs, although he did remain part of the Church for over ten years and it was only in 1997 that he began examining paganism and eventually drifted away from Catholicism altogether. Southgate is now a student of rune magic and a member of the English-based neopagan group, Woden's Folk, for whom he has written and researched a series of esoteric pamphlets. These include A Sussex Swan: The Wodenic Mysteries of a Small English Town, The Centre: Its Symbolic and Practical Significance, Beachy Head: The Negation of the Solar, Runic Sex Postures of the Anglo-Saxon futhorc and Runic Mysteries of the Suð Seax Wheel. During an initiation rite on the South Downs he is said to have taken the name 'Fenix', which is the Anglo-Saxon word for phoenix. On 2 July 2007, Southgate was also seen participating in a Woden's Folk demonstration in East Sussex against ITV filming a stunt for Trinny and Susannah's fashion show, Trinny & Susannah Undress, at the Long Man of Wilmington. The group protested against the TV series Trinny and Susannah Undress the Nation when its crew altered the hill drawing known as the Long Man of Wilmington by giving it breasts and a dress, something the group deemed to be sacrilegious. Southgate and his associates considered this to be a desecration of an ancient English burial ground and the site was slightly damaged as a result. The programme itself was shown on 20 November 2007.[16][17] Southgate is involved with the group and was reportedly one of two representatives who attended the Long Man of Wilmington protest.[18][19] His poetry appears on the Woden's Folk website.[20]

According to Searchlight,[5] in 1998 Southgate was partly the subject of a smear piece by former colleagues in the ITP in the booklet, Satanism and its Allies – The Nationalist Movement Under Attack, published by Final Conflict, and linking him and others that left the ITP to Satanism, which he has never been involved with.[4][21][22][23] This period of involvement, and in general, with the ITP, is discussed by Southgate in Nazis, Fascists or Neither? Credentials of the British Far Right, 1987–1994, 2010, The Palingenesis Project.[24] Graham D. Macklin refers to this slander as an "attack" due to leaving the "staunchly Catholic ITP" in footnote 30 of "Co-opting the Counter Culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction", Patterns of Prejudice, Vol .39, No.3, September 2005, although he points out that it was only later, after the original publication of the booklet, that the ITP decided for some reason to produce an update that "singled out Southgate as a ‘Satanist’ and ‘pro-faggot’". Southgate responded to this in Paranoia in the Pews (Rising Press, 2000).

Other neo-Fascists have been equally critical of Southgate. Giacomo Vallone of the European Knights Project described Southgate's politics as "more a product of cultural marxism than nationalist thought".[25]

Academic coverage

Southgate and his political ideas have been discussed in various books and publications, including The Beast Reawakens (1999) by Martin A. Lee, International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus by Roger Griffin (2002), Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism & the Politics of Identity by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (2003), the five-volume study Fascism: Critical Concepts in Political Science (2004) by Roger Griffin & Matthew Feldman (ed.) and The Radical Right in Britain by Alan Sykes (2005). He is also mentioned in World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia (2006) by Cyprian Blamires and Monsters in the Mirror: Representations of Nazism in Post-War Popular Culture by Sara Buttsworth. A 26-page article by Graham D. Macklin, entitled "Co-opting the Counter-Culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction", appeared in Volume 39, No. 3 of the academic journal Patterns of Prejudice (2005), and Southgate and the New Right were also discussed in an essay called "The West Reborn" by David J. Wingfield which appeared in The Initiate: Journal of Traditional Studies (2008), pp. 17–19. An article by Spencer Sunshine appeared in the Winter 2008 (Vol. 23, No. 4) edition of The Public Eye magazine, entitled "Rebranding Fascism: National-Anarchists". In Germany, Southgate is mentioned in Gabriel Kuhn's Neuer Anarchismus in den USA: Seattle und die Folgen (2008) and Charles Lindholm's The Struggle for the World: Liberation Movements for the 21st Century [2010]. A reference to Southgate can also be found in Fascism Past and Present, West and East: An International Debate on Concepts and Cases in the Comparative Study of the Extreme Right by Walter Laqueur, Roger Griffin, Werner Loh and Andreas Umland [Eds.], L'Extremisme: Une Grande Peur Contemporaine by Christophe Bourseiller, Rethinking the French New Right: Alternatives to Modernity by Tamir Bar-On (2013) and The Post-War Anglo-American Far Right by Paul Jackson & Anton Shekhovtsov (2014). Some of Southgate's musical activities are discussed in the Hungarian book, Battlenoise: The Blows of the Martial Industrial Music, published by Mozgalom Records (2007). A chapter by Southgate is also included in Northern Traditions, published by Primordial Traditions (2011) and he is discussed in Ideology in a Global Age: Continuity and Change by Rafal Soborski (2013), Cultures of Post-War British Fascism (2015) by Nigel Copsey & John E. Richardson (Eds.) and Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship by Marlene Laruelle (Ed.).

Bibliography

Music

As a teenager, Southgate was a vocalist in two skinhead bands from Crowborough, East Sussex. These were The Distortions (formerly Public Convenience) and The Banana Skins. In his 20s he went on to become the singer with Crowborough ska band The Toot 'n Ska Men and then backing vocalist with a Tunbridge Wells ska act, Bugsy Malone. Southgate is now a vocalist, guitarist and percussionist with the mainly Dutch outfit, H.E.R.R., who play Neoclassical music and have released several albums including Es Regnet Das Leben Heraus (2004), The Winter of Constantinople (2005), Vondel's Lucifer: First Movement (2006) and the Fire & Glass: A Norwood Tragedy EP (2007). Southgate's vocals with H.E.R.R. have also been on the following compilation albums: Hopes Die In Winter ("Hopes Die in Winter" and "Fifteen Tokens"), Instruo Vestri Pro Pugna! ("The Baron of Urga"), Neo-Form I ("For a Christ-Thorn") and Swarm ("Stalingrad"). Future projects include a 7" single release of Current 93's "For a Christ Thorn" coupled with a new song, "Narcissus", on the B-side. The latest release is "The Twelve Caesars", based upon the work of the same name by the Roman historian, Suetonius.

Southgate is also a singer/songwriter with the German group, Seelenlicht, one of whom, Butow Maler, was a member of Kammer Sieben, and the project has released a 14-track album for the Cold Spring Records label, entitled Gods & Devils. A compilation track, "Return to Summerisle", was recorded for the Old Europa Cafe label and their second album, Love & Murder, has just been released.

In September 2007, Southgate became a full-time vocalist and member of Poland's Horologium, founded by Grzegorz Siedlecki, for whom he had previously recorded "Faustus" (with Maria Southgate) and "Thus I Spake" for two separate Horologium releases. This came about after Southgate was asked to write and record five tracks for a forthcoming Horologium album called Earthbound (expected on the Old Europa Cafe label in early 2008). The group has just released a joint 7" Neuropa Records collaboration with Oda Relicta from the Ukraine.

He has also worked with Sweden's Survival Unit, Holland's Erich Zahn, the Canadian project, Funerary Call, the Italian projects Ouroboros, Bonebound, Silent Cathedral, Sala Della Colonne and Nove Code, the Polish projects Elvatorium, Ollin and Desert Divinity, and the German bands, Sagittarius, Von Thronstahl and The Days of the Trumpet Call.

He has recorded vocals for the Greek National-Anarchist band, Mind Terrorist,[26] and is presently playing bass guitar in Tribal Resonance, said to be a fusion of anarchist politics, 1970s dub and 1980s post-punk.

Discography

Forthcoming releases

Further reading

References

  1. 1 2 3 http://genforum.genealogy.com/cgi-genforum/messagehistory.cgi?590440355
  2. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=518508501522830&set=a.180038958703121.44626.100000910553325
  3. 1 2 3 Troy Southgate, "Transcending the Beyond: from Third Position to National-Anarchism", Pravda.ru, 17 January 2002
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Miron Fyodorav, Interview with Southgate, Kinovar (Russia), 17 February 2006
  5. 1 2 3 Adam Carter, "Troy Southgate – A Timeline", Searchlight, January 2012, pages 7 – 8.
  6. ↑ Daniel Foggo, "Neo-nazis join animal rights groups", Sunday Telegraph, 16 June 2001
  7. ↑ http://whois.net/whois/rosenoire.org
  8. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20111115181933/http://www.rosenoire.org/
  9. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/troy.southgate/posts/421170597923288
  10. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/troy.southgate/posts/324522474295009
  11. ↑ http://attackthesystem.com/2012/06/06/r-i-p-richard-hunt/#comment-10323
  12. ↑ H.E.R.R. interview with Heathen Harvest
  13. ↑ http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00313220500198292#.UlgVTn9h5K8
  14. ↑ Adam Carter,"Packaging hate – the New Right publishing networks", Searchlight, 1 March 2012
  15. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/pages/Black-Front-Press/190496407658027
  16. ↑ "Trinny and Susannah face protestors", Eastbourne Herald, 2 July 2007
  17. ↑ "Pagans outrage at Long Man stunt", Bexhill Observer, 4 July 2007
  18. ↑ http://pafr.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=details&thread=19&post=89
  19. ↑ http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/user/1318/weblog
  20. ↑ http://wodensfolk.org.uk/poetry.html
  21. ↑ http://finalconflictblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/satanism-and-its-allies-update-page-1.html
  22. ↑ http://www.dspace.dial.pipex.com/finalconflict/bk-satan.html
  23. ↑ http://www.academia.edu/2326694/Far-Right_Music_and_the_Use_of_Internet_Final_Conflict_and_the_British_National_Party_Compared
  24. ↑ http://efp.org.uk/publications/reviews/nazis-fascists-or-neither/
  25. ↑
  26. ↑ http://www.national-anarchist.net/2013/08/troy-southgate-records-vocals-for-greek.html

External links

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