Nationalist anarchism
Encyclopedia
Anarchism and nationalism both emerged in Europe
following the French Revolution
, and have a long relationship going back at least to Mikhail Bakunin
and his involvement with the Pan-Slavic movement prior to his conversion to anarchism
. There has been a long history of anarchist involvement with nationalism
all over the world, as well as with internationalism
. Some anarchists argue that the achievement of meaningful self-determination
for all of the world's nations requires a political system based on local control, free federation and mutual aid.
Although anarchism is generally considered a movement of the left, the nationalist and anti-semitic side of Proudhon's and Bakunin's thought influenced some 20th-century far right
parties and movements. The national syndicalist movement in Italy, a group of a few thousand former members of various anarcho-syndicalist labor unions who split with the larger anarchist movement over their support for Italian nationalism
, was cited by Benito Mussolini
as a major source of inspiration, though he had a mixed relationship with the movement in his socialist leftist phase. Nazis like Willibald Schulze
cited Proudhon as an inspiration for National Socialism.
In the early to mid 19th century Europe, the ideas of nationalism
, socialism
, and liberalism
were closely intertwined. Revolutionaries and radicals like Giuseppe Mazzini
aligned with all three in about equal measure. The early pioneers of anarchism were a product of the spirit of their times
: they had much in common with both liberals and socialists, and they shared much of the outlook of early nationalism as well. In 1880 and 1881, the Boston
-based Irish nationalist W.G.H. Smart wrote articles for a magazine called The Anarchist.
Anarchists in China
during the early part of the 20th century were very involved in the nationalist movement while actively opposing racist elements of the Anti-Manchu wing of that movement. During the Mexican Revolution
, anarchists such as Ricardo Flores Magón
participated enthusiastically in what was indisputably a left-nationalist revolution.
militantly oppose nationalism, as they equate the nation with the state. Contemporary Social Anarchists consider nationalist-anarchism to be a contradiction, and recent fusions of anarchism and nationalism have been characterized as outside the larger anarchist movement. The general perception of nationalism; it's approach to the of liberation of a people by means of a national identity
based around shared culture, values, language, history and symbols; has shifted from being considered a left-wing ideology at the beginning of the 20th century, to being seen as a right-wing ideology today. Post Colonial Anarchism in particular denounces nationalism for its statism and links to authoritarian ideologies. Other contemporary anarchists oppose all nationalism and national liberation struggles from a class struggle
perspective.
A critique of nationalism from an anarchist point of view is Rudolf Rocker
's book Nationalism and Culture
. American anarchist Fredy Perlman
wrote a number of pamphlets that were strongly critical of all forms of nationalism, including Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom, a critique of Zionism
, and The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism, which argues that nationalism is a process of state formation inspired by imperialism
, which capitalists, fascists and Leninists use as a mean of controlling their subjects.
Andrew Flood wrote in An Anarchist Perspective on Irish Nationalism,
The Anarchist Federation views nationalism as an ideology totally bound up with the development of capitalism, and unable to go beyond it:
More recently post-left anarchist Fredy Perlman
wrote a work on the subject of nationalism in 1984 called The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism In it he argues that "Leftist or revolutionary nationalists insist that their nationalism has nothing in common with the nationalism of fascists and national socialists, that theirs is a nationalism of the oppressed, that it offers personal as well as cultural liberation." And so "To challenge these claims, and to see them in a context," he asks "what nationalism is - not only the new revolutionary nationalism but also the old conservative one." And so he concludes that nationalism is an aid to capitalist control of nature and people regardless of its origin. Nationalism thus provides a form through which "Every oppressed population can become a nation, a photographic negative of the oppressor nation" and that "There's no earthly reason for the descendants of the persecuted to remain persecuted when nationalism offers them the prospect of becoming persecutors. Near and distant relatives of victims can become a racist nation-state; they can themselves herd other people into concentration camps, push other people around at will, perpetrate genocidal war against them, procure preliminary capital by expropriating them."
Prior to his involvement with the anarchist movement, Mikhail Bakunin
had a long history of involvement in nationalist movements of various kinds. In his Appeal to the Slavs (1848), Bakunin called for cooperation between nationalist revolutionary movements across Europe (both Slavic and non-Slavic) to overthrow empires and dissolve imperialism, in an uprising of "all oppressed nationalities" which would lead to a "Universal Federation of European Republics". He also agitated for a United States of Europe (a contemporary nationalist vision originated by Mazzini). Later, exiled to eastern Siberia
, he became involved with a circle of Siberian nationalists who planned to separate from Russia
. They were connected with his cousin and patron, Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky
, the Governor General of Eastern Siberia, whom Bakunin defended in Herzen's journal The Bell. It was not until a full four years after leaving Siberia, however, that Bakunin proclaimed himself an anarchist.
Max Nettlau
remarked of this period in his life that: "This may be explained by Bakunin's increasing nationalist psychosis, induced and nourished by the expansionist ideas of the officials and exploiters who surrounded him in Siberia, causing him to overlook the plight of their victims."
A small group of Anarchists - mostly those associated with the early 'Paris Group', a grouping of Chinese Expatriates based in France - were deeply involved in the nationalist movement and many served as "movement elders" in the KMT right up until the defeat of the nationalists by the Maoists. A minority of Chinese Anarchists associated with the Paris Group also helped funnel large sums of money to Sun Yat-sen
to help finance the Nationalist revolution of 1911.
After the 1911 Nationalist revolution, Anarchist involvement with the Kuomintang
was relatively minor, not only because the majority of Anarchists opposed nationalism on principle but because the KMT government was more than willing to level repression against anarchist organizations whenever and wherever they challenged state power. Still, a few prominent anarchists, notably Jing Meijiu and Zhang Ji
(both affiliated with the Tokyo Group) were elected to positions within the KMT government and continued to call themselves Anarchists while doing so. The response from the larger anarchist movement was decidedly mixed. They were roundly denounced by the Guangzhou group; but other groupings that favored an 'evolutionary' approach to social change instead of immediate Revolution, such as the 'Pure Socialists', were more sympathetic.
The "Diligent Work and Frugal Study" program in France, a series of businesses and educational programs organized along anarchist lines that allowed Chinese students from working-class backgrounds to come to France and receive a European education that had previously been only available to a tiny wealthy elite, was one product of this collaboration of the anarchists with nationalists. The program received funding from both the Chinese and French governments as well as raising its own independent funds through a series of worker-owned anarchist businesses, including a Tofu factory that catered to the needs of Chinese migrant workers in France. The program allowed poor and working-class Chinese students to receive a high-quality modern university education in France at a time when foreign education was almost exclusively limited to the children of wealthy elites, and educated thousands of Chinese workers and students - including many future communist leaders such as Deng Xiaoping
.
Following the success of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution anarchism went into decline in the Chinese labour movement. In 1924 the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) allied itself with the nationalist Kuomintang
(KMT). Originally composed of many former anarchists, it soon attracted a mass base, becoming increasingly critical of anarchism. When the Kuomintang purged the CPC from its ranks in 1927, the small group of anarchists who had long participated in the KMT urged their younger comrades to join the movement and utilize it in the same way that the Stalinists
had been using it - as a vehicle to gain membership and influence.
Partly because of the growing power of the right-wing within the KMT and the repression of workers movements advocated by that right wing, the Anarchists opted not to join the KMT en masse or even work within it, instead, the result of this last collaboration was the creation of China's first Labor University. The Labor University was intended to be a domestic version of the Paris groups Diligent Work and Frugal Study educational program and sought to create a new generation of Labor Intellectuals who would finally overcome the gap between "those who work with their hands” and “those who work with their minds." The goal was to train working-class people with the skills they needed to self-organize and set up their own independent organizations and worker-owned businesses, which would form the seed of a new anarchist society within the shell of the old in a Dual Power
-based evolutionary strategy reminiscent of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
.
The university would only function for a very few years before the Nationalist government decided that the project was too subversive to allow it too continue and pulled funding. When the KMT initiated a second wave of repression
against the few remaining mass movements, anarchists left the organization en masse and were forced underground as hostilities between the KMT and CPC – both of whom were hostile towards anti-authoritarians – escalated.
In Italy, National Syndicalism
provided an intellectual path which drew some former members of anarcho-syndicalist labor movements away from anarchism and towards nationalism.
According to this analysis, Anarchism is the successor to left-nationalism, a working class movement working to achieve the liberation that the Republican movements that toppled the worlds monarchies in the last two centuries promised but never delivered. So even though the ideas of Anarchism are fundamentally different from those of Nationalism it is still possible to learn from nationalist movements by studying the working class elements of those movements that demanded more than the bourgeoisie leadership was willing or able to deliver.
, one of the early leaders of the Mexican left-nationalist movement which eventually culminated in the Mexican Revolution
, based his anarchism primarily on the works of early anarchists Mikhail Bakunin
and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
, but was also influenced by his anarchist contemporaries: Élisée Reclus
, Charles Malato
, Errico Malatesta
, Anselmo Lorenzo
, Emma Goldman
, Fernando Tarrida del Mármol
and Max Stirner
. However, he was most influenced by Peter Kropotkin
. Flores Magón also read from the works of Karl Marx
and Henrik Ibsen
. Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread
, which he considered a kind of anarchist bible, served as basis for the short-lived revolutionary communes in Baja California
during the "Magonista" Revolt of 1911. In addition to his work with the Partido Liberal Mexicano, Magón organised with the Wobblies (IWW) and edited Regeneración, which aroused the workers against the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz
.
became an anarchist agitator in San Francisco, joining the IWW
before becoming a pivotal figure in the Ghadar Party
. A long-time advocate of Indian nationalism
, he developed a vision of anarchism based upon a return to the principles of ancient Aryan
society. He was particularly influenced by Guy Aldred
, who was jailed for printing The Indian Sociologist
in 1907. Aldred, an anarcho-communist, was careful to point out that this solidarity arose because he was an advocate of free speech and not because he felt that nationalism would help the working class in India
or elsewhere. The National Bolshevik, Fritz Wolffheim
was also involved with the IWW at the same time as Har Dayal.
input can be traced back to the populist
revolutionary nationalisms of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the Russian narodnik
s (themselves a cradle of many political strains and tendencies with anarchistic leanings) and the völkisch movement
of Germany and Austria. The latter inherited its Romantic
outlook from Johann Gottfried von Herder whose own philosophy, which also inspired Mazzini (Hearder 1966: 44, 46), affirmed both the particularity of national cultures (nationalism) and their value within a universal context (internationalism).
As the völkisch movement developed, sections of it focussed on to theories of anti-semitism and racial supremacy which claimed a foundation in biology. Others, however, repudiated racism and preserved Herder's emphasis upon the equality of all nations. Among these prophets of internationalism was the German-Jewish völkisch anarchist Gustav Landauer
.
formed during the 1970s in which Keith Motherson (formerly Keith Paton) 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 Motherson 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 dialog.
Alternative Socialism is an evident precursor to a similar concept of völkisch anarchism which surfaced briefly in Britain in 1982 when the Black Ram Group (formerly Derby Anarchist Group) published the only edition of its journal Black Ram. This publication made connections between anarchism, neo-paganism and völkisch nationalist ideas (Landauer in particular), with further exploration of these themes promised. However the group disbanded in the following year without further elaboration.
The Black Ram Group remained within the mainstream anarchist consensus of anti-racism
and anti-sexism
. Its positive evaluation of nationalism derived not from any roots in far right political organisations, but from the theoretical consideration that:
The term anarcho-nationalist is introduced in Black Ram 1: 12 to describe the outlook of American Odinists with whom the paper's editors were in sympathy and, since then, it has been reused as a general term covering nationalist anarchisms. The term national anarchism was also used in the title of an article projected for publication in the second edition, "Towards an Anarchist Nationalism: provisional manifesto of the National Anarchist Pagan Resurgence", but no further editions appeared and so it was never formally defined. Wotan, 'Fylfots for Freedom', Black Ram 1: 7-8 sets out a programme aiming to subvert fascism by reclaiming symbols and concepts for libertarian ends. The group's emblem was a circled A in the centre of a swastika
('anarcho-swastika').
and subjugation and domination of people of color, and favors a non-hierarchical organization of society. Black anarchists seek to abolish white supremacy
, capitalism
, and the state. Theorists include Ashanti Alston
, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin
, Kuwasi Balagoon
, many former members of the Black Panther Party
, and Martin Sostre
. Black anarchism rejects the traditional anarchist movement.
Black anarchists have criticized both the hierarchical organization of the Black Panther Party
, and the anarchist movement, on the grounds that it has traditionally been European and/or white-based. They oppose the anti-racist conception, based on the universalism
of the Enlightenment
, which is proposed by the anarchist workers' tradition, arguing that it is not adequate enough to struggle against racism
and that it disguises real inequalities by proclaiming a de jure equality
. For example, Pedro Ribeiro has criticized the whole of the anarchist movement by declaring that: "It is a white, petty-bourgeois Anarchism that cannot relate to the people. As a Black person, I am not interested in your Anarchism. I am not interested in individualistic, self-serving, selfish liberation for you and your white friends. What I care about is the liberation of my people."
Black anarchists are thus influenced by the civil rights movement
and the Black Panther Party, and seek to forge their own movement that represents their own identity and tailored to their own unique situation. However, in contrast to black activism that was, in the past, based in leadership from hierarchical organizations, black anarchism rejects such methodology in favor of developing organically through communication and cooperation to bring about an economic and cultural revolution that does away with racist domination, capitalism, and the state. From Alston's @narchist Panther Zine:
Where traditional anarchism is a movement arising from the struggles of proletarians in industrialized western European nations - and thus sees history from their perspective - post-colonial anarchism approaches the same principles of mutual aid, class struggle, opposition to social hierarchy, and community-level self-management, self-government, self-management, and self-determination from the perspective of colonized peoples throughout the world. In doing so it does not seek to invalidate the contributions of the more established anarchist movement, but rather seeks to add a unique and important perspective. The tendency is strongly influenced by indigenism, anti-state forms of nationalism, and APOC (Anarchist People of Color), among other sources.
a position developed in Europe during the 1990s. Among its first advocates were Hans Cany, Peter Töpfer, and former National Front
activist, Troy Southgate
, founder of the National Revolutionary Faction, a since disbanded UK-based organization which cultivated links to certain far-right circles in Britain and post-Soviet states
. National-Anarchist groups have also arisen worldwide, most prominently in Germany, the United States of America, and Australia. In the UK, National-Anarchists worked with Albion Awake, Alternative Green
(published by former Green Anarchist
editor, Richard Hunt
) and Jonathan Boulter to develop the "Anarchist Heretics Fair". While many mainstream anarchist groups condemned them, SchNEWS
ran advertisements for the Fair.
National-Anarchists advocate a society that allows separation
to exist along ethnic and religious lines, and even along lines of sexual orientation. Like other anarchists they oppose the totalitarian state typically advocated by stalinism
and fascism
. Such autonomous zones would allow communities to set their own rules and qualifications for acceptance into permanent residence in a community, and are not necessarily limited to the strict ethnic divisions advocated by white nationalism
and black nationalism
. Cultural pluralism and the right to self determination are key tenets of National-Anarchism. Genocide, murder, and social conformism (as typical of America and Western societies on the whole) are denounced by National-Anarchists as tyrannical and an affront to libertarian minded people. Each collective would be free to practice the economic or political structure of its choosing as long as it does not interfere with the rights of other communities to follow their own lifestyle choice (excluding the above mentioned crimes); however, National-Anarchists generally believe that environmental protection and conservation are things that all people should coordinate on. Areas without significant human development and borderlands would be maintained collectively and the existence of free zones allowing trade and sharing between communities would be established with the agreement of all parties involved.
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
following the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, and have a long relationship going back at least to Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
and his involvement with the Pan-Slavic movement prior to his conversion to anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
. There has been a long history of anarchist involvement with nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
all over the world, as well as with internationalism
Internationalism (politics)
Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation among nations for the theoretical benefit of all...
. Some anarchists argue that the achievement of meaningful self-determination
Self-determination
Self-determination is the principle in international law that nations have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or external interference...
for all of the world's nations requires a political system based on local control, free federation and mutual aid.
Although anarchism is generally considered a movement of the left, the nationalist and anti-semitic side of Proudhon's and Bakunin's thought influenced some 20th-century far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
parties and movements. The national syndicalist movement in Italy, a group of a few thousand former members of various anarcho-syndicalist labor unions who split with the larger anarchist movement over their support for Italian nationalism
Italian nationalism
Italian nationalism refers to the nationalism of Italians or of Italian culture. It claims that Italians are the ethnic, cultural, and linguistic descendants of the ancient Romans who inhabited the Italian Peninsula for centuries. The origins of Italian nationalism have been traced to the...
, was cited by Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
as a major source of inspiration, though he had a mixed relationship with the movement in his socialist leftist phase. Nazis like Willibald Schulze
Willibald Schulze
-Work:Willibald Schulze hailed Proudhon as the Wegweiser of the Third Reich for he repudiated revolutionary socialism, interest capital and parliamentarianism. He asserted that Proudhon was nearest to National Socialism.-Writings of Schulze:...
cited Proudhon as an inspiration for National Socialism.
In the early to mid 19th century Europe, the ideas of nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, and liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
were closely intertwined. Revolutionaries and radicals like Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini , nicknamed Soul of Italy, was an Italian politician, journalist and activist for the unification of Italy. His efforts helped bring about the independent and unified Italy in place of the several separate states, many dominated by foreign powers, that existed until the 19th century...
aligned with all three in about equal measure. The early pioneers of anarchism were a product of the spirit of their times
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
: they had much in common with both liberals and socialists, and they shared much of the outlook of early nationalism as well. In 1880 and 1881, the Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
-based Irish nationalist W.G.H. Smart wrote articles for a magazine called The Anarchist.
Anarchists in China
Anarchism in China
The predominance in the late 19th century of the Nihilist movement and anarchist communism in Russia, which borders China, was a major source of anarchist influence on radical movements in China....
during the early part of the 20th century were very involved in the nationalist movement while actively opposing racist elements of the Anti-Manchu wing of that movement. During the Mexican Revolution
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...
, anarchists such as Ricardo Flores Magón
Ricardo Flores Magón
Cipriano Ricardo Flores Magón was a noted Mexican anarchist and social reform activist. His brothers Enrique and Jesús were also active in politics. Followers of the Magón brothers were known as Magonistas....
participated enthusiastically in what was indisputably a left-nationalist revolution.
Anarchist opposition to nationalism
Social AnarchistsSocial anarchism
Social anarchism is a term originally used in 1971 by Giovanni Baldelli as the title of his book where he discusses the organization of an ethical society from an anarchist point of view...
militantly oppose nationalism, as they equate the nation with the state. Contemporary Social Anarchists consider nationalist-anarchism to be a contradiction, and recent fusions of anarchism and nationalism have been characterized as outside the larger anarchist movement. The general perception of nationalism; it's approach to the of liberation of a people by means of a national identity
Nation
A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and/or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic make-up...
based around shared culture, values, language, history and symbols; has shifted from being considered a left-wing ideology at the beginning of the 20th century, to being seen as a right-wing ideology today. Post Colonial Anarchism in particular denounces nationalism for its statism and links to authoritarian ideologies. Other contemporary anarchists oppose all nationalism and national liberation struggles from a class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
perspective.
A critique of nationalism from an anarchist point of view is Rudolf Rocker
Rudolf Rocker
Johann Rudolf Rocker was an anarcho-syndicalist writer and activist. A self-professed anarchist without adjectives, Rocker believed that anarchist schools of thought represented "only different methods of economy" and that the first objective for anarchists was "to secure the personal and social...
's book Nationalism and Culture
Nationalism and Culture
Nationalism and Culture is a nonfiction book by German anarcho-syndicalist writer Rudolf Rocker. In this book, Rocker's best known work, he criticizes religion, statism, nationalism, and centralism from an anarchist perspective.- Background :...
. American anarchist Fredy Perlman
Fredy Perlman
Fredy Perlman was an author, publisher and activist. His most popular work, the book Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, details the rise of state domination with a retelling of history through the Hobbesian metaphor of the Leviathan. The book remains a major source of inspiration for...
wrote a number of pamphlets that were strongly critical of all forms of nationalism, including Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom, a critique of Zionism
Anti-Zionism
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionistic views or opposition to the state of Israel. The term is used to describe various religious, moral and political points of view in opposition to these, but their diversity of motivation and expression is sufficiently different that "anti-Zionism" cannot be...
, and The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism, which argues that nationalism is a process of state formation inspired by imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
, which capitalists, fascists and Leninists use as a mean of controlling their subjects.
Andrew Flood wrote in An Anarchist Perspective on Irish Nationalism,
Anarchists are not nationalists, in fact we are completely against nationalism. We don't worry about where your granny was born, whether you can speak Irish or if you drink a green milkshake in McDonalds on St Patrick's Day.
But this doesn't mean we can ignore nations. They do exist; and some nationalities are picked on, discriminated against because of their nationality. Irish history bears a lot of witness to this.
The Kurds, Native Americans, Chechins, and many more have suffered also - and to an amazingly barbaric degree. National oppression is wrong. It divides working class people, causes terrible suffering and strengthens the hand of the ruling class. Our opposition to this makes us anti-imperialists. ... So fight national oppression but look beyond nationalism. We can do a lot better. Changing the world for the better will be a hard struggle so we should make sure that we look for the best possible society to live in.
We look forward to a world without borders, where the great majority of people have as much right to freely move about as the idle rich do today. A worldwide federation of free peoples - classless and stateless - where we produce to satisfy needs and all have control over our destinies - that's a goal worth struggling for.
The Anarchist Federation views nationalism as an ideology totally bound up with the development of capitalism, and unable to go beyond it:
...At heart, nationalism is an ideology of class collaboration. It functions to create an imagined community of shared interests and in doing so to hide the real, material interests of the classes which comprise the population. The ‘national interest’ is a weapon against the working class, and an attempt to rally the ruled behind the interests of their rulers ... Anarchist communists do not simply oppose nationalism because it is bound up in racism and parochial bigotry. It undoubtedly fosters these things, and has mobilised them through history. Organising against them is a key part of anarchist politics. But nationalism does not require them to function. Nationalism can be liberal, cosmopolitan and tolerant, defining the ‘common interest’ of ‘the people’ in ways which do not require a single ‘race’. Even the most extreme nationalist ideologies, such as fascism, can co-exist with the acceptance of a multiracial society, as was the case with the Brazilian Integralist movement. Nationalism uses what works – it utilises whatever superficial attribute is effective to bind society together behind it.
More recently post-left anarchist Fredy Perlman
Fredy Perlman
Fredy Perlman was an author, publisher and activist. His most popular work, the book Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, details the rise of state domination with a retelling of history through the Hobbesian metaphor of the Leviathan. The book remains a major source of inspiration for...
wrote a work on the subject of nationalism in 1984 called The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism In it he argues that "Leftist or revolutionary nationalists insist that their nationalism has nothing in common with the nationalism of fascists and national socialists, that theirs is a nationalism of the oppressed, that it offers personal as well as cultural liberation." And so "To challenge these claims, and to see them in a context," he asks "what nationalism is - not only the new revolutionary nationalism but also the old conservative one." And so he concludes that nationalism is an aid to capitalist control of nature and people regardless of its origin. Nationalism thus provides a form through which "Every oppressed population can become a nation, a photographic negative of the oppressor nation" and that "There's no earthly reason for the descendants of the persecuted to remain persecuted when nationalism offers them the prospect of becoming persecutors. Near and distant relatives of victims can become a racist nation-state; they can themselves herd other people into concentration camps, push other people around at will, perpetrate genocidal war against them, procure preliminary capital by expropriating them."
Bakunin and nationalism
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
had a long history of involvement in nationalist movements of various kinds. In his Appeal to the Slavs (1848), Bakunin called for cooperation between nationalist revolutionary movements across Europe (both Slavic and non-Slavic) to overthrow empires and dissolve imperialism, in an uprising of "all oppressed nationalities" which would lead to a "Universal Federation of European Republics". He also agitated for a United States of Europe (a contemporary nationalist vision originated by Mazzini). Later, exiled to eastern Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, he became involved with a circle of Siberian nationalists who planned to separate from Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. They were connected with his cousin and patron, Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky
Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky
Nikolay Nikolayevich Muravyov-Amursky was a Russian statesman and diplomat, who played a major role in the expansion of the Russian Empire into the Amur River basin and to the shores of the Sea of Japan.-Surname spelling:The surname Muravyov has also been transcribed as Muravyev or Murav'ev.-Early...
, the Governor General of Eastern Siberia, whom Bakunin defended in Herzen's journal The Bell. It was not until a full four years after leaving Siberia, however, that Bakunin proclaimed himself an anarchist.
Max Nettlau
Max Nettlau
Max Heinrich Hermann Reinhardt Nettlau was a German anarchist and historian. Although born in Neuwaldegg and raised in Vienna he retained his Prussian nationality throughout his life. A student of the Welsh language he spent time in London where he joined the Socialist League where he met...
remarked of this period in his life that: "This may be explained by Bakunin's increasing nationalist psychosis, induced and nourished by the expansionist ideas of the officials and exploiters who surrounded him in Siberia, causing him to overlook the plight of their victims."
China
Anarchists formed the first labor unions and the first large-scale Peasant organizations in China. During the roughly two decades when anarchism was the dominant radical ideology in China (roughly 1900-1924), Anarchists there were active in mass movements of all kinds, including the nationalist movement.A small group of Anarchists - mostly those associated with the early 'Paris Group', a grouping of Chinese Expatriates based in France - were deeply involved in the nationalist movement and many served as "movement elders" in the KMT right up until the defeat of the nationalists by the Maoists. A minority of Chinese Anarchists associated with the Paris Group also helped funnel large sums of money to Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese doctor, revolutionary and political leader. As the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China, Sun is frequently referred to as the "Father of the Nation" , a view agreed upon by both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China...
to help finance the Nationalist revolution of 1911.
After the 1911 Nationalist revolution, Anarchist involvement with the Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
was relatively minor, not only because the majority of Anarchists opposed nationalism on principle but because the KMT government was more than willing to level repression against anarchist organizations whenever and wherever they challenged state power. Still, a few prominent anarchists, notably Jing Meijiu and Zhang Ji
Zhang Ji
Zhang Ji , style name Derong , was a a military general of Cao Wei during the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. During the Battle of Tong Pass, Zhang helped defend Chang'an together with Xiahou Yuan. According to the records of history, Zhang Ji later became the protector of Yong Province...
(both affiliated with the Tokyo Group) were elected to positions within the KMT government and continued to call themselves Anarchists while doing so. The response from the larger anarchist movement was decidedly mixed. They were roundly denounced by the Guangzhou group; but other groupings that favored an 'evolutionary' approach to social change instead of immediate Revolution, such as the 'Pure Socialists', were more sympathetic.
The "Diligent Work and Frugal Study" program in France, a series of businesses and educational programs organized along anarchist lines that allowed Chinese students from working-class backgrounds to come to France and receive a European education that had previously been only available to a tiny wealthy elite, was one product of this collaboration of the anarchists with nationalists. The program received funding from both the Chinese and French governments as well as raising its own independent funds through a series of worker-owned anarchist businesses, including a Tofu factory that catered to the needs of Chinese migrant workers in France. The program allowed poor and working-class Chinese students to receive a high-quality modern university education in France at a time when foreign education was almost exclusively limited to the children of wealthy elites, and educated thousands of Chinese workers and students - including many future communist leaders such as Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...
.
Following the success of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution anarchism went into decline in the Chinese labour movement. In 1924 the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) allied itself with the nationalist Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
(KMT). Originally composed of many former anarchists, it soon attracted a mass base, becoming increasingly critical of anarchism. When the Kuomintang purged the CPC from its ranks in 1927, the small group of anarchists who had long participated in the KMT urged their younger comrades to join the movement and utilize it in the same way that the Stalinists
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
had been using it - as a vehicle to gain membership and influence.
Partly because of the growing power of the right-wing within the KMT and the repression of workers movements advocated by that right wing, the Anarchists opted not to join the KMT en masse or even work within it, instead, the result of this last collaboration was the creation of China's first Labor University. The Labor University was intended to be a domestic version of the Paris groups Diligent Work and Frugal Study educational program and sought to create a new generation of Labor Intellectuals who would finally overcome the gap between "those who work with their hands” and “those who work with their minds." The goal was to train working-class people with the skills they needed to self-organize and set up their own independent organizations and worker-owned businesses, which would form the seed of a new anarchist society within the shell of the old in a Dual Power
Dual power
Dual power is a concept that has taken on a broad meaning in the hands of anarchists and Libertarian socialists who use it to refer to the concept of gradual revolution through the creation of "alternative-institutions" and "counter-institutions" in place of and in opposition to state and corporate...
-based evolutionary strategy reminiscent of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
.
The university would only function for a very few years before the Nationalist government decided that the project was too subversive to allow it too continue and pulled funding. When the KMT initiated a second wave of repression
Political repression
Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take political life of society....
against the few remaining mass movements, anarchists left the organization en masse and were forced underground as hostilities between the KMT and CPC – both of whom were hostile towards anti-authoritarians – escalated.
Italy
National syndicalism
National syndicalism is a nationalist variant of syndicalism.- Founding of national syndicalism in France :National syndicalism was founded in France by the fusion of Maurrassian integral nationalism with Sorelian syndicalism. Interest in Sorelian thought arose in the French political right,...
provided an intellectual path which drew some former members of anarcho-syndicalist labor movements away from anarchism and towards nationalism.
Ireland
The anarcho-Platformist Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM) has produced a number of articles and essays on the relationship between Anarchism and Irish Republicanism over the years. Their position, roughly, is that Anarchism and Republicanism are incompatible and opposed to each other but that Anarchists can and should learn things from Ireland's long history of struggle. In their analysis Republicanism has always been split between rich people who want to rule directly and working class movements that demand social equality and community self governance instead of simply trading foreign bosses for local ones.In Ireland in the 1790's we had a mass republican movement influenced by the American and then the French revolutions. That movement included those who favored a radical leveling agenda as well as the democratic agenda of mainstream republicans. Edward Fitzgerald, the military planner of the rising was one such proponent. But it also contained those like Wolfe Tone who saw an independent Ireland as opening up its own colonies in the Caribbean. In the north Henry Joy McDonald had to remove the existing United Irish leadership paralyzed by fear of the mob seizing property before the rising there could get underway, weeks after it had begun in the south. After its defeat and before his execution he warned future republicans to beware that "the rich always betray the poor."
...
This process was mirrored in republican movements elsewhere. Left republicans would build real popular struggle but then be confronted with the need to preserve national unity in the face of the wealthy republicans whose funds were often needed for arms backing off because they feared for their privilege. And this is where we find the roots of the early anarchist movement... So in terms of historical development anarchism and republicanism have a lot in common, in fact anarchism is arguably an off shoot of republicanism, an off shoot that emerged for the first time in the 1860's but has emerged on other occasions since then including in 1970's Ireland where some of those leaving the official republican movement became anarchists while other anarchists were joining both provisional and official republican movements.
According to this analysis, Anarchism is the successor to left-nationalism, a working class movement working to achieve the liberation that the Republican movements that toppled the worlds monarchies in the last two centuries promised but never delivered. So even though the ideas of Anarchism are fundamentally different from those of Nationalism it is still possible to learn from nationalist movements by studying the working class elements of those movements that demanded more than the bourgeoisie leadership was willing or able to deliver.
Mexico
Ricardo Flores MagónRicardo Flores Magón
Cipriano Ricardo Flores Magón was a noted Mexican anarchist and social reform activist. His brothers Enrique and Jesús were also active in politics. Followers of the Magón brothers were known as Magonistas....
, one of the early leaders of the Mexican left-nationalist movement which eventually culminated in the Mexican Revolution
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...
, based his anarchism primarily on the works of early anarchists Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism. He has also often been called the father of anarchist theory in general. Bakunin grew up near Moscow, where he moved to study philosophy and began to read the French Encyclopedists,...
and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
, but was also influenced by his anarchist contemporaries: Élisée Reclus
Élisée Reclus
Élisée Reclus , also known as Jacques Élisée Reclus, was a renowned French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes , over a period of nearly 20 years...
, Charles Malato
Charles Malato
Charles Malato was a French anarchist and writer.He was born to a noble Neapolitan family, his grandfather Count Malato being a Field Marshal and the Commander-in-Chief of the army of the last King of Naples...
, Errico Malatesta
Errico Malatesta
Errico Malatesta was an Italian anarcho-communist. He was an insurrectionary anarchist early in his life. He spent much of his life exiled from his homeland of Italy and in total spent more than ten years in prison. He wrote and edited a number of radical newspapers and was also a friend of...
, Anselmo Lorenzo
Anselmo Lorenzo
Anselmo Lorenzo was a defining figure in the early Spanish Anarchist movement, earning the oft quoted sobriquet "the grandfather of Spanish anarchism," in the words of Murray Bookchin; "his contribution to the spread of Anarchist ideas in Barcelona and Andalusia over the decades was enormous"...
, Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
, Fernando Tarrida del Mármol
Fernando Tarrida del Mármol
Fernando Tarrida del Mármol , was a Cuban anarchist writer. He was born in Havana to a wealthy family of Catalan emigrants, and was the nephew of Cuban general Donato Mármol. He studied engineering in Barcelona, Toulouse and Madrid, becoming professor and director of the Polytechnic School of...
and Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
. However, he was most influenced by Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
. Flores Magón also read from the works of Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
. Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread
The Conquest of Bread
The Conquest of Bread is a book by the anarchist communist Peter Kropotkin. Originally written in French, it first appeared as a series of articles in the anarchist journals Le Révolté and La Revolté . It was first published as a book in Paris in 1892 with a preface by Élisée Reclus, who also...
, which he considered a kind of anarchist bible, served as basis for the short-lived revolutionary communes in Baja California
Baja California
Baja California officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is both the northernmost and westernmost state of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1953, the area was known as the North...
during the "Magonista" Revolt of 1911. In addition to his work with the Partido Liberal Mexicano, Magón organised with the Wobblies (IWW) and edited Regeneración, which aroused the workers against the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz
Porfirio Díaz
José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori was a Mexican-American War volunteer and French intervention hero, an accomplished general and the President of Mexico continuously from 1876 to 1911, with the exception of a brief term in 1876 when he left Juan N...
.
Har Dayal
In the 1910s Lala Har DayalHar Dayal
Lala Har Dayal was a Indian nationalist revolutionary who founded the Ghadar Party in America. He was a polymath who turned down a career in the Indian Civil Service...
became an anarchist agitator in San Francisco, joining the IWW
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
before becoming a pivotal figure in the Ghadar Party
Ghadar Party
The Ghadar Party was an organization founded by Punjabi Indians, in the United States and Canada with the aim to liberate India from British rule...
. A long-time advocate of Indian nationalism
Indian nationalism
Indian nationalism refers to the many underlying forces that molded the Indian independence movement, and strongly continue to influence the politics of India, as well as being the heart of many contrasting ideologies that have caused ethnic and religious conflict in Indian society...
, he developed a vision of anarchism based upon a return to the principles of ancient Aryan
Aryan
Aryan is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit ārya and denoting variously*In scholarly usage:**Indo-Iranian languages *in dated usage:**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers...
society. He was particularly influenced by Guy Aldred
Guy Aldred
Guy Alfred Aldred - often Guy A. Aldred - was a British anarchist communist and a prominent member of the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation...
, who was jailed for printing The Indian Sociologist
The Indian Sociologist
The Indian Sociologist was an Indian nationalist publication in the early twentieth century. Its subtitle was An Organ of Freedom, and Political, Social, and Religious Reform....
in 1907. Aldred, an anarcho-communist, was careful to point out that this solidarity arose because he was an advocate of free speech and not because he felt that nationalism would help the working class in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
or elsewhere. The National Bolshevik, Fritz Wolffheim
Fritz Wolffheim
Fritz Wolffheim was a German communist politician and writer. He was a leading figure in the National Bolshevism tendency that was briefly influential in Germany after World War I.-Early life:...
was also involved with the IWW at the same time as Har Dayal.
Völkisch anarchism
A concept of nationalist anarchism independent of anti-semitism or far rightFar right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
input can be traced back to the populist
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
revolutionary nationalisms of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the Russian narodnik
Narodnik
Narodniks was the name for Russian socially conscious members of the middle class in the 1860s and 1870s. Their ideas and actions were known as Narodnichestvo which can be translated as "Peopleism", though is more commonly rendered "populism"...
s (themselves a cradle of many political strains and tendencies with anarchistic leanings) and the völkisch movement
Völkisch movement
The volkisch movement is the German interpretation of the populist movement, with a romantic focus on folklore and the "organic"...
of Germany and Austria. The latter inherited its Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
outlook from Johann Gottfried von Herder whose own philosophy, which also inspired Mazzini (Hearder 1966: 44, 46), affirmed both the particularity of national cultures (nationalism) and their value within a universal context (internationalism).
As the völkisch movement developed, sections of it focussed on to theories of anti-semitism and racial supremacy which claimed a foundation in biology. Others, however, repudiated racism and preserved Herder's emphasis upon the equality of all nations. Among these prophets of internationalism was the German-Jewish völkisch anarchist Gustav Landauer
Gustav Landauer
Gustav Landauer was one of the leading theorists on anarchism in Germany in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. He was an advocate of communist anarchism and an avowed pacifist. Landauer is also known for his study and translations of William Shakespeare's works into German...
.
Alternative Socialism
A recent revival of völkisch anti-racism can be found in the Alternative Socialist Movement, an alliance of British radicalsFar left
Far left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...
formed during the 1970s in which Keith Motherson (formerly Keith Paton) and the controversial artist Monica Sjöö
Monica Sjöö
Monica Sjöö, , was a Swedish painter, writer and a radical anarcho/eco-feminist who was influential in the Goddess movement. She first came to Britain in the late 1950th and eventually settled in Bristol where she lived for many years, before she died of cancer...
were key members. Alternative Socialism sought to synthesise a range of seeming contraries: dissident Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
with anarchism, socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
with libertarianism
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
, Christianity with paganism, and reformism with revolution.
It espoused the love of homeland and country from a nonviolent and feminist perspective which Motherson 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 dialog.
Black Ram
The Black Ram Group remained within the mainstream anarchist consensus of anti-racism
Anti-racism
Anti-racism includes beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or developed to oppose racism. In general, anti-racism is intended to promote an egalitarian society in which people do not face discrimination on the basis of their race, however defined...
and anti-sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
. Its positive evaluation of nationalism derived not from any roots in far right political organisations, but from the theoretical consideration that:
the pseudo-'nationalism' of the 'nation-State - which anarchists unequivocally oppose...must be distinguished from the nationalism of the people (Volk) which in its more consistent expressions is a legitimate rejection of both foreign domination and internal authoritarianism, i.e. the State.
The term anarcho-nationalist is introduced in Black Ram 1: 12 to describe the outlook of American Odinists with whom the paper's editors were in sympathy and, since then, it has been reused as a general term covering nationalist anarchisms. The term national anarchism was also used in the title of an article projected for publication in the second edition, "Towards an Anarchist Nationalism: provisional manifesto of the National Anarchist Pagan Resurgence", but no further editions appeared and so it was never formally defined. Wotan, 'Fylfots for Freedom', Black Ram 1: 7-8 sets out a programme aiming to subvert fascism by reclaiming symbols and concepts for libertarian ends. The group's emblem was a circled A in the centre of a swastika
Swastika
The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...
('anarcho-swastika').
Black anarchism or Panther anarchism
Black anarchism opposes the existence of a stateAnti-statism
Anti-statism is a term describing opposition to state intervention into personal, social, and economic affairs. Anti-statist views may reject the state completely as well as rulership in general , they may wish to reduce the size and scope of the state to a minimum , or they may advocate a...
and subjugation and domination of people of color, and favors a non-hierarchical organization of society. Black anarchists seek to abolish white supremacy
White supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
, capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, and the state. Theorists include Ashanti Alston
Ashanti Alston
Ashanti Alston Omowali is an anarchist activist, speaker, and writer, and former member of the Black Panther Party. Even though the party no longer exists, Alston sometimes refers to himself as a Black Panther, and sometimes as "the @narchist Panther", a term he coined in his @narchist Panther Zine...
, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin is an American writer, activist, and Black anarchist. He is a former member of the Black Panther Party. He has lived in Memphis, Tennessee since 2010.- Youth and early activism :...
, Kuwasi Balagoon
Kuwasi Balagoon
Kuwasi Balagoon , born Donald Weems, was a Black Panther, a member of the Black Liberation Army, a New Afrikan anarchist, and a defendant in the Panther 21 case in the late sixties. Captured and convicted of various crimes, he spent most of the 1970s in prison...
, many former members of the Black Panther Party
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
, and Martin Sostre
Martin Sostre
Martin Ramirez Sostre is an American activist.He served time in Attica prison during the early 1960s, where he embraced doctrines as diverse as Black Muslimism, Black Nationalism, Internationalism, and finally anarchism. In 1966 Sostre opened the Afro-Asian Bookstore in the black ghetto of...
. Black anarchism rejects the traditional anarchist movement.
Black anarchists have criticized both the hierarchical organization of the Black Panther Party
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
, and the anarchist movement, on the grounds that it has traditionally been European and/or white-based. They oppose the anti-racist conception, based on the universalism
Universalism
Universalism in its primary meaning refers to religious, theological, and philosophical concepts with universal application or applicability...
of the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, which is proposed by the anarchist workers' tradition, arguing that it is not adequate enough to struggle against racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and that it disguises real inequalities by proclaiming a de jure equality
Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism is a trend of thought that favors equality of some sort among moral agents, whether persons or animals. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that equality contains the idea of equity of quality...
. For example, Pedro Ribeiro has criticized the whole of the anarchist movement by declaring that: "It is a white, petty-bourgeois Anarchism that cannot relate to the people. As a Black person, I am not interested in your Anarchism. I am not interested in individualistic, self-serving, selfish liberation for you and your white friends. What I care about is the liberation of my people."
Black anarchists are thus influenced by the civil rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
and the Black Panther Party, and seek to forge their own movement that represents their own identity and tailored to their own unique situation. However, in contrast to black activism that was, in the past, based in leadership from hierarchical organizations, black anarchism rejects such methodology in favor of developing organically through communication and cooperation to bring about an economic and cultural revolution that does away with racist domination, capitalism, and the state. From Alston's @narchist Panther Zine:
Panther anarchism is ready, willing and able to challenge old nationalist and revolutionary notions that have been accepted as ‘common-sense.’ It also challenges the bullshit in our lives and in the so-called movement that holds us back from building a genuine movement based on the enjoyment of life, diversity, practical self-determination and multi-faceted resistance to the Babylonian Pigocracy. This Pigocracy is in our ‘heads,’ our relationships as well as in the institutions that have a vested interest in our eternal domination.
Post-colonial anarchism
Post-colonial anarchism is a relatively new tendency within the larger anarchist movement. The name is taken from an essay by Roger White, one of the founders of Jailbreak Press and an activist in North American APOC circles. Post-colonial anarchism is an attempt to bring together disparate aspects and tendencies within the existing anarchist movement and re-envision them in an explicitly anti-imperialist framework.Where traditional anarchism is a movement arising from the struggles of proletarians in industrialized western European nations - and thus sees history from their perspective - post-colonial anarchism approaches the same principles of mutual aid, class struggle, opposition to social hierarchy, and community-level self-management, self-government, self-management, and self-determination from the perspective of colonized peoples throughout the world. In doing so it does not seek to invalidate the contributions of the more established anarchist movement, but rather seeks to add a unique and important perspective. The tendency is strongly influenced by indigenism, anti-state forms of nationalism, and APOC (Anarchist People of Color), among other sources.
National-Anarchism
The most recent current to fuse nationalism and anarchism is National-AnarchismNational-Anarchism
National-Anarchism is a radical, anti-capitalist, anti-statist, right-wing political and cultural ideology which emphasizes ethnic tribalism. As a prelude to an anticipated racial civil war and a collapse of the capitalist system, National-Anarchists seek to establish autonomous villages for...
a position developed in Europe during the 1990s. Among its first advocates were Hans Cany, Peter Töpfer, and former National Front
British National Front
The National Front is a far right, white-only political party whose major political activities took place during the 1970s and 1980s. Its popularity peaked in the 1979 general election, when it received 191,719 votes ....
activist, Troy Southgate
Troy Southgate
Troy Southgate is an author, musician and leading National-Anarchist activist based in the United Kingdom.-Politics:Originally from Crystal Palace, in South London, Southgate is of English-Scots descent and moved to the small village of Jarvis Brook, East Sussex, in his teenage years...
, founder of the National Revolutionary Faction, a since disbanded UK-based organization which cultivated links to certain far-right circles in Britain and post-Soviet states
Post-Soviet states
The post-Soviet states, also commonly known as the Former Soviet Union or former Soviet republics, are the 15 independent states that split off from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in its dissolution in December 1991...
. National-Anarchist groups have also arisen worldwide, most prominently in Germany, the United States of America, and Australia. In the UK, National-Anarchists worked with Albion Awake, Alternative Green
Alternative Green
Alternative Green is a UK magazine set up by former Green Anarchist contributor and editor Richard Hunt in 1991 to promote the ideas later set out in his book 'To End Poverty, The Starvation of the Periphery by the Core' ....
(published by former Green Anarchist
Green Anarchist
The magazine Green Anarchist was for a while the principal voice in the UK advocating green anarchism, an explicit fusion of libertarian socialist and ecological thinking.-Early years:...
editor, Richard Hunt
Richard Hunt (editor)
Richard Hunt is a green anarchist activist, and editor of various environmentalist magazines, such as Green Anarchist and Alternative Green. He was widely criticised in the anarchist community for his perceived sympathies for nationalism, and wrote an editorial for Green Anarchist expressing...
) and Jonathan Boulter to develop the "Anarchist Heretics Fair". While many mainstream anarchist groups condemned them, SchNEWS
SchNEWS
SchNEWS is a free weekly publication from Brighton, England, which has been running since November 1994. The main focus is environmental and social issues/struggles in the UK – but also internationally – with an emphasis on direct action protest, and autonomous political struggles...
ran advertisements for the Fair.
National-Anarchists advocate a society that allows separation
Separatism
Separatism is the advocacy of a state of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, governmental or gender separation from the larger group. While it often refers to full political secession, separatist groups may seek nothing more than greater autonomy...
to exist along ethnic and religious lines, and even along lines of sexual orientation. Like other anarchists they oppose the totalitarian state typically advocated by stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
and fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
. Such autonomous zones would allow communities to set their own rules and qualifications for acceptance into permanent residence in a community, and are not necessarily limited to the strict ethnic divisions advocated by white nationalism
White nationalism
White nationalism is a political ideology which advocates a racial definition of national identity for white people. White separatism and white supremacism are subgroups within white nationalism. The former seek a separate white nation state, while the latter add ideas from social Darwinism and...
and black nationalism
Black nationalism
Black nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...
. Cultural pluralism and the right to self determination are key tenets of National-Anarchism. Genocide, murder, and social conformism (as typical of America and Western societies on the whole) are denounced by National-Anarchists as tyrannical and an affront to libertarian minded people. Each collective would be free to practice the economic or political structure of its choosing as long as it does not interfere with the rights of other communities to follow their own lifestyle choice (excluding the above mentioned crimes); however, National-Anarchists generally believe that environmental protection and conservation are things that all people should coordinate on. Areas without significant human development and borderlands would be maintained collectively and the existence of free zones allowing trade and sharing between communities would be established with the agreement of all parties involved.
See also
- Carlo CarràCarlo CarràCarlo Carrà was an Italian painter, a leading figure of the Futurist movement that flourished in Italy during the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to his many paintings, he wrote a number of books concerning art. He taught for many years in the city of Milan.-Biography:Carrà was born in...
, painter of The Funeral of the Anarchist GalliThe Funeral of the Anarchist GalliThe Funeral of the Anarchist Galli is a painting by Italian painter Carlo Carrà. It was finished in 1911, during the artist's futurist phase. It currently resides in New York City's Museum of Modern Art....
. - National Anarchism
- National CommunismNational communismThe term National Communism describes the ethnic minority communist currents that arose in the former Russian Empire after Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party seized power in October 1917....
External links
- Anarchist Integralism
- Anarchist Notions of Nationalism and Patriotism by Rob Knowles
- http://libcom.org/library/continuing-appeal-nationalism-fredy-perlmanThe Continuing Appeal of Nationalism by Fredy PerlmanFredy PerlmanFredy Perlman was an author, publisher and activist. His most popular work, the book Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, details the rise of state domination with a retelling of history through the Hobbesian metaphor of the Leviathan. The book remains a major source of inspiration for...
] - Anarchists against nationalism and Anarchists and nationalism at flag.blackened.net
- Beyond Nationalism, But Not Without It. Nationalism and anarchism from a Black anarchist perspective, from Anarchist Panther by Ashanti AlstonAshanti AlstonAshanti Alston Omowali is an anarchist activist, speaker, and writer, and former member of the Black Panther Party. Even though the party no longer exists, Alston sometimes refers to himself as a Black Panther, and sometimes as "the @narchist Panther", a term he coined in his @narchist Panther Zine...
. - Post Colonial Anarchism, by Roger White. Anarchism, nationalism, and national liberation from an APOC perspective.