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Title: The Left-Overs
Author: Alexander Reid Ross
Date: 29 March, 2017
Language: en
Topics: anti-fascism; fascism; fascist creep; post-left; criticism and critique; anarcho-primitivism; Bob Black; ELF; green anarchism; Hakim Bey; John Zerzan; Lawrence Jarach; Max Stirner; nihilism
Source: Retrieved on 28 September, 2022 from https://antifascistnews.net/2017/03/29/the-left-overs-how-fascists-court-the-post-left/
Notes: Alexander Reid Ross is a former co-editor of the Earth First! Journal and the author of Against the Fascist Creep. He teaches in the Geography Department at Portland State University and can be reached at .

Alexander Reid Ross

The Left-Overs

Author’s Note: A few months ago, the radical publication, Fifth Estate,

solicited an article from me discussing the rise of fascism in recent

years. Following their decision to withdraw the piece, I accepted the

invitation of Anti-Fascist News to publish an expanded version here,

with some changes, at the urging of friends and fellow writers.

Chapter 1: The Early Composition of Fascist Individualism

A friendly editor recently told me via email, “if anti-capitalism and

pro individual liberty [sic] are clearly stated in the books or

articles, they won’t be used by those on the right.” If this were true,

fascism simply would vanish from the earth. Fascism comes from a mixture

of left and right-wing positions, and some on the left pursue aspects of

collectivism, syndicalism, ecology, and authoritarianism that intersect

with fascist enterprises. Partially in response to the tendencies of

left authoritarianism, a distinct antifascist movement emerged in the

1970s to create what has became known as “post-left” thought. Yet in

imagining that anti-capitalism and “individual liberty” maintain

ideological purity, radicals such as my own dear editor tend to ignore

critical convergences with and vulnerabilities to fascist ideology.

The post-left developed largely out of a tendency to favor individual

freedom autonomous from political ideology of left and right while

retaining some elements of leftism. Although it is a rich milieu with

many contrasting positions, post-leftists often trace their roots to

individualist Max Stirner, whose belief in the supremacy of the European

individual over and against nation, class, and creed was heavily

influenced by philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. After Stirner’s death in 1856,

the popularity of collectivism and neo-Kantianism obscured his

individualist philosophy until Friedrich Nietzsche raised its profile

again during the later part of the century. Influenced by Stirner,

Nietzsche argued for the overcoming of socialism and the “modern world”

by the iconoclastic, aristocratic philosopher known as the “Superman” or

“übermensch.”

During the late-19^(th) Century, Stirnerists conflated the “Superman”

with the assumed responsibility of women to bear a superior European

race—a “New Man” to produce, and be produced by, a “New Age.” Similarly,

right-wing aristocrats who loathed the notions of liberty and equality

turned to Nietzsche and Stirner to support their sense of elitism and

hatred of left-wing populism and mass-based civilization. Some

anarchists and individualists influenced by Stirner and Nietzsche looked

to right-wing figures like Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, who

developed the idea of a “conservative revolution” that would upend the

spiritual crises of the modern world and the age of the masses. In the

words of anarchist, Victor Serge, “Dostoevsky: the best and the worst,

inseparable. He really looks for the truth and fears to find it; he

often finds it all the same and then he is terrified… a poor great man…”

History’s “great man” or “New Man” was neither left nor right; he strove

to destroy the modern world and replace it with his own ever-improving

image—but what form would that image take? In Italy, reactionaries

associated with the Futurist movement and various romantic nationalist

strains expressed affinity with the individualist current identified

with Nietzsche and Stirner. Anticipating tremendous catastrophes that

would bring the modern world to its knees and install the New Age of the

New Man, the Futurists sought to fuse the “destructive gesture of the

anarchists” with the bombast of empire.

A hugely popular figure among these tendencies of individualism and

“conservative revolution,” the Italian aesthete Gabrielle D’Annunzio

summoned 2,600 soldiers in a daring 1919 attack on the port city of

Fiume to reclaim it for Italy after World War I. During their exploit,

the occupying force hoisted the black flag emblazoned by skull and

crossbones and sang songs of national unity. Italy disavowed the

imperial occupation, leaving the City-State in the hands of its romantic

nationalist leadership. A constitution, drawn up by national

syndicalist, Alceste De Ambris, provided the basis for national

solidarity around a corporative economy mediated through collaborating

syndicates. D’Annunzio was prophetic and eschatological, presenting

poetry during convocations from the balcony. He was masculine. He was

Imperial and majestic, yet radical and rooted in fraternal affection. He

called forth sacrifice and love of the nation.

When he returned to Italy after the military uprooted his enclave in

Fiume, ultranationalists, Futurists, artists, and intellectuals greeted

D’Annunzio as a leader of the growing Fascist movement. The aesthetic

ceremonies and radical violence contributed to a sacralization of

politics invoked by the spirit of Fascism. Though Mussolini likely saw

himself as a competitor to D’Annunzio for the role of supreme leader, he

could not deny the style and mood, the high aesthetic appeal that

reached so many through the Fiume misadventure. Fascism, Mussolini

insisted, was an anti-party, a movement. The Fascist Blackshirts, or

squadristi, adopted D’Annunzio’s flare, the black uniforms, the skull

and crossbones, the dagger at the hip, the “devil may care” attitude

expressed by the anthem, “Me ne frego” or “I don’t give a damn.” Some of

those who participated in the Fiume exploit abandoned D’Annunzio as he

joined the Fascist movement, drifting to the Arditi del Popolo to fight

the Fascist menace. Others would join the ranks of the Blackshirts.

Originally a man of the left, Mussolini had no difficulty joining the

symbolism of revolution with ultranationalist rebirth. “Down with the

state in all its species and incarnations,” he declared in a 1920

speech. “The state of yesterday, of today, of tomorrow. The bourgeois

state and the socialist. For those of us, the doomed (morituri) of

individualism, through the darkness of the present and the gloom of

tomorrow, all that remains is the by-now-absurd, but ever consoling,

religion of anarchy!” In another statement, he asked, “why should

Stirner not have a comeback?”

Mussolini’s concept of anarchism was critical, because he saw anarchism

as prefiguring fascism. “If anarchist authors have discovered the

importance of the mythical from an opposition to authority and unity,”

declared Nazi jurist, Carl Schmitt, drawing on Mussolini’s concept of

myth, “then they have also cooperated in establishing the foundation of

another authority, however unwillingly, an authority based on the new

feeling for order, discipline, and hierarchy.” The dialectics of fascism

here are two-fold: only the anarchist destruction of the modern world in

every milieu would open the potential for Fascism, but the mythic

stateless society of anarchism, for Mussolini, could only emerge,

paradoxically, from a self-disciplining state of total order.

Antifascist anarchist individualists and nihilists like Renzo Novatore

represented for Mussolini a kind of “passive nihilism,” which Nietzsche

understood as the decadence and weakness of modernity. The veterans that

would fight for Mussolini rejected the suppression of individualism

under the Bolsheviks and favored “an anti-party of fighters,” according

to historian Emilio Gentile. Fascism would exploit the rampant misogyny

of men like Novatore while turning the “passive nihilism” of their

vision of total collapse toward “active nihilism” through a rebirth of

the New Age at the hands of the New Man.

The “drift” toward fascism that took place throughout Europe during the

1920s and 1930s was not restricted to the collectivist left of former

Communists, Syndicalists, and Socialists; it also included the more

ambiguous politics of the European avant-garde and intellectual elites.

In France, literary figures like Georges Bataille and Antonin Artaud

began experimenting with fascist aesthetics of cruelty, irrationalism,

and elitism. In 1934, Bataille declared his hope to usher in “room for

great fascist societies,” which he believed inhabited the world of

“higher forms” and “makes an appeal to sentiments traditionally defined

as exalted and noble.” Bataille’s admiration for Stirner did not prevent

him from developing what he described decades later as a “paradoxical

fascist tendency.” Other libertarian celebrities like Louis-Ferdinand

Céline and Maurice Blanchot also embraced fascist themes—particularly

virulent anti-Semitism.

Like Blanchot, the Nazi-supporting Expressionist poet Gottfried Benn

called on an anti-humanist language of suffering and nihilism that

looked inward, finding only animal impulses and irrational drives.

Existentialist philosopher and Nazi Party member, Martin Heidegger,

played on Nietzschean themes of nihilism and aesthetics in his

phenomenology, placing angst at the core of modern life and seeking

existential release through a destructive process that he saw as

implicit in the production of an authentic work of art. Literary figure

Ernst Jünger, who cheered on Hitler’s rise, summoned the force of

“active nihilism,” seeking the collapse of the civilization through a

“magic zero” that would bring about a New Age of ultra-individualist

actors that he later called “Anarchs.” The influence of Stirner was as

present in Jünger as it was in Mussolini’s early fascist years, and

carried over to other members of the fascist movement like Carl Schmitt

and Julius Evola.

Evola was perhaps the most important of those seeking the collapse of

civilization and the New Age’s spiritual awakening of the “universal

individual,” sacrificial dedication, and male supremacy. A dedicated

fascist and individualist, Evola devoted himself to the purity of sacred

violence, racism, anti-Semitism, and the occult. Asserting a doctrine of

the “political soldier,” Evola regarded violence as necessary in

establishing a kind of natural hierarchy that promoted the supreme

individual over the multitudes. Occult practice distilled into an

overall aristocracy of the spirit, Evola believed, which could only find

expression through sacrifice and a Samurai-like code of honor. Evola

shared these ideals of conquest, elitism, sacrificial pleasure with the

SS, who invited the Italian esotericist to Vienna to indulge his thirst

for knowledge. Following World War II, Evola’s spiritual fascism found

parallels in the writings of Savitri Devi, a French esotericist of Greek

descent who developed an anti-humanist practice of Nazi nature worship

not unlike today’s Deep Ecology. In her rejection of human rights, Devi

insisted that the world manifests a totality of interlocking life

forces, none of which enjoys a particular moral prerogative over the

other.

Chapter 2: The Creation of the Post-Left

It has been shown by now that fascism, in its inter-war period,

attracted numerous anti-capitalists and individualists, largely through

elitism, the aestheticization of politics, and the nihilist’s desire for

the destruction of the modern world. After the fall of the Reich,

fascists attempted to rekindle the embers of their movement by

intriguing within both the state and social movements. It became popular

among fascists to reject Hitler to some degree and call for a return to

the original “national syndicalist” ideas mixed with the elitism of the

“New Man” and the destruction of civilization. Fascists demanded

“national liberation” for European ethnicities against NATO and

multicultural liberalism, while the occultism of Evola and Devi began to

fuse with Satanism to form new fascist hybrids. With ecology and

anti-authoritarianism, such sacralization of political opposition

through the occult would prove among the most intriguing conduits for

fascist insinuation into subcultures after the war.

In the ’60s, left-communist groups like Socialisme ou Barbarie, Pouvoir

ouvrier, and the Situationists gathered at places like

bookstore-cum-publishing house, La Vielle Taupe (The Old Mole),

critiquing everyday life in industrial civilization through art and

transformative practices. According to Gilles Dauvé, one of the

participants in this movement, “the small milieu round the bookshop La

Vieille Taupe” developed the idea of “communisation,” or the

revolutionary transformation of all social relations. This new movement

of “ultra-leftists” helped inspire the aesthetics of a young,

intellectual rebellion that culminated in a large uprising of students

and workers in Paris during May 1968.

The strong anti-authoritarian current of the ultra-left and the broader

uprising of May ’68 contributed to similar movements elsewhere in

Europe, like the Italian Autonomia movement, which spread from a wildcat

strike against the car manufacturer, Fiat, to generalized upheaval

involving rent strikes, building occupations, and mass street

demonstrations. While most of Autonomia remained left-wing, its

participants were intensely critical of the established left, and

autonomists often objected to the ham-fisted strategy of urban

guerrillas. In 1977, individualist anarchist, Alfredo Bonanno, penned

the text, “Armed Joy,” exhorting Italian leftists to drop patriarchal

pretensions to guerrilla warfare and join popular insurrectionary

struggle. The conversion of Marxist theorist, Jacques Camatte, to the

pessimistic rejection of leftism and embrace of simpler life tied to

nature furthered contradictions within the Italian left.

With anti-authoritarianism, ecologically-oriented critiques of

civilization emerged out of the 1960s and 1970s as significant strains

of a new identity that rejected both left and right. Adapting to these

currents of popular social movements and exploiting blurred ideological

lines between left and right, fascist ideologues developed the framework

of “ethno-pluralism.” Couching their rhetoric in “the right to

difference” (ethnic separatism), fascists masked themselves with labels

like the “European New Right,” “national revolutionaries,” and

“revolutionary traditionalists.” The “European New Right” took the

rejection of the modern world advocated by the ultra-left as a

proclamation of the indigeneity of Europeans and their pagan roots in

the land. Fascists further produced spiritual ideas derived from a sense

of rootedness in one’s native land, evoking the old “blood and soil”

ecology of the German völkische movement and Nazi Party.

In Italy, this movement produced the “Hobbit Camp,” an eco-festival

organized by European New Right figure Marco Tarchi and marketed to

disillusioned youth via Situationist-style posters and flyers. When

Italian “national revolutionary,” Roberto Fiore, fled charges of

participating in a massive bombing of a train station in Bologna, he

found shelter in the London apartment of Tarchi’s European New Right

colleague, Michael Walker. This new location would prove transformative,

as Fiore, Walker, and a group of fascist militants created a political

faction called the Official National Front in 1980. This group would

help promote and would benefit from a more avant-garde fascist

aesthetic, bringing forward neo-folk, noise, and other experimental

music genres.

While fascists entered the green movement and exploited openings in left

anti-authoritarian thought, Situationism began to transform. In the

early 1970s, post-Situationism emerged through US collectives that

combined Stirnerist egoism with collectivist thought. In 1974, the For

Ourselves group published The Right to Be Greedy, inveighing against

altruism while linking egoist greed to the synthesis of social identity

and welfare—in short, to surplus. The text was reprinted in 1983 by

libertarian group, Loompanics Unlimited, with a preface from a

little-known writer named Bob Black.

While post-Situationism turned toward individualism, a number of

European ultra-leftists moved toward the right. In Paris, La Vieille

Taupe went from controversial views rejecting the necessity of

specialized antifascism to presenting the Holocaust as a lie necessary

to maintain the capitalist order. In 1980, La Vielle Taupe published the

notorious Mémoire en Défense centre ceux qui m’accusent de falsifier

l’histoire by Holocaust denier, Robert Faurisson. Though La Vielle Taupe

and founder, Pierre Guillaume, received international condemnation, they

gained a controversial defense from left-wing professor, Noam Chomsky.

Even if they have for the most part denounced Guillaume and his

entourage, the ultra-leftist rejection of specialized antifascism has

remained somewhat popular—particularly as expounded by Dauvé, who

insisted in the early 1980s that “fascism as a specific movement has

disappeared.”

The idea that fascism had become a historical artifact only helped the

creep of fascism to persist undetected, while Faurisson and Guillaume

became celebrities on the far-right. As the twist toward Holocaust

denial would suggest, ultra-left theory was not immune from translation

into ethnic terms—a reality that formed the basis of the work of

Official National Front officer, Troy Southgate. Though influenced by

the Situationists, along with a scramble of other left and right-wing

figures, Southgate focused particularly on the ecological strain of

radical politics associated with the punk-oriented journal, Green

Anarchist, which called for a return to “primitive” livelihoods and the

destruction of modern civilization. In 1991, the editors of Green

Anarchist pushed out their co-editor, Richard Hunt, for his patriotic

militarism, and Hunt’s new publication, Green Alternative, soon became

associated with Southgate. Two years later, Southgate would join allied

fascists like Jean-François Thiriart and Christian Bouchet to create the

Liaison Committee for Revolutionary Nationalism.

In the US, the “anarcho-primitivist” or “Green Anarchist” tendency had

been taken up by former ultra-leftist, John Zerzan. Identifying

civilization as an enemy of the earth, Zerzan called for a return to

sustainable livelihoods that rejected modernity. Zerzan rejected racism

but relied in no small part on the thought of Martin Heidegger, seeking

a return authentic relations between humans and the world unmediated by

symbolic thought. This desired return, some have pointed out, would

require a collapse of civilization so profound that millions, if not

billions, would likely perish. Zerzan, himself, seems somewhat ambiguous

with regards to the potential death toll, regardless of his support for

the unibomber, Ted Kaczynsky.

Joining with Zerzan to confront authoritarianism and return to a more

tribal, hunter-gatherer social organization, an occultist named Hakim

Bey developed the idea of the “Temporary Autonomous Zone” (TAZ). For

Bey, a TAZ would actualize a liberated and erotic space of orgiastic,

revolutionary poesis. Yet within his 1991 text, Temporary Autonomous

Zone, Bey included extensive praise for D’Annunzio’s proto-fascist

occupation of Fiume, revealing the disturbing historical trends of

attempts to transcend right and left.

Along with Zerzan and Bey, Bob Black would prove instrumental to the

foundation of what is today called the “post-left.” In his 1997 text,

Anarchy After Leftism, Black responded to left-wing anarchist Murray

Bookchin, who accused individualists of “lifestyle anarchism.” Drawing

from Zerzan’s critique of civilization as well as from Stirner and

Nietzsche, Black presented his rejection of work as a nostrum for

authoritarian left tendencies that he identified with Bookchin

(apparently Jew-baiting Bookchin in the process).[1]

Thus, the post-left began to assemble through the writings of

ultra-leftists, green anarchists, spiritualists, and egoists published

in zines, books, and journals like Anarchy: Journal of Desire Armed and

Fifth Estate. Although these thinkers and publications differ in many

ways, key tenets of the post-left included an eschatological

anticipation of the collapse of civilization accompanied by a synthesis

of individualism and collectivism that rejected left, right, and center

in favor of a deep connection with the earth and more organic, tribal

communities as opposed to humanism, the Enlightenment tradition, and

democracy. That post-left texts included copious references to Stirner,

Nietzsche, Jünger, Heidegger, Artaud, and Bataille suggests that they

form a syncretic intellectual tendency that unites left and right,

individualism and “conservative revolution.” As we will see, this

situation has provided ample space for the fascist creep.

Chapter 3: The Fascist Creep

During the 1990s, the “national revolutionary” network of Southgate,

Thiriart, and Bouchet, later renamed the European Liberation Front,

linked up with the American Front, a San Francisco skinhead group

exploring connections between counterculture and the avant-garde. Like

prior efforts to develop a Satanic Nazism, American Front leader Bob

Heick supported a mix of Satanism, occultism, and paganism, making

friends with fascist musician Boyd Rice. A noise musician and

avant-gardist, Rice developed a “fascist think tank” called the Abraxas

Foundation, which echoed the fusion of the cult ideas of Charles Manson,

fascism, and Satanism brought together by 1970s fascist militant James

Mason. Rice’s protégé and fellow Abraxas member, Michael Moynihan,

joined the radical publishing company, Feral House, which publishes

texts along the lines of Abraxas, covering a range of themes from

Charles Manson Scandinavian black metal, and militant Islam to books by

Evola, James Mason, Bob Black, and John Zerzan.

In similar efforts, Southgate’s French ally, Christian Bouchet,

generated distribution networks and magazines dedicated to supporting a

miniature industry growing around neo-folk and the new, ”anarchic”

Scandinavian black metal scene. Further, national anarchists attempted

to set up and/or infiltrate e-groups devoted to green anarchism. As

Southgate and Bouchet’s network spread to Russia, notorious Russian

fascist, Alexander Dugin, emerged as another leading ideologue who

admired Zerzan’s work.

Post-leftists were somewhat knowledgable about these developments. In a

1999 post-script to one of Bob Black’s works, co-editor of Anarchy: A

Journal of Desire Armed, Lawrence Jarach, cautioned against the rise of

“national anarchism.” In 2005, Zerzan’s journal, Green Anarchy,

published a longer critique of Southgate’s “national anarchism.” These

warnings were significant, considering that they came in the context of

active direct action movements and groups like the Earth Liberation

Front (ELF), a green anarchist group dedicated to large-scale acts of

sabotage and property destruction with the intention of bringing about

the ultimate collapse of industrial civilization.

As their ELF group executed arsons during the late-1990s and

early-2000s, a former ELF member told me that two comrades, Nathan

“Exile” Block and Joyanna “Sadie” Zacher, shared an unusual love of

Scandinavian black metal, made disturbing references to Charles Manson,

and promoted an elitist, anti-left mentality. While their obscure

references evoked Abraxas, Feral House, and Bouchet’s distribution

networks, their politics could not be recognized within the milieu of

fascism at the time. However, their general ideas became clearer, the

former ELF member told me, when antifascist researchers later discovered

that a Tumblr account run by Block contained numerous occult fascist

references, including national anarchist symbology, swastikas, and

quotes from Evola and Jünger. These were only two members of a larger

group, but their presence serves as food for thought regarding important

radical cross-over points and how to approach them.

To wit, the decisions of John Zerzan and Bob Black to publish books with

Feral House, seem peculiar—especially in light of the fact that two of

the four books Zerzan has published there came out in 2005, the same

year as Green Anarchy’s noteworthy warning against national anarchism.

It would appear that, although in some cases prescient about the

subcultural cross-overs between fascism and the post-left, post-leftists

have, on a number of occasions, engaged in collaborative relationships.

As Green Anarchy cautioned against entryism and Zerzan simultaneously

published with Feral House, controversy descended on an online forum

known as the Anti-Politics Board. An outgrowth of the insurrectionist

publication Killing King Abacus, the Anti-Politics Board was used by

over 1,000 registered members and had dozens of regular contributors.

The online platform presented a flourishing site of debate for

post-leftists, yet discussions over insurrectionism, communisation,

green anarchy, and egoism often produced a strangely competitive

iconoclastism. Attempts to produce the edgiest take often led to the

popularization of topics like “‘anti-sexism’ as collectivist moralism”

and “critique of autonomous anti-fascism.” Attacks on morality and

moralism tended to encourage radicals to abandon the “identity politics”

and “white guilt” often associated with left-wing anti-racism.

Amid these discussions, a young radical named Andrew Yeoman began to

post national anarchist positions. When asked repeatedly to remove

Yeoman from the forum, a site administrator refused, insisting that

removing the white nationalist would have meant behaving like leftists.

They needed to try something else. Whatever they tried, however, it

didn’t work, and Yeoman later became notorious for forming a group

called the Bay Area National Anarchists, showing up to anarchist events

like book fairs, and promoting anarchist collaboration with the

Minutemen and American Front.

An important aspect of the Anti-Politics Board was the articulation of

nihilist and insurrectionary theories, both of which gained popularity

after the 2008 financial crisis. In an article titled, “The New

Nihilism,” Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey) pointed out that the

rising wave of nihilism that emerged during the late 2000s and into the

second decade could not immediately be distinguished from the far right,

due to myriad cross-over points. Indeed, Stormfront is riddled with

users like “TAZriot” and “whitepunx” who promote the basic,

individualist tenets of post-leftism from the original, racist position

of Stirnerism. Rejecting “political correctness” and “white guilt,”

these post-left racists desire separate, radical spaces and autonomous

zones for whites.

Through dogged research, Rose City Antifa in Portland, Oregon,

discovered whitepunx’s identity: “Trigger” Tom Christensen, a known

member of the local punk scene. “I was never an anti [antifascist] but

I’ve hung out with a few of them,” Christensen wrote on Stormfront. “I

used to be a big punk rocker in the music scene and there were some

antis that ran around in the same scene. I was friends with a few. They

weren’t trying to recruit me, or anybody really. They did not, however,

know I was a WN [white nationalist]. I kept my beliefs to myself and

would shut down any opinions the[y] expressed that seemed to have holes

in them. It’s been fairly useful to know some of these people. I now

know who all the major players are in the anti and SHARP [Skinheads

Against Racial Prejudice] scene.”

For a time, Christensen says he hung out with post-leftists and debated

them like Yeoman had done. Less than a year later, however, Christensen

followed up in a chilling post titled, “Do You Think It Would Be

Acceptable To Be A ‘Rat’ If It Was Against Our Enemies.” He wrote, “I

had an interesting thought the other day and wanted peoples opinions. If

you were asked by the Police to provide or find evidence that would

incriminate people who are enemy’s [sic] of the movement, i.e. Leftists,

reds, anarchists. Would you do it? Would you ‘rat’ or ‘narc’ on the Left

side?” Twenty one responses came beckoning from the recesses of the

white nationalist world. While some encouraged Christensen to snitch,

others insisted that he keep gang loyalty. It is uncertain as to whether

or not he went to the police, but the May 2013 discovery of his

Stormfront activity took place shortly before a grand jury subpoenaed

four anarchists who were subsequently arrested and held for contempt of

court.

In another unsettling example of crossover between post-leftists and

fascists, radicals associated with a nihilist group named Ultra harshly

rebuked Rose City Antifa of Portland, Oregon, for releasing an exposé

about Jack Donovan. An open member of the violent white nationalist

group, Wolves of Vinland, Donovan also runs a gym called the Kabuki

Strength Lab, which produces “manosphere” videos. As of November 2016,

when the exposé was published, one member of Ultra was a member of the

Kabuki Strength Lab. Although Donovan runs a tattoo shop out of the gym

and gave Libertarian Party fascist Augustus Sol Invictus a tattoo of the

fasces there, a fellow gym member wrote, “Obviously Jack has very

controversial beliefs and practices that most disagree with; but I don’t

believe it affects his behavior in the gym.” Donovan, who has publicly

parroted “race realist” statistics at white nationalist gatherings like

the National Policy Institute and the Pressure Project podcast, also

embraces bioregionalism and the anticipation of a collapse of

civilization that will lead to a reversion of identity-bound tribal

structures at war with one another and reliant on natural hierarchies—an

ideology that resonates with Ultra and some members of the broader

post-left milieu.

It stands to reason that defending fascists and collaborating with them

are not the same, and they are both separate from having incidental

ideological cross-over points. However the cross-over points, when

unchecked, frequently indicate a tendency to ignore, defend, or

collaborate. Defense and collaboration can, and do, also converge. For

instance, also in Portland, Oregon, the founder of a UK ultra-leftist

splinter group called Wildcat began to participate in a reading group

involving prominent post-leftists before sliding toward anti-Semitism.

Soon he was participating in the former-leftist-turned-fascist Pacifica

Forum in Eugene, Oregon, and defending anti-Semitic co-op leader, Tim

Calvert. He was last seen by antifas creeping into an event for

Holocaust denier, David Irving.

Perhaps the most troubling instance of collaboration, or rather

synthesis, of post-left nihilism and the far right is taking place

currently in the alt-right. Donovan is considered a member of the

alt-right, while Christensen’s latest visible Facebook post hails from

the misogynistic Proud Boys group. These groups and individuals

connected to the alt-right are described as having been “red-pilled,” a

term taken from the movie, The Matrix, in which the protagonist is

awakened to a dystopian reality after choosing to take a red pill. For

the alt-right, being “red-pilled” means waking up to the “reality”

offered by anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, misogyny, and white

nationalism—usually through online forums where the competitive

iconoclasm of “edge-lords” mutates into ironic anti-Semitism and hatred.

Among the most extreme forms of this phenomenon occurring in recent

years is the so-called “black pill”—red-pillers who have turning toward

the celebration of indiscriminate violence via the same trends of

individualism and nihilism outlined above.

“Black-pillers” claim to have shed their attachments to all theories

entirely. This tendency evokes the attitude of militant

anti-civilization group, Individuals Tending to the Wild, which is

popular among some post-leftist groups and advocates indiscriminate

violence against any targets manifesting the modern world. Another

influence for “black-pillers” is Adam Lanza, the infamous mass shooter

who phoned John Zerzan a year before murdering his mother, 20 children,

and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown,

Connecticut. Zerzan has condemned Individuals Tending Toward the Wild,

and months after Lanza’s horrifying actions, he penned a piece imploring

post-left nihilists to find hope: “Egoism and nihilism are evidently in

vogue among anarchists and I’m hoping that those who so identify are not

without hope. Illusions no, hope yes.” Unfortunately, Zerzan developed

his short communiqué into a book published by Feral House on November

10, 2015—the day after Feral House published The White Nationalist

Skinhead Movement co-authored by Eddie Stampton, a Nazi skinhead.

Conclusion

In light of these cross-overs, many individualist anarchists,

post-leftists, and nihilists tend not to deny that they share nodal

networks with fascists. In many cases, they seek to struggle against

them and reclaim their movement. Yet, there tends to be another

permissive sense that anarchists bear no responsibility for

distinguishing themselves from fascists. If there are numerous points in

which radical milieus become a blur of fascists, anarchists, and

romantics, some claim that throwing shade on such associations only

propagates fallacious thinking, or “guilt by association.”

However, recalling the information in this essay, we might note that

complex cross-overs seem to include, in particular, aspects of egoism

and radical green theory. Derived from Stirnerism and Nietzschean

philosophy, egoism can reify the social alienation felt by an

individual, leading to an elitist sense of self-empowerment and

delusions of grandeur. When mixed with insurrectionism and radical green

thought, egoism can translate into “hunter versus prey” or “wolves

versus sheep” elitism, in which compassion for others is rejected as

moralistic. This kind of alienated elitism can also develop estranged

aesthetic and affective positions tied to cruelty, vengeance, and

hatred.

Emerging out of a rejection of humanism and urban modernism, the

particular form of radical green theory often embraced by the post-left

can relativize human losses by looking at the larger waves of mass

extinctions. By doing this, radical greens anticipate a collapse that

would “cull the herd” or cause a mass human die off of millions, if not

billions, of people throughout the world. This aspect of radical green

theory comes very close to, and sometimes intertwines with, ideas about

over-population compiled and produced by white nationalists and

anti-immigration activists tied to the infamous Tanton Network. Some

radical green egoists (or nihilists) insist that their role should be to

provoke such a collapse, through anti-moralist strikes against

civilization.

As examples like Hakim Bey’s TAZ and the lionization of the Fiume

misadventure, Zerzan and Black’s publishing with Feral House, and

Ultra’s defense of Donovan indicate, the post-left’s relation to white

nationalism is sometimes ambiguous and occasionally even collaborative.

Other examples, like those of Yeoman and Christensen, indicate that the

tolerance for fascist ideas on the post-left can result in unwittingly

accepting them, providing a platform for white nationalism, and

increasing vulnerability to entryism. Specific ideas that are sometimes

tolerated under the rubric of the “critique of the left” include the

approval of “natural hierarchies,” ultranationalism understood as

ethno-biological and spiritual ties to homeland and ancestry, rejection

of feminism and antifascism, and the fetishization of violence and

cruelty.

It is more important today than ever before to recognize how radical

movements develop intersections with fascists if we are to discover how

to expose creeping fascism and develop stronger, more direct networks.

Anarchists must abandon the equivocations that invite the fascist creep

and reclaim anarchy as the integral struggle for freedom and equality.

Sectarian polemics are the result of extensive learning processes, but

are less important than engaging in solidarity to struggle against

fascism in all its forms and various disguises.

Notes

[1] Black writes, “Bakunin considered Marx, ‘the German scholar, in his

threefold capacity as an Hegelian, a Jew, and a German,’ to be a

‘hopeless statist.’ A Hegelian, a Jew, a sort-of scholar, a Marxist, a

hopeless (city-) statist — does this sound like anybody familiar?’ Full

text available at

theanarchistlibrary.org