I am not fairing well these days with the path to writing success being the production of quick, copious online content. That said, I do take pleasure in the fact that things I wrote years, even decades, ago continue to be read and, in some cases, translated. Although I had already been publishing stuff for a few years prior, my 2008 piece “Rebranding Fascism: National-Anarchists” was the first legitimately popular thing I wrote. It was translated into Russian and Greek, and reprinted by various anarchist websites. But apparently it still has legs and a Spanish translation has just popped up!
At the time I wrote it, “National Anarchism” and similar currents were a new phenomenon in the United States, although they had been percolating in Europe for a while. Basically, the British fascist Troy Southgate—who had previously been in the National Front, which endorsed racial separatism and anti-capitalism—had, over the years, taken these ideas to their logical extreme. Influenced by Continental thinkers like Alain de Benoist of the French New Right, Southgate reconceptualized this decentralized racial scheme as not about separate countries, but instead separate villages. And just like that, he rechristened himself an anarchist!
Nevermind that, decentralization aside, everything else about his ideas remained the same: racial homogeneity, homophobia, antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial, etc. And so he went about trying to recruit, albeit with rather modest success, anarchists, radical ecologists, and others in the then-current anti-globalization movement.
When I published this, the idea of a “decentralized fascism” was too much for some people to accept. Today, this kind of approach barely raises more than a curious eyebrow. While some National Anarchists can still be found running round, I think that many read the article more as a cautionary tale about entryism; the inherent problems with certain anarchist ideas being taken to extremes without safeguards in place; and maybe a quick and dirty overview of French New Right and related ideas.
Regardless, I am happy that my previous work seems to still has meaning to people. Especially since it means that I don’t have to write something new all the time!
Spencer Sunshine 