Troy Southgate is one of the most interesting interviewees I have ever interviewed. I believe that his syntheses as an intellectual musician will be a seminal contribution to the debate on ‘conservative revolutionary’.

In the art world, especially in the music industry, a bohemian lifestyle seems to be the norm. However, beyond being a musician, you also have an intellectual production process. The issues you address are considered ‘dangerous’ for mainstream politics and the music industry. How do you maintain these identities together? What were the turning points that shaped your life and your orientation towards these issues?

I’ve always been an outsider, and my early life was fairly self-destructive, but although I have always been anti-capitalist due to my family background my first real awakening was when I discovered the National Front in the mid-1980s. I was surprised that the organisation had changed so much by that period, becoming a dynamic force for revolutionary change that had rejected its reactionary, imperialistic past and begun promoting radical decentralisation, economic autarky, anti-Americanism and self-determination for all peoples. The NF was also opposed to vivisection, fox-hunting and nuclear power. As for music, I was involved in ska and oi! bands in my teens and early-20s, but it wasn’t until the early-2000s that I became involved in the neofolk/martial industrial scene and that gave me an opportunity to present some of my political beliefs to a new audience. At that time, the scene contained a lot of dilettantes who simply flirted with ideas about European identity but only in the sense of making themselves look ‘edgy’ and ‘dangerous’. I think I upset a lot of people back then, because I wasn’t playing games and some musicians resented the infusion of a more authentic embodiment of those ideas within an environment that involved a lot of bluster and fancy dress. I must say, however, not all musicians are a bunch of unregenerate bohemians and one thinks of Iron Maiden. Their professionalism extends to quiet nights spent in a hotel room and very few signs of the rampant sexuality and drug-use that one ordinarily associates with the genre. I have no objection to people indulging in either of those things, within the bounds of moderation, but there are exceptions to the rule. As for me personally, the ‘intellectual production process’ you describe is the result of my strong motivation. Having found out years ago just who and what is responsible for our plight, I simply refuse to lie down and allow them to get away with it. From my perspective, what we are experiencing in the world today is a form of extreme bullying; something I have always detested. 

Tradition and revolution are often perceived as opposing concepts. Your book is called ‘Tradition & Revolution’. Isn’t tradition inherently opposed to revolution? How can tradition be revolutionary?

 I wouldn’t say that Tradition itself is revolutionary, or certainly not in the way that I understand it as something that is associated with a primordial source, but I certainly believe that we need to maintain a revolutionary mindset in order to defend it as a principle. One must also take into consideration tradition with a small ‘t,’ as there are many socio-cultural factors that align themselves with the Absolute and which must also be maintained. Tradition at the transcendent level is more than capable of perpetuating itself, without our help, but at the same time we have a duty to parallel the macrocosm with our own microcosmic efforts and this, like it or not, often involves the use of revolutionary means to contain (or destroy) those factors which threaten  our existence. So the two things go hand in hand, otherwise Tradition becomes associated with a rather weak and tepid ‘conservatism’ that has no possible chance of surviving the coming storm.

Why is your thinking perceived as far right?

This misconception – which has declined a great deal in recent years – has less to do with a misunderstanding of my ideas, than a systematically dishonest attempt to distort them. In that sense, people are usually prevented from doing their own perceiving by those who have actively set out to label me as a ‘fascist’. As I have explained in several online interviews, I actually come from the Left, having voted for the British Labour Party as a teenager in 1983. I later joined the National Front for its economic policies (distributism, co-operatives, family farms), by which time the organisation had expelled fascist members and adopted an anti-racist policy. In 1989 I moved into Roberto Fiore’s ITP group that had emerged from the ashes of the NF itself, but soon persuaded most of its activists to join me in forming the English Nationalist Movement because some of the ITP’s main figures (Fiore, Holland, Griffin) were promoting fascism. Myself and other ENM activists continued to attack the views of Hitler, Mussolini, Petain and the neo-nazi British National Party. Prior to becoming a National-Anarchist, I had been a Strasserite from the mid-80s onwards and it was Otto Strasser who had written a book strongly attacking fascism in 1969. Jews also joined Strasser’s ‘Black Front’ group, which was anti-Hitlerist and heavily persecuted by the Nazi SS in the 1930s. I even named my publishing house after the group and one of our books was titled ‘Strasserites Against Hitler’. Elsewhere, I have written a lengthy biography of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer who was wrongly accused of spying for the Germans against the French. Although Dreyfus is universally smeared by those who are anti-Jewish, I actually defend him and claim that he was innocent of all charges. I have also written an anti-Hitler novel in which the dictator survives the war and comes to a very sticky end. In addition, I have published books on poetry by Jewish musician Richard Levy and written others on the life of black revolutionary Thomas Sankara and Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. I also wrote a book on Jewish mysticism.

  Anarcho-nationalism contains both the sense of belonging of traditional nationalism and the modern anarchism’s understanding of individual freedom. How do you combine these two seemingly opposing ideologies?

 With National-Anarchism, as we call it, it all depends how one defines the actual terms. Firstly, ‘anarchism’ is not about chaos and disorder; we believe in order of the highest possible kind, something that will ultimately counteract the disorder that we presently see around us. The greed, the inhumanity, the destruction of the natural world; these are things that ‘anarchism’ can address with its commitment to family farms, social justice and freedom of expression. Secondly, we do not interpret the term ‘national’ (or even ‘nationalism’) as something that is bound up with the nation-state. Tribal identity existed long before the rise of modern states and in fact the state – or ‘cold monster,’ as Nietzsche correctly referred to it – is a direct threat to such identity. National-Anarchism, therefore, is a combination of self- and group-discernment and a determination to overthrow repressive, authoritarian systems such as capitalism, communism and fascism. 

 How do you interpret the concept of metapolitics?

 As far as I’m concerned, metapolitics is the process of moving beyond everyday political affairs by interpreting human existence in a more transcendent fashion. Personally, as something of an Absolute Idealist I believe that everything around us is divine. As Friedrich Schelling says, “nature shall be the visible spirit, and spirit, invisible nature.” We are the universe looking back at itself. This means that ordinary day-to-day existence must be viewed quite differently to the manner in which the materialist sees nothing other than political, social and economic relations between a disparate mass of atomised units. Julius Evola comes closest to a metapolitical position that accords with my own, I think, particularly in Ride the Tiger (1961). 

What do you think of British conservatism?

I think it depends what is meant by ‘conservatism’. I certainly reject the mainstream Conservative Party, which is a hardline capitalist/zionist entity connected to the British establishment, but I do wish to ‘conserve’ certain aspects of the past. Somebody once described National-Anarchism as ‘non-reactionary conservatism’ and this is correct in the sense that we are the ultimate conformists. What I mean by this, is that although many of us are outsiders my perception of National-Anarchism nonetheless involves being on the side of nature. This is a very subjective word, of course, but I do believe that whilst we are completely swimming against the tide of modernity it is civilisation itself which is rebelling against the world as it really is. In that sense, we are not rebelling at all. We may rebel against the people who wish to control us, but that doesn’t make us rebels in a more tangible regard. On the other hand, National-Anarchists may wish to reject ‘conservative’ values and go it alone; or even live in a way that other N-As may regard as ‘unnatural’. As always, the first port of call is Anarchism itself and that’s what really brings us together. The word ‘conservatism’ will always conjure up negative connotations for its inevitable connection with right-wing statism in the way that the word ‘anarchism’ does with regard to its unfortunate association with authoritarian leftists or bearded fanatics with molotov cocktails.

The UK has historically had a strong national identity and local community structure. How can the idea of ‘decentralization’ be applied in the UK context? Is it not an updated version of the idea of empire?

 I don’t recognise the ‘UK’ and decentralisation simply cannot be achieved within the patameters of such an artificial structure. A great deal of negative hatred exists between our respective peoples, for a start. In reality, there are seven main nations in the British Isles and these are England, Scotland, Wales, Ulster, Ireland, Cornwall (Kernow) and the Isle of Man (Mannin). However, beyond these instantly recognisable entities lies an entire multitude of micronations with their own dialects and cultural peculiarities. This is crucial, because our view is that one can form a ‘nation’ without having to ask the authorities for permission or give credit to the nation-states that currently rule over us. Even beyond the wonderful diversity that exists in the British Isles, we have to take into consideration hundreds of alternative communities and counter-currencies that operate in defiance of the centralised powers. Once you start thinking about the possibilities of this trend on a global scale, especially when one considers the many tribal societies that exist in the so-called ‘third world,’ you realise that the present borders and boundaries that appear on the map are irrelevant. We certainly support borders and boundaries, and the more the merrier, but there is no reason why they can’t be re-shaped to reflect what is really happening inside. The multi-racial countries of Europe, for example, do not reflect the original territories that were settled (and named) by the Angles, Belgae and Bretons.

On the other hand, the ‘West’ is organically collapsing. What happened at the Olympic opening ceremony is obvious. American culture dominates everything, birth rates are falling, churches are empty, woke liberalism is taking over. Is there any possibility of producing a new way of life in the future?

 America and its puppet-governments are the main enemies of all freedom-loving people, there is no doubt about that. I think I have already provided a few of the possibilities that are available to us, but unless the present economic system starts to unravel in a more dramatic fashion – and things are not quite as ‘bad’ as I would like them to be, because the various geopolitical blocs are simply in the process of restructuring – there will be no significant change. I once had a debate in which somebody told me they did not believe that National-Anarchism could work. My reply to this was that many people associated with National-Anarchism already have smallholdings and allotments, educate their children at home, live in squats and farmsteads, practice bushcraft and generally make a conscious effort to operate outside of the System. National-Anarchism, in other words, is not something that lies far off in the future, but has a strong sense of immediacy about it. National-Anarchism will never be a mass movement and neither do we have any real intention of becoming one. In many ways, our influence already extends far beyond the number of people who may attend a National-Anarchist gathering or perhaps write an essay for a National-Anarchist website. Indeed, whilst many of those who describe themselves as ‘revolutionaries’ look forward to some distant manifestation of their ideals on some mythical ‘glorous day,’ the advocates of National-Anarchism believe that the realisation of our objectives is not something that is far away at all, but already taking place within the realms of action. National-Anarchism is not a striving for some remote fantasy, it is an unlimited process of constant endeavour. It is happening right now. Finally, thank you for presenting me with this valuable opportunity to explain some of my ideas to the Turkish people. May we all set about creating a better world in which there is more peace and understanding, even if defence must always be a prerequisite for survival.