Alexander Reid Ross and the Politics of Distortion
by Troy Southgate
August 20th, 2017
This article is just the latest example of how Alexander Reid Ross, one of
the rising stars in the world of professional bullshit, sets out to vilify
everyone through guilt-by-association. In actual fact, this is his entire modus
operandi and it is dangerous in the sense that it seeks to facilitate a type of
academic 'justification' for those making an attempt to demonise
National-Anarchism through Wikipedia and various other forms of controlled
media. In other words, when people such as Ross produce a book or an article,
the work in question is then cited by others as a means of adding some kind of
'intellectual' gloss to the overall strategy of ideological misrepresentation
in general. Ross wants people to believe that there is a wide-ranging fascist
conspiracy to both infiltrate and take over Anarchist groups and certain music
circles. This is completely untrue. Groups such as the National Front (NF),
mentioned in this article, certainly made an attempt to seize control of
skinhead subculture back in the early-1980s, which is precisely how - as a
teenage Labour voter - I found my way into the organisation after buying one of
the group's newspapers outside a Bad Manners concert and finding myself
impressed with its stance on alternative economics, but I was never a racist
nor a fascist because at that time the organisation itself was already in the
process of expelling such elements from its ranks and adopting what were
generally considered to be 'left-wing' ideas and strategies. This included the
regular promotion of anti-racism and anti-fascism in the pages of its
literature, for which I still have a mountain of evidence sitting on my
bookshelves. Furthermore, in 1986 those who had been expelled formed their own
version of the 'National Front' (more properly known as the 'Flag' faction) and
began labelling us 'nigger-lovers'.
Meanwhile, the ever-deceitful and politically-motivated Ross deliberately
tries to conceal the incontrovertible fact that National-Anarchism is something
which, in relation to myself, at least, arrived by way of the late Richard Hunt
and Alternative Green magazine. Richard, who was formerly editor of Green
Anarchist, fell out with his former allies after defending patriarchal
societies and making the mistake of supporting the Iraq War. But Richard
himself was never actually Right-wing and had merely thought his way out of the
leftist straight-jacket in the way that Bob Black and various other Anarchists
have. Indeed, Richard was not afraid to work alongside those of us who were
English nationalists and who were genuinely opposed to fascism and racism. In fact,
it was Richard who introduced me to Anarchist ideas for the first time, so
there was no conspiracy to infiltrate and subvert the Left from people like
myself at all and I certainly never set out to recruit him in accordance with
the imagined designs of a wicked nationalist plot.
Moving on, the fact that I have mentioned entryism as a viable tactic in the
past - even praising the tactics used by Derek Hatton's Trotskyist group,
Militant, during the 1980s - is used by Ross to provide incriminating
'evidence' for my allegedly secret desire to inject fascist ideas into the
ranks of Anarchism. Ironically, however, in the late-1990s I was accused by
Nick Griffin of "trying to cherry-pick from the British National
Party" and he was right. I actively set out to bring nationalists across
to Anarchist ideas and not vice versa. I am also prepared to admit, quite
openly, that I even use Strasserism as a 'bridge' in order to bring people over
from Hitlerism to Anarchism. So again, it's a one-way street and all the
traffic is moving in a single direction. In fact, if you look very carefully
you can probably see the fading Berlin sunset in the rear-view mirror. More
seriously, one thing we National-Anarchists always insist on, is that anyone
who joins us is Anarchist. That is the distinguishing feature of our ideology
and the first port of call for anyone wishing to get involved. Anarchism must
come first, everything else is secondary. We therefore reject fascism and neo-Nazism
completely and always have. I do not expect Ross and his impressionable friends
to discuss the hard-line stance that we take against such people or the manner
in which we have previously expelled them from our ranks.
One further point: I never set out to infiltrate the Neofolk scene, I was
merely invited to join an existing group (HERR) that had already released its
first album and that same person happens to be left-wing. HERR itself has never
promoted a political agenda in any way, shape or form and its members have
always had a wide range of differing views and opinions and none of them are
even remotely 'fascistic'.
Several months ago, Ross published a book, entitled Against the Fascist
Creep, in which he distorts my ideas yet again. Having seen a pdf of this text,
I will now deal with some of the lies and insinuations that appear in relation
to me personally:
1. Ross claims that I served an eighteen-month prison sentence for assault
in 1988, which is correct, but what he neglects to mention is that myself and
10-15 others were attacked by violent 'anti-fascists' on Brighton seafront
during the non-political skinhead gathering that has taken place there since
the late-1960s. One individual, whom I did not know personally, given that
skinheads would travel there from all over the country, decided to approach a
left-wing bookstall at the town's annual Mayday gathering and complain that
they were promoting the Irish Republican Army (IRA). As I watched the debate
become increasingly heated, the stallholders and around 200 of their friends
assumed that we were fascists - despite the fact that some of us were wearing
Trojan reggae shirts - and started throwing large stones from the beach and chasing
us along Madeira Drive. There was some roadworks along the seafront at the
time, so in self-defence I tore out one of the metal poles and threw it at the
crowd of people who were attacking us and it struck what later turned out to be
a Marxist lab technician on the top of the head. Consequently, I was arrested
by the police for Actual Bodily Harm (ABH) and Affray. The second charge is far
more serious, because it rests on the notion that people were actually fearing
for their lives, hence the harsh sentence that was delivered at Lewes Crown
Court nineteen months later. At the time, and despite the fact that I had
merely defended myself from a violent attack during which myself and a mutual
group of virtual strangers were outnumbered by almost fifteen to one, I was the
Regional Organiser of a very effective political unit in East Sussex that was
selling over 30 newspapers door-to-door every night, so this was a very
convenient way for the Establishment to remove me from the equation. In other
words, I was framed.
2. Ross says that I consequently spent a few 'uncomfortable years' in the
International Third Position (ITP), but neglects to mention that I left in
disgust after some of its members - most notably Fiore, Holland and Todd -
began promoting fascist ideas. That, as two statements from the time attest,
was the main reason I established the English Nationalist Movement (ENM) in
September 1992. Ross tells us the ENM was short-lived, although the fact that
it lasted until the end of the millennium possibly indicates that it wasn't too
short-lived by political standards and, besides, we ourselves decided to change
the name to the National Revolutionary Faction (NRF).
3. Ross says that Richard Hunt supported 'blood and soil', which is another
downright lie. Richard was always conscious of the fact that his association
with the ENM might cause others to assume that he also supported racial
separatism and this is why he openly rejected it in the pages of Alternative
Green. His own artwork even depicts love between people of different races and
he rejected separatism time and time again in the pages of the magazine itself.
In Issue 14, for example, published in the Spring of 1996, Richard's headline
was 'Loyalty to Place, Not to Race'. On Page 10 of the same publication, he
claims that racial separatism is disastrous for multi-racial societies and must
be stopped.
4. Ross claims I am promoting a 'third-position anarchism' when, in actual
fact, one of my more well-known essays is called 'Transcending the Beyond: From
Third Position to National-Anarchism' and makes an important distinction
between the two.
5. Ross tells us that I 'continue to see the individual locked in a
Darwinian struggle against multicultural society'. Rather curious, given that I
have always rejected the theory of evolution and also have no objection to
people living in multi-racial societies at all. So long as they respect the
right of others to live in a peaceful and non-coercive manner.
6. The one article by me that Ross cites in his bibliography is 'The Case
For National-Anarchist Entryism', which, again, is designed to imply that I am
on a mission to infiltrate Anarchism and worm my way into certain forms of
music.
Finally, individuals like Ross are not interested in the truth and we should
not be deceived into thinking that he has simply got his facts wrong, the man
has an agenda and that involves smearing us by any means necessary.
Posts
