If at First You Do Not Succeed, Then Try, Try and Try Again
by Troy Southgate
Two months ago, I was attacked by Alexander Reid Ross, a notoriously poisonous individual who can only be described as a purveyor of systematic misinformation. I posted a reply to Ross on August 20th this year, but not content with having delivered his spurious opening salvo this thoroughly loathsome and dishonest creature has since assembled a second collection of unfounded insinuations.
I shall deal with his lies in turn:
1. The fact that I responded to his first attack "may mean that I pushed all the right buttons". Since when did attempting to set the record straight amount to an admission of guilt? Does the fact that Ross has now replied to me indicate that I "pushed all the right buttons", too?
2. Ross claims that I "joined one of England’s fascist parties, the National Front, in the mid-1980s." However, by this time the NF was already in the process of expelling the fascist elements that had worked their way into the organisation during the first two decades of its existence and this is demonstrated by those NF publications that called for an end to racism and which denounced fascism and neo-Nazism on a regular basis. Indeed, as a result of this radical change in direction the NF was denounced by those it had purged as a party of 'nigger-lovers'.
3. It is claimed that I "joined the NF due to the same concentrated effort that he now denies as existing at all." This relates to the fact that I was a skinhead at the time I first became involved with nationalist politics, but of course, he completely neglects to mention that I was heavily into Ska and Reggae music and was not the kind of skinhead who enjoyed sieg-heiling out of car windows through Brixton. Ross also fails to mention that the NF expelled racist skinheads associated with the Blood & Honour movement and set up a musical alternative that was devoid of fascism and neo-Nazism. Success was limited, which is why the NF then tried to recruit from Folk circles. Attempting to recruit skinheads, however, should not imply that the NF I belonged to was interested in recruiting Nazi boneheads. Or at least not without trying to educate them and turn them away from such views altogether. Skinhead subculture, remember, even that which is anti-fascist, is nonetheless viewed as a bastion of patriotism and that is what the NF was trying to cultivate. Just as the communists had made an attempt to recruit English youth by way of the punk genre in the late-1970s.
4. Laughably, Ross tells us that "the NF’s economic program, such as it has been over the decades, is profoundly racist. Ranging from syncretic notions of distributism to a contradictory hatred of the welfare state that rests on a cynical idealization of self-sufficiency, the economic ideas bandied about in the English fascist movement maintain the incessant drone of xenophobia and Islamophobia." Oh dear. He clearly knows nothing whatsoever about the Distributist League's frequent debates with Mosley's Blackshirts during the 1930s, or the fact that when I joined the NF it was a revolutionary organisation that advocated the overthrow of the State itself. Take away emotive words like 'profoundly', 'syncretic', 'contradictory', 'hatred', 'idealization', 'bandied', 'fascist', incessant', 'drone', 'xenophobia' and 'Islamophobia' and there is very little of substance. This, you see, is precisely how this obnoxious little toerag likes to operate.
5. The next scurrilous allegation is that "by the mid-1980s when Southgate joined, everyone in England understood that the NF was linked to mass violence, beatings, and even murders, especially of South Asian and Caribbean immigrants, LGBT folks, and leftists." Well, given that the Zionist media had fed that line to them for many years it is hardly surprising, but I never once saw any evidence of violence among the NF that had purged the reactionaries from its ranks. In fact Ross has openly defended the very groups that use violence and intimidation against their enemies. He is not merely a liar, therefore, but a hypocrite.
6. Another incredibly wild claim is that the "NF’s pathetic numbers at the polls" meant that the political soldier faction (of which I was part) "became more associated with [...] neo-folk and industrial music." Interesting, given that Neofolk only became popular among nationalist groups during the late-1990s when the NF I had been involved with - and, consequently, left in 1989 - had been dead for almost a decade. This, unfortunately, is the pitiful level of scholarship that we get from a man, who recently published a very inaccurate and badly-researched book on 'fascism'.
7. Ross says that "Southgate’s own brand of supposedly 'anti-racist' ideology is also informed by the ideology of Alexander Dugin" and that, unsurprisingly, is also patently untrue. I have met Dugin on two occasions and he spoke at one of my meetings in London, but whilst I initially liked the idea of a Eurasian bulwark against Anglo-American imperialism I soon found his thinly-disguised chauvinism and centralist proclivities unacceptable. To say that my anti-racism has ever been "informed" by Dugin is absolutely hilarious and I am sure that even my Russian counterpart would agree. We never even discussed race at all. It is, of course, simply another exercise in guilt-by-association. The fact that I have since criticised Dugin on numerous occasions over the course of the last ten years obviously counts for nothing. I think that's called being economical with the truth.
8. One thing that I find curious is the manner in which Ross tries to ingratiate himself with more informed researchers of fascism like Anton Shekhovtsov, Roger Griffin, Tamir Bar-On and Graham Macklin, all four of whom have corresponded with me in respectful, cordial terms. One of these men also found the first attack on me by Ross to be perfectly ridiculous, although I prefer to keep our academically inferior friend guessing as to who it might be.
9. Ross then says that "Southgate, himself, has disavowed the Alt Right on the basis of their attachment to Trump". That, and that alone? Really?! Try to pay attention, Ross, there's a good chap.
10. Elsewhere, Ross alleges that "Southgate set up the 'New Right' (NR) group in England in the mid-2000s, cloaking his ideology in some antiracist and antifascist rhetoric in attempts to disseminate in a more-or-less antiracist context." Apart from the confusingly repetitive nature of this rather bizarre statement, the New Right was established as a way for me to feed National-Anarchist ideas into the British Far Right. The same kind of entryism, if you will, that Ross only imagines takes place in relation to the Left. Furthermore, to connect me with figures such as Gaston Bergery and Alexandre Marc is also very strange given that I have never made reference to either of them in over thirty years of political involvement.
9. Ross then says that "Southgate, himself, has disavowed the Alt Right on the basis of their attachment to Trump". That, and that alone? Really?! Try to pay attention, Ross, there's a good chap.
10. Elsewhere, Ross alleges that "Southgate set up the 'New Right' (NR) group in England in the mid-2000s, cloaking his ideology in some antiracist and antifascist rhetoric in attempts to disseminate in a more-or-less antiracist context." Apart from the confusingly repetitive nature of this rather bizarre statement, the New Right was established as a way for me to feed National-Anarchist ideas into the British Far Right. The same kind of entryism, if you will, that Ross only imagines takes place in relation to the Left. Furthermore, to connect me with figures such as Gaston Bergery and Alexandre Marc is also very strange given that I have never made reference to either of them in over thirty years of political involvement.
11. The sentence "Perhaps because he could find no true fault with my article, he retreats to his critiques of my book" is pure comedy gold. The fact is, I utterly destroyed him on both counts and it is impossible to decide which of the two amounts to the biggest pile of horseshit. I'll let you know if I do eventually make my mind up, although it's like trying to work out the difference between a donkey and a mule.
12. He then bemoans the fact that I published an article on the 'blood and soil' ideas of Richard Walther Darrè, but neglects to mention that this same individual was - as Anna Bramwell points out admirably - perhaps the greatest influence on the Greens. Are they Nazis, too?
13. Ross notes that the National Revolutionary Faction (NRF), a precursor of National-Anarchism, tried to create a 'synthesis' between ideas on either side of the political spectrum. The fact that the article in which I made this claim (Transcending the Beyond) was itself dealing with having rejected third positionism for a complete departure from either side appears to have gone right over his head.
14. Another odd remark is that "Southgate claims that his movement repudiates Darwin" and yet I went on to publish an article by someone else who endorsed it. However, the reality is that whilst I dismissed the theory of evolution during my speech on Oswald Spengler at the recent National-Anarchist Movement (N-AM) conference in Madrid, it remains a personal opinion and not something that the N-AM itself necessarily subscribes to. Ross tries to infer that "[Southgate] surely advocates an idea of Natural Order that seeks an evolution of the 'folk' through the refutation of multiculturalism and exclusion of gender and sexual diversity". Actually, no. We welcome into our ranks not just all races and religions, but atheists and people with differing notions of sexuality.
15. Strangely enough, I totally concur with the final sentence in this incredible litany of falsehood: "Enough with the games and tricks. Let’s have honesty and clarity in political discourse." Not that I expect Ross to take his own advice.
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