As you may have read in one of my previous posts, I started out in left-leaning, and even some far-left circles. At first I was a full-fledged Communist, even joining the Communist Party USA. I still have my membership card.

I started my membership while in the Marines and left the party soon after I was discharged.

Not too long after I left the CPUSA, I started studying Anarchism again. Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, PJ Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin…all the intellectual and activist giants that Anarchists know very well. I rediscovered my deep sympathies for Anarchist ideas. To be honest, they never really left me throughout my time as a White Nationalist. As a matter of fact, I even joined the IWW while I still held on to White Nationalist and/or racial-separatist beliefs. An article exposing me came out a while back that made mention of my joining the IWW. I can honestly say that it was not an attempt at infiltration, but a genuine search into what the IWW was. As a longtime software developer, I was actually interested in the fact that they had a Communications, Computer, and Programmers Union and so I sent in my dues and received a membership card. I still have that somewhere, as well, but my attempts to find it have turned up nothing.

Fast-forwarding to 2012, I had been participating in far-right circles for four years but, as was so typical of me, I was getting burned out. As a result, I let some of those old Anarchist thoughts and sympathies bubble up in my mind. I retreated back to surfing the internet for a while, and one day I happened to be looking at the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and saw an article about a group calling themselves National-Anarchists.

The article was three years old by that point, but it immediately sparked my interest in learning more about them. After a quick Google search, I found a website with multiple articles and eventually found their Facebook group. Before I engaged with anyone in the group, I wanted to know exactly what I was getting into, an approach I had not taken up until that time when I became interest in a group.

Despite its short length and straightforwardness, I studied the National-Anarchist Manifesto intently, reading it repeatedly to make sure that I understood what the National-Anarchist Movement (NAM) was about. I then took some time to go find out more about what other people were saying about NAM. Predictably, given that the National-Anarchist Manifesto had a section on race and how they support those that wish to live, work, cohabitate, and procreate with people of their own race, many people saw the National-Anarchist Movement as a White Nationalist project. For those outside of the National-Anarchist Movement, the Wikipedia article on NAM sums up most people’s opinions of it:

Some accuse national-anarchists of being white nationalists who promote ethnic and racial separatism, while others argue they want the militant chic of calling themselves “anarchists” without the historical and philosophical baggage that accompanies such a claim.

The two things that attracted me to National-Anarchism the most were that they were anarchists, and they had no problem with anarchists who wished to preserve their genetic or ethnic lineages. The section regarding race in the manifesto stated that they had a live-and-let-live approach. Those who wished to practice racial separatism were free to do it, and those who didn’t were free to do so, as well. This view that one could be both a racial separatist and an anarchist seemed to me to be a perfect synthesis that appealed to my anarchist sympathies and racial-separatist inclinations.

Once I believed I completely understood what National-Anarchism truly was, I set out to prove its detractors wrong about it being a White Nationalist project disguised in the militant chic of historical Anarchism. So I wrote my first article explaining what I knew about National-Anarchism and the movement in general called National-Anarchism in a Nutshell.

Not long after I published that article, I got a message from Troy Southgate, the founder and leader of the National-Anarchist Movement. He stated that he enjoyed the article and asked my permission to use it in an upcoming print publication he was putting together. Soon, my article appeared in the National-Anarchist Movement’s first book, National-Anarchism: A Reader.

My first article for the National-Anarchist Movement

Other articles in various NAM publications

From my youth, I always had a passion for writing. I’m not that great at it, but I like it. My dream was to one day be a “published author” and suddenly I had seen that dream come true. As time went on, I was asked to contribute to more publications that NAM put out. In total I contributed six different articles in five books published by the movement. I felt that I had finally found my calling.

I stayed in the National-Anarchist Movement for close to three years, all the while still espousing my racial-separatist and many White Nationalist beliefs. I never really did any true activism, though. I was simply content with writing. However, it was a struggle for me to try and reconcile my own brand of Nationalism with National-Anarchism, and it eventually led to me leaving the movement. I say I left, but I was actually kicked out of NAM by Troy Southgate himself after it was found that I was working with other groups that were certainly not sympathetic to any sort of Anarchism.

Truth be told, I started getting bored with the fact that I wasn’t doing any activism. At first, I thought that I could practice something called ‘entryism’. My plan was to join up with White Nationalist groups and organizations and slowly begin introducing National-Anarchist concepts and ideas with the hope that they would join up with us. It was an absolutely terrible plan.

In fact, the exact opposite happened. Instead of convincing them of the merits of anarchism, I fell in league with those other groups and eventually there was nothing really “anarchistic” about my ideas anymore. I had allowed myself to suppress them once more and fully re-embraced White Nationalism. The reason being is that during my talks with members of these White Nationalist groups, I became convinced that Anarchism was simply too individualistic. Thus, that desire for camaraderie, community support, brotherhood, and shared-struggle that White Nationalism had appealed more to me. I wish I had been able to suppress that, instead. I’d be in a whole different place right now.

Another reason that I began to disengage from National-Anarchism was because of some arguments and debates I got into with other members specifically regarding the racial question. At the time, I sensed that the National-Anarchist Movement was softening its stance on racial separatism and that it was being caused by allowing increasing numbers of non-racialist members to join the group and participate. As the weeks went on, I felt that the movement I once knew was starting to die. I felt, in a way, betrayed and it led me back into White Nationalism. Eventually I was removed from the movement and social media groups entirely.

My participation in the National-Anarchist Movement was rather lackluster. Again, I didn’t do any IRL (in real life) activism. I simply sat around writing and discussing the practical applications of Anarchism with a racial-separatist bent. I do remember, though, that while I was still inwardly racist, those feelings were dampened while I was in that group. I don’t say that out of sympathy or support for the NAM, I simply mean that it did at least tone my racism down enough that I could interact with POC Anarchists that were curious about what NAM was all about, as well as pretty much anyone. That is one of the reasons I researched and ended up joining the IWW. I should also mention that I did absolutely nothing with them, either. I’m honestly a terrible activist no matter the ideology.

Despite my former racist and bigoted beliefs, I always believed I was a good person inside. While I was brought up to believe that the races were different and should remain separate, I was also taught to treat everyone equally and that I wasn’t inherently better than anyone due to the circumstances of my birth. The White Nationalist movement made me think differently. It made me think that I was superior to non-Whites and so-called “degenerate” White people. All the old tropes about how high our IQs are, how we invented all these things, how, without White people, Western Civilization wouldn’t exist…all that, for some reason, appealed to my twisted sense of purpose.

Even still, it was always uncomfortable for me to actually make hateful remarks to POC and anti-rightwing White people. Admittedly I did say hateful things to all kinds of people, but thankfully never in public. I would make them in writing, on social media, and use hateful language in private conversation. In my public and professional life, though, I was always courteous to POC and others that I knew were “different” from me. I still have friends that are POC, but they don’t know anything about my inner world as a White Nationalist. Or, if they do, they haven’t said anything to me. Part of my work from now on will be informing those friends, acquaintances, and other people as to who I used to be, what I used to believe, and the things I said and did…and then apologizing and making a commitment to atone for the harm I caused.

I’m starting to ramble, so I’ll end the post here. But, as I recall more about my time in the National-Anarchist Movement, or if questions about my time in NAM, I will post that information to the best of my memory’s capability.

This article has made me recall my time spent studying Judaism and even attending services at two different local synagogues…all while still being a White Nationalist. Yeah, it seems strange, I know. That article will take some time to put together because there’s a lot behind it, but it will be coming out soon.

Thank you for reading.