The ‘New Right’: a British Tradition

Over 30 years ago, around the time of the death of Oswald Mosley, David Irving bemoaned the poor quality of the senior activists and thinkers of the British far Right. He hoped that groups such as the Clarendon Club and his own Focal Point Publications would help rectify this.

Irving failed, disappearing up a Holocaust denial alley: he and his projects ending up as yet another case study of the bizarre and egotistical misfits who have long populated the supposed Mensa end of the British far Right spectrum. Indeed, with the exception of Mosley, the British far Right has barely had a thinker who reached beyond the bierkeller.   

Continuing this British tradition we have the 'New Right' group, organised by Troy Southgate and featuring Alexander Baron. The New Right recently held its 39^th meeting, where it was addressed by none other than Rabbi Ahron Cohen of the anti-Zionist Jewish sect, Neturei Karta. (More often found in the company of far Left and Islamist anti-Zionists.)

Alexander Baron and Ahron Cohen first met in the back of a Tehran Airport taxi, on their way to Iran’s notorious 2006 Holocaust denial conference (where Cohen gave a counter-opinion, as stated by Baron when introducing him to the New Right meeting).

The paper that Baron intended to give to the Tehran denial Conference was entitled, “The Nazi Gas Chambers: Rumours, Lies And Reality – One Researcher’s View”. It can be read here on his website. (Sanity warning: it is practically unreadable. The offence of the Holocaust denial, or “revisionism”, is almost overwhelmed by the sheer ridiculousness of what is written.) A taster:

As the Nazis freely admitted their crimes – so we are told – why should not a re-enactment of a mass gassing be ordered? Or a simulation? Nowadays computers can do wonderful things. There have been simulations of the Kennedy assassination which dispel the numerous ill-informed claims that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the assassin; why not a simulation of a couple of thousand Jews being marched into a gas chamber and exterminated with a lighter than air gas that was dropped from the ceiling while the SS stood around drinking coffee and smoking Woodbines? If my tone sounds facetious I apologise not; the scenario really is that ludicrous.

Baron’s account of the New Right meeting suggests that he sees less “Zionist” plots than does Ahron Cohen. Nevertheless, a quick look at Baron’s output will show that he is prodigious and ludicrous in equal measure. His leaflets include: (links are provided but readers may be offended)

• Adolf Hitler: Anti-Racist! The myth of Aryan evil exploded and the real roots of racial hatred exposed (Link)
• If They’re Black Send Them Back. How Nelson Mandela went from working class hero to well-oiled  Nazi machine. (Link)
• The Menace of Sexism in Chess. (Link)
• Exposed! The Homosexual Plot to Destroy Orthodox Judaism. (Link)
• The World Zionist Conspiracy. Exposed by a Rabbi. (Link – unsurprisingly, the rabbi is from Neturei Karta.)

Then, there is Troy Southgate, organiser of this elitist New Right group and no stranger to ventures that hold themselves as intellectually superior to rank and file boneheads and football thugs. Best known of these was the International Third Position, which also included Nick Griffin, who gave up on the intellecshulism to be leader of the BNP.

On 30 May, Griffin tweeted this about David Cameron and ‘Tommy’ Lennon (leader of BNP’s rival, the English Defence League):

30 MayNick Griffin MEP?@nickgriffinmep

. . . war for Israel is huge. From Camoron down to 'Tommy' Lennon, all in Zionists' pockets.

“All in Zionists’ pockets”. Its unlikely that Southgate would be so concise, but he would agree with his former comrade. Indeed, Southgate’s Nationalist Anarchist output (2010) prioritised “anti-Zionism” for its Part 1. If you can bear the verbosity, read its introductory paragraph:

ALTHOUGH people around the world are quite aware of the disproportionate influence of Jewish pressure groups within the various governmental and mass media appendages of Europe and North America, most of which are completely under their control, few are prepared to come out and say so for fear of persecution or incurring the usual threats of 'anti-Semitism'. It is a fact, however, that ever since ambitious European monarchs first plunged us into the financial vortex of the burgeoning international debt system, an elite coterie of Jews and their allies have effectively manipulated world events for their own interests. This was achieved, not simply through usury, but also as a result of Jewish involvement in the bootlegging and criminal racketeering of 1930s America, something which eventually went on to finance the Zionist takeover of the Hollywood film industry and, by 1948, brought about the establishment of the bandit-state of Israel. But Zionism is not Jewish nationalism, as some like to claim, it is Jewish imperialism.

Got that? Good, then you’ll be glad to know that in the next paragraph we hear that they don’t hate Jews, only “a minority of parasitic vampires”:

National-Anarchists do not 'hate' ordinary Jews and neither do we wish to undermine them as a people with their own unique religious and cultural identity, but what we will not tolerate, however, is the ongoing enslavement of our people by a minority of vampiric parasites intent on carving up the world's resources in an attempt to create a single, global market... Zionism is an enemy of all peoples and must be vanquished.

Finally, to bring all of this back to David Irving (who almost looks normal amongst this particular cast) we have the sudden death of Jonathan Bowden, to whose memory this New Right meeting was dedicated. Bowden was well known to Irving and appears to be one of the few British right-wing thinkers whom he actually admired.

Many years have passed since Irving attempted to bring some intellectual rigour and leadership to these circles: but curiously British tradition of incompetent (and often plain bizarre) far Right intellectualism persists. And, contemplating the European far Right today, that is something for which we all should really be quite grateful...including Neturei Karta.