Bay Area National Anarchists:
An Interview with Andrew Yeoman, Part 2

TOQ Online: Is there a religious or spiritual dimension to National Anarchism, or is it a purely political form of association?

Andrew Yeoman: At its heart National Anarchism is a purely political framework, but any group or religious movement can adopt it to advance the aim of establishing an autonomous region or community.  Religion has a special importance for National Anarchism as it is one of the most powerful motivating factors of human society, and it is vital for many religious traditions to form communities where their values are respected and recognized by the territorial administrators of the land they live on.

Forming communities exclusively on the basis of religious conviction is a perfectly acceptable option for National Anarchists.  National Anarchists have been known to advocate for autonomous Christian, Muslim, Pagan, and secular regions according to the values of the National Anarchist in question.  This is how traditional societies have operated for most of human history.

Any particular National Anarchist may advocate for areas to be administered according to certain religious values or even be a strictly secular enterprise, but that the ideal determining factor being the will of the people involved in a given region.

For purely practical reasons, some groups such as BANA take no official position on what religious values participants should have. However, activists are encouraged to have strong beliefs concerning the tradition they follow and tolerance of differences between comrades in the same struggle for national liberation.

TOQ Online: BANA got a lot of attention for protesting a rather large homosexual event in San Francisco. Tell me about that. Obviously it took some courage. What was the rationale for the protest? Are there homosexual National Anarchists?

Andrew Yeoman: The event in question was the Folsom Street Fair, an annual sado-masochist event in San Francisco that has been running for over 25 years. It is essentially a public orgy where any and all acts of sexual deviance take place in full view of the police.  In other words it’s the antithesis of sexual responsibility.

Our protest centers on the fact that children and minors — some as young as babies and three-year-olds dressed up in leather suits and dog collars — and were brought to witness the spectacle. Many are brought by adoptive gay parents who believe that having their children witness these events exposes them to greater diversity.

In our statement on the reasons for this protest, we made it clear that we can’t prevent adults engaging in risky or vile behavior, but we have the shared responsibility to prevent harm coming to children at these events who may be abused at home.  We have been criticized for appearing to be anti-gay or a square “right wing” group tolerating only Christian family values.  If that is the case, then my view is “so be it.”

Our goal is to represent the people in our tribe and the views of the people in our local area.  The overwhelming majority of people who have learned about this event through us have supported our actions 110 percent.  We even have our supporters among adult attendees who don’t like minors at the event, and among queers who believe it gives their community a bad name.

What is most telling is the complete lack of coverage from the mainstream media and government of an event that draws tens of thousands of people from across the country.  By saying nothing, we believe they are encouraging child abuse, recklessly promoting the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and ignoring the complaints of the vast majority of their constituents in San Francisco.

The ideology of National Anarchism makes no requirement on what kind of sexual preferences people take.  Although most National Anarchists hold traditionalist or conservative views of sexual relationships, I know of queer National Anarchists.  National Anarchists who are queer tend to have folkish views on racialism and may support establishing enclaves that are devoted to their lifestyle of choice.  To paraphrase Troy Southgate, the most well-known National Anarchist ideologue, there is every reason to support queer individuals to act as white blood cells in our society rather than pariahs.

The cultural and tribal goals of BANA necessitate the promotion of traditional relationships between men and women and the growth of successful families.  That does not mean we persecute individuals who have alternative lifestyles. On the contrary, alternatives are perfectly acceptable as long as differences of opinion are respected.

TOQ Online: Most nationalist groups are predominantly composed of single men. Is this true of BANA? Are there women, married couples, families with children?

Andrew Yeoman: To date BANA has been most successful with Bay Area youth.  BANA consists mostly of people under 30 and is about 70 percent male/30 percent female. However there is a growing trend of women and families supporting our campaigns.  I am very proud to share that we have been blessed with a pair of comrades becoming engaged, and we also have female members taking leadership roles within the network.  As a tribe it’s essential for us to have a wide cross-section of people at different stages of life and to foster positive and meaningful experiences for the people who become involved.

Although the youth predominate in our street actions, older members are involved in other ways, either as advisers or as advocates.

The website and YouTube channel that we use to share our experiences and events are the public record of BANA. Unfortunately, due to the limits of the technology, this acts as sort of a one-way mirror. There also many activities we do that for one reason or another don’t become publicized.

TOQ Online: What are some concrete skills and practices that BANA is developing in order to be a resilient and flourishing community even as California plunges from the First World into the Third World?

Andrew Yeoman: I divide our training curriculum along three lines: knowledge, skills, and experience.

For knowledge we have a very active book sharing club and discussion groups on European customs and culture.

For skills I stress those disciplines that help individuals become fully realized in the roles they wish to play in the network and their lives as a whole.  This can be anything from writing, public speaking, physical fitness, survival skills, protest organizing, and the art of diplomacy.  We want to share the experiences and skills we have learned so we can mentor new members of the tribe in the ways of community organizing.

The culmination of this work is to prepare activists for the challenges and obstacles they will face while undertaking political struggles. The only way to do this is through the hard work of experience and winning hearts and minds to our cause.  As far as I’m concerning, a person cannot call him or herself a BANA activist without taking public action to win our people over to our cause or create allies in other tribes that respect our differences.

It is my belief that all political movements are defined by what they do and how they are viewed by the community they represent.  If the actions of the movement are inconsistent with the prevailing cultural attitudes of those people, they will be rejected for being incompatible with the people’s desires.

To date National Anarchists are known, significantly in my opinion, for their actions rather than their words.  We are a young movement, and the evolution of the National Anarchist ideas since the year 2000 has been extraordinary.  There are few writers who write objectively in favor of National Anarchism, yet our influence has dominated discussions of Left wing anarchists for the last few years.

It is also significant that the goals of BANA and other National Anarchists are modest in comparison with political movements who have macroscopic world views that pit themselves against a host of large national, racial, or corporate interests.  BANA’s focus is just the opposite, resting exclusively on representing the interests of our people in the nine Bay Area counties and no further.

In practical terms we train our cadre in the arts of self-sufficiency, gardening, self-defense, renewable energy, mutual aid, technology, and provide a support network for people.

As the slide into Third World status accelerates, as it has been, I believe that a community utilizing this model of organizing and training will produce the leaders and support network capable of handling sensitive situations with greater skill and determination than activists who do not continually strive to find, rectify, and eliminate blind spots that could compromise the success of our mission: to represent and defend the interests of our tribe and like-minded people.

TOQ Online: Let’s end on a visionary note. What do you hope BANA will have accomplished in ten years’ time? What form would you like the BANA community to take as it develops?

Andrew Yeoman: In ten years’ time BANA will be one of a number of regional autonomous networks that support each other in providing a social movement of activists who are neither Left nor Right but true to their cultural heritage and act to fully realize the desires of its membership without compromise.

It is my desire that BANA, in line with the demographic reality of California today, develop to not just represent the interests of my tribe but instead represent the interests of hundreds of tribes working in concert on mutually beneficial objectives.

When a million tribes rise up and refuse to acknowledge authorities higher than themselves, the global system will lose the base it depends on for its existence, and the first stage of our goals will be achieved. Then the Tribes will be free to follow their destiny as they see fit, from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs.