The SPLC on National Anarchism

Editor’s Note: Although the SPLC is not to be taken seriously as a source of information on racial nationalism, the Bay Area National Anarchists have been kind enough to publish corrections to the SPLC article.

“‘National Anarchism’: California Racists Claim They’re Anarchists”
by Casey Sanchez
from SPLC Intelligence Report, Summer 2009

San Francisco — At this year’s Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair, held in Golden Gate Park in mid-March, there was plenty of discord among the 6,000 or so anarchists in attendance. The militant vegans of the Animal Liberation Front, for instance, sold books advocating violence in defense of animal rights while a nearby “anarcho-steampunk” (a survivalist with a fetish for Victorian-era steam-powered contraptions) casually skinned a roadkill raccoon. “It’s good protein,” he offered.

Unifying anarchists has been likened to herding cats. But if there is one theme that most anarchists will rally around, it is that of stamping out racism, especially organized racism driven by white nationalist ideology. Many younger anarchists are members of Anti-Racist Action, a national coalition of direct-action “antifa” (short for “anti-fascist”) groups that confront neo-Nazis and racist skinheads in the street, often resulting in violence. At the Golden Gate book fair, one antifa crew handed out stickers with a telephone hotline number that called out the racist skinhead groups Volksfront and the Hammerskins and encouraged fellow anarchists to report in with “Information on Racist/Fascist activity in your area.”

But also lurking at the book fair was a handful of little-noticed anarchists of a different sort — so-called “national anarchists,” who advocate racial separatism and white racial purity. They’re also fiercely anti-gay and anti-Israel. Calling themselves the Bay Area National Anarchists (BANA), they envision a future race war leading to neo-tribal, whites-only enclaves to be called “National Autonomous Zones.” . . . Read the rest of the article