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Jonathan Bowden
English political activist (1962–2012) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Jonathan David Anthony Bowden (12 April 1962 – 29 March 2012)[1] was an English political activist, orator, writer and artist. A member of the Conservative Party in the early 1990s, he later became involved in far-right organisations, including the British National Party (BNP). Bowden has been described as a "cult figure" amongst the far-right movement, even more than a decade after his death.[2][3][4]
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Life and career
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Early life and education
Bowden was born in Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent, and attended Presentation College in Reading, Berkshire.[5] He was an only child. His mother, Dorothy Bowden, suffered from severe mental illness.[2]
In 1984 he completed one year of a Bachelor of Arts history degree course at Birkbeck, University of London, as a mature student, but left without graduating. He enrolled at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in 1988, but left after a few months. He became a lifelong friend of the novelist Bill Hopkins (1928–2011), one of the angry young men, during this time.[6] Bowden was otherwise largely self-educated.[2]
Conservative Party
Bowden began his career as a member of the Conservative Party in the parliamentary constituency of Bethnal Green and Stepney. In 1990 he joined the Monday Club, a pressure group on the fringes of the party, and the following year made an unsuccessful bid to be elected onto the club's Executive Council. In 1991 he was appointed co-chairman, with Stuart Millson, of the club's media committee,[7] and was also active in the Western Goals Institute.[8] In 1992 Bowden was expelled from the Monday Club.[9] (The Conservative Party disassociated itself from the Monday Club in 2001, and the club disbanded in 2024.)
Revolutionary Conservative Caucus
Bowden and Millson co-founded the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus in November 1992[10] with the aim of introducing "abstract thought into the nether reaches of the Conservative and Unionist party [sic]".[8] It published a quarterly journal entitled The Revolutionary Conservative Review. By the end of 1994 Millson and Bowden parted company and the group dissolved.
In 1993 Bowden published Right through the European Books Society. He was also reported to be a prominent figure in the creative milieu responsible for the emergence of the political magazine Right Now!.[11]
Freedom Party
Bowden then joined the Freedom Party; he was its treasurer for a short time,[12] and subsequently was a member of the Bloomsbury Forum, alongside Adrian Davies.[13]
British National Party
In 2003 Bowden joined the BNP. He was appointed Cultural Officer, a position that was created by Nick Griffin, the party's leader at the time, to give Bowden an official role. In July 2007 Bowden resigned both his position and his membership after a dispute between him, Griffin and other individuals within the party. Although he gave speeches throughout England and Wales at local meetings for the BNP, he never re-joined the party, and cut all ties after the 2010 general election.[14]
Many of his speeches were recorded and have been transcribed. Topics of his lectures included philosophers, politicians, and historical literary figures who were prominent in the far-right. In late 2011 and early 2012 Bowden made 14 appearances on the American White supremacist Richard B. Spencer's Vanguard podcast.[14]
New Right
The New Right Committee, or simply "New Right", was a pan-European nationalist and far-right think tank founded by Bowden and the activist Troy Southgate. The name was a reference to the French Nouvelle Droite and the group was otherwise unrelated to the wider British and American usage of the term "New Right".
In March 2005 the group described itself on its Yahoo! Groups webpage: "We are opposed to liberalism, democracy and egalitarianism and fight to restore the eternal values and principles that have become submerged beneath the corrosive tsunami of the modern world."[15]
In June 2005 New Right announced that it would publish New Imperium, a quarterly magazine it described as an "intellectual journal".[16] Bowden was the organisation's press officer.[17]
Death
On 29 March 2012 Bowden died of a heart attack at his home, 14 days before his 50th birthday.[1] In 2011 he had been released from the psychiatric ward of a hospital, to which he was involuntarily committed earlier that year after suffering a mental breakdown.[2]
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Views
Bowden believed that some hierarchies are good for society, that "liberalism is moral syphilis" and that native Europeans are justified in asserting their cultural, ethnic, psychological and spiritual hegemony over Europe.[2]
Bibliography
Works
- Mad (London: Avant-Garde Publishing, 1989); (Nine-Banded Books, 2009) ISBN 978-0578006406
- Sade (London: Egotist, 1992); (Nine-Banded Books, 2013) ISBN 978-0989697217
- Aryan (London: Egotist Press, 1992); (Nine-Banded Books, 2020)
- Brute (London: Egotist Press, 1992)
- Skin (London: Egotist Press, 1992)
- Axe (London: Egotist, 1993); (London: The Palingenesis Project, 2014). ISBN 978-1909606074
- Craze (London: Egotist Press, 1993) ISBN 1-872181-17-1
- Right (London: European Books Society 1994); (London: The Palingenesis Project, 2016) ISBN 978-1909606159
- Collected Works, 6 vols. (London: Avant-guarde, 1995)
- Standardbearers – British Roots of the New Right, edited by Adrian Davies, Eddy Butler & Jonathan Bowden; Beckenham, Kent, 180pps, (April 1999)
- Apocalypse TV (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2007). ISBN 978-0-9557402-0-6
- The Art of Jonathan Bowden (1974–2007) (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2007). ISBN 978-0-9557402-2-0
- The Fanatical Pursuit of Purity (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2008). ISBN 978-0-9557402-3-7
- Al-Qa’eda Moth (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2008). ISBN 978-0-9557402-5-1
- Kratos (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2008). ISBN 978-0-9557402-1-3
- A Ballet of Wasps (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2008). ISBN 978-0-9557402-6-8
- Goodbye Homunculus! (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2009). ISBN 978-0-9557402-9-9
- The Art of Jonathan Bowden, Vol. 2 (1968–1974) (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2009). ISBN 978-0-9557402-4-4
- Lilith Before Eve (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2009). ISBN 978-0-9557402-8-2
- Louisiana Half-Face (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2010). ISBN 978-0-9565120-2-4
- The Art of Jonathan Bowden, Vol. 3 (1967–1974) (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2010). ISBN 978-0-9565120-1-7
- Our Name Is Legion (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2011). ISBN 978-0-9565120-3-1
- Colonel Sodom Goes to Gomorrah (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2011). ISBN 978-0-9565120-4-8
- Locusts Devour a Carcass (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2012). ISBN 978-0-9565120-5-5
- Spiders Are Not Insects (London: The Spinning Top Club, 2012). ISBN 978-0-9565120-6-2
- The Speeches (London: Black Front Press, 2012). ISBN 978-0957324510
- Pulp Fascism (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2013). ISBN 978-1935965640
- Western Civilization Bites Back (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2014). ISBN 978-1935965770
- Demon (London: The Palingenesis Project, 2014). ISBN 978-1909606043
- Blood (London: The Palingenesis Project, 2016). ISBN 978-1909606098
- Heat (London: The Palingenesis Project, 2017). ISBN 978-1909606197
- Deathlock (London: The Palingenesis Project, 2017). ISBN 978-1909606210
- Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2017). ISBN 978-1940933481
- Why I Am Not a Liberal (Imperium Press, 2020). ISBN 978-0648859307
- Reactionary Modernism (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2022). ISBN 978-1642641677
- The Cultured Thug (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2023). ISBN 978-1642640113
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Further reading
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