Investigation Dreaming of a parallel culture Adam Carter Carter profiles Alex Kurtagic, a New Right activist, who is based in the UK but has strong links to the US racist counter-culture. ON 16-18 MARCH THIS YEAR in become one of the most prolific and website several years ago which is the town of Dickson, Tennessee, increasingly well-known figures in part of a network of American blogs USA, the cream of the American the pseudo-intellectual racist and websites including American radical right – a motley collections of underground. Renaissance, Counter Currents, white nationalists, ‘scientific’ racists, Kurtagic was born in 1970 and is Occidental Quarterly and Vdare antisemites, Holocaust deniers and of Slovenian-Spanish descent. He that aim to provide a more New Right activists – gathered at the recently moved to the picturesque sophisticated intellectual veneer to annual meeting of American town of Abergele in North Wales. racism and white nationalism. He is Renaissance, a leading suit-and-tie He became a participant in white also active on the black metal music white supremacist group. In the nationalist circles within the past scene, owned the Supernal Music past, this meeting has been decade and has become increasingly record label and now owns the addressed by British National Party dedicated to the cause – he co- Wermod & Wermod book leader Nick Griffin and luminaries of founded the Alternative Right publishing group. the US white nationalist scene such as Jared Taylor. However this year the British speaker at the meeting is Alex Kurtagic who was billed to speak on an apocalyptic fantasy he calls the “great erasure”, which he defines as “the actual destruction of Whites as a unique biological entity”. Kurtagic is a self-styled ‘right-wing intellectual’ who has been a regular attendee at meetings of the UK New Right group for several years and has a close relationship with its leading ideologues such as Troy Southgate and Jonathan Bowden. Kurtagic has a vision of creating a white nationalist alternative to mainstream culture by establishing small cultural producers who can link up to disseminate a dissident racist message to oppose what he perceives as a liberal hegemony. This is part of the broader strategy of the UK New Right groups and similar ‘metapolitical’ enterprises to effect political change through cultural activism. As a result, Kurtagic is an active figure in a variety of cultural fields and has New Right “intellectual” Alex Kurtagic April 2012 | Searchlight | 5 Investigation Blogging for the white race realism’ or ‘human biodiversity’ and Alternative Right was established in the specious pseudoscience, the March 2010 as an online magazine underlying reality of Alternative of “radical traditionalism” which, in Right is the same old racial its own words, “marks an attempt to nationalism which regards African- forge a new, independent Americans and other minorities as intellectual Right”. It operates out of mentally inferior, prone to violent Whitefish, Montana in the US and is crime and unfit to live as social and edited by Kurtagic and Richard B. political equals among whites. Spencer, a former assistant editor at Kurtagic is a very regular The American Conservative and contributor to Alternative Right executive editor at Taki’s Magazine. generally focusing on racial issues Its contributing editors are Peter and also strategic analysis of where Brimelow, Paul E. Gottfried, Mark the far right is going wrong and Hackard, Colin Liddell, Scott Locklin, what it needs to change. He is Andy Nowicki, Keith Preston and obviously intelligent and widely Derek Turner, several of whom are read, and appears desperate to have long-standing US activists on the an influence on cultural life – one anti-immigrant radical right. Irish gets the impression of a considerable born Derek Turner, who now edits Kurtagic’s “dystopian white nationalist novel” ego crying out for recognition of its the conservative Quarterly Review, ‘genius’. But, in his elitist monomania, he is obsessed with a will be more familiar to Searchlight regularly updated magazine, blogs, a ‘leftist conspiracy’ along the lines of readers as the former leader of an podcast, video links and a shop the ‘cultural Marxist’, one which was Irish nazi group, the Social Action (selling Odinist t-shirts!). Its content a similar bête noire for Breivik. He is Initiative, and longtime editor of varies from old style Right Now! the overtly racist paleoconservative attacks on the clearly in thrall to the likes of Kevin magazine on the fringes of the UK usual suspects – liberalism, MacDonald, the controversial Tory party which ceased publication multiculturalism, immigration, antisemitic psychology professor in 2006. The site has also featured feminism, homosexuality and who has been described by the contributions from John Bean, the affirmative action – to more Southern Poverty Law Center as veteran British fascist who until apocalyptic fantasies of the “the neo-Nazi movement’s favorite recently edited the BNP’s magazine ‘destruction of the white race’. One academic”. Kurtagic has written Identity. does not have to look too far to see about shocking his liberal tutors by Alternative Right is funded by the extremist sentiments like the support using MacDonald’s work when he National Policy Institute (NPI). The for Oslo murderer Anders Breivik in was studying for an MA in Cultural NPI, now also based in Whitefish a post by Andy Nowicki, “I do Studies and he has posted frequently Montana, was created in 2005 by understand the appeal, in a way. on MacDonald’s Occidental far-right publisher William Regnery Whenever anyone shows nerve, Observer website. In Kurtagic’s and recently appointed Alternative guts, and fortitude, putting himself novel Mister MacDonald appears as Right co-founder Richard B. Spencer in possible danger in order to a leading dissident who has been as its chairman. It has published a express a deeply-held conviction, locked up by the ‘liberal’ authorities. number of reports criticising civil whether with words or with guns There is similar hero worship of the rights, affirmative action and and bombs, there is something to late William Pierce, former leader of immigration as well as attacking admire”, or the apparent the neo-nazi National Alliance and anti-hate groups such as the exhortations for a ‘black genocide’ author of the terrorist bible, The Southern Poverty Law Center. In in South Africa in a piece by Colin Turner Diaries. The fourth album by 2011 it held its inaugural conference Liddell. Kurtagic’s own band Benighted on the theme ‘Towards a New In contrast though, many of the Leams, Obombrid Welkins (2007), Nationalism’, which featured posts are articulate and careful with features a paean to Pierce. Kurtagic as one of the speakers their use of language (although the The blog posts written by Kurtagic alongside veteran white nationalists comments are frequently far more frequently discuss cultural matters such as Jared Taylor and Sam intemperate and sometimes feature including an ambitious (albeit, at Dickson. crude racism and occasionally times, laughably pretentious) The Alternative Right website is antisemitism) but despite the surface attempt on Alternative Right to fairly sophisticated, featuring a discourse of ‘white advocacy’, ‘racial present Black Metal music as the 6 | Searchlight | April 2012 current incarnation of the völkisch featured Hitler on a CD cover and so it would appear that he has given traditions which fed into the original songs that praised white supremacist up on the music business as a formation of the Nazi party. terrorists, and the Greek band Der cultural battleground. Kurtagic’s advocacy of the racist Stürmer (named after the notorious potential of this murky sub-genre of antisemitic Nazi newspaper) who Wermod & Wermod heavy metal is based on his released a song called ‘The While he may have turned his back longstanding active participation in Nailbomber’ lauding David on converting others to the white that musical milieu through the Copeland, the London nazi bomber, nationalist cause through music, record label he founded, Supernal as well as Russian and US bands Kurtagic is still active as a book Music. with close links to the nazi music publisher. He established Wermod & Blood and Honour networks. Wermod Publishing Group (W&W) Supernal Music several years ago and it has since Supernal Music was established in Dissolution rather than published both non-fiction and 1996 and is wholly owned by distribution novels expressing far-right Kurtagic. It is a record label and Supernal was clearly trying to be viewpoints. As part of its distributor specialising in both a money-making exercise and palingenesis project (‘palingenesis’ ‘Underground Extreme Metal’ an attempt to convert fans of black or the myth of national rebirth into a which, from its inception, has been metal to the white supremacist new golden age is seen as a core one of the main UK distributors of cause as part of a wider cultural component of fascist ideology National Socialist Black Metal activism. Kurtagic admits the latter according to the respected scholar, (NSBM) a sub-genre within the in an audio interview with Croatian Professor Roger Griffin) these wider black metal music scene extremist Tomaslov Sunic on the include new reprints of books by featuring bands that use Nazi overtly white supremacist and American writers who have imagery and have lyrics advocating Holocaust denial Voice of Reason influenced the development of white white supremacy, antisemitism