In 2009, at a secret and un-filmed Occidental Quarterly meeting in Atlanta, a portly, middle-aged Englishman with a slightly whining rural accent delivered what, according to multiple witnesses, was the best speech ever made. Certainly, they all agreed, it was the best nationalist speech ever made. It was all the more impressive if you consider that when this man ascended the stage he apparently had no idea what he was going to say. A so-called mediumistic speaker, he told friends that, prior to an oration, he would effectively enter a trance in which he would dissociate — almost split in two — and then hear the words from the ether before saying them. This man was Jonathan Bowden.
Since his untimely death in March 2012 aged just 49, a process which had already commenced towards the end of his life has accelerated and continues to accelerate. Bowden has become a cult figure on the internet, especially among the increasingly rebellious and anti-Woke zoomers who have known nothing other than Clown World throughout their young lives. Bowden, despite or possibly because of his multiple flaws as well as obvious talents, is a nationalist folk hero; a kind of “based shaman” who inspires young people, and increasingly (though they won’t mention it in public) some rather prominent and influential older people, to at worst “Ride the Tiger” of Kali Yuga and to, at best, find the courage to fight against it, personal consequences be damned. Such is the clamour to understand more about this incredible man that I have just published his official biography: Shaman of the Radical Right: The Life and Mind of Jonathan Bowden. I have been flabbergasted, to be frank, by the level of interest in it, especially among Generation Z.
It was a book that almost never got written. Various people asked me to write it in 2019 but it turned out that a friend of Bowden’s had been doing-so since 2012. In 2021, he was still blocking others from writing it, clearly unable to produce it but also unable to admit that he couldn’t do so. In September 2024, I was a meeting of what I would call a “purple-pilled” magazine in London; one of those magazines that is slightly too frightened to fully go where the empirical evidence leads. I got chatting to a female philosopher who suddenly produced a book of Bowden’s speeches from her handbag (purse in American) and gleamed at me with undisguised pride. If I had been a cartoon, a light bulb would’ve appeared above my head: “Bowden is a lot more popular and influential than I thought,” I said to myself. Bowden’s heir (to whom he bequeathed all his property) and I gave his “official biographer” a week to write back, he didn’t, so off I went; determined to do Bowden justice.
A key question remained, though: Why has Bowden become such a phenomenon? What was it about him? Can we pick apart the assorted intertwined factors that led to my semi-respectable philosopher carrying around a book of speeches by this open “Fascist” in her handbag?
There was something inherently fascinating about Bowden’s breadth of knowledge, delivered without notes; the way in which he could reveal unusual connections or elucidate the previously obscure; from Julius Evola to Judge Dredd. Bowden was, to some extent, the Weberian charismatic; the man gifted with certain skills that, for a people feeling a sense of crisis or meaninglessness, is able to make a cold world seem warm again. When there is no crisis, such a person is perceived as a crank, or is a charismatic only for a small group of troubled followers (as he was in his lifetime), but as a sense of crisis spreads so does his role as the charismatic. As German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) put it, “The term ‘charisma’ will be applied to a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary . . .” The Charismatic comes to lead, inspire and embody the community.
Bowden’s extraordinarily engaging talks were, in some ways, a kind of performance art. His lectures are not meant simply to be read, and the internet has allowed them to be preserved and widely disseminated in a way that could not have been true of people like Bowden from an earlier generation. Recorded, often in an amateur way, in rooms above pubs, an aura of the genuine, of the English struggle against tyranny, of the mysterious is added to them.
Bowden used his real name despite the obvious financial and social dangers of being a dissident against the Woke regime. This indicated bravery and self-sacrifice. Bowden espoused a kind of Nietzsche-inspired philosophy: We must reject weakness, resentment and being part of the grievance hierarchy. We are in an evolutionary and spiritual battle in which, ultimately, the powerful will triumph. We must embrace power openly and fight, eternally, against weakness, such that we can bring about the triumph of our people.
Another attractive dimension to Bowden is that he took chances, particularly in terms of his nightmarish faux-Kandinsky abstract art; his unreadable and opaque stream-of-consciousness novels, but also in his unscripted speeches. One of Bowden’s friends referred to his prose thus: “His novellas and short stories are almost unreadable, but all the same the prose is incredible, uniquely pyrotechnic . . . in its use of metaphor, vocabulary, and striking juxtapositions.” This risk-taking in pursuit of what he feels and believes has the potential not to pay off, but he was fervent enough to take the risk and it paid off not in terms of his novellas but in terms of his speeches. This risk-taking can be inspiring and certainly signals a kind of genuineness.
Bowden was an artist as well as a thinker, so he understood, explicitly from his reading, how to successfully transmit his ideas; the brilliant teacher, he could make the world make sense for his audience. Bowden had a way with words; he would leave other speakers thinking, “I wish I’d said that!” He was acerbically witty. Some of the radical right’s favourite phrases—such as “Clear them out!” (with reference to the Labour Party) —originate from him.
Most importantly, Bowden, in a sense made the ultimate sacrifice by dying and dying prematurely. This would have imbued him with a prophet-like status; an aura of the other-worldly. In this regard, studies have found that when a charismatic leader dies, and especially if he dies suddenly, then he is suffused with greater charisma. He is perceived as being “one with the group” and representing the group to a greater extent. Death renders him, somehow, fused with the collective.
In addition, there is an extent to which Bowden seemed, in some respects, slightly childlike and helpless. Studies have found that people who sometimes make mistakes are regarded as more relatable, that childlike traits, including slight helplessness, make people more engaging, and that charismatic leaders often have a childlike enthusiasm and naivety. In comparing her husband, the leader of the British Union of Fascists Sir Oswald Mosley (1896–1980), to Hitler, Diana, Lady Mosley (1910–2003) observed that Hitler possessed this attractive quality of slight helplessness: “When people met Hitler they thought: here is this wonderful but unfortunate man who seems to have all of the cares of the world on this shoulders, so we must do all we can to help him.”
Bowden also had an “identifiable flaw:” He was short and overweight. It has been argued that, counter-intuitively, this is an aspect of charisma; of gaining a following. It allows ordinary people to identify better with you and so bond more strongly with you. Bowden also suffered from serious mental health problems and was, essentially, penniless. A childless bachelor, Bowden lived alone in a decrepit caravan in a caravan park in Reading, never really worked, had an old mobile phone and didn’t have the internet where he lived, so he used to research his essays at the local library.
For some this might add to his charisma: he sacrificed the worldly so that he could dedicate himself to his research, his art and to promulgating his ideas. Diogenes the Cynic (412–323 BC) lived in a barrel in Sinope in what is now northern Turkey; Bowden lived in a mobile home in dreary Reading. As Bowden put it in his 2009 interview “Why I Am Not a Liberal,” “I’m probably a Bohemian. There’s an artistic element in me. I don’t care for bourgeois respectability. It doesn’t bother me. That’s where the leaders of the extreme right often come from. They actually come from the arts as much as from the academy or from the intelligentsia, and the arts are a psychologically very radical part of the society, and therefore you don’t care as much for, you know, being regarded as a bit of a demon.”
But, certainly, these are identifiable flaws. They all contribute to his charisma. Posthumously, though the process had already commenced during his lifetime, Bowden has become an “influencer,” with YouTube channels and Twitter accounts dedicated to him. He has become a meme, with inspiring videos of his speeches produced all the time. Were he alive today, I imagine he’d have a huge channel, but he is a dead, and, naturally, this has made him even more influential; for so many younger people he is a kind of based prophet.
