Jonathan Bowden

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Jonathan Bowden
Bowden speaking in December 2011. The topic was Yukio Mishima.
Born	(1962-04-12)12 April 1962 Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England
Died	29 March 2012(2012-03-29) (aged 49) Tadley, Hampshire, England
Alma mater	Birkbeck College, University of London

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 internet figure" amongst the far-right movement, even several years after his death.^[2][3]

Bowden was born in Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent, and attended Presentation College in Reading, Berkshire.^[4] 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 College, University of London, as a mature student, but left without graduating. He enrolled at Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge in autumn 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.^[5] Bowden was otherwise largely self-educated.^[2]

Bowden began his political career as a member of the Conservative Party in the parliamentary constituency of Bethnal Green and Stepney. In 1990 he joined the Monday Club, and the following year made an unsuccessful bid to be elected onto its Executive Council. In 1991 he was appointed co-chairman, with Stuart Millson, of the club's media committee,^[6] and was also active in the Western Goals Institute.^[7] In 1992 Bowden was expelled from the Monday Club.^[8] (The Conservative Party disassociated itself from the Monday Club in 2001, and the club disbanded in 2024.)

Bowden and Millson co-founded the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus in November 1992^[9] with the aim of introducing "abstract thought into the nether reaches of the Conservative and Unionist party".^[7] The group 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 the book Right through the European Books Society. He was also reported to be a prominent figure in the creative milieu responsible for the emergence of Right Now! magazine.^[10]

Bowden then joined the Freedom Party; he was its treasurer for a short time,^[11] and subsequently was a member of the Bloomsbury Forum, alongside Adrian Davies.^[12]

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 at local meetings for the BNP, he never re-joined the party, and cut all ties after the 2010 general election.^[13]

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.^[13]

New Right Committee

Formation	16 January 2005
Founders	Troy Southgate, Jonathan Bowden, and Jonothon Boulter
Legal status	defunct
Website	new-right.org (archive)

The New Right Committee, or simply "New Right", was a pan-European nationalist, 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."^[14]

In June 2005 New Right announced that it would publish New Imperium, a quarterly magazine it described as an "intellectual journal".^[15] Bowden was the organisation's press officer.^[16]

On 29 March 2012, Bowden died of heart failure or a heart attack at his home in Berkshire, 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]

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]

Bowden expressed pagan religious beliefs.^[2]

• 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

Wikiquote has quotations related to Jonathan Bowden.

• Official website on the Wayback Machine
• The Jonathan Bowden Archive
• BOWDEN! on Spreaker
• Jonathan Bowden Archive on YouTube, featuring all known recordings of Bowden's speeches and lectures

• Graham D. Macklin, "Co-opting the counter culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction", Patterns of Prejudice 39/3 (2005).
• Edward Dutton, Shaman of the Radical Right : The Life and Mind of Jonathan Bowden, Imperium Press, 354 p., 2025 ISBN 978-1-923104-68-6