Remembering Jonathan Bowden
(April 12, 1962–March 29, 2012)

1,287 words

Jonathan Bowden was born 62 years ago today, on April 12, 1962. He died on March 29, 2012, just short of his 50th birthday. Jonathan was a painter, novelist, essayist, playwright, actor, and orator. He was also a friend. His ideas and personality have had a real and permanent impact on my approach to New Right metapolitics. I wonder what Jonathan would have written in the last eleven years. I wonder what he would have made of Donald Trump, the Alt Right, Black Lives Matter, and other developments. We would have gained much from his insights and guidance.

Counter-Currents  launched The Jonathan Bowden Archive in honor of Jonathan’s sixtieth birthday. The purpose of the Archive is to make Jonathan’s surviving writings, speeches, and films available, as well as to collect the sort of documentary material necessary to write a definitive biography.

The Archive now contains a great deal of material, and is being frequently updated; new items are listed on the top page when they are added. But this is an ongoing project. As new materials come to light, we will add them to the collection. We are asking people who knew Jonathan to contact us to share their recollections, correspondence, photographs, and clippings. We are especially interested in photographs. If you have something to contribute, please contact me at [email protected].

Jonathan wrote 35 original articles and reviews for Counter-Currents, both under his own name and under the pen name of John Michael McCloughlin. Since his death, we have also published a number of his lectures, lecture transcripts, interviews, and book excerpts. But the best place to begin reading Jonathan is his lecture “Credo: A Nietzschean Testament.” To learn more about the man himself, listen to “The Jonathan Bowden Memorial Livestream,” which features interviews with some of those who knew him.

See also posts where Bowden is tagged for those which mention him in passing.

Books

• Pulp Fascism: Right-Wing Themes in Comics, Graphic Novels, and Popular Literature, ed. Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2013)
• Western Civilization Bites Back, ed. Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2014)
• Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics, ed. Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2017)
• Reactionary Modernism, ed. Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2022)
• The Cultured Thug, ed. Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2023)

Articles and Reviews

• “Aeschylus’ Agamemnon: The Multiple Uses of Greek Tragedy.”
• “Arkham Asylum: An Analysis.”
• “Batman and the Joker.”
• “Bill Hopkins’ The Divine and the Decay.”
• “Blind Cyclops: The Strange Case of Doctor Fredric Wertham.”
• “Conan the Barbarian and Robert E. Howard.”
• “Criminology, Elitism, Nihilism: James Hadley Chase’s No Orchids for Miss Blandish.”
• “Doc Savage and Criminology.”
• “Eugenics or Dysgenics? Brian Aldiss’ Moreau’s Other Island.”
• “Francis Pollini’s Night.”
• “Frank Frazetta: The New Arno Breker.”
• “George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.”
• “George Steiner’s The Portage to San Cristobal of A. H.“
• “H. P. Lovecraft: Aryan Mystic.”
• “Hans-Jürgen Syberberg — Leni Riefenstahl’s Heir.”
• The Hour of the Dragon (Conan the Conqueror), Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
• “The Incredible Hulk.”
• “Judge Dredd.”
• “Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ” (Czech translation here)
• “Murnau’s Nosferatu.”
• “Opening Pandora’s Box: An Elitist Defense of Modernism.”
• “Remembering Bill Hopkins, 1928–2011.”
• “Robert E. Howard’s ‘Rogues in the House.”
• “Sarban’s The Sound of His Horn.”
• “Selected Poems of Bill Hopkins.”
• “Stewart Home and Cultural Communism.”
• “T. S. Eliot: Ultra-Conservative Dandy.”
• “Theseus’ Minotaur: An Examination of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thought.”
• “Why I Write.”
• “Wyndham Lewis’ The Apes of God” (Bulgarian translation here).
• “Wyndham Lewis’ Childermass: Black Metal, without the Music.”
• “Wyndham Lewis’ Tarr: An Exercise in Right-Wing Psychology” (Bulgarian translation here).
• “Zeus Hangs Hera at the World’s Edge: Arno Breker and the Pursuit of Perfection.”

As John Michael McCloughlin

You can buy Jonathan Bowden’s Extremists here.

Lectures and Lecture Transcripts

• “Against the Turner Prize.”
• “Bill Hopkins and the Angry Young Men.”
• “The Blackburn Speech.”
• “The Blackpool Speech.”
• “BNP Ideas Conferences, 2012.”
• “Bowden on Islam: The Manchester Speech.”
• “British Power and British Glory.”
• “British Sculpture,” Part 1, Part 2.
• “Charles Maurras and Action Franҫaise.”
• “Colin Wilson and Bill Hopkins.”
• “Credo: A Nietzschean Testament” (video) (Swedish translation)
• “The Economic Crisis Caused by Speculation” (video)
• “Edward Elgar.”
• “Elitism, British Nationalism, and Wyndham Lewis.”
• “The European Union, Globalization, and Immigration.”
• “Ezra Pound” (transcript)
• “Gabriele D’Annunzio.”
• “George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.”
• “The Greenwich Speech.”
• “Hans-Jürgen Syberberg: Leni Riefenstahl’s Heir?.”
• “H. P. Lovecraft.”
• “H. P. Lovecraft: Aryan Mystic.”
• “Jonathan Bowden on the Merging of Left and Right.”
• “Jonathan Bowden on the Ravages of Mass Immigration.”
• “Julius Evola” (transcript).
• “Labour, Old and New: The Wigan and Lee Speech.”
• “The Leicester Speech.”
• “Lilith Before Eve.”
• “The Manchester Speech.”
• “Martin Heidegger.”
• “Marxism and the Frankfurt School.”
• “Maurice Cowling: Ultraconservative Extraordinaire.”
• “The Newbury Speech.”
• “The North Wales Speech.”
• “Political Oratory.”
• “Pulp Fascism.”
• “The Real Meaning of Punch and Judy.”
• “Revisionism: Left and Right, Hard and Soft.”
• “Robert E. Howard and the Heroic.”
• “Robinson Jeffers and the Other America” (transcript)
• “Savitri Devi.”
• “Shakespeare.”
• “The Soviet Gulag.”
• “Stewart Home: Communism, Nihilism, Neoism, and Decadence.”
• “T. S. Eliot,” Part 1, Part 2
• “The Tameside Speech.”
• “The Tangmere Speech.”
• “Thomas Carlyle: The Sage of Chelsea.”
• “Tragedy, Horror, and the Transcendent.”
• “Vanguardism: Hope for the Future.”
• “W. B. Yeats.”
• “Western Civilization Bites Back.”
• “The Wigan Speech.”
• “Wyndham Lewis.”
• “Yukio Mishima.”

Interviews and Q&As

• “Creative Destruction: Bowden on Libertarianism.”
• “Democracy: The God that Failed.”
• “The E-Word: Eugenics & Environmentalism, Madison Grant & Lothrop Stoddard.”
• “The Essence of the Left.”
• “The European New Right.”
• “Everything is Still Possible.”
• “The Feminist Mystique.”
• “The Forgotten War.”
• “Frankfurt School Revisionism.”
• Interview with Jonathan Bowden.
• “Iran, Israel, and the Bomb.”
• “Jonathan Bowden on Modern Art.”
• Jonathan Bowden’s Last Interview, Part 1 Audio, Part 1 Transcript, Part 2 Audio, Part 2 Transcript
• “Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals.”
• “On Islam and Zionism” (Czech version here).
• “Paganism and Christianity, Nietzsche and Evola.”
• “Politics, Politics.”
• Q&A About Heidegger.
• Q&A to “Western Civilization Bites Back.”
• “Renewing the Radical Right.”
• “Speaking Freely.”
• “Stand and Deliver.”
• Tom Sunić Interviews Jonathan Bowden, Audio, Transcript.
• “Understanding Spengler.”
• “Uses and Abuses of Nietzsche.”
• “Why I Am Not a Conservative.”

Book Excerpts

• “Classical Modernism and the Art of the Radical Right.”
• “The Comic Book as Linear Energy.”
• “The Communist Cell at Cambridge University,” Part 1 and Part 2.
• “Cultural Communism and the Inegalitarian Basis of All Genuine Art.”
• “Marxism and Satanism.”
• “Thoughts on Francis Bacon.”
• “Thoughts on Samuel Beckett.”
• “You Can Never be Too Right-Wing.”

Free E-Books

Videos Featuring Bowden

• “Jonathan Bowden on Absolute Standards.”
• “Jonathan Bowden on British Sculpture.”
• “Jonathan Bowden on Cultural Marxism.”
• “A Future for Whites in America.”
• “Never Apologize.”
• “Underneath the Mind: Bowden on Oratory.”
• “The Point of Great Civilization.”
• “Race is Culture, and Culture is Race.”
• “The Issue of the ‘Shoah’.”
• “The Video of Jonathan Bowden’s Final Lecture: Charles Maurras, Action Française, and the Cagoule.”

About Bowden

• Gunnar Alfredsson, “Jonathan Bowden’s Heat.”
• Gunnar Alfredsson, “Visions of a New Right: Jonathan Bowden’s Right.”
• Jef Costello, “Memories of Jonathan Bowden.”
• “The First Meeting of the Counter-Currents Book Club: Jonathan Bowden’s The Cultured Thug” (podcast).
• Alex Graham, Review of Jonathan Bowden’s Extremists
• Veiko Hessler, “The Enduring Appeal of Jonathan Bowden.”
• Veiko Hessler, “A Tale of Two Jonathans.”
• Juleigh Howard-Hobson, “After Bowden’s Credo.”
• Nicholas R. Jeelvy, “Jonathan Bowden’s Reactionary Modernism.”
• Greg Johnson, “In Praise of Extremists” (French version here).
• Greg Johnson, “Jonathan Bowden’s Sade.”
• Greg Johnson, “Remembering Jonathan Bowden” (my original obituary)
• Alex Kurtagić, “Jonathan Bowden: Man or Beast?.”
• Alex Kurtagić, Review of The Art of Jonathan Bowden, Vol. 1, 1980–2007
• Alex Kurtagić, Review of The Art of Jonathan Bowden, Vol. 2: 1968–1974
• Alex Kurtagić, “Review of Iron Man: The Art of Jonathan Bowden, Vol. 3.”
• Margot Metroland, “Jonathan Bowden’s The Cultured Thug.”
• Margot Metroland, “The Search for a Usable Past.”
• James J. O’Meara, Review of Jonathan Bowden’s Demon.
• James J. O’Meara, Review of Jonathan Bowden’s Axe.
• James J. O’Meara, “Your Faith Is Your Future: For Neville, Bowden, and Prince Harry!.”
• Ted Sallis, Review of Jonathan Bowden’s Pulp Fascism.
• F. C. Stoughton, “Home Remedies for Hitler Hysteria Prescribed by the New Right Avant-Garde.”
• Fenek Solère, “Bowden and I. . .”