Making Sense of Jonathan Bowden’s Life & Mind from Projection in His Literature

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When I published Shaman of the Radical Right: The Life and Mind of Jonathan Bowden, I genuinely didn’t expect there to be quite so much interest in it. I was mainly fascinated by Bowden’s psychology: what is the nature of someone, especially when they are manifestly eccentric, who is able to inspire such a posthumous following? My usual readers are similarly intrigued by such questions, but this book, to my surprise, was read by a far broader audience. Some critics, including on this website, wanted to know more about Bowden’s worldview, which wasn’t very original as far as I could see, or about the abundant self-published, tiny print-run literature that he produced.

Since I published the book in February 2025, previously obscure Bowden literature has come to light. It elucidates us as to his influences and, also, to his psychology and, by implication, what actually happened in his “missing years,” up to the age of about 27. This is important because Bowden was secretive at best and a fantasist at worst; a man who concocted a series of fictions about himself which many of his friends believed until his death or until shortly before his death.

Three particularly intriguing books that have now emerged are Fury, Suck and Craze, all penned in the mid-1990s. To some extent, they read like standard Bowden speeches. Bowden explores a particular topic. Suck, for example, commences with the author examining the meaning of the word “anti-racist.” This is employed as a launch-pad to take us through a history of the European Left and the means via which it suppresses dissent. As you’d expect with Bowden, he makes many insightful connections, arguing, for example, that the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four has been influenced by Dante’s Inferno. He then connects this novel to themes of resentful forced quality in the obscure L.P. Hartley novel Facial Justice. As any Bowden aficionado will agree, the manner in which he makes lucid connections based on his huge breadth of knowledge is enthralling.

However, my interest was particularly piqued when I arrived at these lines: “All of which reminds me of Diligent Observer (name changed), an individual who has figured in these narratives before, and who is at present employed by an Indian cripple who is a homosexual writer in West Hampstead.”

What Bowden is doing here reaches back into a literary tradition of which he must have been aware, and he may even regard himself as similar to writers in that tradition. In Alexander Pope’s 1728 book The Dunciad, the author ridicules fellow writers in a semi-surreptitious manner, providing them with ludicrous names, and he does so in such a way that their identities would be fairly clear to at least some of his audience. Truman Capote, in his serialized book Answered Prayers, mocked assorted Hollywood acquaintances of his using false names, though their identities turned out to be too obvious.

Drawing, perhaps, on Charles Dickens, Bowden christens his real-life characters with names that are germane to, and often mocking of, their characteristics. Ebenezer Scrooge was likely derived from the words “scrouge” and “scruze,” both meaning to squeeze or press. In essence, Dickens chose the surname “Scrooge” due to its connotations of being tight-fisted. Likewise, in Vanity Fair, William Thackeray gives us the cunning “Becky Sharp” and variety of other characters who are named after their qualities Bowden is operating in this tradition.

In Sucked, after a lengthy meander into the psychology of cult members and pagans, does the same. Bowden writes:

All of which brings us quite comfortably to the Monday Club, and in particular, the Young Monday Club conference […] Where a group of people such as Timorous Vole, the ex-Chairman, and A.J. Cronin-in-a-bread-basket, the Chairman to-be, all attended a relatively lack-lustre affair. The other people at the conference included Wilfull Romantic/Priapic Miscegenator, the co-ordinator of the Western Goals Institute, Paedophilic Ant-eater, a law unto himself, a relatively right-wing councillor, a female, whom A. J. had dragged up from his constituency on the south coast, and a little known individual called Youthful Male Lesbian, who was active in the students wing of the Club at Hull University.

There may well be sufficient information here to identify these people if you look into it. Bowden, like Pope, is venting; taking revenge on those he dislikes, consistent with Bowden’s friend Eric Galati telling me that Bowden had a “waspish tongue” like a woman. This also dates the events to no later than 1991, when Bowden was thrown out of the Monday Club for misrepresenting himself. It seems obvious that Bowden is bitter about the club that has rejected him, and confronted him with his dishonesty, leading to his feeling the need to attack them in print. He attacks them again in Fury, employing the same literary method. However, simply goes too far and, had his books had wider audience, they would likely have got him sued for defamation by his targets.

This method, then, provides us with insight into the mind of Jonathan Bowden. He appears to feel profound resentment towards those whom he sees as having rejected him and he copes with this by mocking them, as though he is a latter-day Alexander Pope, in self-published books which very few people will read and which he distributes himself. Indeed, it may be that simply concocts things about them.

In Craze, Bowden presents us with a series of questions and answers, presumably imagining that he was, at that point, sufficiently significant that these would be of interest to people. One of the questions is “Why didn’t you take over the Monday Club?” as if there was any question of this ever occurring. It is a grandiose fantasy consistent with my argument, in the biography, that Bowden had narcissistic traits.

Another question is with regard to a “feud” with an old friend of his, to whom also gives a mocking, quality-laden name. He claims this person is homosexual, makes lurid allegations in that regard that are so defamatory and manifestly inaccurate that we cannot quote them, asserts that he strongly holds grudges, and claims he was rejected by his father.

Freud’s concept of projection is widely accepted in psychology. The study “Narcissism on Facebook” finds that narcissism predicts attacking others for being narcissistic. According to the study “A new look at defensive projection,” when people suppress negative thoughts about themselves, these traits are more likely to be highlighted in other people; in other words, contemplated via a different method. Projection allows you to distance yourself from the trait by comparison; to minimise it in yourself. Clearly, it is Bowden that holds grudges.

As for this issue of sexuality, Bowden’s friend Eddy Butler wondered if Bowden’s deep animus towards homosexuals was because Bowden was gay. However, I suspect it was more likely that there was some other sexual issue and Bowden was projecting this. By all accounts, Bowden was a proto-incel who would pretend he had a wife and children despite never seemingly having had a serious relationship with a woman. Moreover, he was extremely interested in sadomasochism. Bowden penned two books on Sade and in Suck he is clearly fascinated by the group Romantia. They attempted to live as though it was pre-1963 and Bowden attended their meetings. At their core was a sadomasochist female-only cult, called Aristasia, in which women would pay to attend an ersatz traditional female school where they would be, for example, caned on their bare bottoms or birched in the nude by a transwoman headmistress, also head of Romantia, called, variously, Miss Martindale, Miss Partridge or the Countess.

As for poor relations with one’s father, Bowden told a friend that his father had walked out on him and seriously ill mother, which was completely untrue. This seems to imply that he was the one whose relationship with his father, widowed when Bowden was 15, was a problem. Bowden also seemed to project onto another relation, something I will explore in a later article.