Jonathan Bowden had a loud voice and liked the sound of it. Fortunately, so did many people. One of the British New Right’s most charismatic figures has died at the young age of 49.
I didn’t know Jonathan Bowden very well, but on the few occasions I did meet him and spoke to him, I found him a charming host, master of ceremonies, and most of all a powerful and charismatic speaker.
Although he died March 29, news of his premature death from a heart attack at only 49 has just leaked out. Like many people on the so-called far right, Jonathan went through many political groups.
He was educated at Presentation College, Reading and also attended Birkbeck College, London, although he did not graduate. His political career started in the mainstream, he joined the Conservative Party and also the Monday Club. It was not though until the founding of the New Right that he found his true spiritual home. The New Right is not a political party but a forum, people of his persuasion having at last realised like Chris Tame that social change - for better or worse - is achieved not through political parties but by the dissemination of ideas.
Although he was concerned primarily with Western cultural values, Jonathan was a fierce and outspoken opponent of the insane wars the United States and its Western allies have been pursuing over the past two decades beginning with the first Gulf War after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, seeing these policies as a continuation of what the Revisionist Historian Harry Elmer Barnes called perpetual wars for perpetual peace. He believed there would be and will be an attack on Iran at some point, and was (hopefully unduly) pessimistic about Obama, who has if nothing else managed to stave off this madness.
His personal website appears to be off-line currently; whether or not it will ever be restored, it has been archived.
Jonathan Bowden was a fierce opponent of political correctness, but he was primarily a cultural animal, as will be seen from the above.
Jonathan David Anthony Bowden (born April 12, 1962, died March 29, 2012).
[The above article was published originally April 26, 2012.]
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