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An Interview with Robert N.Taylor (#1)Conducted by Troy Southgate, for the English publication 'Tribal Resonance', April, 1998.1. Tell us about your childhood, what actually inspired your development during those early years and made you realise that you had something to offer?
I began to draw a lot as a young child, 4 or 5 years old and on. Mostly copying things from comic books and magazines. Sometimes I would use my toy soldiers as models and draw from them. I was always busy drawing or colouring things.
In grade school the only subjects I liked were art and history. All the rest bored me. When it was an art project I was enthused and worked hard at it. Anything else I simply refused to have anything to do with. I refused to do homework and really didn’t care at all about school and grades and such.
By the third grade I decided I was going to be an artist.. So everything else seemed superfluous if it didn’t help my becoming an artist. I can still visualise a tempera painting I had done in the third or fourth grade. We were supposed to paint a picture of ourselves grown-up and costumed in the manner of what we wanted to be when we were grown. I painted a picture of myself with a beard, a beret and a paint brush in hand at an easel.. Another painting I recall from that same period was one which depicted Vikings standing on a deck of a huge dragon-prowed ship, riding the crest of a wave, which looked straight out of a Hokusai or Hirosige wood-block print.
I always had this creative artistic side to me. In my teens I was painting, drawing, writing poems, keeping journals and such, with no objective purpose or goal in mind. It was just as though I was a doing it all as a natural part of being alive and human. There was no immediate precedent for all of this among my family. No one painted pictures or wrote poems, that I was ever aware of. My father was primarily interested at that time in boxing matches, baseball and football games, politics and things of that sort. The entire world that surrounded me was thoroughly working class in all of it’s values, aptitudes and appetites.
Art aside, I was also a very physical and rigorous child. My favourite sport was boxing. I particularly enjoyed bare-fisted fighting. Two men facing one another in a bare-fisted fight is for me honest courage personified. I also learned at a young age that it turned the girls on as well. It seemed to resonate in some deep primitive redoubt of their psyches. I, of course, exploited such factors to my own advantage at every possible opportunity. I was attracted to girls at a very young age. I was quite precocious in that sense. One summer I fell under the spell of a beautiful blond girl from Germany named Ingra. She was three or four years older than I was. She and several of her girl friends taught me quite a bit about sex at a very early age. Bless her heart wherever she may be.
I addition to boxing I played football and baseball, weight-lifted, and in my later years studied karate and martial arts. I was also the top track and field athlete in my school. I was very fast in running dashes, and pretty good at both high and broad jumping. I always preferred individual sports to team sports.
I also sang a lot as a child. I had a better than average voice, very strong and loud, and I exercised it constantly as I went about my daily affairs. I always loved music as far back as i can recall. I would sing along with the radio with Bing Crosby, the Andrew sisters and all the vocalists’ who came before the advent of rock ‘n roll. I very much liked the early rock ‘n roll music; Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Pat Boone and of course Elvis. Rock ‘n roll seemed a fresh breeze after the staid and formulaic ballads of the forties. Most of that music was for me, soulless. But even the rock ‘n roll performers were essentially only vocalists. Even Elvis, for all his fame and fortune, never wrote any of the songs he did. But, with the advent of the Beatles and the so called “British Invasion“ music became a creative art again, and the performers were real troubadours, who wrote their own material and performed it as well.
I bought a cheap Stella, orchestral guitar when I was about 14 years old. I think it cost about twenty-five dollars. What I really liked best were drums and other percussion instruments. I started my percussion career using fifty-gallon garbage cans. Using either the flat of my hands or sometimes drum sticks. I would beat out rhythms on the up-side-down cans for hours at a stretch, or until someone in a nearby house stuck their head out of the window and yelled for me to stop or they would call the police.
I was fortunate, in so much as the family home where I grew up, had work benches and vices and all manner of hand tools. I was constantly working on projects in my basement. I built a functioning cross-bow out of a leaf spring when I was about 14 years old. In time I also made zip-guns and other weapons.
During the period I grew up there was a lot of house construction going on, and there was always lots of scrap lumber that we would use to make swords and shields, build forts with and such. My friends and I built lots of rafts that we sailed in nearby quarries, underground hide-outs and such. Our days were filled with endless adventures. The railroad tracks and yards were another favourite place to play.
At about fifteen years old or so my attraction to the girls became my primary interest. Also in my teens I began to run with street gangs on Chicago’s west-side. I never joined gangs so much for the camaraderie or as a group security thing. Gangs served more as a context or vehicle for fighting. I loved the exhilaration of combat. There was always some gang war going on. Between the ages of fourteen and 18 I was in a street gang that is still remembered and talked about by many Chicagoans, The Taylor Street Dukes. They were the most feared White street gang in Chicago at that time. Most of our gang-wars were with black and Puerto Rican gangs of that era; The Vice Lords, The Egyptian Cobras and others. There were generally rumbles every weekend. I seldom missed any of them. They all generally ended with a flying squad of riot police screeching to the scene, from whom we endeavoured to escape. Sometimes we did get caught and were hauled down to the local police station. They seldom charged us with anything serious though. Our parents were called to come down and pick us up. It was always a very sullen trip back home. I spent a good part of my teen years running from and evading the police. Mostly as a result of hooliganism, fighting and vandalism.
Living in this sort of environment, a virtual combat zone, certainly brought grass roots social problems into sharp focus. Everyday became a drama of life and death.Racial tensions flared-up frequently. Armed conflict became a common-day experience.
This all took place in the early period of the 1960s. I was actually a participant of a “White-riot “. That may be hard to believe for members of the current generation of young people. But it was a bonified White-riot. It was generated by mostly Irish and Italian ethnics fighting against the police.
It all began when several old spinsters sold a large apartment building to a black family. The evening that the black family moved in, a mob of neighbourhood people, thousands of them, surrounded the apartment building and started chanting curses. A few moments later bricks and other debris began to bombard the building. All the windows were wiped out in less than a minute.
The mob began to break the doors of the building down battering-ram style - just as riot police arrived from all approaches, screeching to a halt in the middle of the intersection. Then the battle between the riot police ( a special unit of particularly big, burly. mean cops, all brandishing billy clubs the size of baseball bats ) and the white mob raged. The battle surged back and forth.The mob would surge forward en masse - then the police would begin to drive the crowd back with their clubs. It went on and on - it felt as though time itself had expanded itself. The fighting seemed an eternity of time and a crazy dream all rolled into one. I was somewhat near the middle of the mob. The front bodies would surge back into us crushing those behind - then after a few moments crush me again as the mob pushed forward from the rear. I imagine if one had a bird’s-eye-view from above it would have appeared like a minuet movement. A dance of rage.
An enraged mob is a fearful and awesome thing. All is levelled to the lowest common denominator. The mob has a single mind, a single purpose, a single soul. Someone yells out a slogan or command, and the entire mob, mind and body surges forward to effect the command without question or hesitation. In a mob action, even those of lesser courage will oftentimes commit actions they would never dare to commit as lone individuals.
This riot continued for four nights. It would convene each evening, as though a scheduled event at dusk. Word of the riot continued to spread far beyond the neighbourhood in question. The crowds grew larger each night. The fighting and violence spread out from the initial epi-center. Dummies stuffed with rags and painted with black faces were hung from lamp posts and set ablaze in effigy. Roving bands of armed teens moved about the streets and alley ways. By the second night all of the street lights had been broken or shot out.City buses passing through the riot area, who had black drivers, were attacked by the mob. Windshields were smashed out with large chunks of concrete broken from the curbs, many dropped from railroad bridges as the buses or cars drove
under. It was a pretty ugly scene to be sure.
After the initial rioting, and many arrests of people on the streets, a police command-post was set-up in the garage of the apartment building that had been under attack. It was maintained for the next twelve years at tax payers expense. The real estate agent who had sold the building was literally cut in two with a shotgun blast later that year.
Strangest of all for me, was the fact that none of this was reported in the newspapers or other local media. They effectively suppressed information about it. Fearful no doubt, that had they reported it, it would have attracted people from far and wide to join the mob and riot. I'm sure that would have been the case had they done so.
This media “black-out“ confirmed for me that the so-called “free-press“ was less than honest and free in it’s reporting. Obviously there were hidden forces who determined what could and could not be told. Probably some human relations commission in the background.
I was there at the riot, and seen it with my own eyes and had participated in it - so the press couldn’t lie to me by omission. So I learned as a very young boy to trust my own instincts, observations and experiences, above all else. I also learned to test things that I had been told, by a simple comparison of what I had experienced or seen. If I could choose one thing to say to younger folks of today, it would be to trust their own senses and immediate observations rather than anything they read or are told by the system.
I've related this incident so as to give some insight as to the time and place I grew up, as well as to finally tell the story that was suppressed so long ago. The working class people from which I trace my origins seldom have anyone to tell their story or chronicle the events of their lives.
I was also in close proximity to a number of black riots that erupted in the 1960s in Chicago. The area I lived in bordered the area of the riots. I hope to write a detailed account on that sometime. There is much to be learned from it. Official statements, like the Kerner Commission Report on Riots, are so far from the truth as to qualify as fantasy genre literature.
My father was politically to the Right. He very much viewed America’s involvement in the two World Wars as completely bad. To his view, it was Europeans fighting and killing Europeans. He saw the two World Wars as comparable to the classical world’s Peloponnesian war; a self-defeating conflict in which all the participants’ are the ultimate losers. I think he was correct in his analysis, judging from the world I witness around me today. He saw the casualty rates of those two wars as effectively squandering forever some of the best and most valuable genetic material we of the West had. He felt that these loses would lead to general disgenics in the West. It sure seems like that has occurred.
Sit in any international airport and watch the soft, indolent and disgenic pedestrians that limp by.
So, I had my father’s influences politically - but he also inspired my heathenism. His own spiritual life was very much along the lines of what developed in time as Asatru or Odinism. It was not so well formalised as what exists today - but it was about as close as one could get to it, so many decades in advance of it’s actual existence as a movement. So, I was ostensibly raised as a heathen. I never had any burden of guilt or sin insinuated into my life by my parents. I was raised to be brave, honest and proud. They treated most everything in an open, honest and matter of fact manner. My father inspired me to read Nietzsche, Spengler and other important authors.
Between my home life, my life in the streets, and the social unrest of the times, they all compositely pretty much formed my attitudes and social philosophy. These things were paramount in my development and future activities.
2.Who were the Minutemen, and when and why did you choose to become involved with this movement?
Ostensibly The Minutemen were an anti-communist para-military organisation. This was the public face it wore. Behind this mask was a revolutionary underground army.
Though not exactly the same, nor within the exact context of circumstances, I have often detected similitudes between the Minutemen and the post-World War I Free Corps in Germany. At least in the earlier stages of the movement. There were a predominance of disgruntled former military people from World War II and the Korean conflict in the first phase of the movement.
The movement’s origin was of an organic nature. Isolated individuals and groups began to form what they termed “Minutemen bands“. Articles reporting on such activities began to appear in various gun magazines in the late 1950s. I imagine that this facilitated networking between these autonomous groups. Sometime in 1960 Robert Bolivar DePugh, a Missouri bio-chemist and business man began to draw these scattered groups together into a single organisation.
A guerrilla warfare training exercise conducted by DePugh and other Minutemen was reported in the national press. I had already been following the grass roots emergence in the gun magazines from the late 1950s. This was the first time, however, that I heard of a national organisation called the Minutemen. Not long afterwards I noticed a letter in a gun magazine and a reply from DePugh giving an address to contact him at. Several weeks later I was listening to a radio talk show and he was the guest. After hearing what he had to say I was mildly impressed and wrote him. I received a large envelope with Minutemen pamphlets and flyers. I sent in my application and joined. I wasgiven a secret code number to sign my letters with. And so began my association with the group. It was an association that would continue for the next decade.
During this early period I took some mail-order correspondence courses that the group offered. At this same period I had formed a local group composed of teens. We got involved in picketing and street corner leafletting and speech making. I had formed this group of my own before joining the Minutemen. Out of this group of about 50 kids I took 6 or 7 of the best prospects and formed them into the nucleus of my local Minutemen group. I was about 15 years old at this time.
Our youth group “ The Sons Of Patriotism “ had already stirred up a bit of controversy on the west side of Chicago. There had been suggestions that black students be transferred from a nearby over-crowded school to the one in the neighbourhood where I lived.The other option was to install mobile classrooms in the school playground to better accommodate them.We obviously were not enthusiastic about blacks being brought into our area. After all they attacked and tried to maim or kill us every chance they got - and vice versa. The racial tensions in our area were very acute.There would be some main avenue or rail line that effectively demarcated one groups area from the other. It was definitely the front lines of violence. The war-zone.
Our demonstration was a pretty bold stroke. The black school where we went to picket was smack-dab in the middle of the black area. It was warm weather also, lots of people out on their porches drinking and milling about on the streets. So, we marched right down into this area. You can imagine the possible repercussions of all this. No less than thirty police cars with riot gear suddenly surrounded our demonstration. That a full scale riot had not erupted seems a small miracle in retrospect. They (the Police) asked us how long are demonstration would be. I told them about 25 minutes. The officer in charge looked a bit spooked at that. He said, ”how about 15 minutes and we wrap it up and get out of here alive?“ I readily agreed to this. I was beginning to have second thoughts as to the wisdom of this foray into this black neighbourhood.
We did survive it though. We walked the two miles west to our neighbourhood with a line of police cars escorting us. I later heard that a group of young blacks had been arrested along our route back. They had taken up positions with shotguns and were apparently lurking in wait for us. We enjoyed some press coverage as result. So we had projected our thoughts and feelings on the issue at hand.
The real downside of all of these activities was it identified me as a dangerous element in the community. For the next month or so there was an unmarked surveillance car conspicuously parked outside my home. Not long after joining the Minutemen the F.B.I. was making discrete inquiries about me among members of our larger group. Asking if they knew if I had any firearms and such things. Primarily looking for something to get me on.
At this naive stage in my life I actually still believed that there was freedom of speech and expression etc. in America. That’s what they always told us time and again at school. The reverse of course is the reality of it. Such vaunted liberties are more apparent than actual. Once you put it to the test you soon realise that, sure you can say or write most anything you like, but not without consequences and repercussions. You’ll quickly end up in the files of the secret police, epitomized as a trouble maker, kook or an enemy of the state. I speak from experience here. I’ve tested these liberties and have found them to be wanting in their actuality.
Realisation of this state of affairs led me to thinking it would be folly to give-up at that point. I was already marked, so to speak. Once that occurs I guess you are committed to taking it all to it’s logical conclusion - victory or defeat. And that’s the path I took. I became more active and involved in the Minutemen. I was appointed the head of the Chicago organisation. Later I was made State Co-ordinator. Finally I joined the National Headquarters off and on for a number of years. I became the Director of Intelligence. It was something I had a decided aptitude for. In brief I became a member of the inner-circle of the organisation. I pretty much became a confidant of Robert DePugh and played an increasingly active role in the organisations activities.
During the earlier part of the 1960s, The Minutemen were engaged in a lower- spectrum underground war against the communist and other leftists. This took the form of infiltration, sabotage of their activities, identifying their personal etc.. Various underground Minutemen penetrated many radical groups and misdirected their efforts.
In the very early sixties we even formed dummy leftist and anti-war groups. Our members would dress slovenly, act obnoxious with newspaper reporters and generally give the "reds" a bad name by way of these activities.
On the public level we carried on propaganda against the U.S. government and it’s pro-socialist activities. And more or less organised, recruited, trained and employed our members in various areas of our operations. We conducted psychological warfare, black and grey propaganda, disinformation activities among radical leftists, expropriating their records and membership lists and things like that. There was seldom a dull moment.
Some pretty amazing twists of fate often occurred. One Minuteman, George Demerle, an artist and former military vet, managed to infiltrate one of the most radical groups around at the time. The Revolutionary Contingent. This was a group which had direct ties to the Viet Cong and Communist Cuba. He stayed undercover with this faction for over six years, keeping us on top of all of their activities, personal and plans.
At one time George had an art gallery in Flatbush New York. He even volunteered his art gallery as a place to hold Leftist gatherings and events. Unfortunately other Minutemen in the area, unknowing of his true loyalties, fire-bombed his gallery. George’s family, brothers, sisters etc. all disdained him for his communist activities. He never let his guard down or revealed his true beliefs and served the organisation despite all of the problems he encountered.
The Revolutionary Contingent began preparations for guerrilla warfare and terrorism. This did bother George, as he did not want to get involved in their illegal activities. One day he appeared half-way across the country at my door asking my opinion on what he should do at that point when the group wanted his direct involvement. We certainly didn’t want him going to jail for leftist crimes. So, I suggested that he hang in there until the 11th hour and then blow the whistle on them - before he himself was involved in the bombings and other illegal acts they were planning.George had travelled to see me and ask my opinion with literally the shirt on his back. He had spent many hours in downtown Manhattan “dry-cleaning“. This is the term used for making sure no one is tailing you or has you under surveillance, and if you discover that you are being tailed, using methods to shake them. This is generally done by going into a very busy area with shopping crowds and loosing oneself in the crush of crowds, where it is difficult to keep up with you and easy to loose you. Often it requires coursing through large department stores, up and down elevators and escalators, entering on one street and leaving through exits on another street.Utilising store windows, where you can stand looking at merchandise inconspicuously are handy as mirrors to spot possible tails behind you.
At any rate George was satisfied he had shook-off anyone following him and jumped on a plane and contacted me. Within several hours George was flying back to New York. Apparently the group kept close tabs on all of it’s members. George had entered into the leftist underground by-way of first joining the Crazies a leftist group into anarchic actions. One of things required of members in the Revolutionary Contingent was to ingest LSD with the other members. They used acid as a way to lay low the defences of people and sort of interrogated them under it’s influence and effects. George had, quite literally passed “the acid-test“.
The main mover in the RC was a man who called himself Sam Melville. He had his name legally changed to Melville. His actual birth name was Sam Grossman. Melville began a nation-wide campaign of sky-scrapper and Federal building bombings in New York, Milwaukee, Ontario Canada and elsewhere. He operated as a one man bombing spree.
Finally George was requested to prove himself by accompanying Melville and others in an attempt to bomb a National Guard Armoury in Brooklyn. Somehow, George managed to call the FBI and inform them of the up-coming event. The Feds captured them all and put them under arrest. George was incarcerated along with the rest of them. After several weeks he was able to establish that he was the one who had called the Feds, and he was released.
The FBI of course claimed he was their undercover agent etc. and took full credit for George’s activities among the RC. This however was not really the case. About a year later George shared the platform with Senator Buckley of New York at a big fourth of July day parade.I think he was given some commendation or award and was the hero of the day. It never came out, until now as I write this, that George was in fact a member of the Minutemen and not some FBI informant. George was not the only person we had planted deep in the leftist underground. There were many others. One of our members even slept with Bernadine Dorhn the leader of the radical Weathermen faction of the
Students For a Democratic Society.
It was while she was living in an apartment on north Kenmore Avenue in Chicago, during the so-called “ Days of Rage “. A small riot that was instituted by the Weatherman in Chicago’s downtown area and near north side. The group had attempted to befriend various bikers in the area as a source of body-guards and illegal munitions. One of those bikers was actually a Minuteman and had access to both Bernadine, as well as her private 'phone directory and other papers which he delivered to us. Right after this incident, Bernadine and others in the Weathermen went underground. She just surfaced several years ago and surrendered to authorities (as others of the group did also) and was slapped on the hand and freed. We had always thought that her and the Weathermen were ostensibly government agents to begin with. Most of them had links to people in the Federal government and Justice Department by way of relatives. Almost all were from extremely wealthy
backgrounds.
Melville and the other RC members went off to Federal prison for various terms of confinement. Melville was one of the principal agitators of the Attica Prison riot. He was shot dead by a prison guard during that riot. These sort of activities and operations conducted by the Minutemen were many and varied during those years.I’ve mentioned these few incidents so as to give an idea of our general activities and something of a feel about those times.
Eventually Robert DePugh ran afoul of the law, was indicted, and subsequently ran into problems of carrying a gun across state lines while under indictment. A Minuteman headquarters had been raided and a metal lathe and other machine tools were found, all set up as a machine gun making factory. So DePugh had many indictments, but somehow remained out on bail.
In summer of 1967 a special group was set-up within the organisation. It was a small inner corps group called The Defence Survival Force. This force numbered about 50 or 60 people, both men and women. All were expected to have on hand all the necessary equipment and contingency plans for going underground at any moment. This group was trained in various skills; lock-picking, survival skills, orientation, map making, killing, expropriation, a knowledge of various explosives and all manner of special operational skills. I was a member of this group.
January 1968 was to be a pivotal year for the Minutemen. It was the year that guerrilla operations began in earnest. An Infiltrator had tripped up plans for a series of bank expropriations. He had worn a wire (a hidden transmitter) and recorded the meeting where said bank expropriations were discussed and planned. DePugh was implicated, along with others, and rather than face any more charges, went underground along with another longtime member Walter Peyson.
I was dispatched to Minutemen headquarters and began the daily operations of the above ground section of the organisation. Making sure publications were printed and sent out etc..The FBI mounted a vigorous effort to capture DePugh and company. Wanted posters appeared in post offices and were sent to hotels and motels across the country. Those of us at headquarters experienced tight surveillance on us. We had for so long grown accustomed to the tactics of FBI
and other law enforcement agencies attempting to monitor our activities, that we began to sense other forces working against us.
Most probably the National Security Agency. At that time a ultra secret intelligence organisation of the U.S. government. The NSA is concerned mostly, but not exclusively, with communications, codes and such. Unlike the CIA, they often operate inside the U.S. as well as abroad. Their operations are of a much higher order than U.S. investigative agencies. They operate outside the law. I feel they were the group monitoring our movements and activities. They have a work force of about 150,000 employees. Among their many chores is that of monitoring every phone call that is made abroad or from abroad. This is done with computers which are programmed with key-words. If these words come up in conversation the computer records the conversation. (Check out our section on the NSA in another area of this website - webmaster) Their tech' is of the highest order. At any rate we began to notice things that had never occurred before. Illegal entry to motel rooms and other sites where we stayed and such.
Sometime in the Spring of 1968, Robert DePugh’s son John and I were instructed to rendezvous with others who had gone underground. We had to be very careful in shaking anyone who might be following us. We took off late one night and drove for hours down back country roads.We covered about 90 miles that night doing this. We will probably never know how they could have followed us - but eventually we came out of the maze of roads to the Kansas City area.
We went to make a phone call from a telephone booth to some folks who had a car hidden away in their garage. It was one of our emergency cars for get-aways. No sooner had we left the phone booth, and a several individuals quickly went to the phone as though checking something - perhaps tracing our call. As we pulled up to the next stoplight another car pulled up alongside us. We recognised the two men inside as two people we had seen months before as wedrove around a bend in the road just before crossing a bridge. As we slowed on the curve of the road. One individual turned and took our picture. These were the same two people we had seen. We went through a bunch of turns and drove at high speeds down side streets. It was around 1 a.m.
We reached our destination at a residential home and switched cars. Certain equipment was stashed in the car earmarked for the Underground. We headed west to Colorado. Their were no signs of being followed - but after encountering the two agents in the car we felt rather uneasy about it all. We sure didn’t want to lead them to the others who had already gone underground.
We made our contacts and were led up some mountain roads to very high country. Many places in the road only allowed for three wheels of the car to be in contact with the ground as we climbed upwards in a spiralling direction. Sections of the road had eroded away. Finally we got out and climbed on foot way above the tree line. This was in the area of southwestern Colorado, above the town of Creede. We stayed for some days in make shift tents up in the mountains. Eventually we all went down to a safe house in the surrounding area. It was still a pretty high location. I believe there were 8 of us at the time in the mountain hide-out. Later we would hook up with others bringing our numbers to 10 adults.
Life underground was certainly different. We had to check and double check every move we made. Things which had once been simple to do now took on a whole new aspect of caution.
For months to come we would collect at a safe house for a given period of time and then we would all disperse on our own. No one knew where the others were going or staying. If more than one of us were in a given city we would check in with each other at pre-arranged schedules from pay-telephone booths. We would have a month or something and then we would rendevouz in a safe house in another location and stay together as a group making claymore mines and pipe grenades. Often when we would disperse we would have missions to do or things to acquire or take care of. I wrote a short chronicle based on this underground period which appeared in the final, or “Death Issue“ of the Fifth Path Magazine called “Animal Spirit".
One such mission comes to mind. I was sent up to Boulder Colorado to case-out the headquarter’s of Soldier Of Fortune magazine. The plan was that once we had a floor plan, three or four of us would go to their office, get the jump on whoever was on hand and steal the files and take them away in a U-haul van.
So I made my way to Boulder Colorado by bus. I found the office, it was one in a row of second floor office suites above a large liquor mart. Entrance was from the side of the building up a short flight of steps. I knocked on the door and was greeted by a man named Ralph Shafferty. Ralph was a soldier of fortune. He had at one time, I was told, been a top army sniper instructor at Fort Bragg’s Special Warfare School. Shafferty was known as Little Ralph in Miami's Little Havana district. Ralph was a great host. We sat, talked, and shared a few beers for several hours and got on well. We both knew mutual friends in the small world of Soldier’s of Fortune. I had been involved in the Anti-Castro movement for a short time in the early 1960s.
At some point in our conversation I mentioned that i would like some information on who was buying what books. We knew that the Weather-underground had been getting various military and guerrilla warfare books by way of a Chicago bookstore called Solidarity books, which ordered them from Panther Publications (the name was later changed to Paladin Press, because they did not want to be associated in anyone’s mind with the Black Panthers) which was the book section of Soldier of Fortune magazine. We wanted to know just exactly who was buying what. Ralph said: “go ahead and look at the invoices if you want“. I spent most of the evening going through the invoices at my leisure and taking notes. As it turned out there was no real reason to expropriate the files. I had full access to them with permission. Ralph mentioned that he had always been hearing about the Minutemen but never met anyone who was a member. So I was the first Minutemen he had encountered.
Life underground could be a pretty uncomfortable affair. We were a bit crowded at times while living in safe-houses. Various clicks and factions began to form among us. Living under the constant duress of underground existence began to take it’s psychological effects. One member criticised the way DePugh was running the operations, another member rose to his defence by whacking the first party across the head with a rifle butt. DePugh himself was acting a bit paranoid about this person or that. He sort of tried to cast aspersion on various people. It was his way of keeping everyone divided, so that no plots or subterfuge would occur. I could half sympathise with his and Walter Payson’s suspicious and cautious actions and attitudes. After all, they were wanted fugitives and faced a unknown fate if captured.
John and I began to feel that all of us would soon be at one another’s throats before long. John decided he was leaving - he had had enough. I was hesitant to go with him, but he was my good friend, and in the end I suppose he was right in his decision, considering how it all turned out.
So, without notice we took a car and left. A group was dispatched to catch up with us and bring us back - but we took mostly logging roads back through the mountains and made it to Lawrence Kansas. From there we split-up and went our separate ways. Depugh and some of the others attempted to either shoot or kidnap me and bring me back - but their attempt failed. Fate was on my side and I escaped their ambush plans. I later heard that they returned to the underground hide and announced to everyone that they had killed John and I. Meantime I had a barrage of visits from the FBI - repeating the same questions over and over. I was feeling pretty pressed upon between them and DePugh and company trying to shoot me.
They continued on. Got another safe-house near Truth Or Consequence New Mexico. Things did go from bad to worse with the group as John and I both figured it would. Several members, a married couple with a small baby, who fell out of grace with DePugh ended up as prisoners. The lady was chained up in an abandoned mine and the man was kept in a large steel box which had been buried in the ground. DePugh had devised the box with a chemical toilet etc. for holding captives. The baby was taken back and forth for breast feedings and alternately left in the box with the father. It had become a pretty ugly scenario. Now you might be wondering what two people with an infant would be doing underground. They being a young couple with a child facilitated their renting safe-houses for the group and creating something of a domestic scene for cover.
Sometime in late 1969 the FBI had caught up with them and captured DePugh and Payson. They did not immediately raid the house since they were afraid of hidden mines planted around the building. This gave the other occupants a chance to escape. Two of the ladies, Janet Taylor and Joan Gorely escaped with arms and membership records by walking waist deep in the Rio Grande Reservoir until they were well out of the area. They eventually hitch-hiked south and ended up in Houston Texas. Once in Houston they got jobs as topless dancers in some nightclub and survived on the proceeds long enough to find other options.
Depugh was preparing for his trial, which included 9 indictments for various federal crimes. I went to Mexico during this time to avoid the prosecution from supoena-ing me as a witness - yet the defence knew how to contact me in order to subpoena me as a Defence witness. At the trial myself, Joan Gorley (a Depugh mistress) and his son John were the only ones who had been underground to come to his defence. Several others appeared as prosecution witnesses. He acted as his own attorney and lost the case. He received a sentence of 9 ten-year concurrent terms in federal prison. Despite whatever animosities I had towards DePugh at this time, the fact that it was the federal Government trying him transcended my personal feelings. If I had anything to settle with him I would do it personally. I didn’t want to use our mutual enemies to settle any scores for me.
At that time I was made national spokesman for the group and editor of it’s publication On Target. The organisation, and it’s continuance was the important thing to me. Two or three years had elapsed since the organisation was functioning. Support had become minimal. I tried to revive things to no real avail. I did a series of newspaper, radio and television appearances attempting to generate some activity - but things had lain dormant for too long. Many members had drifted off to other groups and activities. On top of all of this the government pulled out all stops to destroy the group. Most of their focus was directed towards those of us at the hub of things. We received information that they planned a raid in which they hoped to kill us and then plant evidence on our premises. This is what occurred with the Chicago Black Panther raid. A joint force of FBI and local police simply broke the doors down and shot people sleeping in their beds.
We had very little defence against such attacks at the time. Our resources had dwindled to almost nothing. I wrote a letter to various Minutemen and groups suggesting that they disperse and work on a local level as militias or vigilante groups. That marked the inception of various para-military groups including the so-called Identity movement and other militia groups of the second phase of the revolutionary right in the U.S.. The legacy of the Minutemen continues on now in various factions of the revolutionary right. We layed the groundwork, provided the basic concepts and more or less pioneered that movement. It brought a new sophistication of tactics and strategy to the Right. I certainly learned much through my long association with the Minutemen in a personal way. Technical skills, far too many things to recount. It was a real graduate course to be sure.
Unfortunate for the current Militias in the U.S. is that they seem to be at a level of sophistication at which the Minutemen were in the early 1960s. Dressing up in cammies and toting rifles off to the range is just a very small repetorie. I doubt that many of those within the Militia movement have any real talents in the areas of intelligence, espionage, subversion, propaganda and such. These are the real basic skills they seem to lack. They seem, from what I have observed of them, to have no real plan or leadership. Lots of first-sergeants who know how to breakdown a rifle in the dark and all the other basic military skills - but no generals with much of an overview or idea of what they are doing in a strategic sense.
The following half-dozen years were bleak ones for me. I turned to art; painting, poetry and music. These mediums were for all practical purposes the only weapons I had left to fight back with against this age of upheaval and decay.
3. What did the 1960s mean to you?
It was a time of rapid change and astounding incidents. Assassinations, political scandals, corruption at every level of society, a no-win war raging in Viet Nam, Cults’ abounding all around, the anti-war movement and so many things happening all at once. Most of what occurred in the 1960s was to set the tome for the remainder of this century and perhaps beyond. The rise of Satanism, paganism, the Manson Family, and much more.It was a defining period for our dying civilisation.
4. Many people associate you with Robert DeGrimston’s Process Church of the Final Judgment, although others have suggested that your role was fairly minimal. Were you ever a participating member of the Process Church?
My association with the Process was indeed minimal. I read their literature. Attended their midnight meditations on many occasions, contributed some art work to their magazine and Changes made it’s public debut playing at their Coffee House in Chicago. I never formerly became a member. I had considered it at the time - but when I returned to Chicago with that in mind they had broken up and re-formed the group as The Foundation: Church of the Millennium. I didn’t find this new approach very appealing - it was quite drab after the original group. I’ve covered much of this in Adam Parfrey’s Apocalypse Culture, 2nd edition, as well as in many interviews; Most especially in the U.S. magazine Great God Pan, and the current issue of Compulsion, an English music ‘zine. I have done two instalments of a series on the Process for Esoterra magazine. I am currently writing the third instalment for the next issue. My only regret is that I did not write it all as a book in the first place. Doing this series has turned into a task comparable to writing a full- length book. To do so now would require re-writing it all again, to do it properly. I’m not sure I want too. I’m pretty burned out on the subject and I think there are more relevant ways in which i can allocate my time and energies.
5. When and Why did you decide to form the group Changes?
About 1971. my cousin Nicholas Tesluk and I began to work on the music in earnest. We had previously written some songs together but had not really practised much. A fellow I sporadically encountered at various coffee houses and such heard us playing one day on Chicago’s lake front and suggested we play at a nearby coffee house called the Kingston Mines Company Store. It was a combined cafe and theatre. We had already been playing for several months off and on at the Process Coffee house. So the night we went for an audition at the the Kingston Mines, we were driving down the street and suddenly one of us thought “ Gee, we don’t have a name for our band.” We had never taken it all that serious to formally think of a name. So I believe it was myself who came up with the name Changes. I thought it had a vitalistic sort of sound to it, and in essence what we were doing was a big change from what folk music was at the time.
The group originally included myself, Nicholas and a lady who worked as secretary at an advertising corporation where I was employed. I was basically writing advertisement for T.V. ads at the time. I somehow got to know her and she played acoustic folk guitar and sang a little. Somehow the feds got to her and she pretty well threw a wrench into all that we were doing. One evening at her home after practice she started spouting off stuff like “do you think someone ought to shoot the president?” This was in response to something we were railing against politically. No sooner had she said that, then we heard a noise at her apartment door, Nicholas and I jumped up and went out into the hallway - a man in a suit and tie was quickly making it down the hall - just short of running. We chased him down the stairs and he jumped into a drab, unmarked vehicle (the type government agents usually drive) and he peeled out of the parking space before we could catch up with him. It became obvious she was trying to set us up for conspiracy charges by proffering leading questions.
After that incident we simply dropped her and never had anything to do with her again. So that’s how Changes first formed. Later my wife Karen and another lady joined the group. The other lady only lasted a year. It was around this time that Changes went dormant and we all moved on to others things.
6. Together with Michael Moynihan, you decided to re-master the bands original recordings and finally released them on CD last year. You are now on the verge of releasing a new CD entitled Legends, so is there a chance that Changes will go on tour sometime in the future?
Actually I didn’t decide to do anything with the old music. That was Michael’s idea. I had sent him some poetry chap books of mine. One of them was composed of lyrics to Changes music. Michael enquired as too if we had any old demo-tapes of the songs. I did have some cassettes that were dubbed off the original reel-to-reel tapes. Apparently Michael like what he heard and asked if we would be interested in doing a CD of some of the better stuff.We worked closely on the re-mastering, on all the graphics and liner notes etc. It was a totally gratifying relationship, on all levels.
As for our next release, it will be “ Legends “ a long single ballad which Nicholas and I wrote around 1969. All the liner notes booklet and cover art are original art done by Nicholas and myself. The entire lyrics will appear in the booklet, all 210 lines done in hand calligraphy by Nicholas. We are finalising the packaging as I write this. Only Nicholas and I are on this piece of music. It was recorded at Absinthe Studio about a year and a half ago, and was engineered by Robert Ferbrache.
We wrote it as a sort of Pan European Chaison. I sent a demo tape in early 1970 or so to Radio Liberty in Lisbon. They actually aired it. The station’s call slogan was: “The West Shall Win “. This was during the day’s of Antonio Sallazar, the brilliant economist who ruled there for many years.
As for Changes doing any tours. I sincerely doubt it at this point. Both Nicholas and myself are both married, have children and many responsibilities and other concerns. But never say never. I’ve lived long enough to witness all sorts of things that “never“ could be. The fall of Soviet communism and the Berlin Wall coming down and things like that, lead me to suspend any final word on anything. We have had no offers to date for touring or appearing anywhere, so I suppose it is a moot point in that regard.
7. What are your views on a) Satanism, and b) Charles Manson?
Satanism has become a sort of generic label. Beyond that it means different things to different people.I’ll try and break it down into types first. There are rock ‘n roll satanists; heavy and black metal artists and fans. This is the most superficial type. It seldom relies on any deep thoughts or convictions. Anyone who wants to don a t-shirt with a inverted pentagram can join this devil’s party. It is most of all a vehicle for testosterone laden rebellion and anti-social behaviour. The worst of this misanthropic and impressionable rebellion end up as Richard Rameriz, or any number of others who say after capture “The Devil made me do it“.
Then there are the philosophical satanists who have intellectual arguments against Christianity and an effete society. Here is where we find artists and people into creative things. This Philosophy of satanism appeals to a more intellectual type and serves as a central focal point for their creativity. For the most part this segment of satanists are principally reactionary - not revolutionary. They are a reaction to the oppressiveness of Christianity. Also, such philosophical Satanism serves as a justification for hedonism, exotic sexual practices and such. It is permeated with a aura of Elitism. When you take a closer look at what it all means in essence and at the people who compose it’s ranks, it’s lacks anything vital or dynamic. In this form satanism breaks down into two further sub groups - a libertarian wing and a Fascist wing. The Libertarians seem content to eat, drink and be happy and “do their own thing“, while the Fascist side tends to mix heavy political content to their philosophy. They as such are far more revolutionary. They generally see satanism as a personification of the Faustian spirit of the West.
Then we move on to what I can only describe as “true“ satanists. These are folks who take all the devil rant in Christianity and the Bible in a literal sense, right down to the prophecies in the book of revelation. They have simply decided to play the heavies in the drama. What makes me label them true Satanists is the diabolical element in their methods and theology. As with the Process who took the Devil and Jesus and compounded them both into something else. The Devil or Satan, if he is to be a devil, must do something more diabolical then to rent his rage against Christianity. He must be a figure of guile and seduction. One who can tell a convincing lie or bait his victims with sophisticated methods that subvert their minds and souls. The Process and Manson fit this type more readily than Anton LaVey and his many imitators do.
To employ your adversaries own doctrines and teachings and twist them in another direction, or antithetical to their literal meaning is indeed diabolical. It clearly shows some sophistication and finesse. Many folks I have said this to I think have had a hard time reconciling what I’ve said or understand what I am getting at when i speak of the diabolical element.
Of course one need not be a satanist to be diabolical. Bankers, politicians, and jive-ass preachers could certainly teach satanists a thing or two about the diabolic.
My only criteria in judging satanists is as to whether or not they are revolutionaries or just simply run of the mill rebels and poseurs. As to whether they are effective or not or not effective.
For many young folks escaping the stifling atmosphere of their Christian parents and homes, satanism often becomes one of the forbidden things. For many it is a first reaction to Christianity. For a large number of people it is only a first stop before they mature somewhat and find more constructive avenues of approach.
As for my views on Charles Manson, I find him and his current popularity and fame quite astounding in one sense, but understandable in another sense. Manson’s life in general is the stuff of tragedy. He really never had a chance in life. He was kicked around from one institution to another. His is the saga of the White underclass in America. There are many Charles Manson’s out there. Victims of the system - what sets him apart from the others most is that he got even with the world in a sense. He has also never repented or caved in psychologically. In that sense he is a sort of personification of the Uber Mensch. He’s still ranting his ideas, composing songs, etc. despite the circumstances he is in.
In many ways he seems to be a personification of several archetypes. The life that the Family lived was very archetypal in an Indo-European sense. It was a tribe of Germanic/Celtic young folks. Surrounded by horses and animals, music, rituals, a life- style close to nature etc.. I think all of this somehow captured a romantic image that resounded with many young folks. All those authors who have made millions off of writing books on him have further helped to keep him in the public eye. Charlie is “The Unforgiven“. He has become a personification of everything the system hates and fears. The savage who has been untouched by their mind-fucking propaganda and indoctrination, and still able to see the world in his own way, and from his own experience and insights. He has certainly payed the piper for his role. They can’t seem to heap enough abuse towards him. Yet he maintains his indivisibility despite all their efforts. He’s a unique individual, much can also be said for Lynette Frome and Sandra Good. There is a touching loyalty they have both shown. They all may not have that much going for them personally, but that sort of loyalty, under duress, that they have shown, raises them above their persecutors by a mile, in a world where loyalty and and fidelity are almost unheard of anymore.
8. In a philosophical sense what stage had you reached by the mid-1970s?
Basically I was played out on politics. I realised that the political process had been pre-empted by the major parties since before World War Two. Radical politics could only be used as a protest - there is little possibility of it’s being politically efficacious. I began to see that the crux of the problems of the west are essentially spiritual ones. Solve the spiritual problems and all other problems will take care of themselves more or less. I had reached a stage of nihilism by this time. It became apparent to me that there was not much worth conserving of this world we live in. Today I am even more amazed then ever that there are people who call themselves conservatives. What is there of this brave new world which is worth preserving - very little I think. This point of view was reached by me when I realised that we were not looking forward to the death of the west.For all practical purposes Western civilisation died in 1945 with the end of our second world war. Some say at Stalingrad. What we have witnessed ever since is the aftermath of it’s demise and it’s decomposition. And it will degenerate further I am sure. Most men and women of the west have not even realised that their civilisation has already bit the dust. I am sure the Roman citizen, just prior to the physical fall of their empire, never thought that their civilisation had withered and died. But it had died from within centuries before the first barbarian stood on the outskirts of Rome poised for the coup de grace.
So with that in mind, it seemed that the only thing worth the effort was to begin building the skeletal structure of a new culture, one at the grass-roots level. Petite nationalism plays no relevant part in what I am speaking of here. Many of us once thought of ourselves as patriots and nationalists. We don’t anymore. Our nation is in our DNA, and it extends to wherever those of like kind reside. This is the principal message in relation to the recently formed International Asatru/Odinist Alliance. It is an affirmation of what I have said here. My own patriotism today extends for all of about a half-mile around me. I can only relate to tangible soil that I stand on, My fields, my gardens, my orchards, my family my friends and Kinfolk. The rest is a wasteland.
So there are no old-right residues in me any longer. Nothing I want to save or preserve of the present order. My loyalty is to the vision of the future that I have. It would be too much in this interview to explore, but I hope to elucidate some of these visions, concepts and and dreams in the future. So that is why I have placed my main emphasis and activities on the spiritual and the cultural.
9. Given that you have been heavily involved in the emerging cultural “underground“ for several decades, do you ever become disillusioned? If so, how do you manage to overcome this?
Of course I become tired at times, disillusioned, burnt-out etc... Just like most everyone does that enters into these activities for any length of time. As an individual I am an introvert by nature - but an introvert who has learned all the skills of extroversion as a means of survival in the world. Nothing pleases me more than to have hours of solitude to think and dream and engage in reverie. That’s the poet and artist in me. I don't think I have experienced boredom since I was a small child. My mind and imagination are always active. I have found my own self to be among the best company I have ever kept. The inner dialog seldom flags. So, with this in mind, it has often been tempting to just go off and do my own thing without having to deal with all the problems of the world. But then I think of the enormity of it all and the consequences that lie in wait for our world, and then feel activated to keep on fighting for my beliefs. There are also friends, family and kinfolk who I feel I can't let down. So I fight on. Also, on the occasions when I felt almost ready to simply retire into my own world - something, some incident, will come along as a challenge, and I have a difficult time turning away from challenges. There will be infiltrators trying to throw a wrench into the works or others acting “human all to human“ etc... In this sense my own enemies have helped to generate my activism more than anything. I’m a fighter by nature. An intransigent fighter that never gives up.
One must admire the Viet Cong on the basis that they fought a gruelling war of attrition for forty years. It is that sort of attrition that wins in the end. Unfortunately many Americans have the idea that wars and revolutions are something you do for three or four years and then it’s over. We have a fast-food generation that has not cultivated patience and determination. They want everything fast or immediately, if not sooner. A real generation of spoiled children. The slogan of the Minutemen was “We Shall Never Surrender“; and that pretty much sums up my attitude.
10. How long have you been interested in Odinism, and what kind of activities are you involved in with the Asatru Alliance?
I have been interested in Heathen and pagan matters since i was a grammar school student. My formal entry to the Heathen world was about 25 years ago. Karen and I were seminal figures in the emergence of the general Pagan movement in the Midwest of the U.S. in the mid to late 1970s- from there we formed a early Odinist group The Northernway. Eventually The Northernway became the Wulfing kindred and affiliated with the original Asatru Free Assembly founded by Steve McNallen. When the old AFA broke up, a handful of us including Valgard Murray, Karen, myself and a few others formed the Asatru Alliance and started the process of organisation all over again. Today we have forty official and supporting groups in the U.S. and have taken the lead in the International formation I mentioned.
As for activities. We help and have often hosted national gatherings of the Alliance. We and members of our Tribe have been very active over the past ten years in developing Vor Tru to the fine magazine it now is. We have experimented with out-reach projects like Viking games open to the public and such. We recently did a formal dedication of an Asatru Hof we built and many other things. For a while we published a family oriented ‘zine called Othalla (we ceased publication because of time considerations and the work we were doing in other areas like Vor Tru.) I do all that I can to promote the alliance through interviews like this one I am doing here. So we have been busy on many levels and many projects, and continue to be. Our own group Tribe of The Wulfings is now a national, rather than simply a regional group.That is why we changed the name to tribe from kindred. It better describes our group as it presently is. It is composed of some very bright, creative and thoroughly dedicated people. And we all get along with one another and work together on myriad projects.
11. In recent years we have seen the growth of bands such as Blood Axis, Sol Invictus, Allerseelen and Death in June. Have you an opinion on why it has taken so long for this kind of music to achieve the recognition it deserves?
Yes, I do. There are certain dynamics to movements. Any movement in it’s beginning stages will attract some pretty sorry individuals. The Right, aside from a few leaders, was pretty much composed of people with little creativeness and even less ability at getting things done professionally.
In the second phase of a movement a higher calibre of people usually begin to fill it’s ranks and contribute their talents and aptitudes. Changes could compose music of this type 20 year or more ago - but there were no people in our ideological camp that had either the foresight or the business acumen to produce and get things generated. So, even though Changes was doing material like the later groups you listed, we were sort of doing it all in a void. At the time the only way we could expect to get our music and message out was by playing it on a stage. That meant we had to win auditions to do so. But beyond that, it we would be dependent on the large record companies for anything like wide distribution and production. Those running such companies had an exactly different agenda then we did.So we were blocked at every turn in that sense. Then a period of inflation hit and many of the large record companies began to falter and fail. Small entrepreneurs began to fill this paucity. Independent record companies began to pop up everywhere. They now are vying (compositely) for the profits that were once the exclusive realm of the big companies. As a result this type of music has finally had a chance to be heard and has begun to develop a following of loyal listeners and cohorts. I’m sure that the increasing decline has made such music and it’s message far more relevant than before.
12. How would you describe yourself politically?
At this junction I would describe myself as 'a-political' in a real sense. As I said practical politics have been pre-empted by the two party system - which has become in fact a one party system. It matters little who you vote for - it’s all part and parcel of the New World Order scheme. When there are changing parties in office - they practically don’t loose a beat on their grand conspiracies. Essentially in the U.S. we elect officials that spend most of their time in office dreaming up new ways to divest the citizens of the fruits of their labour. Recently in the state where I live they now want to tax canoes and other small water crafts - what’s next, a taxation on bathing suits? They spend all their time finding new areas to fleece us all. The other primary activity is their milk-sop imperialism around the world. That takes money to buy friends and eventually make them dependent on America. They fund all these activities with the money of their subjects here in the U.S.. This is the epi-centre of their dreams of a world shopping mall where everyone is an interchangeable work unit in their world plantation.So, that type of politics is fruitless at this time.
On an ideological level of politics I take this view. Ask me what system of government I think best and I must ask for which people, in what place, in what time? Certainly the American representative Republic worked fine for Anglo/Celtic people. It is probably an outward manifestation of their inner sense of justice, liberty et.al. Add millions of illegal Mexican immigrants, millions of Asians and what-not, and then the question of this system of republicanism comes into sharp question. This form of government is not inimitable to these other people or the cultures they come out of.
Most of South America has constitutions that read almost like carbon copies of the U.S. system - but we all have seen the reality of how this system works when applied to other people, with a different sensibility etc.. It doesn’t work. We observe one coup de tat after another, one oligarchy after another, a society pervaded by corruption at all levels - and most of those people in those countries seem content with it all - if they didn’t it would be otherwise.
When there are too many different groups in a nation there will be stringent competition and conflicts of interest. How does one deal with these conflicts of interest? It brings questions of liberty and freedom into question. As it stands in America we have what could be termed the Anarchy of tyranny. The streets are unsafe, crime rages everywhere and becomes more outrageous all the time. Meanwhile the government uses all of this as an excuse for more laws and tyranny.
The great mistake of the British Empire and the American Imperialism, and other empires before, was that they always assumed that governmental forms, cultural forms etc. were transferable to other people unrelated to them. The British did everything they could to turn their subjects into model Englishmen. What a farce. What a delusion on their behalf.
One of my favourite stories concerns Charles Darwin bringing the Terra Del Fuego native Jimmy Buttons back with him to England. They dressed him up in a suit, with stiff collar and cravat, sent him to the best universities, taught him high tea,and to act and deport himself like a Englishman. This accomplished, they allowed him to return, figuring he would be useful for their colonial ambitions there. But Jimmy Buttons was no fool. He saw European Civilisation from the inside - and it had nothing to do with him on a soul level. So when he landed back in his native land he quickly tore off all the western garments, organised a revolt and killed all the European colonists. You have to hand it to him, he remained who he was. They did not steal his soul as they did to so many other native peoples the world over. So, without a known people or place to apply a political system or ideology, anything I could say is simply in the realm of abstractions and has no immediate application.My final thought on what my politics are is simply - what works.
13. Do politics and culture go hand in hand?
I believe that all real culture is the outgrowth of the spiritual and religious. Think of the spiritual as the hub of a wheel, and the spokes emanating out from it are the various areas of life such as politics, culture, ethics etc.. In an Archaic society, such as Julius Evola describes in his book Revolt Against the Modern World, all facets of a Civilisation or culture are integrally bound to a spiritual source. Japanese culture is a fine living example of this. In all areas, spiritual, martial arts, gardening, poetry, painting etc. the same spirit underlies all of them. They are integrally one. This is not where we in the west are at today. We live in a hellishly fragmented world culturally and spiritually. There is no real centre or central axis to it all. It’s a grotesque hodge-podge. That is what Asatru is attempting to do on several levels, to provide that central spiritual axis from which all the other things will fall into place easily and create a wholeness for our people once again. Western Civilisation has been under the impress of so many culturally alien and distorting elements for nearly a thousand years.To change the direction now is indeed an epic task.
14. What are your plans for the future?
To continue to fulfil my destiny as a human being. I define destiny as that which is meant to be at the inception of life. What is coded into our DNA matrix. I see fate as the external or environmental factors that, which by their nature often impose road-blocks to our fulfilling are true destiny. We have to overcome fate so as to become that which we were intended to be. This may seem simplistic at first thought. It’s not. Living a life to it’s natural fulfilment is an arduous task. Few make it to the goal. But we should all strive to become full human beings - not specialists in some minutiae of life such as a profession or job, but truly human in all it’s many facets. The forces at work around us do all they can to turn us into automatons, company-men, one-trick ponies.
On a simpler level I hope to continue to produce music, art, and social philosophy and hold true to the slogan I mentioned earlier: "We Will Never Surrender!"
