
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
Oregon Synagogue Attacker Out of Prison, Hopes to Rebuild American FrontBy the time Laskey was sentenced in 2007, he referred to his Volksfront involvement in the past tense. Laskey eventually changed allegiance to the American Front (AF), one of the oldest far-Right bonehead groups in the US. The exact date of Laskey changing allegiance is unknown. One letter from Laskey composed shortly after his 2007 sentencing lists a number of organizational affiliations, such as being “part of White Revolution, and religiously associated with the [Christian Identity] Christian Separatist Church Society.” American Front is not mentioned in the letter, suggesting that Laskey either became an AF member later while in federal prison, or that Laskey was at the time keeping quiet about this particular group affiliation. By at least 2010, Laskey was openly describing himself as an American Front member. Interestingly, while in prison Laskey also appears to have changed religious affiliation—Laskey adopted racially-changed Odinist beliefs and abandoned Identity. (Volksfront, which Laskey had been involved in, was known for having both Identity and racist pagan adherents within its ranks.)The American Front was founded in the mid-1980s by Robert Heick in the California Bay Area, making the American Front one of the earlier and longer-lasting bonehead organizations in the US (although the organization has had long periods of hibernation.) The American Front is known for its introduction of “Third Position” politics within the United States white power scene. Briefly, Third Positionism is an attempt to merge some “left-wing” concerns as well as a pro-worker orientation with more generic fascist or neo-Nazi politics.
In early 1990s, the American Front moved its headquarters to Portland, Oregon, where it was for a while one of the more visible neo-Nazi groups in the city. (See the report “The Northwest Imperative: Documenting a Decade of Hate” here for information about the American Front in early-1990s Oregon.) The American Front changed leadership from Heick to James Porrazzo in the mid-1990s, with new leader Porrazzo leading the organization away from the bonehead subculture and more deeply into “Third Position” and “National Revolutionary” political territory. The organization declined during this period from a mixture of infighting, Porrazzo’s increasingly arcane politics, and his alienating AF’s on-the-ground bonehead support. However, in places such as Florida and California clusters of American Front boneheads continued, maintaining an orientation closer to the first generation American Front.
In a piece of prison writing, Laskey states: “A few years later [than a 2002 Hammerskin event Laskey wrote about] after I parted ways with Volksfront (who I always will have a lot of love and respect for), knowing that good comrades like Roy [from the white power music act Final War] was American Front and true National Socialist, I heeded the call and accepted membership into AF (Also Dave, Rob, Rabbitt, Chris, Big Bryan, and others were influential in my decision).” It is clear from this account that Laskey was more drawn towards the bonehead part of the American Front, with its links to the white power rock scene. Laskey would have encountered bonehead American Front from the West Coast white power circuit, and perhaps even earlier from when Laskey was in Florida with the Navy.
]While serving his federal prison sentence, Jake Laskey appears to have spent his time writing, organizing on the inside, and getting tattooed. Laskey’s writings are available on a number of websites, several of them signed as “American Front Political Prisoner Jake Laskey.” One source for Laskey’s writings is a blog titled “Letters from Jake,” the postings appearing in 2000 and 2011. Most of these writings are reminisces about Laskey’s life as a violence-prone bonehead, and about the various white power festivals he attended before his incarceration. Laskey also writes about Odinist mysticism, which he claimed to be “our racial religion”–this shows Laskey’s change in religious affiliation.
The “Letters from Jake” blog also features an “Aryan Resistance Manifesto” written under Laskey’s name. In the Manifesto, Laskey writes that “The Race War is fought between the oppressed Aryan Race and an alien, degenerate, unwanted system under the control of Zionists [clearly meaning Jews], who are destroying our land and our rights.” Laskey outlines his plan to “make America ungovernable” for the “Zionist Occupational Government” by organizing a paramilitary force divided into secretive cells. The manifesto then fills pages with Laskey’s fantasies about assassination and bombing campaigns before concluding “Hail the Aryan Revolutionary Movement! White Power!”
It appears as though Laskey organized within an “Aryan Resistance Movement” on the inside. In an article titled “The Movement Inside” on yet another blog, Laskey discusses the Aryan Resistance Movement and provides a (real or imagined) genealogy connecting it to the white power terrorist organization The Order/Brüder Schweigen of the 1980s. (The Order did briefly refer to itself as the “Aryan Resistance Movement.”) The current “ARM” within the prison system does not seem to solely be a figment of Laskey’s imagination, since a Department of Justice press release from 2013 discusses an assault by someone else affiliated with the “Aryan Resistance Movement, a violent white supremacist prison gang.”
lnside Virginia’s Church-Burning Werewolf White Supremacist Cult
The FBI arrested two young men in Virginia on Tuesday for planning to start a race war by burning churches. But the Norse-inspired white supremacist cults they belonged to are all the rage in parts of Southern Virginia.
Viking-inspired white supremacists trying to terrorize black Christians in the South: not as rare as you think.
News broke yesterday that the FBI arrested two young men under the suspicion that they were planning to start a race war by bombing black churches in their home state of Virginia. The men, Robert Doyle and Ronald Chaney, allegedly ascribe to an Icelandic pagan faith called Asatru that has a disturbingly large following among white supremacists.
The faith itself doesn’t seek to endorse or promulgate racist or anti-Semitic views. But you could be forgiven for thinking it does, given its strange appeal to Nazis and other sundry bigots.
Asatru is a pagan religion that draws on Norse mythology. It is related to Odinism, according the Southern Poverty Law Center, and some use the terms interchangeably. Its defenders say the religion itself isn’t inherently bigoted. But many white supremacists find it appealing because, unlike Christianity, it isn’t influenced by Judaism. If you think the KKK is soft on the Jews because it’s Christian-friendly, Asatru might be for you.
The SPLC notes that Odinism, which has ties to Asatru, played an important role in some corners of Nazism.
“Its Nordic/Teutonic mythology was a bedrock belief for key Third Reich leaders,” the group noted in a 1998 write-up, “and it was an integral part of the initiation rites and cosmology of the elite Schutzstaffel, which supervised Adolf Hitler’s network of death camps.” Asatru apologists seem to recognize that it has a bit of a PR problem.
Nazi affection for Asatru wasn’t a fluke. David Lane, a white supremacist terrorist who died in prison, promoted the religion while incarcerated. And it has gained significant traction in the prison population; the Anti-Defamation League wrote in a 2002 report that it was one of the faiths that incarcerated white supremacists found most often. The men arrested for allegedly trying to start a race war “may have met in prison, where all were designated by prison officials as white supremacists while in custody,” the ADL notes.
“According to the FBI, the suspects were adherents of a white supremacist variety of Asatruism,” the group added.
And they aren’t the only young white men to target black churches in Virginia.
In 2012, Maurice Thompson Michaely pleaded guilty to arson—specifically, to charges of Unlawfully Entering Property of Another with the Intent to Damage and Maliciously Destroying or Defacing Church Property, according to the Bristow Beat. Michaely tried to burn down a historic black church, the 135-year-old Mount Pleasant Baptist Church. The fire didn’t injure anyone since the building wasn’t occupied when he attempted to burn it down.
However, the fire caused about $1 million of damage, according to ABC affiliate WJLA and he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
According to social media screenshots on the Fools of Vinland blog, Michaely goes by the name Hjalti and is part of a group based outside Lynchburg, Va., called Wolves of Vinland.
When The Daily Beast reached out to the group via Facebook message, the person who runs the account replied, “It doesn’t matter who we are, what matters is our plan.”
Matthias Waggener, one prominent member of the group, described it as an “Odinic Wolfcult.”
He also said the group practices animal sacrifice.
“It is a tool that can heighten the function of the human mind to a state where it can open doors that appear closed or non existent to the normal state of observation,” he said, according to Hunter Yoder’s book 9 Worlds of Hex Magic. “In this type of ritual you are ’sacrificing’ the life of the animal to achieve this state in order to gain the wisdom beyond those doors. With this wisdom we increase the effectiveness and potential of our actions that will in turn bring glory to ourselves and our Gods. This reconciles the practice back to one of Odinic sacrifice of Blood, and life for the attainment of knowledge to increase the life of those sacrificing.”
Waggener’s brother, Paul Waggener, visited Hjalti while he was incarcerated. And at least one prominent white supremacist, Jack Donovan, is affiliated with their group. Donovan, who recently spoke at the white supremacist National Policy Institute’s event in Washington, D.C., instagrammed a picture of a dead sheep, tagged #wolvesofvinland.
“Wolves and prospects preparing to butcher the sheep we sacrificed this afternoon at moot,” he wrote.
Animal sacrifice, Norse mythology, wolf-themed weekends—it all sounds like something out of a heavy metal music video or a Live Action Role Play convention. But as yesterday’s arrests evince, viking-inspired white supremacy is alive and well and weird in Southern Virginia.
Heathens against hate: Exclusive interview with the high priest of the Icelandic Pagan Association
THE ALLSHERJARGOÐi Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson (in the centre), the high priest of the Icelandic Pagan Association argues that those who see Ásatrú as a religion of militarism, bloodshed and hero worship are seeing it through the prism of 19th century German nationalism, not the Poetic Edda..
The Icelandic Pagan Association, Ásatrúarfélagið, is the fastest-growing religious congregation in Iceland. With close to 3,000 members, it is the sixth largest religious group in Iceland, and by far the largest non-Christian group. Since 2000, it has grown by 657%. This year the congregation started the construction of its temple in Reykjavík, which it plans to consecrate late next year. It will be the first central pagan temple constructed in the Nordic countries in over a thousand years.
“It is a religion which teaches you how to live in harmony with your surroundings and yourself."
A religion of respect and harmony
Whatever the reason for the growth of the Ásatrúarfélag might be, it is not aggressive heathen proselytizing. Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, the high priest or Allsherjargoði of the Ásatrúarfélag, tells us that neither he nor any other member of the congregation has engaged in missionary work.“We do not go around trying to recruit new members. People come to us because they see something they like, they witness our ceremonies, whether it is a wedding or a funeral, and they see that these are beautiful ceremonies, and they feel that Ásatrú might have something to offer them.”
Hilmar Örn stresses that Ásatrú is a religion of peace and respect. “It is a religion which teaches you how to live in harmony with your surroundings and yourself, and how to deal with the different phases of your life. How to become of age and then how to age.” True to this, the Ásatrú, as it is practiced in Iceland, is a religion of respect and tolerance. “We reflect Icelandic society and Icelandic values,” Hilmar tells us.
However, while the emphasis on respect and tolerance has contributed to the growth of the congregation in Iceland, it does not sit well with some foreign practitioners of the faith. Hilmar tells us that Ásatrúarfélagið has received “disturbing” messages and hate mail from conservative pagans in other countries.
Among other things, the emphasis Ásatrúarfélagið places upon equality and respect for human rights, especially LGBT rights, has angered some reactionary heathens abroad.
Ásatrú vs 19th-century German militaristic nationalism“Ásatrú is not a religion which celebrates machismo, militarism, or bloodshed, contrary to what many seem to believe. Quite the contrary. There is a lot of that stuff in the Dróttkvæði [the ancient heroic poetry preserved in the Sagas], where the poets were spinning verses of heroic deeds they had perhaps not even done. But there is very little of that kind of boasting and bombastic heroism in the Poetic Edda, which are the primary texts revered in Icelandic Ásatrú.”
Hilmar argues that the basis of this mistaken view of Ásatrú, as a religion obsessed with glorifying heroism, battles, and blood, is to be found in the 19th century.“This misreading of Ásatrú comes from the fact that many seem to view it through the lens of 19th-century German nationalism. In the 19th century, German nationalists, artists, poets, and composers looked to the Poetic Edda for artistic inspiration and read into it the kind of militarism, hero-worship, and warrior deification that dominated the German zeitgeist at the time.”
Hilmar has also come under fire from what he calls heathen “fundamentalists“ for having proclaimed that he does not take the stories of the gods literally.“I have said I do not believe in a one-eyed man, riding an eight-legged horse, and some consider this blasphemy. There are always people who want things to be set in stone. But the Poetic Edda is fundamentally about how life changes, and how you must be prepared to respond to the changes it brings.”
Homophobia and gender-bending gods
Odin, of course, was one-eyed, having sacrificed his eye to Mimir, at the well of Urdur at the root of the world-tree Yggdrasill. His horse, Sleipnir, is the child of the god Loki (in the form of a mare) and Svaðilfari, a giant of the race of Hrimthurs, who built the walls of the gods’ realm, Asgard. This is a story which should remind us that the gods can engage in quite dramatic gender-bending.
Another important story from the Edda involves Thor (Þór), the god of thunder and the embodiment of manliness, impersonating the goddess Freyja. The Jötun king Þrymr had stolen Thor’s hammer Mjölnir, and demanded the hand of Freyja in exchange for the hammer. By dressing up in drag and marrying the king, Thor was able to recover the hammer.
Indeed, Hilmar argues that the Viking Age inhabitants of the Nordic countries and Iceland were free of the kind of homophobia that has become standard among cultural conservatives today.“They base their interpretation of Ásatrú upon Tacitus’s Germania, a Roman treatise written in AD 70. Germania was written to influence domestic debates in Rome. Tacitus portrayed the Germanic tribes as noble savages who could teach the Romans how to return to a path he felt they had left. It should not be read as an accurate description of how the Germanic people practiced their religion, and it certainly does not describe how the settlers of Iceland practiced their religion, some 800 years later.”
Cut all ties with foreign heathen groups
The Ásatrúarfélag cut all formal ties with foreign heathen congregations in the 1980s, after Hilmar Örn and his predecessor as the high priest, Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson, became alarmed at the politics of some of the foreign groups who visited the Ásatrúarfélag.“These people seemed to view Iceland as some kind of Rome of the North, and sought out Sveinbjörn for a sort of papal blessing. Most were very nice in person, but once we started to look into what they were saying at home we encountered things we found extremely disturbing, so in the end we decided to cut all ties to foreign groups. We didn’t want to participate in extremist politics.”
Problems in Heathenry in its Current State
February 11, 2016
Heathens United Against Racism (HUAR) has many intelligent, strong individuals that see the necessity to speak up about what they feel are the biggest problems within Heathenry. Here they will use their own words to express their main concerns, which gives those who identify as Heathen some very heavy topics to consider and commit to solving. HUAR is comprised of members that consider themselves Heathen, and members that do not, and we believe both points of view are extremely valuable, as they provide a broad perspective to consider.
“Thor and the Midgard Serpent” by Emil Doepler
Just as much as these people felt a responsibility to respond to the current state of Heathenry, it is the responsibility of all Heathens to make sure these messages are heard, and that these concerns do not get ignored, or set on the back-burner by those who are in leadership of Heathen organizations.
SHARON KNIGHT![]()
“I have had an uneasy relationship with Heathenry for about 12 years now. Its power is undeniable. Its Gods and its inner landscapes are both beautiful and terrible. And yet, its willingness to accept racism as a defining feature among some of its practitioners is utterly abhorrent to me. It makes me ashamed to call myself Heathen. So I often don’t.
The Blood and Soil nonsense needs to be abolished. It is hurtful, exclusionary, and completely fallacious. We humans have been nomadic since forever. We’ve been intermingling with one another since we dwelt in caves, so the thought that there has ever been any sort of racial purity is ridiculous.
Also, Gods have called to people across cultural boundaries for as long as we have record of people experiencing Gods. Who are we to second guess the choices of Gods? It is laughable to think this is our decision to make. Aside from the absurdity in such thinking, this attitude in no way demonstrates the hospitality that Heathens boast of.
The kind of Heathenry espoused by Stephen McNallen makes my skin crawl. I want as far away from it as I can get. However, I am unwilling to cede the ground to such views and let them poison something so breathtakingly beautiful. So I stay, that I may be part of defining a Heathenry I can be proud of.
I don’t know Ryan Smith well. I don’t know Steven Abell at all. But to suggest that Ryan is too extreme in his condemnation of racism while Stephen McNallen is a friendly fellow to chat with is everything that is wrong with Heathenry. Personally I think an aggressive stance against racism is called for. People are being killed over it. If you don’t like Ryan’s methods then come up with your own. But do something, because racism is poisoning the well.
I am glad HUAR exists. I wish it didn’t need to. The fact that some felt a need to create a group to demarcate those of us willing to stand against racism is telling indeed. The day we don’t need a special group, because the word “Heathen” itself already includes within it a bold stance against racism, is the day I will wear the banner of Heathen proudly.
I can’t stop people being racists. But I don’t have to tolerate racism, or welcome it at any events I produce, sponsor, or attend. Racism is not welcome in my sphere of influence in any way.
Heathens United Against Racism
HUAR would like to raise money to start our own website, and to fund a few events we have coming up. Our website will cost $150 to get started and keep standing for the next 3 years. Pagan Alliance in the Bay Area is coming around again, and to register our spot would be $30. We would like the rest of the money donated to go to promoting our Light The Beacons event on May 1st, and any extra proceeds beyond $250 will be going towards other projects such as a possible suite at Pantheacon 2017. We will be having another fundraiser for Pantheacon 2017 if we do get approved for a suite.
Donate here
Fascist Lawyer Augustus Invictus Dropped from International Left Hand Path Consortium Event in Atlanta
Augustus Invictus speaks in front of banner for Rock Against Communism, a racist and far-Right movement, December 2015
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