An Interview with Robert N.Taylor (#1)Conducted by Troy Southgate, for the English publication 'Tribal Resonance', April, 1998.2.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.
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.
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.