Racialist Asatru

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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby tapitsbo » Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:27 am

I get the impression the ethnopolitically savvy chinese have a good shot at running the west coast and their government already boasts about this plan...

Bringing up drug cartels as you do slomo immediately brings to mind the deep state angle that of course is missing from the entire mainstream Mexico/"illegal immigrant" conversation.

the WN stuff isn't just an isolated fringe of course and is tied to the wider right...

personally I hope the west can move forward with some pluralism involved, but then again I grew up with pluralism... a west somewhat similar to latin america or russia seems more realistic to me than "white nationalism" which is sketchy in its current form - then again the USA was originally "white nationalist" as it would be understood today.

At present the "white nation" is very much lacking or hardly extant though! The "white supremacist" history of north america is definitely still felt to this day but there is not a coherent "white nation". Most "white" people are horrified by such an idea - most "white" people are also enthusiastic devotees of an American or Canadian nation that is almost as arbitrary or more, though

the white nationalists seem misguided and up against unbelievable odds to me personally. Who knows.
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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby slomo » Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:28 am

The other thing is that there is a historical precedence for the likes of Donovan. Their fate can be predicted. See: Ernst Röhm and Night of the Long Knives.
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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby tapitsbo » Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:31 am

Well I don't know a ton about Donovan. I do know that the third reich was an anomalous twelve years and doesn't have a lot in common with the present day.
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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby slomo » Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:36 am

Funny thing about white nationalists. Lots to say about blacks, latinos and Jooos. Not much about Asians. The worldview is kind of amusing. In their eyes, their data show that blacks and latinos are demonstrably less intelligent than (presumably non-Jewish) whites, and therefore less deserving. The same data, if followed up with the same logic, would show Jews and Asians to be smarter. Jews can be dismissed as simply (((evil))). I'm not sure they yet have an explanation for Asians, do they? Or, by white nationalist logic, they must also be evil. Sigh.
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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby slomo » Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:37 am

tapitsbo » 16 Nov 2016 21:31 wrote:Well I don't know a ton about Donovan. I do know that the third reich was an anomalous twelve years and doesn't have a lot in common with the present day.

Maybe not. But the idea of a hyper-masculine homosexual fascist elite has been tried before. Didn't go well for them in the end.
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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby tapitsbo » Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:39 am

This world is full of people with all sorts of views about those topics. Technology is about to really scramble the whole "race and IQ" angle - the people who hammer away at that topic relentlessly don't seem like the "smartest" anyhow

Are you sure you're not partially ruled by a hyper-masculine homo elite, slomo?
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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby slomo » Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:42 am

tapitsbo » 16 Nov 2016 21:39 wrote:This world is full of people with all sorts of views about those topics. Technology is about to really scramble the whole "race and IQ" angle - the people who hammer away at that topic relentlessly don't seem like the "smartest" anyhow

Are you sure you're not partially ruled by a hyper-masculine homo elite, slomo?

Not me :wink
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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby tapitsbo » Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:46 am

Imagine a road war between the Wolves of Vinland and the Bohemian Grove.

SPLC and Alex Jones get to face off as judges.
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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby American Dream » Wed Dec 07, 2016 2:35 pm

https://godsandradicals.org/2016/12/07/ ... o-fascism/

With Enemies at the Gate

Image A Discussion Between Alexander Reid Ross and Shane Burley on Paganism and the Resistance to Fascism

SB: For people that are uninitiated, what role has paganism played in what we call the “broad fascist movement?” What importance has it had?

ARR: Historically, I think it has had quite an impact. You don’t look at Mussolini’s attitudes, his speeches in the in the late 1910s and early 1920s and see paganism. You just don’t. You see even some atheism, and a wholesale rejection of the church’s power. And, in a way, a sort of sacralized politics that is there to replace the power of the church and the state as we know it and transform it into a total entity.

It isn’t until Hitler’s party rises out of the great depression that paganism starts to influence the fascist movement, because Hitler’s background is in Guido von Liste and people who were recreating that kind of ethnic pagan narrative in the volkish movement and out of the ultra-nationalist tendencies in Germany at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. So it’s not intrinsic to fascism, but it did have a huge impact and it changed the game.

So today we find ourselves in the midst of all of these spiritual takes on fascism, and one of the strongest of them is paganism. More specifically Asatru or Odinism.

My question to you would then be, we talk a lot about Asatru and Odinism and we get to the exclusionary differentialism of it, but Else Christensen who created this new weird faith, racialist paganism, came out of the anarcho-syndicalist movement. She tried to sort of racialize anarcho-syndicalism with paganism, what is your take on that? Its so different today with ecology and paganism being the things we identify the most, but what about workerism and paganism?

SB: Well I think the first thing is it confronts the notion that fascism is synonymous with authoritarianism or with specific political choices. That is a narrative that was obscured by the Cold War and by free market “libertarianism” in general, which wants to position itself both as anti-Left and as anti-fascist.

What it also shows is that the center of those politics has always been race, and it’s always been a sense that if you stripped away social forms you would come to an innate inequality. That there’s something really baked into people, not just on a biological level, but in this case a spiritual level as well.

So with Elsie Christiansen, she held onto some anarcho-syndicalist ideas, but they were superficial in comparison to her underlying beliefs. She wanted ethnocentric tribal communities, ones that came out of a mythological version of the past. Maybe to recreate a Viking past that she believed to be true, which isn’t necessarily historically true.

It also speaks to the fact that anarcho-syndicalism was popular inside of revolutionary movements that were undefined. So anarcho-syndicalism itself is defined as anti-fascist, I don’t think that’s debatable, but that doesn’t mean that the people who came in constellation with it were universally anti-fascist. And today we see the same thing happening with National Anarchism because its synonymous with what Elsie Christiansen was talking about. It’s almost identical. But what happens is that people develop that idea after coming in contact with post-left anarchism, coming in contact with social anarchism, and coming in contact with social movements through things like Occupy, and then bringing in a right-wing populism or a right-wing understanding of the natural world. So it’s the same interaction [between left-wing surface politics and right-wing ideas] that we have today. Elsie Christiansen’s just happened to be uniquely focused on Odinism.

It also needs to be said that she was not a uniquely spiritual person. She didn’t necessarily see Odinism in the way that people see Christianity traditionally. She saw it specifically as an archetypal force to “save the white race.” And she thought that it was going to be an injection of a “warrior spirit,” and in that way it was useful more than it was true, in the metaphysical sense, though I don’t doubt that she grew to believe that it was metaphysically true, at least in the Jungian sense.

This is also true of Odinism broadly, maybe less true of people who use the term Asatru. For those that use the term Odinism or Wotanism it has always been much more about the effect a religion like that has rather than the actual spirituality itself.

AAR: Like the Church of the Creator.

SB: The Church of the Creator is a good example because not only does it not have a spiritual foundation, it doesn’t have a philosophical foundation either. It has no ideas. Its ideas are that white people are superior and must reign over others. Creativity is just a name that’s given to a very primitive white supremacist concept.

In the modern context, and when you start seeing these strange different strands of fascist politics like the New Right in Europe and the Alt Right in the U.S., what role does paganism continue to play in the extreme right?

AAR: For a while National Anarchism looked like something that was going to be a significant entryist trend. It sort of fizzled out a little bit. It was shut down. People like Spencer Sunshine and New York City Antifa did a really good job of putting the kibosh on their attempts, at least in New York, and publicizing why that was urgent. But you still have similar groups, like Jack Donovan’s group the Wolves of Vinland and the anti-Muslim Soldier of Odin, a sort of biker gang operation, and this group in Ukraine, the Misanthropic Division. These sort of formations springing up, sort of like biker gangs, pretty violent seeming, in a lot of ways “anti-civ” leaning. Drawing on a lot of those National Anarchist ideas.

Pan-secessionism is another great example. There is also the Asatru Folk Assembly, which seems to be holding numbers, though they may have been falling off since the recent controversy.

I don’t see it as leading, though. I don’t see Odinism or paganism as coming out in front of the new fascist movement. Part of that is the robust resistance within pagan groups to the steps that the AFA, especially, has taken in recent months, if not years, to clarify their stance on immigration and gender. That is sort of what it takes, recognizing where and how fascist tendencies within each of these milieu’s creeps up. Whether it’s Odinism or whether it is the ecology movement or whether it is the workers movement. It means identifying it and confronting it, using the internal truth of those milieus to isolate and push out the fascists so they can’t organize in them.

Can you talk a little bit about what the Left Hand Path is, what has been going on regarding Augustus Sol Invictus, and what your opinions on that are?

SB: So the Left Hand Path traditionally meant not being tied to conventional morality, and in that way it meant a sort of “selfishness” or “self-worship.” In a lot of ways it was associated with right-wing politics that were not necessarily racialized, but they were hierarchical and sometimes libertarian. So you see figures, a lot of which are kind of cartoonish like Anton Salvador LaVey, who writes these silly books that plagiarize other books like Might is Right. Its all about a will to power, its about gaining power.

With occult stuff it sometimes means gaining power through black magic, and not judging your spiritual morality on allegiance to a God since you, yourself, can be that God, in a lot of ways. And that’s not, I don’t think, dominant in occult or pagan circles. Traditionally, it seems like you come across a lot of people who have a strict Karmic set of ethics when it comes to those sort of things. This idea that we should put out what we want to get in, and the Left Hand Path is often really against that.

It needs to be said really clearly that 90% of Left Hand Path people would have nothing to do with those fascist politics. It’s very sexually libertine, so homophobic and transphobic politics have usually been out. As have Traditionalist gender roles, those are often gone.

But I think, someone like Augustus Sol Invictus is the logical ideological conclusion of these things. It makes perfect sense. His entire notion has been about regaining a sort of warrior power, one that takes power over others. Augustus Invictus’ actually spirituality is pan-European. What he believes is that different European pantheons of Gods are different names for the same Gods, but culturally interpreted. So he would like to return to something closer to pagan Rome. Which is something that people like Richard Spencer (Alt Right leader) probably have a fondness for too. Though I don’t think that they believe in literal pagan Gods in the way that August Invictus does.

So I think that those circles have that element, and after all his negative publicity he has been pretty much expelled from pagan circles. But there is also a reckoning inside of paganism, broadly. Its not just Heathenry or Left Hand Path.

Obviously, inside of Heathenry it’s happening. The Asatru Folk Assembly finally drew a line in the sand by saying that they were for “white children,” that they stand for traditional gender roles, and also showing support for the Soldiers of Odin. Asatru Alliance and the Odinic Rite, which is one of the largest Odinist specific groups, are all of the “folkish” camp, but every other Heathen group has admonished them, saying that Heathenry is for everybody. That’s happening inside Left Hand Path circles too. They’re having a reckoning.

It doesn’t mean that I don’t personally find parts of Left Hand Path stuff problematic. I always have. I think that there is a problematic element anytime your sense of ethnics is based on a “might is right” concept. I think that has what you see on a macro-modern scale in fascist movements.

It means that for those in pagan circles you have to look at the core ideas of why you are there, which is incredibly challenging. For Heathenry specifically, the entire theology, the philosophy that has been constructed to give it depth, has been done by racists. That work has been done, historically, was done by nationalists. It’s not true of Celtic paganism, Wicca, and a lot of other traditions. But for Reconstructionist Germanic paganism, the reason it was reconstructed was to embolden a national identity. It was reconstructed out of a romantic nationalism. That was its entire function for being, so it’s harder to decouple that, but absolutely not impossible.

There is a lot of other, even Traditionalist reasons, to join Heathenry that is not necessarily of that racist tradition. For example, start by looking at the use of archetypal Gods and decouple that from the older racial doctrines. What underlies this fascist interpretation of Heathenry was that archetypes were racial. So that Odin, and Thor, and Freyja were the racial ideas of the collective unconscious of Aryan people. But if you take away that notion and say no, the Gods themselves are archetypal spiritual concepts, but they aren’t unique to racial groups, and say instead they are unique to personalities, you have a concept that underlies a lot of Universalist Heathenry. That on its own is a real challenge to the folkish ideas that run underneath many of those more problem groups.

AAR: You could argue that in books like Man and His Symbols that Jung actually goes in that Universalist direction rather than in a racial one.

SB: Modern Jungianism is much more indebted to things like feminist Goddess worship. Its walked away from those racial ideas, because the racial science that inspired them has been completely discredited. And so has most of these racist spiritual ideas, they have not proven justifiable.

Even for anti-racist pagans, one of the things that drive it is a quest for pre-modern folkways. For a lot of people the idea of centering on a tradition that you have a history with because you have a history with it has some problematic associations. Eclectic paganism that takes pieces from non-white cultures is also often identified as problematic for its cultural appropriation. What answers do you have for people who are on this search and both believe that these spiritualties are not rooted in their genetics and hold critiques of cultural appropriation?

AAR: That’s a good question. It goes back to me personally, and I’ve always hung out with people that are very spiritual, and I’ve always been close to people with these ideas, but I’ve always been agnostic. An agnostic leaning atheist, or an atheist leaning agnostic. So, it’s difficult for me to provide advice to other people about it since I have such a different association with spirituality.

I do think that in my experience, the people I have been able to have affinity with, have been people who have generally opened up their identity and beliefs to all different kinds of people.

On the cultural appropriations side of things, the most important thing is to have a lot of respect for other cultures’ autonomy and sovereignty. In the 19th Century, the “spiritual awakening,” a lot of that happened because of colonialism. They were bringing in new spiritual ideas from areas that had been colonized. So there was an influx of Native shamanic ideas imported from America or Brazil. These Hindi ideas from India and the subcontinent, which was an English colony at the time. The fascination with African masks, and other spiritual pieces that were seen as mystical oddities. So this sort of eclectic fascination was, in a way, a result of the parasitic spirit of colonial Europe in the late 19th century.

People like Renee Guenon, the far-right Traditionalist thinker, tried to say, “No, what we’re saying is ‘modernism’ isn’t that cool and we think Sufism is really interesting. And Islam is really interesting.” Back then it was much more open than it is today, for a variety of reasons.

Of course, their assessments of these things were very partial, very Orientalist. They were trying to make an effort to open up the modern sensibilities of Europe to other ideas that could, in some ways, be more creative. Or an “exit strategy” to the factory system or scientific thinking that was, at the time, very racist. And remains, in many ways, innately white supremacist.

So its possible to have this sort of open minded respect for other spiritualties, and how, in some ways, when you read about them they are sort of integrated into your life. That is what happens when you read a book. That is what happens when you learn about different traditions. It’s easy to go way too far and to all of a sudden think that you’re some kind of Druidic or Dervish wonder. And a lot of that is just based on racist interpretations of people one never encounters. So I think the advice I would have would be to keep an open mind in regard to other spiritual practices, without taking things too far and adopting these practices as if they were one’s own, when in fact the relationship is just not there. And all the baggage of white supremacy and privilege weighs down the interpretation.

A lot of that goes back to the big palingenisis word, which I think you were sort of breaking the issue down to. This desire to go back to a pre or post-modern period, a return to something that happened before and could re-manifest as a renaissance or a reawakening for all people. I wonder, to what extent, you see paganism in things like the bioregionalist movement or in various Traditionalist sects.

My question is to what extent does paganism play a role in the modern fascist movement? How are those two things the same, and how are they different?

SB: On the one hand, it’s artificial because Traditionalism, in the Evolian sense, rejected neo-paganism. It rejected it completely because it lacked the chain of initiation and thought that traditions could only be “true” if they could be traced back. So the only major modern pagan traditions that they thought were valid were Hinduism and Shinto, and various constellations and other smaller religions. Shinto itself had a uniquely Japanese context, but they thought Hinduism descended from an ancient, Indo-Aryan white tribe. So they thought that Hinduism was a white, ethnic religion.

Traditionally, while Evola might have venerated European paganism, he thought it was useless nature worship.

AAR: Right. Anarchic, in fact.

SB: So its not Traditionalist in any way. There’s an irony about this when you look at some of these journals that either claim Heathenry or claim Traditionalism. TYR is a good example. Michael Moynihan edits it, and it describes itself as a “journal of radical Traditionalism.” Colin Cleary, who wrote The Gods Who Summon and What is a Rune?, published by the white nationalist publishing house Counter-Currents, also edits it. Those two books are very complicated studies of heathenry on the one hand, and really complicated looks at people like Heidegger on the other. It gives the sense of depth when it comes to these traditions, relaying the idea that Heathenry is not just symbolism but instead has a deep underlying philosophy.

But what you see in places like Tyr are discussions about Evola, and specifically republishing of Evola, and then, in the very next article, discussions on what it means to be an Odinist. These two ideas are in very clear contradiction with each other, since Evola’s Traditionalism excluded heathenry. What is not in contradiction, however, is the racism implicit in both ideas. So that is where they are able to find a common idea, it is not in the Heathenry or in the Traditionalism. That’s the defining quality of journals like Tyr; it’s the reactionary politics and social views. This is true of the spirituality of the whole New Right, or Alt Right as it were today in America.

So Traditionalism is a great sounding label they use, and they can point to really big and complicated books that cite it as a key influence, but many of the people using the term are not Traditionalists in any way that you would normally understand it (Not that there is anything to be proud of there anyway.).

So, the people who run the Traditionalist Workers Party are both Orthodox Christians as well as Presbyterians. These have been the most public religious affiliations mentioned, though there may be others. They have also had some involvement by National Anarchist, which is part of their conscious recruitment of skinheads, many of which are identifying as Odinists or with Asatru. Matthew Heimbach, the leader of the Traditionalist Workers Party and the Traditionalist Youth Network, had a lot of respect for those beliefs (even though he is an Orthodox Christian) because he sees them as folkish religions. He disagrees, he thinks that Christ is for everyone, but he understands and respects the attempt of moving towards a pre-modern folkway. What he likes to say is that “modernity ruins everything,” and will ruin your paganism too.

So, one thing that you said is that Odinism is not going to be out front of the Alt Right or new fascist movement, but I think that it will be behind it. I no longer think that there is going to be a dominant faction of religious pagans, but I think it will always be the clothing that they choose to wear. It’s what they want to bring into their holiday celebrations. It’s in the music they prefer, genres like neofolk. There are even neofolk bands playing at the National Policy Institute conference the last couple of years. What they talk about a lot if that they want to reclaim those traditions even if they don’t believe in it religiously. They think that it represents an authentic, European theological and philosophical rebirth.

So in that way they are traditional pagans, because a large part of the modern pagan movement has used paganism as a tool to reclaim things that are “para-spiritual.” That may be true of any religion, a lot of people return to traditional Christianity because they want a certain type of family or memory about their past. A lot of people turn to paganism because of the desire for connection, maybe with nature and history. So its not disingenuous in any way, but what many of the nationalists are now starting to say that they are not really religious pagans but paganism is how I think of myself in an identitarian way.

That’s true of the European New Right as well. What Alain de Benoist was arguing in On Being a Pagan was not arguing that we should literally believe in them, but that they were archetypes for European people. Someone like Stephen McNallen, on the other hand, would agree with his analysis of where these Gods come from, but also believes that they are literally true.

AAR: But they are sort of a metaphor. A sort of story that we tell ourselves.

SB: And that is a sort of Evolian concept as well, the beliefs that myths were true only in a sense. That’s why in his anti-Semitism he knew that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was a fabrication, but he said it didn’t matter because it was a myth that proved itself true.

AAR: And that is perhaps why people like Moynihan, or Troy Southgate, can claim Evola and paganism. While the Traditionalism and the paganism are incommensurate, in some ways paganism becomes one of those mytho-poetic things that can reinforce Traditionalism even though they are at odds.

SB: It is kind of like the left-right synthesis, because they are at odds, but they are both “anti-imperial” or have other types of surface level agreement. They are both, theoretically, “against the modern world.”

Satanism is a great example too. What does Satanism, in any way, have in common with Asatru? Or have in common with Rene Guenon’s understanding of Sufism? Absolutely nothing. There is no correlation, whatsoever, other than maybe a valoration of strength.

AAR: And people like Anton LaVey saying that Odinism was a Satanic idea.

SB: It’s more of a cultural force to say, “we reject your world.” It’s more of a cross-religious alliance, really. And then when those spiritual ideas mingle enough they end up having ideological crossover, because they develop theory together. Whenever people take spiritual ideas like this seriously, it develops a body of philosophy that pairs with it and progresses on and further develops. No matter what the intentions are, when these different spiritual paths mingle enough they begin to meld together, in some ways.

AAR: Isn’t there an idea that Satanism itself is a sort of paganism? That Satan himself was ushered into the Christian religion later on through the church, not so much through the scriptures, as this Pan God. This Demi God. Cloven hooves, horns, the “God of fun.”

SB: It goes back to this anti-Semitic caricature that has come back into resurgence. It is sort of a Gnostic idea that Yahweh, the Jewish God, was a sort of demon. That is where the Alt Right joke of the Jewish “Volcano God” comes from. It’s close to the ideas of Esoteric Hitlerism and Miguel Serrano that the Jewish God is a demiurgic demon that has taken over the Earth. It was the Jewish ethnic God who has taken over, and dethroned, all other Gods, so whites must reclaim their ethnic Gods to fight their demonic, lesser God. Though a few probably believe that narrative literally true, it is often believed on the radical right as metaphorically true. And a lot of the Alt Right seems to believe that metaphorically, that the Jewish religion is evil and their religious values have basically colonized the rest of the world and made whites work against their interests, which were conscious when they were manifested in their Nordic ethnic Gods. This drives from really deep Nazi anti-Semitism that says that the power for Jews to destroy Western man comes deep in their race and religion.

AAR: Sure, it was even Jared Taylor who went on one of those podcasts to say that he thought there was a case to be made that the Jew had a plan to take down Western Civilization, and that it should be looked into and taken seriously.

SB: Because Christianity has waned on the far right, there is this idea that Christianity is a Jewish disease has permeated their ranks. The alternative to that would then be a white ethnic religion. In that sensibility, the image of Lucifer as a “God insulted” or a deity that has been lied about by Judeo-Christianity is a Gnostic idea because it is reinterpreting the scriptures to mean its opposite. There is theistic Satanist groups that do believe that, like The Order of Nine Angels and the Joy of Satan, which believe something similar. It also has an underlying idea that Jewish religion made universal through Christianity tells people to behave altruistically or with forgiveness when instead we should be exerting force to destroy our enemies to create a white empire. That is one of the key aspects of Satanic fascism, which is about rejecting Jewish ideas of compassion and reclaiming a warrior spirit.

AAR: How should pagans interact with this tacit theme of “the Judeo-Christian menace,” rationalism, legalism, etc? These different sorts of catchwords ascribed to Judeo-Christian ideas, as if there is a pure lineage of oppression from Christianity that has to be overcome. How can pagans interact with some of the anti-Semitic themes that are often in this discourse of rejecting Christianity’s modern influence?

SB: I think if paganism is a sort of “protest vote” for you, then it might be important to look at what the protest vote is against. There are these workshops that I have seen going around with names like “Decolonizing Whiteness,” which are problematic in some ways, but also come from a real place of Christianity’s colonial history in Europe as well as the rest of the world. Take Mjonir, the Thor’s hammer pendant, which became really cemented in heathen culture after Christianity was cemented in the Nordic world, barring Christians from trading with heathens. It was then that Mjornir was used by Vikings to show allegiance to the Old Gods rather than this new imperial religion. There’s an impulse now to maintain that narrative, a resistance to Christianity’s colonizing effect.

What often happens, however, is that some people will use that idea as a tool to say “We are victims imperialist colonialism too, just like people of color.” And that is a factually untrue idea. It doesn’t’ mean that there wasn’t an imperialist history of Christianity in Europe, but it does not have a comparable history and ongoing legacy that white colonialism has in the global South.

What paganism can act as, for some, is a form of spirituality that is just untainted. A lot of people discuss the switching to Yule celebrations instead of Christmas because when they were growing up Christmas was a time when you went to a scary church with violent rhetoric with abusive family members. That was a very unhappy holiday. But we still want a Winter holiday, and since paganism is such a reconstructed religion, it is often people reconstructing something for themselves that is unique to their needs and condition that may be without some of the baggage of their earlier experiences of religion. Also having something that feels old can be important and therapeutic.

So having a clear idea of what you are doing and why can help to avoid that problematic dimension. If the problem with Christianity is that it is Judaic in origin, or that it is universalist or destructive to nations, then it is a problem no matter what religion it is tied to. That is true of Atheism as well (New Atheism especially). What drives a lot of those far right critiques of Christianity is that the religion is problematic because of its own internal logic, a criticism that I think is patently untrue.

Also, whether or not the value systems implicit in a person’s paganism are shared with the more questionable avenues is worth exploring. Sometimes I will walk into a pagan or New Age shop, and you will see some Asatru items, and a lot of Wiccan stuff, and various Welsh, Celtic, and other items. And then all of a sudden you will see a Baphomet, or stuff for the Temple of Set. The ideological, philosophical, and spiritual core of those religions could not be more different. It would be like having statues to Satan inside of a Christian bookshop because Christians believe in Satan. We shouldn’t revel in those contradictions anymore, we should be spiritually consistent. We reject “Might is Right” logic seen in a lot of left-hand path religions. If you have a warrior dimension in your pagan spirituality and that means that it is a ferocious spirit against the challenges of life, then great. But that is worlds away from a warrior spirit whose manifestation is domination over others, yet both spiritual philosophies are often represented inside of pagan spaces since they have similar iconography and myths. I think drawing those lines and saying “we believe this, but we do not believe that” is the kind of consistency that really blocks out problematic elements.

AAR: Yeah, for example, indigenous warrior societies in North America who are resisting oil pipelines. They are going up against police in very serious ways, though blockades, and other actions. It can be associated with a kind of warrior identity, but it is not an authoritarian and hierarchical warrior character that takes their power on top of the peasantry. Instead with fascist warrior spiritual image, the kind that Evola invoked regularly, it is about fighting to enforce a caste structure of the wolves over the sheep.

It was very baked into the Years of Lead in the 1970s, where Evolian terrorists were going around bombing civilian sites, infrastructure and what not, in order to act out this kind of fantasy of the warrior spirit. What would later become known as the “political soldier.” And it is really in that realm that Roberto Fiore from Terza Posizione went up to England to escape charges for bombing the Bologne train station, which was the worst act of terrorism during the Years of Lead. I think they killed over 80 people. In England he was sheltered by Michael Walter of the National Front, with Patrick Harrington and Nick Griffin (former leader of the British National Party) they formed the Political Soldier faction of the National Front. This later became known as the Official National Front, a sort of splinter group. They were the ones who were recruiting the skinheads.

Through that time period, the mid to late 1980s, Blood and Honor came about, the racist skinhead movement was shipped from England to German and France and the United States. That’s why even white nationalist skinheads have these weird crossover spiritualties between Odinism, Creativity, and hard line Christianity. The warrior culture was for them a tool to reclaim their belief that they were the authority in an oppressive social structure.

SB: What this conversation brings me back to the Wolves of Vinland. They have gotten a lot of attention in pagan circles because they have an evolving tradition; they define their own specific spirituality. A lot of Heathens get criticizes for their reconstructionist use of ancient rituals, which some critics like to call “reenactments.” The Wolves of Vinland instead try to do their own thing, like the funeral to Baldur they hold every year where they ritualistically set a wooden boat on fire. It is a unique tradition, they develop the rituals themselves, and they have their own evolving esoteric understanding of what they call “tribal spirituality.” They often discuss it as an effort to embody the “Germanic hero aesthetic.” They use the Gods in a way that secularly would be a sort of inspiration, but in a spiritual sense it would be a type of “becoming.” Through the rituals and folkways they hope to internalize the spirit of Odin, which is the name for this kind of Germanic spirit based on the acquisition of knowledge and the discovery of power.

I think that that idea, when decoupled from its obviously problematic aspects, is actually one that is very striking and attractive in pagan circles. On the one hand, it is a very well thought out form of mysticism, and it provides a very fresh reading of the lore. So when we talk about the warrior culture, embodying the spirits of those Gods and stories does not have to be done in this oppressive way and can instead be spun into a positive, and maybe even revolutionary, context.

You see in paths like the Reclaiming Tradition, the effort to take stories about care and community, especially between women, the inspiration that you live out in your own life. In a way its unquestionably true since it is putting a name, in this case Gods or spirits, on a quality that is very much alive in people’s communities. It gives people an image to meditate on, to decide they want to bring it into their own life. In that way it can be incredibly empowering, it can be the opposite of the way the far right attempts to co-opt those myths.

You see that with Circle Ansuz, the anarchist Heathen collective that was very big on taking the Viking warrior culture and using it to fight for a just community. It was a war against reactionary forces, a war against inequality and fascism. That kind of “warlike feature” was not baked in implicit violence and oppression, and instead seems like the concept of “spiritual warfare,” the war we have in our lives to become the better version of ourselves.

That’s not unique to paganism either; you see it in a lot of left-wing Christianities. There, the concept of salvation is really critical to overcoming oppression, on the one hand, but also overcoming yourself, and finding the best way to live your life.[/img][/img-right] A Discussion Between Alexander Reid Ross and Shane Burley on Paganism and the Resistance to Fascism

SB: For people that are uninitiated, what role has paganism played in what we call the “broad fascist movement?” What importance has it had?

ARR: Historically, I think it has had quite an impact. You don’t look at Mussolini’s attitudes, his speeches in the in the late 1910s and early 1920s and see paganism. You just don’t. You see even some atheism, and a wholesale rejection of the church’s power. And, in a way, a sort of sacralized politics that is there to replace the power of the church and the state as we know it and transform it into a total entity.

It isn’t until Hitler’s party rises out of the great depression that paganism starts to influence the fascist movement, because Hitler’s background is in Guido von Liste and people who were recreating that kind of ethnic pagan narrative in the volkish movement and out of the ultra-nationalist tendencies in Germany at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. So it’s not intrinsic to fascism, but it did have a huge impact and it changed the game.

So today we find ourselves in the midst of all of these spiritual takes on fascism, and one of the strongest of them is paganism. More specifically Asatru or Odinism.

My question to you would then be, we talk a lot about Asatru and Odinism and we get to the exclusionary differentialism of it, but Else Christensen who created this new weird faith, racialist paganism, came out of the anarcho-syndicalist movement. She tried to sort of racialize anarcho-syndicalism with paganism, what is your take on that? Its so different today with ecology and paganism being the things we identify the most, but what about workerism and paganism?

SB: Well I think the first thing is it confronts the notion that fascism is synonymous with authoritarianism or with specific political choices. That is a narrative that was obscured by the Cold War and by free market “libertarianism” in general, which wants to position itself both as anti-Left and as anti-fascist.

What it also shows is that the center of those politics has always been race, and it’s always been a sense that if you stripped away social forms you would come to an innate inequality. That there’s something really baked into people, not just on a biological level, but in this case a spiritual level as well.

So with Elsie Christiansen, she held onto some anarcho-syndicalist ideas, but they were superficial in comparison to her underlying beliefs. She wanted ethnocentric tribal communities, ones that came out of a mythological version of the past. Maybe to recreate a Viking past that she believed to be true, which isn’t necessarily historically true.

It also speaks to the fact that anarcho-syndicalism was popular inside of revolutionary movements that were undefined. So anarcho-syndicalism itself is defined as anti-fascist, I don’t think that’s debatable, but that doesn’t mean that the people who came in constellation with it were universally anti-fascist. And today we see the same thing happening with National Anarchism because its synonymous with what Elsie Christiansen was talking about. It’s almost identical. But what happens is that people develop that idea after coming in contact with post-left anarchism, coming in contact with social anarchism, and coming in contact with social movements through things like Occupy, and then bringing in a right-wing populism or a right-wing understanding of the natural world. So it’s the same interaction [between left-wing surface politics and right-wing ideas] that we have today. Elsie Christiansen’s just happened to be uniquely focused on Odinism.

It also needs to be said that she was not a uniquely spiritual person. She didn’t necessarily see Odinism in the way that people see Christianity traditionally. She saw it specifically as an archetypal force to “save the white race.” And she thought that it was going to be an injection of a “warrior spirit,” and in that way it was useful more than it was true, in the metaphysical sense, though I don’t doubt that she grew to believe that it was metaphysically true, at least in the Jungian sense.

This is also true of Odinism broadly, maybe less true of people who use the term Asatru. For those that use the term Odinism or Wotanism it has always been much more about the effect a religion like that has rather than the actual spirituality itself.

AAR: Like the Church of the Creator.

SB: The Church of the Creator is a good example because not only does it not have a spiritual foundation, it doesn’t have a philosophical foundation either. It has no ideas. Its ideas are that white people are superior and must reign over others. Creativity is just a name that’s given to a very primitive white supremacist concept.

In the modern context, and when you start seeing these strange different strands of fascist politics like the New Right in Europe and the Alt Right in the U.S., what role does paganism continue to play in the extreme right?

AAR: For a while National Anarchism looked like something that was going to be a significant entryist trend. It sort of fizzled out a little bit. It was shut down. People like Spencer Sunshine and New York City Antifa did a really good job of putting the kibosh on their attempts, at least in New York, and publicizing why that was urgent. But you still have similar groups, like Jack Donovan’s group the Wolves of Vinland and the anti-Muslim Soldier of Odin, a sort of biker gang operation, and this group in Ukraine, the Misanthropic Division. These sort of formations springing up, sort of like biker gangs, pretty violent seeming, in a lot of ways “anti-civ” leaning. Drawing on a lot of those National Anarchist ideas.

Pan-secessionism is another great example. There is also the Asatru Folk Assembly, which seems to be holding numbers, though they may have been falling off since the recent controversy.

I don’t see it as leading, though. I don’t see Odinism or paganism as coming out in front of the new fascist movement. Part of that is the robust resistance within pagan groups to the steps that the AFA, especially, has taken in recent months, if not years, to clarify their stance on immigration and gender. That is sort of what it takes, recognizing where and how fascist tendencies within each of these milieu’s creeps up. Whether it’s Odinism or whether it is the ecology movement or whether it is the workers movement. It means identifying it and confronting it, using the internal truth of those milieus to isolate and push out the fascists so they can’t organize in them.

Can you talk a little bit about what the Left Hand Path is, what has been going on regarding Augustus Sol Invictus, and what your opinions on that are?

SB: So the Left Hand Path traditionally meant not being tied to conventional morality, and in that way it meant a sort of “selfishness” or “self-worship.” In a lot of ways it was associated with right-wing politics that were not necessarily racialized, but they were hierarchical and sometimes libertarian. So you see figures, a lot of which are kind of cartoonish like Anton Salvador LaVey, who writes these silly books that plagiarize other books like Might is Right. Its all about a will to power, its about gaining power.

With occult stuff it sometimes means gaining power through black magic, and not judging your spiritual morality on allegiance to a God since you, yourself, can be that God, in a lot of ways. And that’s not, I don’t think, dominant in occult or pagan circles. Traditionally, it seems like you come across a lot of people who have a strict Karmic set of ethics when it comes to those sort of things. This idea that we should put out what we want to get in, and the Left Hand Path is often really against that.

It needs to be said really clearly that 90% of Left Hand Path people would have nothing to do with those fascist politics. It’s very sexually libertine, so homophobic and transphobic politics have usually been out. As have Traditionalist gender roles, those are often gone.

But I think, someone like Augustus Sol Invictus is the logical ideological conclusion of these things. It makes perfect sense. His entire notion has been about regaining a sort of warrior power, one that takes power over others. Augustus Invictus’ actually spirituality is pan-European. What he believes is that different European pantheons of Gods are different names for the same Gods, but culturally interpreted. So he would like to return to something closer to pagan Rome. Which is something that people like Richard Spencer (Alt Right leader) probably have a fondness for too. Though I don’t think that they believe in literal pagan Gods in the way that August Invictus does.

So I think that those circles have that element, and after all his negative publicity he has been pretty much expelled from pagan circles. But there is also a reckoning inside of paganism, broadly. Its not just Heathenry or Left Hand Path.

Obviously, inside of Heathenry it’s happening. The Asatru Folk Assembly finally drew a line in the sand by saying that they were for “white children,” that they stand for traditional gender roles, and also showing support for the Soldiers of Odin. Asatru Alliance and the Odinic Rite, which is one of the largest Odinist specific groups, are all of the “folkish” camp, but every other Heathen group has admonished them, saying that Heathenry is for everybody. That’s happening inside Left Hand Path circles too. They’re having a reckoning.

It doesn’t mean that I don’t personally find parts of Left Hand Path stuff problematic. I always have. I think that there is a problematic element anytime your sense of ethnics is based on a “might is right” concept. I think that has what you see on a macro-modern scale in fascist movements.

It means that for those in pagan circles you have to look at the core ideas of why you are there, which is incredibly challenging. For Heathenry specifically, the entire theology, the philosophy that has been constructed to give it depth, has been done by racists. That work has been done, historically, was done by nationalists. It’s not true of Celtic paganism, Wicca, and a lot of other traditions. But for Reconstructionist Germanic paganism, the reason it was reconstructed was to embolden a national identity. It was reconstructed out of a romantic nationalism. That was its entire function for being, so it’s harder to decouple that, but absolutely not impossible.

There is a lot of other, even Traditionalist reasons, to join Heathenry that is not necessarily of that racist tradition. For example, start by looking at the use of archetypal Gods and decouple that from the older racial doctrines. What underlies this fascist interpretation of Heathenry was that archetypes were racial. So that Odin, and Thor, and Freyja were the racial ideas of the collective unconscious of Aryan people. But if you take away that notion and say no, the Gods themselves are archetypal spiritual concepts, but they aren’t unique to racial groups, and say instead they are unique to personalities, you have a concept that underlies a lot of Universalist Heathenry. That on its own is a real challenge to the folkish ideas that run underneath many of those more problem groups.

AAR: You could argue that in books like Man and His Symbols that Jung actually goes in that Universalist direction rather than in a racial one.

SB: Modern Jungianism is much more indebted to things like feminist Goddess worship. Its walked away from those racial ideas, because the racial science that inspired them has been completely discredited. And so has most of these racist spiritual ideas, they have not proven justifiable.

Even for anti-racist pagans, one of the things that drive it is a quest for pre-modern folkways. For a lot of people the idea of centering on a tradition that you have a history with because you have a history with it has some problematic associations. Eclectic paganism that takes pieces from non-white cultures is also often identified as problematic for its cultural appropriation. What answers do you have for people who are on this search and both believe that these spiritualties are not rooted in their genetics and hold critiques of cultural appropriation?

AAR: That’s a good question. It goes back to me personally, and I’ve always hung out with people that are very spiritual, and I’ve always been close to people with these ideas, but I’ve always been agnostic. An agnostic leaning atheist, or an atheist leaning agnostic. So, it’s difficult for me to provide advice to other people about it since I have such a different association with spirituality.

I do think that in my experience, the people I have been able to have affinity with, have been people who have generally opened up their identity and beliefs to all different kinds of people.

On the cultural appropriations side of things, the most important thing is to have a lot of respect for other cultures’ autonomy and sovereignty. In the 19th Century, the “spiritual awakening,” a lot of that happened because of colonialism. They were bringing in new spiritual ideas from areas that had been colonized. So there was an influx of Native shamanic ideas imported from America or Brazil. These Hindi ideas from India and the subcontinent, which was an English colony at the time. The fascination with African masks, and other spiritual pieces that were seen as mystical oddities. So this sort of eclectic fascination was, in a way, a result of the parasitic spirit of colonial Europe in the late 19th century.

People like Renee Guenon, the far-right Traditionalist thinker, tried to say, “No, what we’re saying is ‘modernism’ isn’t that cool and we think Sufism is really interesting. And Islam is really interesting.” Back then it was much more open than it is today, for a variety of reasons.

Of course, their assessments of these things were very partial, very Orientalist. They were trying to make an effort to open up the modern sensibilities of Europe to other ideas that could, in some ways, be more creative. Or an “exit strategy” to the factory system or scientific thinking that was, at the time, very racist. And remains, in many ways, innately white supremacist.

So its possible to have this sort of open minded respect for other spiritualties, and how, in some ways, when you read about them they are sort of integrated into your life. That is what happens when you read a book. That is what happens when you learn about different traditions. It’s easy to go way too far and to all of a sudden think that you’re some kind of Druidic or Dervish wonder. And a lot of that is just based on racist interpretations of people one never encounters. So I think the advice I would have would be to keep an open mind in regard to other spiritual practices, without taking things too far and adopting these practices as if they were one’s own, when in fact the relationship is just not there. And all the baggage of white supremacy and privilege weighs down the interpretation.

A lot of that goes back to the big palingenisis word, which I think you were sort of breaking the issue down to. This desire to go back to a pre or post-modern period, a return to something that happened before and could re-manifest as a renaissance or a reawakening for all people. I wonder, to what extent, you see paganism in things like the bioregionalist movement or in various Traditionalist sects.

My question is to what extent does paganism play a role in the modern fascist movement? How are those two things the same, and how are they different?

SB: On the one hand, it’s artificial because Traditionalism, in the Evolian sense, rejected neo-paganism. It rejected it completely because it lacked the chain of initiation and thought that traditions could only be “true” if they could be traced back. So the only major modern pagan traditions that they thought were valid were Hinduism and Shinto, and various constellations and other smaller religions. Shinto itself had a uniquely Japanese context, but they thought Hinduism descended from an ancient, Indo-Aryan white tribe. So they thought that Hinduism was a white, ethnic religion.

Traditionally, while Evola might have venerated European paganism, he thought it was useless nature worship.

AAR: Right. Anarchic, in fact.

SB: So its not Traditionalist in any way. There’s an irony about this when you look at some of these journals that either claim Heathenry or claim Traditionalism. TYR is a good example. Michael Moynihan edits it, and it describes itself as a “journal of radical Traditionalism.” Colin Cleary, who wrote The Gods Who Summon and What is a Rune?, published by the white nationalist publishing house Counter-Currents, also edits it. Those two books are very complicated studies of heathenry on the one hand, and really complicated looks at people like Heidegger on the other. It gives the sense of depth when it comes to these traditions, relaying the idea that Heathenry is not just symbolism but instead has a deep underlying philosophy.

But what you see in places like Tyr are discussions about Evola, and specifically republishing of Evola, and then, in the very next article, discussions on what it means to be an Odinist. These two ideas are in very clear contradiction with each other, since Evola’s Traditionalism excluded heathenry. What is not in contradiction, however, is the racism implicit in both ideas. So that is where they are able to find a common idea, it is not in the Heathenry or in the Traditionalism. That’s the defining quality of journals like Tyr; it’s the reactionary politics and social views. This is true of the spirituality of the whole New Right, or Alt Right as it were today in America.

So Traditionalism is a great sounding label they use, and they can point to really big and complicated books that cite it as a key influence, but many of the people using the term are not Traditionalists in any way that you would normally understand it (Not that there is anything to be proud of there anyway.).

So, the people who run the Traditionalist Workers Party are both Orthodox Christians as well as Presbyterians. These have been the most public religious affiliations mentioned, though there may be others. They have also had some involvement by National Anarchist, which is part of their conscious recruitment of skinheads, many of which are identifying as Odinists or with Asatru. Matthew Heimbach, the leader of the Traditionalist Workers Party and the Traditionalist Youth Network, had a lot of respect for those beliefs (even though he is an Orthodox Christian) because he sees them as folkish religions. He disagrees, he thinks that Christ is for everyone, but he understands and respects the attempt of moving towards a pre-modern folkway. What he likes to say is that “modernity ruins everything,” and will ruin your paganism too.

So, one thing that you said is that Odinism is not going to be out front of the Alt Right or new fascist movement, but I think that it will be behind it. I no longer think that there is going to be a dominant faction of religious pagans, but I think it will always be the clothing that they choose to wear. It’s what they want to bring into their holiday celebrations. It’s in the music they prefer, genres like neofolk. There are even neofolk bands playing at the National Policy Institute conference the last couple of years. What they talk about a lot if that they want to reclaim those traditions even if they don’t believe in it religiously. They think that it represents an authentic, European theological and philosophical rebirth.

So in that way they are traditional pagans, because a large part of the modern pagan movement has used paganism as a tool to reclaim things that are “para-spiritual.” That may be true of any religion, a lot of people return to traditional Christianity because they want a certain type of family or memory about their past. A lot of people turn to paganism because of the desire for connection, maybe with nature and history. So its not disingenuous in any way, but what many of the nationalists are now starting to say that they are not really religious pagans but paganism is how I think of myself in an identitarian way.

That’s true of the European New Right as well. What Alain de Benoist was arguing in On Being a Pagan was not arguing that we should literally believe in them, but that they were archetypes for European people. Someone like Stephen McNallen, on the other hand, would agree with his analysis of where these Gods come from, but also believes that they are literally true.

AAR: But they are sort of a metaphor. A sort of story that we tell ourselves.

SB: And that is a sort of Evolian concept as well, the beliefs that myths were true only in a sense. That’s why in his anti-Semitism he knew that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was a fabrication, but he said it didn’t matter because it was a myth that proved itself true.

AAR: And that is perhaps why people like Moynihan, or Troy Southgate, can claim Evola and paganism. While the Traditionalism and the paganism are incommensurate, in some ways paganism becomes one of those mytho-poetic things that can reinforce Traditionalism even though they are at odds.

SB: It is kind of like the left-right synthesis, because they are at odds, but they are both “anti-imperial” or have other types of surface level agreement. They are both, theoretically, “against the modern world.”

Satanism is a great example too. What does Satanism, in any way, have in common with Asatru? Or have in common with Rene Guenon’s understanding of Sufism? Absolutely nothing. There is no correlation, whatsoever, other than maybe a valoration of strength.

AAR: And people like Anton LaVey saying that Odinism was a Satanic idea.

SB: It’s more of a cultural force to say, “we reject your world.” It’s more of a cross-religious alliance, really. And then when those spiritual ideas mingle enough they end up having ideological crossover, because they develop theory together. Whenever people take spiritual ideas like this seriously, it develops a body of philosophy that pairs with it and progresses on and further develops. No matter what the intentions are, when these different spiritual paths mingle enough they begin to meld together, in some ways.

AAR: Isn’t there an idea that Satanism itself is a sort of paganism? That Satan himself was ushered into the Christian religion later on through the church, not so much through the scriptures, as this Pan God. This Demi God. Cloven hooves, horns, the “God of fun.”

SB: It goes back to this anti-Semitic caricature that has come back into resurgence. It is sort of a Gnostic idea that Yahweh, the Jewish God, was a sort of demon. That is where the Alt Right joke of the Jewish “Volcano God” comes from. It’s close to the ideas of Esoteric Hitlerism and Miguel Serrano that the Jewish God is a demiurgic demon that has taken over the Earth. It was the Jewish ethnic God who has taken over, and dethroned, all other Gods, so whites must reclaim their ethnic Gods to fight their demonic, lesser God. Though a few probably believe that narrative literally true, it is often believed on the radical right as metaphorically true. And a lot of the Alt Right seems to believe that metaphorically, that the Jewish religion is evil and their religious values have basically colonized the rest of the world and made whites work against their interests, which were conscious when they were manifested in their Nordic ethnic Gods. This drives from really deep Nazi anti-Semitism that says that the power for Jews to destroy Western man comes deep in their race and religion.

AAR: Sure, it was even Jared Taylor who went on one of those podcasts to say that he thought there was a case to be made that the Jew had a plan to take down Western Civilization, and that it should be looked into and taken seriously.

SB: Because Christianity has waned on the far right, there is this idea that Christianity is a Jewish disease has permeated their ranks. The alternative to that would then be a white ethnic religion. In that sensibility, the image of Lucifer as a “God insulted” or a deity that has been lied about by Judeo-Christianity is a Gnostic idea because it is reinterpreting the scriptures to mean its opposite. There is theistic Satanist groups that do believe that, like The Order of Nine Angels and the Joy of Satan, which believe something similar. It also has an underlying idea that Jewish religion made universal through Christianity tells people to behave altruistically or with forgiveness when instead we should be exerting force to destroy our enemies to create a white empire. That is one of the key aspects of Satanic fascism, which is about rejecting Jewish ideas of compassion and reclaiming a warrior spirit.

AAR: How should pagans interact with this tacit theme of “the Judeo-Christian menace,” rationalism, legalism, etc? These different sorts of catchwords ascribed to Judeo-Christian ideas, as if there is a pure lineage of oppression from Christianity that has to be overcome. How can pagans interact with some of the anti-Semitic themes that are often in this discourse of rejecting Christianity’s modern influence?

SB: I think if paganism is a sort of “protest vote” for you, then it might be important to look at what the protest vote is against. There are these workshops that I have seen going around with names like “Decolonizing Whiteness,” which are problematic in some ways, but also come from a real place of Christianity’s colonial history in Europe as well as the rest of the world. Take Mjonir, the Thor’s hammer pendant, which became really cemented in heathen culture after Christianity was cemented in the Nordic world, barring Christians from trading with heathens. It was then that Mjornir was used by Vikings to show allegiance to the Old Gods rather than this new imperial religion. There’s an impulse now to maintain that narrative, a resistance to Christianity’s colonizing effect.

What often happens, however, is that some people will use that idea as a tool to say “We are victims imperialist colonialism too, just like people of color.” And that is a factually untrue idea. It doesn’t’ mean that there wasn’t an imperialist history of Christianity in Europe, but it does not have a comparable history and ongoing legacy that white colonialism has in the global South.

What paganism can act as, for some, is a form of spirituality that is just untainted. A lot of people discuss the switching to Yule celebrations instead of Christmas because when they were growing up Christmas was a time when you went to a scary church with violent rhetoric with abusive family members. That was a very unhappy holiday. But we still want a Winter holiday, and since paganism is such a reconstructed religion, it is often people reconstructing something for themselves that is unique to their needs and condition that may be without some of the baggage of their earlier experiences of religion. Also having something that feels old can be important and therapeutic.

So having a clear idea of what you are doing and why can help to avoid that problematic dimension. If the problem with Christianity is that it is Judaic in origin, or that it is universalist or destructive to nations, then it is a problem no matter what religion it is tied to. That is true of Atheism as well (New Atheism especially). What drives a lot of those far right critiques of Christianity is that the religion is problematic because of its own internal logic, a criticism that I think is patently untrue.

Also, whether or not the value systems implicit in a person’s paganism are shared with the more questionable avenues is worth exploring. Sometimes I will walk into a pagan or New Age shop, and you will see some Asatru items, and a lot of Wiccan stuff, and various Welsh, Celtic, and other items. And then all of a sudden you will see a Baphomet, or stuff for the Temple of Set. The ideological, philosophical, and spiritual core of those religions could not be more different. It would be like having statues to Satan inside of a Christian bookshop because Christians believe in Satan. We shouldn’t revel in those contradictions anymore, we should be spiritually consistent. We reject “Might is Right” logic seen in a lot of left-hand path religions. If you have a warrior dimension in your pagan spirituality and that means that it is a ferocious spirit against the challenges of life, then great. But that is worlds away from a warrior spirit whose manifestation is domination over others, yet both spiritual philosophies are often represented inside of pagan spaces since they have similar iconography and myths. I think drawing those lines and saying “we believe this, but we do not believe that” is the kind of consistency that really blocks out problematic elements.

AAR: Yeah, for example, indigenous warrior societies in North America who are resisting oil pipelines. They are going up against police in very serious ways, though blockades, and other actions. It can be associated with a kind of warrior identity, but it is not an authoritarian and hierarchical warrior character that takes their power on top of the peasantry. Instead with fascist warrior spiritual image, the kind that Evola invoked regularly, it is about fighting to enforce a caste structure of the wolves over the sheep.

It was very baked into the Years of Lead in the 1970s, where Evolian terrorists were going around bombing civilian sites, infrastructure and what not, in order to act out this kind of fantasy of the warrior spirit. What would later become known as the “political soldier.” And it is really in that realm that Roberto Fiore from Terza Posizione went up to England to escape charges for bombing the Bologne train station, which was the worst act of terrorism during the Years of Lead. I think they killed over 80 people. In England he was sheltered by Michael Walter of the National Front, with Patrick Harrington and Nick Griffin (former leader of the British National Party) they formed the Political Soldier faction of the National Front. This later became known as the Official National Front, a sort of splinter group. They were the ones who were recruiting the skinheads.

Through that time period, the mid to late 1980s, Blood and Honor came about, the racist skinhead movement was shipped from England to German and France and the United States. That’s why even white nationalist skinheads have these weird crossover spiritualties between Odinism, Creativity, and hard line Christianity. The warrior culture was for them a tool to reclaim their belief that they were the authority in an oppressive social structure.

SB: What this conversation brings me back to the Wolves of Vinland. They have gotten a lot of attention in pagan circles because they have an evolving tradition; they define their own specific spirituality. A lot of Heathens get criticizes for their reconstructionist use of ancient rituals, which some critics like to call “reenactments.” The Wolves of Vinland instead try to do their own thing, like the funeral to Baldur they hold every year where they ritualistically set a wooden boat on fire. It is a unique tradition, they develop the rituals themselves, and they have their own evolving esoteric understanding of what they call “tribal spirituality.” They often discuss it as an effort to embody the “Germanic hero aesthetic.” They use the Gods in a way that secularly would be a sort of inspiration, but in a spiritual sense it would be a type of “becoming.” Through the rituals and folkways they hope to internalize the spirit of Odin, which is the name for this kind of Germanic spirit based on the acquisition of knowledge and the discovery of power.

I think that that idea, when decoupled from its obviously problematic aspects, is actually one that is very striking and attractive in pagan circles. On the one hand, it is a very well thought out form of mysticism, and it provides a very fresh reading of the lore. So when we talk about the warrior culture, embodying the spirits of those Gods and stories does not have to be done in this oppressive way and can instead be spun into a positive, and maybe even revolutionary, context.

You see in paths like the Reclaiming Tradition, the effort to take stories about care and community, especially between women, the inspiration that you live out in your own life. In a way its unquestionably true since it is putting a name, in this case Gods or spirits, on a quality that is very much alive in people’s communities. It gives people an image to meditate on, to decide they want to bring it into their own life. In that way it can be incredibly empowering, it can be the opposite of the way the far right attempts to co-opt those myths.

You see that with Circle Ansuz, the anarchist Heathen collective that was very big on taking the Viking warrior culture and using it to fight for a just community. It was a war against reactionary forces, a war against inequality and fascism. That kind of “warlike feature” was not baked in implicit violence and oppression, and instead seems like the concept of “spiritual warfare,” the war we have in our lives to become the better version of ourselves.

That’s not unique to paganism either; you see it in a lot of left-wing Christianities. There, the concept of salvation is really critical to overcoming oppression, on the one hand, but also overcoming yourself, and finding the best way to live your life.



Continues at: https://godsandradicals.org/2016/12/07/ ... o-fascism/
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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby American Dream » Wed Dec 07, 2016 4:33 pm

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/throughthe ... -movement/

Understanding the New Right and Our Movement

April 27, 2016 by Ryan Smith

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Over the past few months, following the publication of a piece by Gods & Radicals on the New Right and the modern Pagan and polytheistic movements, there has been a great deal of debate and uproar on the subject. Though there have been quite a few eschewing debate for personal attacks, ranging from a recent red-baiting post by John Michael Greer to others unworthy of mention, thankfully in spite of this there have been a number of thoughtful critiques and discussions of the subject. Authors such as River Devora, John Beckett, G.B. Marian, Craig ‘VI’ Slee, and many others have offered solid questions and points in this conversation. In my opinion if there is any major flaw in the work done by Gods & Radicals on this topic it is that further explanation of the particulars of how the New Right operates, not just the what used by them, is necessary. However, it is worth pointing out going into detail on these matters would have produced a small novel’s worth of material to read through and probably wouldn’t have been suitable for the intended platform.

It is my hope, in the spirit of the other bloggers who have taken up this topic, to move this aspect of the discussion forward. I believe this element, critical to our understanding of the problem of the New Right, is one that needs further attention and care. There are two key aspects to this broader discussion that must be effectively addressed if we are to move ahead in understanding the problem of the New Right and modern Paganism. These are cultural factors and structural factors.

The first, which was covered in detail by Gods & Radicals, is the question of specific cultural factors that are used by New Right activists to twist spiritual groups into fronts for advancing their ideology. I want to make very clear the presence of particular cultural factors in specific groups or traditions does not inherently make them more or less likely to fall prey to New Right entryism. Before going into why these specific cultural elements must be discussed it is first necessary to understand what, exactly, entryism is.

Entryism, for those unfamiliar, is a specific strategy employed by political groups to advance their agendas. Entryism occurs when a member of such a group joins an organization or movement with the intent of covertly changing their goals, methods, and beliefs into those of the entryist group. Such tactics have become a favorite of the New Right over the past two decades for a very simple reason. The vast majority of human beings don’t like the idea of living under the heel of a jackboot. The fact that more conventional forms of fascist and neo-Nazi organizing ended in blood and death for their leaders is an equally crucial factor in causing this shift towards employing entryist tactics as advocated by New Right leaders such as so-called National Anarchist Troy Southgate, “race realist” David Duke, and mystical racialists like Michael Moynihan, David Lane and his partner Ron McVan, Jack Donovan, and Stephen McNallen.

Entryist tactics are not happening in a vacuum for the New Right. They are part of a broader strategy of what is referred to as engaging in metapolitics. Metapolitical action, in the world of the New Right, is where instead of engaging with political issues directly one focuses instead on changing the culture, preconceptions, and assumptions of a particular group and larger society to assumptions that are receptive to and best enable achieving the New Right’s goals. Some go so far as to describe metapolitical action as “occult warfare”, a term first coined by Michael Moynihan. An especially powerful weapon in this ideological arsenal is what is known as “apple pie words”, meaning the use of seemingly inoffensive terms like, “identity”, “tribalism”, and “cultural diversity” as a way of winning people over to New Right positions by actively misrepresenting them in terms the target audience is most likely to embrace without question.

To further lend legitimacy to their arguments New Right activists employ pseudoscientific language and discredited research in an attempt to portray their views as natural, justified, and representative of the human condition. A particular favorite is the discredited historian Oswald Spengler who, though a favorite of some of the Beatnik poets, is widely derided within the discipline due to his overly deterministic, race based assumptions regarding human history and culture. In spite of these factors his works are used because they lend a veneer of credibility to fascist arguments for a revitalization of decaying, decadent cultures suffering from the effects of “mongrelization”. The goal is to camouflage their ideology in seemingly inoffensive words until they are confident they have successfully ensnared their intended targets.

This is why these cultural factors belong in any analysis of fascist entryism in the Pagan and polytheist communities. This is not to say, as I mentioned earlier, the presence of specific ideas, positions, or approaches automatically guarantee fascist corruption and takeover. Rather what is important to understand is that New Right activists will use the same language, same concepts, and same aesthetics as Pagans and polytheists in an attempt to blend in, win over the unwary, and ultimately turn otherwise decent groups into platforms for organized bigotry. These ideas are the terrain fascists seek to move through, blend into, and ultimately use for ambushing the unprepared.

This is not to say ideas such as appealing to the ideas of pre-Christian European peoples are inherently fascist or reactionary in and of themselves. Effective antidotes for entryist co-optation already exist that do not require surrendering any key components of polytheistic or Pagan practice. The examples of Reclaiming and Feri, both of whom have robust cultures of inclusion, dialog, and reframing core concepts in ways that are most applicable to people living in the here and now, demonstrate one can be Pagan and antifascist without any real conflict between the two or surrender of core values. By better understanding what it is we believe, why, and most importantly how we should move in the present based on such ideas we can build practices, communities, and approaches which are thoroughly inoculated against fascist deception.

As Pagans and polytheists we must be constantly asking ourselves whether what we are doing is beneficial for people, life, and all practitioners in the present while honoring the spirit of what it is we seek to do. When one thoroughly examines Pagan and polytheist ideas there is no contradiction between building inclusive tribalism, honoring ancestral practice, or engaging in nature centered worship and doing so in a fashion that is aware, resistant, and antifascist. This discussion has been ongoing in Heathenry for a number of years now with increasing success for those building inclusive practice that is ancestral, polytheistic, nature based, and surrenders nothing of our identity, community, or core beliefs to the New Right. Though Gods & Radicals did not broach the subject in the most tactful fashion possible nowhere did they say we must cease to be who we are. The experiences of grassroots Heathenry, Reclaiming, and Feri show we can build cultures where the New Right has no soil for sowing their noxious seeds without compromising our identity or authenticity.

The second, which is covered somewhat by Gods & Radicals and sadly has escaped deeper discussion, is the question of structural factors. The presence or lack of specific cultural factors in enabling New Right takeovers of groups do not operate in a vacuum. Even if there are elements in a specific community, organization, or group New Rightists could use as cover and justification for their rhetoric these alone are not sufficient to enable total conquest. There are two main structural environments where this is possible. The first are highly authoritarian, hierarchical settings with little to no real accountability for those in positions of power. The other major structural avenue for fascist co-optation is when a sufficient critical mass of otherwise liberal, tolerant individuals and groups feel cooperating with the New Right is the most effective means of securing their own positions, influence, and respectability.

In discussing hierarchical, authoritarian groups I want to stress that the presence of hierarchy alone does not mean authoritarianism is at work or that New Rightist entryism is a guaranteed outcome. Truly authoritarian environments depend on situations where the power to make decisions and set the agenda is heavily concentrated in a small number of hands and there is little to no means for the rank and file membership to hold the powerful accountable. An excellent guide for determining the presence of such structures was written years ago by the late Isaac Bonewits and is readily available online. His ABCDEF matrix is an excellent system for analyzing how stratified groups, organizations, and communities are and where decision making power is concentrated.

The other major structural problem, namely the presence of otherwise tolerant individuals who feel their interests are better served through cooperating with or refraining from challenging the New Right, is a far more complex situation. For those who are swift to claim even raising this problem is a veiled attempt at inciting a witch hunt history offers two powerful rebuttals with the actual facts of Mussolini and Hitler’s rise to power. Mussolini was swept into power not due to his infamous March on Rome but thanks to deals he struck with powerful conservative politicians and the last minute refusal by the King of Italy to use force against the already faltering and vulnerable Blackshirts.[1] Hitler, for his part, became Chancellor thanks to the internal rivalries between conservative German politicians.[2] Prior to von Papen’s “backstairs conspiracy” that put Hitler in the Chancellor’s office the Nazi Party’s finances were crumbling and they were losing critical public support.[3]

The recent history of Heathenry, in spite of great strides being made in effective resistance to the New Right, gives a more direct and potent example. Nearly all of the active opposition to neofascist impulses within Heathenry in the United States and Canada has come from grassroots organizations, local kindreds, and communities who are refusing to allow the New Right to advance unopposed. The one institution many would expect to be leading this fight, the Troth, has not only refused to do so but has seen their Steer openly denounce such efforts earlier this year. Their governing board has taken no action regarding this statement and even more distressingly there is nothing in the Troth bylaws prohibiting Troth members from also being members of racist, fascist groups such as the AFA, the Soldiers of Odin, or the Hammerskins. Now I want to be clear I am not claiming the Troth itself, its leadership, or its members are in any way racist or fascist. I am only pointing out their leadership isn’t doing terribly much to oppose such influences and seem to be more comfortable working with the devil they know than they’ll publicly admit.

The best solutions to these structural problems are quite simple. Communities founded on accountability, transparent and participatory decision making processes, and who take strong, unapologetic stands for inclusivity, hospitality, and diversity are communities where the New Right has little influence or means for gaining ground. Again Reclaiming and Feri are both living proof this approach works as are the elements of modern Heathenry who are actively taking a stand against the New Right and for inclusive, hospitable practice. All of this can be done without surrendering the Gods, sacred mysteries, mysticism, or any of the other core tenets of modern Pagan and polytheistic practice.

In conclusion only by having robust discussion and dialog, confronting our assumptions, and being willing to challenge them in a constructive, open fashion can we build a community that is effectively immune to the New Right’s work. Before us is the question of whether Paganism and polytheism will be hollowed out by an odious ideology where the Gods and all that is holy are reduced to mere trappings for justifying power over others at all costs or if we will flourish and grow on our own merits leaving such beliefs, ideas, and people behind. Around the world a hydra of New Right groups are seeking to impose their ideologies on their communities and society at large by any means necessary. If we, as a movement, are to effectively resist these attempts we must understand them, be prepared to meet them, and repel them decisively wherever they rear their heads.

[1] Paxton, Robert O. The Anatomy of Fascism. New York: Knopf, 2004, 89-90

[2] Paxton 95-96

[3] Paxton 95
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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby American Dream » Fri Dec 23, 2016 3:14 pm

New York’s Racist Heathens

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Wolftyr and Heathen Circle promote Polish Nazi bands like Graveland



https://nycantifa.wordpress.com/2016/12 ... -heathens/
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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 25, 2016 2:33 pm

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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby American Dream » Thu Dec 29, 2016 4:22 pm

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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby American Dream » Fri Dec 30, 2016 5:31 pm

Shapeshifters: The Paganism of Identity and the Danger of Fascist Infiltration

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Public domain image of a werewolf. “Werwulf” was the name of a Nazi guerrilla movement after WWII.


https://godsandradicals.org/2016/01/29/ ... iltration/
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Re: Racialist Asatru

Postby American Dream » Sat Dec 31, 2016 12:40 pm

Revolution, Not Absolution

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Some of my ancestors are Irish. I know many others of Irish descent. I have no way of knowing whether the ancestors of the Irish I know fled the Potato Famine on ships where one out of every three passengers died, or whether they were brought over the work the mills or build the railroads. What I do know is that they likely at some point worked processing the cotton grown by slaves into cloth. Those workers were generally women, who faced twelve-hour days, sexual harassment, religious oppression, and highly dangerous working conditions. Other ancestors are likely buried in the mass graves used for railroad builders worked to death. If this is benefiting from the oppression of other races, I’m at a loss as to how. What I do know is that the labor wars of the late 1800s and early 1900s were led by immigrant workers and women like these ancestors. I- and every working class person in America- owe those who were brave enough to fight for the rights of labor a deep debt.

Taking a further step back in history, I can guess that the black people I know are descended primarily from people in Africa who were taken from their homes, chained into the coffin ships, and shipped across the Atlantic to be sold at auction like a horse or a dog. They faced whipping and mutilation at the whims of their “owners”. They were told that their enslavement was a good thing because it brought them Christianity.

The English and Irish people were likely driven out of their homes by those who claimed that their ancestral lands were now private property. Harsh vagrancy laws forced them to seek work in factories where they died by the thousands. Those “unfortunates” who failed to find work in factories were rounded up and sold as “indentured servants”. Again, this was justified because it took away their slothful habits and made good Christians out of them. Similar programs in other countries left much of Europe’s peasantry homeless and in search of a better life. Remember that at the same time America’s sharecroppers were struggling to survive, Russia’s serfs were still considered part of real estate and were bought and sold along with pieces of land.

A step farther back in history brings us to the conversion of Europe. Charlemagne’s genocidal wars against the pagan Saxons. The Crusades against the Lithuanians. And above all, the repression of women in society. The tortures used against colonized people were first turned against women in Europe. The stocks and the scold’s bridle, the public whippings and burnings, these were methods of control perfected on women before being used to subjugate other races. The dehumanization of an obviously human part of the population, and the precedent of giving one part of the population (men) a bit of privilege in exchange for their help in subjugating the others was set during the conversion years.

Religious oppression backs up all the other forms of oppression. It is no accident that fundamentalist Christianity and the alt-right are in bed together. It’s no accident that there is a flag hanging in most churches. The history of capitalism is the history of the oppression of indigenous religions, their lifeways, connections to the natural world, and gender relations. From the conversion of the Saxons to the Doctrine of Discovery, the idea that Christianity would make people work hard and go to heaven by oppressing them has been a recurring theme. The idea that the world is a perversion of the divine plan, a dead thing for our use, or a land of temptation to be rejected has led us to a profound ecological crisis.

I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m going through all this and when I’m going to get to the point. Here it is: we pagans should be the ones fighting all this. We should see the long tendrils of ideology weaving their way through the web of wyrd. We can see the mass of the past actions of our oppressors and how they have used religion, race, gender, and sexuality to divide us. We should recognize these demographic divisions as a tool of those who have historically oppressed all of us, and who threaten our future today.

And because of this, we are the most feared enemies of the rulers. For a revolution to be successful, we need an ideology and a worldview that sees the current system of oppression as wrong, and a tradition to reach back into for wisdom. This is why the Red Power and Black Power movements took steps to create or recreate a religion and culture for the oppressed- one not based on oppression.

As the holders of a religious and cultural ideology capable of giving those of European descent (and anyone else who wants it), a cultural identity as a collection of cultures and not just oppressors, we pagans are the deepest, darkest fear of the rulers. It is no accident that I know a racist who was happy to rent to a black couple because they are Christian. It is no accident the entheogens used by many non-Abrahamic religions are illegal (they tend to have the nasty side-effect of causing people to reject ecocide). It is no accident that the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) got music banned from the airwaves if it carried an “occult” message (this campaign supposedly failed, but now all the rock radio stations play the same ten songs from the seventies over and over and over and over and….)

Overall, we pagans have the knowledge of history to realize that an injury to one has been a good predictor of an injury to all. And we have the potential to realize our place in history on the side of the oppressed. Our ancestors may have been oppressors, and in some ways, we are oppressors ourselves. But our choices still matter. We can choose to reject oppression. And the choice to reject oppression matters.

Historically, pagans faced great oppression. In recent times, our oppression has lightened, so long as we hold a Christian worldview and just change the name of the god. Should we truly follow our religions, whether by using entheogens, or fighting for life (I refuse to trivialize it by calling it “the environment”), or having abortions, or celebrating the Hieros Gamos, or reading tarot, or fighting for a better life, or following gender roles accepted under (some forms of) paganism but denigrated under Christianity, we face serious consequences. We could be arrested, thrown in solitary, killed by the cops, or made “unemployable”. In other countries, the consequences for being non-Abrahamic in religion can be quite…medieval.

Our struggle is real, and the more we become involved in fighting for a better world, the harder the hand of the rulers will turn against us. And make no mistake, we white pagans are no more popular among the fundie crowd than black people- probably less popular, in fact. I know a racist landlord who was so proud of herself for renting to a Christian couple- they were black. I know someone who was kicked out of foster care for practicing Wicca. How many teenagers have no place to go because they draw the stigma (or stigmata?) of devil-worship?

The discrimination against pagans hits the most vulnerable the hardest- those teenagers who must rely on fundamentalist parents to survive, or those adults who must stay with family in order to survive due to disability, poverty, or lack of opportunity, those adults too poor to afford housing that is private enough to permit practice without raising eyebrows, those of us who work blue-collars jobs where being a beer-drinking, flag-waving Christian is important. Cultural conformity is a huge part of being in the “in-crowd”, and with networking as the primary source of jobs, being part of the “out-crowd” can have serious consequences. When religious oppression intersects with racial or gender-based oppression, it can get very nasty- and that sort of oppression is very common for the rural poor in economically depressed areas, where losing out on a job opportunity can mean poverty or a huge upheaval and move.

It’s not just pagans who are going to face this. McCarthyism is starting to make a comeback. The rulers of this country have broken the left before, and they will try to do it again. What is annoying redbaiting now could turn into blacklists, lost jobs, unemployability, and even execution in the future. (Remember Sacco and Vanzetti? The Palmer Raids? Eugene Deb’s imprisonment? The shootings at Kent State?) I don’t say this to make us afraid, or to cause people to give up. I say this to help prevent the white left from absorbing the right-wing message that we are just privileged whiners.

The arguments that white people benefit from racism and that various groups have this group-wide privilege can be useful tools for pointing out some of our own blindspots to work on. Don’t get me wrong: I had to think long and hard about my privilege and I think everyone should take the time to consider their own privilege. But these arguments about privilege can also turn into a subtle gas-lighting of the white (and/or male) left, causing us to doubt our right to stand up for ourselves as well as for more-oppressed groups. If we go around saying that we’re privileged whiners, then how can we effectively combat the narrative that we’re all a bunch of privileged children who need “tough love” to kick us out of our safe spaces into “the real world”?

These divisions along race, gender, and sexual lines among the left disturb me greatly. I don’t think that they are progressive. As a pagan, I can see the history of capitalism, and I see it beginning with the oppression of pagans, particularly women. I see that some groups (such a the Native Americans, or African-Americans) suffered far more than others. But I still see a pattern of oppression of all by the rulers. And I think we have a common enemy in the rulers. I’ve written before on the subject of tribes in politics, and the illogicality of considering an entire race a tribe. I think it’s time to apply this same logic to identity politics. (I think the same logic also applies to gender relations, also.)

We are all individuals. We come from different places and make different choices. We are our deeds, and our deeds define us. Ben Carson’s deeds define him as a racist. A man I know who fights with bikers over institutionalized racism is defined by his deeds as not a racist. To claim that any race has an overarching common interest opposed to other races, is pseudo-tribalist propaganda that allows the rulers to keep us divided. (That is not to say that all black people don’t have a common interest in gaining rights- I merely state that that common interest is not IN OPPOSITION to any other group’s rights, except the rulers “right” to oppress.)

People of different races and genders are not warring tribes, each trying to carve out a larger slice of a tiny piece of the pie of human rights. We are natural allies. When a black man is shot for carrying a sandwich, it sets the precedent in the courts that a cop can use lethal force if he feels threatened by a sandwich. That precedent can be used against a white person, since the laws are not written to have separate precedents for white and black people. When a black man loses his job for speaking out against racism, it sets the tone of a workplace that no one can organize there for fear of losing their livelihood. We need to stop fighting over the scraps of humans rights that the rulers choose to give us, and start demanding the whole pie.

Human rights aren’t “privileges” to squabble over. They are RIGHTs. It is horrible when black people are denied their human rights, and it is horrible when white people are denied their human rights. Leftists shouldn’t be gleeful that Trump-supporting coal miners are losing their health care. We should be enraged. We should be engaging with those coal miners, not to say, “I told you so”, but to engage them in a productive struggle, so that they can have options for resistance to the rulers other than voting for His Orange Majesty because he says mean things about other politicians.


More at: https://godsandradicals.org/2016/12/31/ ... bsolution/
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