Wotansvolk: Difference between revisions
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While Wotanswork has endorsed the white separatist concept of the [[Northwest Territorial Imperative]], they dismissed the constitution of the [[white ethnostate]] proposed by the Christian Identity organization [[Aryan Nations]] in April 1996 on the ground that it restricted liberties, especially the [[freedom of religion]].<ref>{{harvnb|Gardell|2003|p=112–113}}</ref> However, in March of that year, a "Declaration of the Aryan Nations" was made which "absolved" Aryans from "allegiance to the [[United States of America]]", following with the 14 Words of David Lane.<ref>https://archive.org/details/AryanNationsDeclaration Declaration of the Aryan Nations</ref> |
While Wotanswork has endorsed the white separatist concept of the [[Northwest Territorial Imperative]], they dismissed the constitution of the [[white ethnostate]] proposed by the Christian Identity organization [[Aryan Nations]] in April 1996 on the ground that it restricted liberties, especially the [[freedom of religion]].<ref>{{harvnb|Gardell|2003|p=112–113}}</ref> However, in March of that year, a "Declaration of the Aryan Nations" was made which "absolved" Aryans from "allegiance to the [[United States of America]]", following with the 14 Words of David Lane.<ref>https://archive.org/details/AryanNationsDeclaration Declaration of the Aryan Nations</ref> |
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However, David Lane preferred migration to the Northern [[Mountain states]] (and the [[Rocky Mountains| Colorado Rocky Mountains]] in particular) and to that end authored a short story entitled "KD REBEL" about a white separatist guerrilla army |
However, David Lane preferred migration to the Northern [[Mountain states]] (and the [[Rocky Mountains| Colorado Rocky Mountains]] in particular) and to that end authored a short story entitled "KD REBEL" about a white separatist guerrilla army. |
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=== Anti-Christianity === |
=== Anti-Christianity === |
Revision as of 02:04, 12 September 2019
Founder | |
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David Lane, Ron McVan, Katja Lane | |
Regions with significant populations | |
American Mountain States, Europe | |
Religions | |
Heathenry (Nordic racial paganism) | |
Scriptures | |
The "Fourteen Words", "88 Precepts", Hávamál |
Part of a series on |
Neo-fascism |
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Wotansvolk (English: "Odin’s Folk") is a form of white nationalist, neo-völkisch paganism which was founded in the early 1990s by Ron McVan, Katja Lane and David Lane (1938–2007) while Lane was serving a 190-year prison sentence for his actions in connection with the white separatist revolutionary domestic terrorist organization The Order. After the founding of 14 Word Press by David Lane and his wife Katja to disseminate her husband's writings, Ron McVan joined the press in 1995 and co-founded Temple of Wotan (with 14 Word Press publishing a book by that name). 14 Word Press - Wotansvolk proceeded to publish several books for the practice of Wotanism before becoming defunct as a publishing outlet in the early 2000s.
History
Wotansvolk was launched following the publication by David Lane of a 1995 article titled "Wotan's Folk", which gave the group its name. Wotan is the Germanic name for Odin, a central figure in Norse faith and other Germanic mythologies. Lane had been publishing white supremacist and neopagan work under the name "14 Word Press", along with his wife Katja Lane and Ron McVan, an artist who had become involved in the white separatist movement from the 1970s after reading the works of Ben Klassen.[1] Headquartered at a mountain outside St. Maries, Idaho, Wotansvolk rapidly evolved into "a dynamic propaganda center that spread its message throughout the United States and abroad".
Established at a time when Internet was beginning to revolutionize communication means, the group set up a website in 1995, and got its own domain in 1997, "14words.com".
In 2001, an online chat was created, in order to link Heathens around the world in a common white power culture. The first European Wotansvolk group was established in spring 1996 in London.[2] According to Mattias Gardell, Wotansvolk was not founded as a membership organization but rather as a propaganda center, providing "a philosophical foundation for independent kindreds and fraternities" with a large number of individual supporters helping disseminate Wotansvolk materials in their local communities.[2] Besides illustrating the group's publications, McVan extended Odinism to a business by selling artifacts such as rune-staffs, Thor's hammers or ceremonial drinking horns.[3]
A number of pagan white-power bands have referenced Wotansvolk in their lyrics, including Darken’s Creed of Iron album and Dissident’s album A Cog in the Wheel. The original group eventually split in 2002, when administration of Wotansvolk was transferred to John Post in Napa, California.[4] In March of the same year, Post announced the formation of the National Prison Kindred Alliance, as a joint effort of Wotansvolk and a number of independent Asatrú/Odinist tribal networks seeking to improve their religious rights in penitentiaries.[5]
Presence in US prisons
Wotansvolk operated a quite successful prison outreach program.[1][4] Research by Mattias Gardell indicated "a pagan revival among the white prison population, including the conversion of whole prison gangs to the ancestral religion [...] partly due to the reputation of Lane and its association with the legendary Brüders Schweigen, Wotansvolk's name-recognition is high among the Aryan prison population".[6] As of January 2001, Wotansvolk catered to more than 5,000 prisoners,[5] including several members of The Order like David Lane and Richard Scutari.[7] There were fewer than a hundred prison kindreds by the fall of 1996; more than three hundred of them were present by the year 2000. Prison authorities however often break groups by disseminating their members to various establishments. Lane’s campaigning has contributed to the fact that all states now allow any prisoner to wear a Thor’s hammer as a religious medallion.[5]
If there are many white supremacist groups active in prison, the organization seemed according to Gardell "more successful in its outreach efforts than other Asatrú/Odinist programs".[6] Non-racist versions of Asatrú and Odinism are protected in the US under freedoms of speech and of religion, but violent and racist religious materials, such as Wotanism, may be banned or restricted from prisons.[8][9] While the movement is primarily associated to prison culture in the media, Wotansvolk co-founder Katja Lane asserted in a 1999 interview that prisoners constituted only an estimated 20 percent of Wotansvolkers in the United States.[5]
Beliefs
Wotansvolk is based on a combination of an "Aryan call to arms with an esoteric teaching, based in part on Jungian psychology, völkisch philosophy, and occult national socialism." The group's founder David Lane was also an early proponent of the Zionist Occupation Government conspiracy theory, the belief that "the U.S. government is controlled by racial enemies, using its military might to establish a global Jewish dictatorship." Convinced that white man was at the verge of extinction, Lane coined the "fourteen word" slogan as a rallying point for a pan-Aryan uprising: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children."[4] Praising the Viking Age, Wotansvolk members claim that "Whites must again learn to think with their blood", with a pan-Aryan pagan religion "Wotanism" considered a spiritual path to "restore the lost Folk consciousness",[3] and "reunify of all branches" of the white race.[2] Wotansvolkers claim to draw their influence in the works of ariosophist Guido von List, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and psychoanalyst Carl Jung.[4]
Lane was bitterly opposed to the continued existence of the United States as a political entity, labeling it the "murderer of the White race",[10] and advocated domestic terrorism as a tool to carve out a "white homeland". To that end, Lane issued a declaration called "Moral Authority" published through now-defunct 14 Word Press and shared through the publications of Aryan Nations, World Church of the Creator and other white separatist groups, referring to the United States as a "Red, White and Blue traveling mass murder machine" intent on committing genocide against white people. According to the declaration, "true moral authority belongs to those who resist" this purported genocide.[11]
Following a militantly Anti-American platform that ran contrary to most of the U.S. oriented White supremacy movement, Lane furthermore equated loyalty to the United States of America with "race treason", declaring: When I am through, if you are still able to say the words "White American," then leave the company of sane men, for you can no more be both White and American than you can stop the motion of the planets. The singular intent of America in all its facets is to mix, overrun and exterminate the White race. How can you be what destroys you? If you are not an implacable enemy of every facet of America listed above, then you are a traitor to the existence of our race. If you support the aims or the continued existence of the entity known as America, then your treason cannot be calculated in the words of mortals.[12]
Race
Wotansvolk promotes a "pan-Aryan" racial nationalism embracing the "world wide White family from Europe to America". They saw the various wars occurring in Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia as tragic consequences of artificial borders imposed by the enemies of the white race to divide and conquer. Wotansvolk advocates regretted that "leaders of the Third Reich were prisoners of geographical nationalism".[2]
Followers of the movement often selectively cite Carl Jung's theories of an "Aryan collective subconscious" or race-soul, specifically his 1936 essay "Wotan".[13] The race is indeed presented by Wotansvolk as an organic entity bestowed with a soul of its own, transmitted genetically via archetypes in the racial collective unconsciousness, and animated by the blood of people of unmixed descent. They project this idealized racial concept back into legendary times, when it allegedly suffered a severe national trauma; then to a promised and glorious future, assuming that the current "threat" of racial extinction can be overcome. Each member of the race is therefore naturally linked to the other ones in a bio-mystical entity, endangered in its eternal history by various life-threatening events, which makes self-determination of individuals a violation of natural laws.[2]
White revolution
Aiming at a "white revolution", Wotansvolk endorsed the "leaderless resistance" strategy originally developed by Louis Beam. Their own version involved the tactical separation between an open propaganda arm and a paramilitary underground. The mission of the overt part was to constitute a "counter system-sponsored propaganda", established "to educate the Folk" and "provide a man pool from which the covert or military arm can be [recruited]."[4] Predicting that the openly racist propaganda would be "under scrutiny", Lane emphasized by 1994 the need for "above-ground" members to "operate within the [legal] parameters" and keep themselves "rigidly separated" from the military underground. The paramilitary wing would have to "operate in small, autonomous cells, the smaller the better, even one man alone", in order for its members to primarily target "weak points in the infrastructure" of industrialized societies, with "fire, bombs, guns, terror, disruption and destruction". Lane added that "whatever and whoever perform valuable service for the system are targets, human or otherwise" and that "special attention and merciless terror are visited upon those White men who commit race treason".[4]
In the coming revolution there will be no innocents. There are only those who are for our cause and those who are our enemies. [The masses] will either follow us or follow them. They are now following their terrorism. When the time comes that our terrorism is superior to theirs, they will follow us. They will worship and adore whoever is the greater tyrant. That’s the nature of the masses.
— David Lane, 1996 interview.[4]
While Wotanswork has endorsed the white separatist concept of the Northwest Territorial Imperative, they dismissed the constitution of the white ethnostate proposed by the Christian Identity organization Aryan Nations in April 1996 on the ground that it restricted liberties, especially the freedom of religion.[14] However, in March of that year, a "Declaration of the Aryan Nations" was made which "absolved" Aryans from "allegiance to the United States of America", following with the 14 Words of David Lane.[15]
However, David Lane preferred migration to the Northern Mountain states (and the Colorado Rocky Mountains in particular) and to that end authored a short story entitled "KD REBEL" about a white separatist guerrilla army.
Anti-Christianity
David Lane attributed the current weakness of the "Aryan man" to Christianity, a creed "diametrically opposed to the natural order", and part of a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world.[16] "God is not love", he said, "God the Creator made lions to eat lambs; he made hawks to eat sparrows. Compassion between species is against the law of nature. Life is struggle and the absence of struggle is death."[4]
Despite Lane's contempt for Christianity, he described the Bible as containing secret codes hidden by pre-Christian, non-Jewish Aryan masters. Lane stated that this Bible code was carried over into the King James Version, which he believed Sir Francis Bacon had translated. Lane also taught something which he called "Pyramid Prophecy" which according to him, said his name and birth-date were prophesied in the Bible as being connected to the coming of the Antichrist, and embodying the spirits of Mars, Thor, and King David while being described as "the Man of prophecy", the "666 Man" and the "Joseph Smith of Wotanism".[17] Ron McVan dismissed the African-Americans who "zealously emphasize the rigors of 200 years of slavery in this country", and Jews who "rant hysterically and endlessly about an alleged holocaust", while highlighting the "freethinking Aryan pagans, alchemists, and scientists [who] suffered under the Christian pogroms and Inquisition." Declaring it a "deliberate, religious slaughter of the innocents unparalleled in the Western world".[2]
McVan argued that the main cause of the fall and degeneration of Aryan golden age was the spiritual advent of Jewish Christianity. According to him, the folk then began to gradually lose consciousness of itself as a race: “if ever there were a birth of tragedy, it was when Aryan man turned his back on the indigenous Gods of his race,” McVan wrote in 1999.[4]
Wotanism
Ron McVan developed Wotansvolk ariosophy in two books titled Creed of Iron (1997) and Temple of Wotan (2000), with the project to get the lost "folk consciousness" to re-emerge, and reconnect white people to their "roots [in] the Aryan race". Wotanism is presented by McVan as "the inner voice of the Aryan soul, which links the infinite past with the infinite future". To McVan, Wotan—Germanic name for Odin—symbolizes "the essential soul and spirit of the Aryan folk made manifest" as an iron-willed warrior god.[4] According to James R. Lewis and Jesper A. Petersen, "there is no ontological distinction separating Aryan man and Aryan gods. They are conceived of as kin, differing in power rather than nature". McVan cultivated the "mystery of the blood", the belief that unmixed Aryan blood carries a genetic memory of the racial lineage with all its gods, demigods, and heroes of the aboriginal golden age. Given that the Aryan can reconnect to the archetypall gods of the blood, "man is able", in the words of McVan, "to awaken to a divinity which flows within him". "A race without its mythos and religion of the blood", McVan followed, "shifts aimlessly through history".[4]
Wotanism, contrary to a self-denying Christianity, is seen by Wotansvolkers as a "natural religion", preaching "war, plunder and sex".[4] Lane's followers, who regard him as a folk hero,[18] see the 14 words and the 88 Precepts as holy scriptures. They primarily consider the gods through a "soft polytheistic" lens as Jungian archetypes, although Lane said one could be a deist, a pantheist, or an atheist and still be Wotansvolk.[19][20]. McVan and Lane have described many rituals and practices, none of which are required of practitioners.[21] Lane often used 'Odinist' and 'Wotanist' as synonymous in his writings, and the Southern Poverty Law Center regards Lane's Wotanism as a form of Odinism, whereas Ron McVan labelled it "Heathen".[22]
Universalist Asatruars—notably The Troth—, along with some non-folkish Odinists, have rejected what they perceive as an attempt to appropriate the revival of the ancient native faith of northern Europe for political and racial ends.[23] Folkish Odinists on their side, such as Stephen McNallen of the Asatru Folk Assembly, generally support Lane's Fourteen Words, although they are not generally in favor of domestic terrorism to establish a white ethnostate.[22]
See also
- Christian Identity
- Creativity (religion)
- National Socialist Kindred
- Neopaganism
- White Separatism
- Ynglism
References
Footnotes
- ^ a b Gardell 2004, p. 205–206
- ^ a b c d e f Gardell 2003, p. 224–225 harvnb error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFGardell2003 (help)
- ^ a b Kaplan, Jeffrey (2000). Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 202. ISBN 9780742503403.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Lewis & Petersen 2014, p. 413–415
- ^ a b c d Lewis & Petersen 2014, p. 417–418
- ^ a b Gardell 2003, p. 217 harvnb error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFGardell2003 (help)
- ^ "Neo-Pagans Peter Georgacarakos, David Lane and Richard Scutari Publishing from Prison". SPLCenter.org. Retrieved August 17, 2017.
- ^ "Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League Discusses Race-Based Gangs and other Extremists in Prison". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. Winter 2002. Retrieved 29 May 2017.
- ^ "Supreme Court Requires Prisons Give Special Consideration to Racist Pagans". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. Fall 2009. Retrieved 29 May 2017.
- ^ "David Lane". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2018-12-10.
- ^ "David Lane". Anti-Defamation League. Archived from the original on 3 November 2008.
- ^ http://www.DavidLane1488.com/revreality.html Revolution By Number 14: Current Reality
- ^ Gardell 2004, pp. 208, 210–212
- ^ Gardell 2003, p. 112–113 harvnb error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFGardell2003 (help)
- ^ https://archive.org/details/AryanNationsDeclaration Declaration of the Aryan Nations
- ^ Gardell (2003), p. 202, 381. sfnp error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFGardell2003 (help)
- ^ Gardell (2003), p. 381. sfnp error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFGardell2003 (help)
- ^ "New Brand of Racist Odinist Religion on the March". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
- ^ see: Gambanreidi Statement; Wotanism by Professor Carl Gustav Jung Compiled by the late, Jost Turner [1]
- ^ Gardell 2003, p. 270 harvnb error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFGardell2003 (help)
- ^ Gardell 2004, pp. 214–217
- ^ a b "New Brand of Racist Odinist Religion on the March". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. Winter 1998. Retrieved 30 May 2017.
- ^ Gardell 2003, pp. 273–283 harvnb error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFGardell2003 (help)
Sources
- Gardell, Mattias (2003). Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Duke UP. pp. 202, 381. ISBN 9780822330714.
{{cite book}}
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(help) - Gardell, Mattias (2004). "White Racist Religions in the United States: From Christian Identity to Wolf Age Pagans". In Lewis, James R.; Petersen, Jesper Aagaard (eds.). Controversial New Religions. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 387–422. doi:10.1093/019515682X.003.0018. ISBN 978-0-19-515682-9.
{{cite book}}
: Invalid|ref=harv
(help) - Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2003). Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-3155-0.
{{cite book}}
: Invalid|ref=harv
(help) - Kaplan, Jeffrey (1997). Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah. Syracuse: Syracuse Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-0396-2.
{{cite book}}
: Invalid|ref=harv
(help) - Lewis, James R.; Petersen, Jesper Aagaard (2014). Controversial New Religions. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199315314.
{{cite book}}
: Invalid|ref=harv
(help)
Further reading
- Gardell, Mattias (2003). Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3071-7.
{{cite book}}
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(help)