Rose City Anti-Fascists: Austrian Far‐Right Musical Project on West Coast Tour

Statement by the Rose City Anti-Fascists

“That is the power of an invisible order. Its members know that they are members. Those who are not members are aware that they do not participate.”

Romanian Legionary propagandist Ovidiu Gules, as quoted by Gerhard Petak in interview¹

“If the mythical and irrational, as well as the desire for anti‐Enlightenment introspection and living transcendence, find a voice in youth culture, the aesthetic consensus of the West will be broken.”

From the German New Right newspaper Junge Freiheit, 1996²

“Folkish is today a dangerous word. Like the words home, roots, loyalty it is situated in the cross wires of an omnipresent brainwashing. Those who use this word are pushed close to the Third Reich. But the foreign policy of the Third Reich was not folkish at all. The principle that the peoples were different, but equal of birth, was not taken into consideration.”

Gerhard Petak, as quoted by the “Tasmanian National‐Anarchists”³

“Separate but equal”

Policy underlining Jim Crow laws in the American South

Allerseelen on Tour

This December, the Austrian far‐Right “post‐industrial” and martial music project Allerseelen is set to give a series of performances on the US West Coast. Allerseelen is the project of Gerhard Petak (aka Kadmon and Gerhard Hallstatt) who also incorporates other performers into the act when playing live⁴. Several of the Allerseelen shows are scheduled to take place in larger venues supporting the prominent Portland, Oregon “dark metal” group Agalloch, who will be touring to promote their new album. The hitching of Allerseelen onto the tour of a larger heavy metal act will provide new outlets for Petak’s extreme‐Right messages. Agalloch, the group which Allerseelen will support, is at present crossing over from underground cult status to something nearer the mainstream, the group’s latest album even being promoted with a write‐up and “exclusive first listen” on National Public Radio’s music webpage.⁵ It is troubling that the accompanying act Agalloch chose to expose its growing audiences to, has a long history of far‐Right involvement and propaganda, and is an attempt to make aspects of fascist discourse acceptable. (Allerseelen will first play two separate headlining shows before joining the Agalloch tour.) Agalloch’s decision to further link itself to Petak / Allerseelen by appearing on a new compilation CD released by Petak’s label⁶, is likewise of concern to anti‐fascists and is of similar poor judgment.

The dates of Allerseelen’s tour are:

Waldteufel + Allerseelen

• 15 Dec 2010: Portland
• 16 Dec 2010: Salem (+ HELL, Barghest)

Agalloch + Allerseelen

• 17 Dec 2010: Portland OR Berbati's Pan (+ Aerial Ruin)
• 18 Dec 2010: Seattle WA Neumo’s (+ Alda + Waldteufel)
• 21 Dec 2010: Los Angeles CA Ultra Violet Social Club (+ Winterthrall)
• 22 Dec 2010: San Francisco CA Great American Music Hall (+ Dispirit)⁷

Petak’s Politics and Associations

Gerhard Petak has been releasing music under the name Allerseelen since the end of the 1980s⁸. During the 1990s, the extreme‐Right nature of Petak’s politics became increasingly evident, through his writing and publishing as well as his musical releases. Before explaining how Petak promotes far‐Right discourses, we must first provide a thumbnail sketch of what his politics actually are—while Petak has had contact with some people who could be fairly described as Nazis or neo‐Nazis, Petak has also criticized the Third Reich in print, and we do not describe him personally as a Nazi. (We will discuss Petak’s attitude towards historical Nazism later.) We place Petak’s viewpoints and advocacy on the terrain of neo‐fascism and the far‐Right, especially that of the European New Right. Some other ideological influences will be discussed in passing. If at times Petak’s viewpoints appear as a jumble of varied and even opposing influences, it is worth noting that fascism has always been a syncretic ideological movement—one that attempts to fuse differing elements into a single whole. Indeed, this syncretic nature has given rise to one of fascism’s primary qualities, that of simultaneously being “A and not A” and often harboring diametrically opposed impulses, such as attempting mass political mobilization while also vocalizing contempt for mass society⁹ (These contradictions unfortunately do not render fascism or fascist politics harmless.)

The European New Right

As well as his own self‐produced pamphlets, Petak’s thoughts have also been printed in publications of the European New Right, such as Staatsbriefe and Junge Freiheit¹⁰. An understanding of this European New Right (ENR hereafter) is crucial for an understanding of Petak and Allerseelen. The European New Right stems from an attempt to rethink fascist politics in light of the failure of its mid‐20th Century manifestations. While the ENR now contains many voices, its primary ideologue is Alain de Benoist, who had been a member of the French neo‐fascist organizations Jeune Nation and its successor Europe‐ Action, before founding the GRECE think tank in 1968 at the age of twenty‐five¹¹. (The French word “Grece” means Greece, suggesting the glories of ancient Europe; the acronym GRECE stands for “Research and Study Group for a European Civilization” as written in French.) In the words of one account, GRECE “became the institutional pivot of the Nouvelle Droite (New Right), the name bestowed upon de Benoist’s Paris‐based circle by the French media.”¹²

One significant aspect of much ENR discourse is its break from biological determinism and racism phrased in such biological terms, which de Benoist in his younger years had argued for. In the place of biological racism, the New Right began to present itself as a defender of cultural diversity and “ethno‐ pluralism.” What this amounts to is a form of cultural racism expressed as difference—when cultures come together, this apparently breeds homogeneity, and therefore the ENR argues for a plurality of cultures precisely through separation and the cessation of pluralism within cultures. While renouncing at least in theory any authoritarianism and conquest between different cultures, in practical terms New Right politics would necessarily lead to neo‐Apartheid and bloody Balkans‐like carve‐ups. (It is telling that Petak / Allerseelen was “impressed” by Slobodan Milosevic¹³.) Within the ENR framework, the United States and the cultural Americanization of Europe are seen as primary opponents, as these are “melting pot” efforts which the New Right sees as homogenizing (paradoxically because they are not homogenizing.) The celebration of lack of difference within cultures, now defined as difference itself—and the imposition of internal homogeneity, described as the “right to difference”—is typical of the transvaluation that occurs within New Right discourse. Similarly, the New Right can even adopt the language of democracy while arguing for purging internal difference: “Direct democracy need not be associated with a limited number of people. It is primarily associated with the notion of a relatively homogenous people conscious of what makes them a people.”¹⁴

Two other aspects of the European New Right are important to note, especially as they relate to Allerseelen: the ENR’s pagan aspect, and its stress on fighting a cultural war. In contrast to the American New Right of the time, which was generally a Christian movement, the ENR’s identity was strongly pagan and anti‐Christian. Christianity is presented as an alien force that imposed itself on indigenous European peoples; the universalist aspect of Christianity is seen as a major enemy¹⁵. (The ENR also sees the capitalist market as spreading the pathogen of universalism, and hence adopts a sort of fascist “anti‐ capitalism.”) In terms of strategy, the European New Right borrows from the Italian Communist leader Gramsci, who argued that lasting political and economic change would have to be preceded by a major shift on the cultural terrain¹⁶. The ENR therefore focuses on creating a cultural environment favorable to their political ideas flourishing—especially culture that popularizes (imagined) “indigenous” European cultural / ethnic identities and lashes out at universalism and Enlightenment values.

While Gerhard Petak does not generally reference de Benoist or GRECE—and it is possible that Petak has theoretical quibbles with some of de Benoist, just as de Benoist himself does not like Petak’s musical genre¹⁷—Petak’s ideas and output are nevertheless infused with ENR influence. This influence is already pointed to by Petak’s statements being carried in ENR journals, and the influence will become especially clear when examining Petak’s attitude towards the Third Reich. Some of this influence may have arrived directly through Petak reading specific ENR theoreticians, while some may stem from the broader far‐ Right cultural / political milieu which Petak works within. Even if he has never thought much of de Benoist’s work, Petak has certainly been presented by third parties as having something to do with the European New Right. In the second volume of the book‐sized American “Radical Traditionalist” journal Tyr: Myth‐Culture‐Tradition, an interview with Petak is one of the longest of the issue, only shorter than the extensive interview with de Benoist¹⁸. (There is also an Allerseelen track on the journal’s accompanying CD; one of the editors of Tyr is Petak’s friend Michael Moynihan, about whom more later.)

The Iron Guard (Romania)

Petak / Allerseelen contribute to the ultra‐Right culture war through his attempts to circulate and rehabilitate classical fascist ideas and imagery. Petak is especially keen on the Romanian fascist movement the Legion of the Archangel Michael (also known as the Iron Guard.) This movement, led by Corneliu Codreanu (1899 – 1938) “displayed all the characteristics of fascism”¹⁹ and “was an extremely violent organization”²⁰ noted for its anti‐Semitism, aiming for “not just the purification of Romanian life from Jewish influence but also the ‘moral rejuvenation’ of Romania on a Christian as well as a national basis.”²¹ While the Iron Guard’s outer embrace of Romanian Orthodox Christianity may appear as at odds with Petak’s paganism, it is the esoteric and mystical elements of the movement that most fascinate Petak—the Legionaries had their own mysticism and internal rites, including members of its death squads ritually drinking each other’s blood²². Such a combination of violence, fascism, blood and the occult is irresistible to Petak, who claims that “The Iron Guard [still] exists, of course” in terms of an eternal ideal and motivating myth. Petak then quotes with approval Ovidiu Gules²³, who edited the Gazeta de Vest publication that promoted the Legionary tradition. (This publication was further linked to the fascist International Third Position organization.²⁴) Gerhard Petak not only issued a pamphlet about Codreanu and the Iron Guard in his Aorta pamphlet series²⁵, but also in 1998 issued a set of two 7” vinyl records of Legionary music, with the fourth side containing a speech by Codreanu²⁶.

Petak’s release of Romanian Iron Guard music on his Aorta label, 1998

The Nazis, Their Precursors, Third Reich Culture and Mysticism

Petak’s relationship to National Socialism and the Third Reich is expressed in a variety of approaches. On occasion, his statements could be considered as historical revisionism and rehabilitation of the Nazi past. At other times, Petak distances himself from Nazism, but on a basis that is still far‐Right. Petak furthermore has an abiding interest in the Conservative Revolutionary streams that fed into Nazi politics. While Petak is not himself a neo‐Nazi, his criticisms of Nazism—such as they are—betray broader far‐Right and fascist sympathies. Petak’s criticisms are generally little but variations on ENR positions surrounding these topics. It is worth taking one of Petak’s criticisms as an example. In an interview on the Raunend post‐industrial music site, Petak discusses the exterior of Haus Atlantis in Bremen, Germany, which at the time of the Third Reich had on its facade “a large wooden sculpture showing Odin surrounded by runes.” Petak used an image of this statue for the cover of his third CD, “Sturmlieder.” Petak comments:

This was the strangest Odin statue I ever saw (unfortunately only on images) with its sad expression. […] In the Third Reich, many Christian as well as pagan National Socialists hated this statue because it was Odin or because it was an Odin some did not want to see. There were also articles in SS magazines against this ‘ugly’ totemistic statue, calling it ‘Entartete Kunst’ [Degenerate Art]. So Allerseelen used some Entartete Kunst on Sturmlieder. Finally it was burnt to ashes ‐ but it were not National Socialists setting it on fire. It was burnt to ashes by British bombers through air‐raids in WWII which destroyed a huge part of Bremen.²⁷

Why is this story so important to Petak? Through his use of the Haus Atlantis image on the cover of “Sturmlieder,” this statue is associated with the Allerseelen project and thus Petak—he sees himself in the art. While the Haus Atlantis’ exterior was condemned by segments of the Nazis according to Petak’s account, it also probably would not have been on public display at all, without the general cultural ambience of pagan revival during the Third Reich. The burning of the building—which would be properly understood as part of a military campaign to defeat the Third Reich—is instead through Petak’s quick switch associated with campaigns against Degenerate Art and presumably Nazi book burnings. The Allies become the harshest arbiters of taste. It is those fighting to overthrow the Reich, who thus seem to be involved in “Nazism” of the most extreme kind. The point is underscored immediately afterwards when Petak mentions his other “close and infamous connection” to Haus Atlantis (subsequently owned by Hilton and possessing “another, quite boring facade now.”) Having attempted to use the Haus as the venue for an Allerseelen show, the far‐Right connections of the project were exposed in the media and the event got cancelled. Criticism of Petak’s far‐Right politics, is generally portrayed by Petak as the height of real “Nazism,” as compared to the actual Nazism of the Third Reich, which warrants more tepid criticism. In one statement, Petak even likens criticism of far‐Right influence within the “darkwave” music scene, to oppression of Jewish people forced to wear the Yellow Star.²⁸ (This is, needless to say, historical revisionism on a grand scale.)

Petak is highly inspired by the work of the “Conservative Revolutionaries” who came to prominence in Germany following WWI, and who provided a large number of themes and ideas that were put to use by the Nazis. When Petak describes himself as “conservative avant‐garde,” the “conservative” in this formulation refers to the Conservative Revolutionaries, according to the sympathetic assessment of Petak / Allerseelen by Tyr co‐editor Joshua Buckley.²⁹ These Conservative Revolutionaries—two of their most famous members being philosopher Oswald Spengler and writer Ernst Jünger—were also major influences on the European New Right. The ENR has argued that the Third Reich never in practice followed Conservative Revolutionary thought despite appropriating Conservative Revolutionary intellectual efforts.³⁰

The Conservative Revolutionary movement was characterized by fervent nationalism following the German defeat in WWI; a view of the nation as an organic whole; glorification of hierarchy, militarism, industrial mobilization, as well as “folk‐community”; plus deep anti‐liberalism and anti‐egalitarianism. While the Conservative Revolutionary movement provided many political, conceptual and rhetorical tools for the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP, or Nazi Party) to utilize, Conservative Revolutionaries did not wholly approve of the Nazi regime—several saw it as insufficiently elitist, especially scorning its socialist elements. Furthermore, Conservative Revolutionaries did not tend to stress biological racism in the strict manner of the Nazi Party. Some Conservative Revolutionaries faced penalties for not wholly embracing Nazi orthodoxy, even though the worldview they spread had helped the NSDAP to power; some Conservative Revolutionaries even ended up as plotters against the regime, especially as WWII ceased going in Germany’s direction. On the other hand, many other Conservative Revolutionaries found a more‐or‐less comfortable home for themselves within the Nazi Party. Petak / Allerseelen has directly paid homage to the Conservative Revolutionaries Ernst Jünger (the Allerseelen track “Käferlied” is a tribute to him³¹) and Friedrich Hielscher (the compilation CD “Wir Rufen Deine Wölfe” on Petak’s Aorta label, contains versions of Hielscher’s poem of the same name, set to music by seventeen acts including Allerseelen.³²)

While the idea of “folk‐community” (or Volksgemeinschaft) was important to the Conservative Revolutionaries, it became an obsession for the Nazis. Yet just as the European New Right argued that the Nazi regime misapplied or failed to implement Conservative Revolutionary principles, Gerhard Petak criticizes the Third Reich not because of its völkisch obsession, but merely because the regime did not enact völkisch principles properly within its foreign policy—Petak articulates a “different, but equal” policy amongst different Völker. One should also note that it is pluralistic democracy that Petak accuses of implementing “omnipresent brainwashing,” not the Third Reich.³³

Photograph of Leni Riefenstahl on cover of Allerseelen’s “Alle Lust Will Ewigkeit” single

Although Petak makes minor criticisms of the Third Reich, his work also references and portrays positively several aspects of Nazi culture. Prime examples of this are Petak’s homages to Leni Riefenstahl, the director of the infamous Nazi propaganda movie “Triumph of the Will” (Triumph des Willens). Petak issued a pamphlet about Riefenstahl’s 1932 (pre‐Third Reich) film “The Blue Light” (Das Blaue Licht)³⁴ and also released a music single paying tribute to her.³⁵ Petak’s evaluation of Riefenstahl prior to her death was: “She was and still is a beautiful and powerful woman.”³⁶ Zero criticism is made of her talents being placed in the service of the Nazi regime. Indeed, when Petak discusses Riefenstahl again, it is to return to his theme of intolerant non‐fascists: “Leni Riefenstahl said that after World War Two, everyone considered her a witch who had love affairs with Nazis and so on, and she definitely had a hard life after the war.”³⁷ Allerseelen also contributed to a Riefenstahl‐themed CD compilation released in 1996 by the German Right‐wing record label VAWS³⁸.

Allerseelen recordings and Petak’s writings also reference and pay tribute to Nazi völkisch researchers and explorers grouped around the Ahnenerbe (“Ancestral Heritage”) think tank. This think tank, founded in the early 1930s, then formally integrated into the SS at the start of 1939 with the support of Heinrich Himmler, aimed to research the achievements of the Nordic race that they believed
once ruled the world. The SS‐ Ahnenerbe also integrated a number of sideline projects, such as human experimentation at Dachau. Friedrich Hielscher—the Conservative Revolutionary celebrated on one of Petak’s compilation discs, and who did work for the Ahnenerbe—testified on behalf of Ahnenerbe Director Wolfram Sievers during the Nuremberg Trials, claiming that Sievers had been active alongside him in opposition to Hitler. Sievers was nevertheless found guilty of crimes against humanity and executed; Hielscher visited Sievers in prison shortly before the execution, and they performed a farewell ritual together³⁹.

Another Ahnenerbe member favorably referenced by Petak is Otto Rahn, who was the topic of one of Petak’s Aorta tracts⁴⁰. Rahn’s main contribution to the Nazi mysticism of the Ahnenerbe was through his 1937 book Lucifer's Court (Luzifers Hofgesind) which described his travels across Europe in search of a hidden “Cathar‐Visigothic tradition”⁴¹. Even more important to Petak is Karl Maria Wiligut, another Ahnenerbe member who had one of Petak’s Aorta pamphlets devoted to him.⁴² Wiligut was a Nazi occultist and Ariosophist who performed pseudo‐religious ceremonies for the SS, as well as designing the death’s‐head ring worn by SS members. Wiligut was also involved with the SS redesign of Wewelsburg castle in Westphalia, intended to be made into the SS leadership hub as well as mystical center.⁴³  The second Allerseelen CD, “Gotos=Kalanda” has as its cover the Sonnenrad (sunwheel / “Black Sun”) mosaic on the floor of the SS Generals' Hall in the redesigned Wewelsburg castle.⁴⁴ This “Black Sun” design has become a popular motif within far‐Right and neo‐Nazi circles,⁴⁵ and has been widely used by Petak himself. The whole “Gotos=Kalanda” release is based on texts by Wiligut.⁴⁶ Petak also assisted the publication of a book of texts by and about Wiligut in English, published by far‐Rightist Michael Moynihan’s Dominion Press.⁴⁷

The Allerseelen CD “Neuschwabenland” (“New Swabia”) is also a Third Reich reference, referring to the 1938‐1939 German Antarctic expedition, which named a section of the Antarctic as “New Swabia” (after the German region of Swabia.) This expedition, despite its real strategic importance for the Nazi regime, has within sections of the extreme‐Right become the stuff of myth. Within such discourse, New Swabia is the site of secret Nazi bases from which they launch their UFOs, a doctrine for example promoted by the infamous Holocaust‐denier Ernst Zündel.⁴⁸ It is likely that Petak is at a minimum aware of this association, as he has published his own tracts (in the Ahnstern successor to his Aorta series) about Viktor Schauberger and Joseph Andreas Epp, both engineers discussed in the context of Nazi flying saucer mythos.⁴⁹ The site of New Swabia is also blended in Nazi esotericism to hollow earth theories and myths of polar peoples. High technology and achievement in exploration are in this way combined with mysticism and alleged ancient mysteries.

For Petak, a process of double‐mirroring is at work when he displays such symbolism. Firstly, the mixture of antiquated irrationality with a glorification of technical matters and industry, is a central aspect of Allerseelen’s 'technosophical' project as a whole; secondly, this reflects in aesthetic terms the simultaneous stress on both atavism and industrial productivity found within fascist regimes, even when explicit references are absent. Through his clear and direct references to the Third Reich, however, Petak portrays this regime—despite certain muted criticism—as a realm of achievement, mastery and mystery. The SS, especially through Petak’s focus on the Ahnenerbe, become seen mostly by reference to mysticism and spirituality, not in regards to the massive crimes against humanity that were the true practice of the organization.

Julius Evola

Petak celebrates another man who was attracted to the SS, the Italian 'traditionalist' theorist Julius Evola (1898 ‐ 1974). While Evola had been published in Ahnenerbe publications, his theories on race clashed with this organization (and with Third Reich orthodoxy), and it was to the “pan‐Europeanist” elements of the SS that Evola ended up being most connected⁵⁰. During WWII, Evola worked for German intelligence⁵¹; following the defeat of the Axis powers, Evola became an extremely influential figure to the most intransigent of the Italian far‐Right, and was a theoretical influence on the fascist bombers of the 1970s and early 80s in that country⁵². Similarly to Petak, Evola had a romantic image of the SS and the Iron Guard, seeing them as elite orders of warrior‐mystics fighting to restore hierarchical values in a world of inversion, corruption and decay.

Evola’s ideas have had some influence within various sectors of the far‐Right, including the European New Right and various non‐Hitlerian fascist organizations. Evola differed with the Third Reich’s racial policies and their biological determinism, favoring instead a “spiritual” and elitist form of racism. Evola argued that only members of an elite could properly be understood as having “race,” and that such race could not only be understood in terms of biology. Such a view was still very much compatible with anti‐ Semitism and racial bigotry, just not the official racial doctrines of the Third Reich. (Evola’s opposition to this policy of the Nazi Party was obviously not enough to prevent his collaboration with its regime.) Elitism is at the core of any of Evola’s criticisms of fascist governments—all were too plebian to earn his complete approval, although some violent closed groups (such as the SS) held a great appeal to him. Evola’s worldview was not primarily political, but rather his political engagements and thought were outgrowths of his broader metaphysical ideas. Evola is a key author of the Traditionalist School, an anti‐ modern intellectual movement with a focus on religious practice and initiation, and Evola also authored several books on esoteric topics. In his later and most pessimistic work, Cavalcare la Tigre (Ride the Tiger) Evola argued for “apoliteia”—detachment from the polity—as the world slid irreversibly into decline. However, this “detachment” did not rule out such acts of mayhem as his adherents would later put into practice in Italy, but instead served as justification for them. Acts of terror and extreme violence became framed as spiritual affirmation by a spiritual warrior‐elite still committed to ordering principles in a corrupt and contemptible world. Evola’s aloof and “spiritual” aspects—and the fact that his thinking was metaphysically‐based—are often used by Evola’s defenders in order to place him in a category outside of fascist political thought. However, Evola’s own affiliations are a matter of record, and even his later apoliteia is noteworthy mainly by reference to the fascist violence it inspired.

Gerhard Petak has explicitly tied Allerseelen to Julius Evola’s works and worldview, through frequent mention of Evola in interviews, as well as the contribution of an Allerseelen track to the “Cavalcare La Tigre ‐ Julius Evola: Centenary” tribute CD⁵³. Petak also contributed, under the name of “Kadmon,” an article in “an issue of a conservative revolutionary French journal, Dualpha […] dedicated to Julius Evola”⁵⁴. A split CD between Allerseelen and the American act Changes (about whom more later) is entitled “Men Among the Ruins”⁵⁵, a reference to Evola’s book of the same name that provided “Post‐ war Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist” and which bemoaned opposition to fascism and totalitarianism.

Changes / Allerseelen split CD, 2006

Black Metal and Right‐Wing Occultism

Petak’s involvement in esoteric fascism also extends to giving interviews to occult fascist journals, such as the interview published in the second issue of The Nexus during the late 90s⁵⁶. The Nexus was published by New Zealand resident Kerry Bolton, who as well as being active in a series of occult organizations, was also a co‐founder of the New Zealand Fascist Union. Bolton’s organization “The Black Order” was an attempt to synthesize his political and occult sympathies, and aimed to “revive the esoteric current of national socialism”⁵⁷. Petak’s association with Bolton began prior to the Nexus interview. The twentieth pamphlet of Petak’s mid‐‘90s Aorta series lists a precursor to The Nexus named The Heretic in its contact addresses following the main article⁵⁸. The central article within of that issue gave Petak’s interpretation of the Norse cult of the “wild hunt” or oskorei, attempting to portray the “black metal” musical scene of the time as a return to the same pagan impulses that were manifested in the old cult. Petak commends the black metal scene’s “fight against Kristianity [sic] and partly also against Americanism afflicting all areas of European life today,” a statement that echoes European New Right formulations. Petak then singles out the Norwegian black metal musician Kristian “Varg” Vikernes and his Burzum solo project for special praise. The rest of the pamphlet is devoted to a sympathetic interview with Vikernes, at the time imprisoned for the murder of a rival black metal figurehead. Vikernes is a central figure in the far‐Right and ideologically racist turn made by a segment of the black metal scene; Petak’s attempts to popularize Vikernes probably played a small part in this development.

Key Associates (One): Blood Axis / Michael Moynihan

Petak’s friend Michael Moynihan—an American far‐Rightist who has his own fascist experimental music project named Blood Axis—has played a much larger role than Petak in popularizing fascistic tendencies within the black metal scene, through his book Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground⁵⁹. The central argument of this book, written by Moynihan and Norwegian co‐author Didrik Søderlind, is that subconscious archetypes and a “return of Wotan” may be behind the racism and violence of individuals such as “Varg” Vikernes, thus absolving these black metal scene participants of responsibility for their own fascist politics and instead imbuing their activity (murder, arsons etc.) with otherworldly mystery⁶⁰. (We are not arguing that most black metal enthusiasts are racists or fascists, merely those individuals such as Vikernes who easily fit within both categories, were largely excused by Lords of Chaos and its archetype theories.) Unsurprisingly, as Petak’s “Oskorei” essay itself comes close to describing the black metal phenomenon as a reawakening of racial archetypes, it was reprinted as an appendix to Lords of Chaos⁶¹. Other occult fascists such as Kerry Bolton are also provided with publicity in the book⁶².

Moynihan’s affiliations are worth briefly examining, firstly because he for some time lived in Portland, Oregon and influenced the milieu that is now hosting Allerseelen, and secondly because Moynihan often tries to obscure his politics and pretend as though he is being unfairly maligned by antifascists. Ironically, Moynihan criticizes similar behavior from others:

I’m sick of people saying they’re ‘not political,’ as I think this is a cop‐out… If you’re going to espouse ‘fascist’ ideas, then I believe you have to accept some of the responsibility for their application in the real world; otherwise what is the point of espousing them in the first place?⁶³

In 1992, Moynihan published Siege: The Collected Writings of James Mason under his Siege imprint. Mason, a neo‐Nazi activist since his teens, for a while edited a publication of the National Socialist Liberation Front, but in 1982 he separated the Siege journal from that organization, creating a new project named the Universal Order which combined neo‐Nazism with recognition of Charles Manson as a movement leader⁶⁴. The name of Moynihan’s musical act also gives some not‐so‐subtle clues about his politics: Blood as in “Blood and Soil,” plus Axis as in the Axis Powers. Moynihan has done much to promote Julius Evola within the post‐industrial scene, and has edited two Evola books for publication in English, including Evola’s Men Among the Ruins: Post‐War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist⁶⁵. Moynihan is currently involved as a co‐editor of Tyr: Myth‐Culture‐Tradition, a journal combining a loosely Evolian outlook with the European New Right and racially‐charged variants of Germanic neo‐ paganism. Tyr does not describe itself as a fascist or Nazi publication, yet it is fixated on völkisch identity, reproduces far‐Right anti‐modernity discourses, and has no problem publishing authors whose political lineages trace back to classical fascism.

Gerhard Petak interviewed Blood Axis in an issue of his Aorta series⁶⁶; Petak was granted a major within Moynihan and Buckley’s Tyr a number of years later⁶⁷. There have been two spit releases between Allerseelen and Blood Axis, a split single in 1994⁶⁸ and a second split single in 1998⁶⁹. The first of these releases is of particular interest, being the first release on Moynihan’s Storm Records label and therefore signifying the deep connection between Moynihan and Petak. Allerseelen’s side of this release contains lyrics from a poem by SS mystic Karl Maria Wiligut, and the song was later included on Allerseelen’s “Gotos=Kalanda” release. Allerseelen’s liner notes contain the “Black Sun” image favored by Petak as a design element (this of course being particularly important in a Wiligut‐themed release.) The Blood Axis side of this release is a cover version of Joy Division’s “Walked in Line,” the song transformed into an unequivocal affirmation of fascist regimentation and violence.

Key Associates (Two): Changes / Robert N. Taylor

Another important ally of Petak’s is Robert N. Taylor of the “folk noir” act Changes. Taylor has also worked closely with Moynihan, and is active within ultra‐Right neo‐pagan circles alongside him. Moynihan is also responsible for the first releases of Changes’ music, issued through his Storm label⁷⁰. Changes and Allerseelen released a split CD in 2006, the album title taken straight from one of Julius Evola’s books⁷¹.

In interviews, Robert Taylor has discussed his involvement with white anti‐Black rioting in Chicago during his youth. Taylor went on to participate in the Minutemen, a Right‐wing paramilitary group active in the 1960s and early ‘70s. Taylor continues to have radical‐Right views. He has discussed in an interview his vision for racial separation in America, with people of color being relocated to specific regions in a plan that plan that mirrors that of David Duke⁷². Additionally, “Robert Wulfing” (Robert N. Taylor) sent lyrics and a description of the Changes song “Waiting for the Fall” to the “musical terrorists” section of Folk & Faith, a “national anarchist” website. While Taylor notes that the song is “a generic revolutionary song” with “no mention of ideology,” he is certainly placing the song in a specifically far‐ Right context by sending his words to Folk & Faith⁷³ (National anarchism is an ideology with its origin in fascist politics; despite the name, the tendency did not initially spring from the anarchist movement, and it is rejected by many anarchists⁷⁴).

Allerseelen’s Support in Oregon

The current tour is not the first time that Allerseelen has been on the West Coast. A 2003 tour played three West Coast dates, all with the Portland group Waldteufel, who are also playing several dates with Allerseelen this year. Markus Wolff, the primary force behind Waldteufel, is a frequent collaborator with Michael Moynihan, and supplies writings on German völkisch authors and pagan revivalists to Tyr and similar publications. Wolff is also an Evola enthusiast who supported the Moynihan‐edited English edition of Men Among the Ruins⁷⁵. Wolff currently also edits Hex magazine, a “heathen” journal that has published Petak (as Gerhard Hallstatt) in several issues⁷⁶. Hex has some other interesting associations with the far‐Right; one of its founders and initial editors, Amie Rautmann (listed as “A. von Rautmann” on the Hex website⁷⁷) is an enthusiast of the Holocaust‐denier David Irving, who attended Irving’s speech in Portland on July 19, 2009⁷⁸. The Hex website also promotes Allerseelen’s current tour⁷⁹.

Allerseelen played in Portland on June 14, 2003, supported by Waldteufel and Sacrificial Totem. The event took place at Optic Nerve Arts on Alberta Street. Michael Moynihan played with Allerseelen at this show. Petak’s far‐Right sympathies were further alluded to in Petak’s account of this tour, which cited questions he had to answer in a form when entering the United States. The following are the only questions cited by Petak:

Are you seeking entry to engage in criminal or immoral activities? Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were you involved in any way in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies?⁸⁰

Petak’s friend Markus Wolff further organized a show for Changes and Waldteufel that took place on August 26th, 2005 at the Alberta Street Public House. The event was publicized in an update from Soleilmoon, an experimental record label and music distribution also headquartered on Alberta Street⁸¹.
While Soleilmoon distributes a variety of different musical styles and artists, it does carry releases by Waldteufel, Changes and Allerseelen. Soleilmoon is also a major US distributor for the fascist⁸² neo‐folk act Death in June and its New European Recordings (NER) label.

A final Oregon ally of Petak is Tyler Davis of Jacksonville, Oregon, who runs The Ajna Offensive record label and the Ajnabound Esoteric Books publishing company. Davis’ connection to Petak traces back to the 1990s, when Davis helped with the black metal and experimental music ‘zine Descent alongside editor Stephen O’Malley. (O’Malley is responsible for an article on the topic of black metal published by the white supremacist Resistance magazine in 1995⁸³.) Davis’ Ajna Offensive distributes a number of Allerseelen titles, and Davis will be following along with the Allerseelen tour⁸⁴. Davis is also planning to issue a book of Petak’s collected tracts from the 1990s (issued as Gerhard Hallstatt) entitled Blutleuchte⁸⁵. While Tyler Davis is involved with issuing and distributing many titles that are not related to fascist politics—many instead focusing on Satanism, evil and the occult—he also seems to have no problem with fascists. The Ajna Offensive, for example, reissued the album “Blodsband (Blood Religion Manifest)” by white nationalists Sigrblot in 2005⁸⁶.

Conclusion

Petak has frequently denied having any interest in politics, stating for
example that “I do not believe in economics or politics. I believe in the power of art.”⁸⁷ Yet Petak continually deploys imagery from fascist movements, maintains associations with others on the far‐Right, and puts forward politics that appear as a combination of völkisch, Conservative Revolutionary and European New Right influences. Allerseelen is also promoted by publications and websites that stem from the fascist political tradition. As well as Petak’s interview in Kerry Bolton’s The Nexus, Allerseelen was also interviewed in Lutte du peuple, a publication of the French “national revolutionary” organization Nouvelle Résistance⁸⁸. Allerseelen is also promoted by in the far‐Right culture war efforts of Richard Lawson’s Flux Europa site⁸⁹, and is reviewed on national anarchist Troy Southgate’s RoseNoire website⁹⁰.

What is the meaning of Petak’s denial of any politics or political motivation? While not referring explicitly to Allerseelen, Anton Shekhovtsov’s article “Apoliteic music: Neo‐Folk, Martial Industrial and ‘Metapolitical Fascism’” points to an answer by discussing Evola’s concept of apoliteia as well as European New Right influence in relation to certain sectors of the post‐industrial scene⁹¹. From a stance of apoliteia, Petak is able to claim detachment from worldly politics, yet apoliteia is far from the same as pure political apathy. Rather, Petak appears to be active in a metapolitical “invisible order” engaged in anti‐Enlightenment culture wars, along the lines of the European New Right and its Right‐Gramscian project. While Petak does not dirty his hands in Right‐wing Party‐building, he nevertheless contributes to a climate favorable to fascist politics, through fighting for the hearts and minds of countercultural audiences. He knows what he is doing. As antifascists, we can only wonder whether Agalloch equally knows what it is doing, by helping such a fascist propagandist to access new audiences.

~ Rose City Antifascists, December 2010
~ download the statement

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NOTES

1. Gules quoted in 'Allerseelen interview', Stigmata magazine (Belarus), No. 2 (August 2001)
2. Junge Freiheit article quoted in Shekhovtsov, Anton, "Apoliteic music: Neo‐Folk, Martial Industrial and ‘Metapolitical Fascism’", Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 43 No. 5 (December 2009), 431‐457 (Shekhovtsov gives his source for the Junge FreiheitFarin, Klaus: Die Gothics: Interviews, Fotografien (Bad Tölz: Tilsner 2001), 15.) quote as:
3. Petak quoted in Tasmanian National Anarchists, “Dark Green Romanticism”, Tasmanian Autonomous Zone: Heathen Anarchism in the Apple Isle website, February 24, 2010
4. Allerseelen interview, Stigmata magazine, op. cit. (Note 1). (Petak: “I am the heart of ALLERSEELEN. Usually I am only collaborating with other people on stage.”)
5. Gotrich, Lars, “First Listen: Agalloch, ‘Marrow Of The Spirit’,” National Public Radio website, November 14, 2010
6. “Steinklang‐Industries präsentieren: OAK FOLK – compilation,” Klang‐Konsortium wordpress blog, November 29, 2010
7. Allerseelen, Myspace Music site (Listing of “Allerseelen Live Performances” on front page, accessed December 3, 2010.)
8. Allerseelen, Discogs website.
9. Passmore, Kevin, Fascism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 11. (Passmore attributes the phrase “A and not A” to Ortega y Gasset; the contrast provided by Passmore himself, is that fascism “idealizes the people” while it shows contempt for mass society.)
10. Bündnis gegen das Allerseelenkonzert (Rosenheim), “Nein zum Allerseelen Konzert in Rosenheim,” April 2005 (“Coalition Against the Allerseelen Concert” / “No to the Allerseelen Concert in Rosenheim.”)
11. Lee, Martin A., The Beast Reawakens (Boston / New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1997), 209‐10.
12. Lee, op. cit. (Note 11), 210.
13. 'Allerseelen interview', Stigmata magazine, op. cit. (Note 1).
14. De Benoist, Alain, “Democracy Revisited,” Telos, No. 95 (Spring 1993), 63‐75, 75. (Translation from Démocratie: Le Problème (Paris: Le Labyrinthe, 1985) by Tomislav Sunic.)
15. Lee, op. cit. (Note 11), 211.
16. Lee, op. cit. (Note 11), 210.
17. Shekhovtsov, op. cit. (Note 2). (“For example, the leader of the French New Right, Alain de Benoist, who actually enjoys folk music, finds it disturbing when folk artists […] add ‘elements of Nazi subculture’ to their music, and considers them provocateurs.”)
18. Buckley, Joshua and Michael Moynihan, Eds., Tyr: Myth‐Culture‐Tradition No. 2 (Atlanta: Ultra Publishing, 2004). (Alain de Benoist interview is at 77‐109 following the publication of a de Benoist essay at 65‐76; the Allerseelen / Gerhard Petak interview is at 285‐296.)
19. Passmore, op. cit. (Note 9), 83.
20. Passmore, op. cit. (Note 9), 84.
21. Sedgwick, Mark, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, (Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press , 2004), 113.
22. Passmore, op. cit. (Note 9), 84.
23. 'Allerseelen interview', Stigmata magazine, op. cit. (Note 1).
24. Ghetu, Dan, “Synthesis Editor Troy Southgate” (2001 interview), Synthesis: Journal du Cercle de la Rose Noire website (Southgate, a theoretician of the fascist “national anarchism” tendency, is a former member of International Third Position, and names Gules’ Gazeta de Vest as “a thinly‐disguised propaganda outlet for the ITP.”)
25. Goodrick‐Clarke, Nicholas, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity (New York / London: New York University Press, 2002), 340‐41, Note 46.
26. “No Artist ‐ Eiserne Garde: Gardia De Fier,” Discogs website.
27. 'Allerseelen interview', Raunend website (undated).
28. Bündnis gegen das Allerseelenkonzert (Rosenheim), op. cit. (Note 10). (Petak is quoted from the scene publication Black 14 (1998): “Apparently every culture needs a witch's mark, a Yellow Star. Today the accusation of fascism against industrial and dark wave music is a Yellow Star. The Yellow Star looks different today, they are the Ariosophic nationalistic symbols, runes, Thor's hammers, the Kruckenkreuz and the swastika.”)
29. Buckley, Joshua, “Musical Ammunition: An Interview with Allerseelen’s Gerhard,” Tyr: Myth‐Culture‐Tradition No. 2, op. cit. (Note 18), 285‐296, 286.
30. Lee, op. cit. (Note 11), 210.
31. “Allerseelen CD Strib und Werde” (reviews), Aorta blogspot site.
32. “Wir rufen Deine Wölfe” (reviews), Aorta blogspot site.
33. Petak quoted in Tasmanian National Anarchists, “Dark Green Romanticism,” op. cit. (Note 3).
34. Goodrick‐Clarke, op. cit. (Note 25), 340‐41, Note 46.
35. “Allerseelen ‐ Alle Lust Will Ewigkeit / Traumlied,” Discogs website
36. 'Allerseelen interview', The Noiseist (France), No. 4 (2000)
37. Collins, Simon, “The Alchemy of Allerseelen,” Judas Kiss magazine website. Interview of May 20, 2006.
38. “Various – Riefenstahl,” Discogs website.
39. Bahn, Peter, “The Friedrich Hielscher Legend: The Founding of a Twentieth‐Century Pantheistic ‘Church’ and Its Subsequent Misinterpretations,” Tyr: Myth‐Culture‐Tradition No. 2, op. cit. (Note 18), 243‐262, 249‐250. (Translated from “Die Hielscher‐Legende. Eine panentheistische ‘Kirchen’‐Gründung des 20. Jahrhunderts und ihre Fehldeutungen” (Gnostika No. 19, October 2001) by Michael Moynihan and “Gerhard”—presumably Gerhard Petak.)
40. Goodrick‐Clarke, op. cit. (Note 25), 340‐41, Note 46.
41. Goodrick‐Clarke, op. cit.
42. Goodrick‐Clarke, op. cit.
43. Goodrick‐Clarke, op. cit., (Note 25), 135‐36.
44. “Allerseelen ‐ Gotos=Kalanda,” Discogs website
45. Goodrick‐Clarke, op. cit. (Note 25), 227. (Goodrick‐Clarke writes of “the rapid internationalization of this German neo‐Nazi symbol.”)
46. 'Allerseelen interview', Descent magazine (Olympia, WA), No. 3 (Spring 1996).
47. Flowers, Stephen E. (Trans.) and Michael Moynihan (Ed.), The Secret King: Karl Maria Wiligut, Himmler's Lord of the Runes (Vermont / Texas: Dominion Press / Rûna‐Raven Press, 2001), Amazon Books “Look Inside!” result (“Kadmon” listed as having “contributed to the eventual publication of this book” on copyright page.)
48. Goodrick‐Clarke, op. cit.
49. Goodrick‐Clarke, op. cit. (Note 25), 340‐41, Note 46.
50. Coogan, Kevin, Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International (New York: Autonomedia, 1999), 310.
51. Coogan, Kevin, Dreamer of the Day, op. cit. (Note 50), 315‐316.
52. Sedgwick, Mark, Against the Modern World, op. cit. (Note 21), 179‐186.
53. “Various ‐ Cavalcare La Tigre ‐ Julius Evola: Centenary,” Discogs website.
54. François, Stephane, “The ‘Euro‐Pagan’ Scene: Between Paganism and Radical Right,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Vol. 1 No. 2 (2008), 35‐54
55. “Changes / Allerseelen, Men Among The Ruins”, Discogs website (Rather amazingly, in an article mentioning this association as well as Petak’s references to Wiligut and his release of Legionary music, François states that Petak “has never had an ideologically oriented message.”)
56. “The Nexus (journal),” SpiritusTemporis website
57. Gardell, Mattias, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 294.
58. Petak, Gerhard (as “Kadmon”), Aorta No. 20 (1995).
59. Moynihan, Michael and Didrik Søderlind, Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground (Venice, CA: Feral House, 1998).
60. Morrow, Charles, “Resurgent Atavism? Resurgent Nazism, Or, Wotan Made Me Do It,” in Burghart, Devin, Ed., Soundtracks to the White Revolution: White Supremacist Assaults on Youth Music Subcultures (Chicago: Center for New Community, 1999), 68‐70.
61. Petak, Gerhard (as “Kadmon”), “Oskorei,” in Moynihan and Søderlind, Lords of Chaos, op. cit.
62. Moynihan and Søderlind, Lords of Chaos, op. cit.
63. Moynihan quoted in Coogan, Kevin, “How Black is Black Metal? Michael Moynihan, Lords of Chaos and the ‘Countercultural Fascist’ Underground,” Hit List Vol. 1 No. 1 (February / March 1999), 32‐49, 45. (Coogan quotes from a Momentum interview with Moynihan.)
64. “Michael Moynihan's Siege Mentality,” Who Makes the Nazis? blog, October 8, 2010
65. Evola, Julius, Men Among the Ruins: Post‐War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 2002).
66. Goodrick‐Clarke, op. cit. (Note 25), 340‐41, Note 46.
67. Buckley, Joshua, “Musical Ammunition: An Interview with Allerseelen’s Gerhard,” Tyr: Myth‐Culture‐Tradition No. 2, op. cit. (Note 18), 285‐296
68. “Blood Axis / Allerseelen ‐ Walked In Line / Ernting,” Discogs website.
69. “Allerseelen / Blood Axis ‐ Käferlied / Brian Boru,” Discogs website.
70. “Changes ‐ Fire Of Life,” Discogs website (The following year, Storm co‐released the first Changes CD, also titled “Fire of Life,” see: Discogs.com)
71. “Changes / Allerseelen ‐ Men Among The Ruins,” Discogs, op. cit. (Note 55).
72. Lunsford, John, “Nazis, Noise and Nihilism: Infiltrating the Experimental Music Scene” in Burghart, Devin, Ed., Soundtracks to the White Revolution, op. cit.
73. Wulfing, Robert (Robert N. Taylor), “Waiting for the Fall,” Folk & Faith website
74. Sunshine, Spencer, “Rebranding Fascism: National‐Anarchists,” The Public Eye Vol. 23 No. 4 (Winter 2008).
75. Evola, Julius, Men Among the Ruins, op. cit.
76. “Hex Contributors,” Hex Magazine website.
77. “Past Staff,” Hex Magazine website.
78. Registration list for July 29, 2009 David Irving event in Portland (Item leaked on internet following event. Scott Rautmann purchased two tickets and is listed as “married to Amy” [sic].)
79. “Winternights/Samhain News 2010,” Hex Magazine website.
80. “2003 Allerseelen Pacific West Coast,” Aorta blogspot blog, November 14, 2005.
81. “Updates”, Soleilmoon website, August 4, 2005
82. Chicago Anti‐Racist Action, “Death in June, Der Blutharsch, Changes”, Infoshop News website, December 17 2003.
83. O’Malley, Stephen, “Nordic Darkness...,” Resistance magazine (Fall 1995).
84. “Allerseelen ‐ US dates,” The Ajna Offensive website.
85. “Gerhard Hallstatt: Blutleuchte,” Facebook page.
86. “Sigrblot ‐ Blodsband (Blood Religion Manifest),” Discogs website.
87. 'Allerseelen interview', Stigmata magazine, op. cit. (Note 1).
88. Bale, Jeffrey M., “‘National Revolutionary’ Groupuscules and the Resurgence of ‘Left‐wing’ Fascism: the Case of France’s Nouvelle Résistance”, Patterns of Prejudice Vol. 36, No. 3 (2002), 25‐49, 42‐43 Note 46.
89. “Allerseelen,” Flux Europa website.
90. Southgate, Troy, “Allerseelen ‐ Stirb und Werde,” Synthesis: Journal du Cercle de la Rose Noire website.
91. Shekhovtsov, op. cit. (Note 2).

Just Say Non: Nazism, Narcissism and Boyd Rice

"Boyd's rather unimaginative sadism used to embarrass me, but then he explained it using words like 'Weltanshauung'"
Lisa Crystal-Carver, Drugs are Nice ^{[LC, p215]}

I last saw Boyd Rice play (as 'Non') back in August 1981, alongside Throbbing Gristle (TG), Z'ev, Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA as part of the 'Industrial Night Out' at the Lyceum, London, which brought together the big cheeses of Industrial Music in what was to be something of a coming out party for the scene but turned out also to be its swansong (it was TG's last UK concert; they broke up a few months later). At the time Rice presented himself as a Dadaist and prankster though his aesthetic was actually closer to the sub-Futurist 'instant karma for kids' noise-racket that Merzbow has since successfully appropriated and turned into a brand / 'racket' of his own. While TG boasted of making music from ugly noise, Rice tried to outflank them by serving up the ugliness directly, unfiltered by any obvious concern for form. In fairness Boyd Rice could be said to be among the key players of early Industrial Music, and as a result he perhaps has a shade more kudos than some of the complete musical non-entities we're generally concerned with around here (Wakeford, Pearce, Moynihan, et al). Rice has declared his Fascism in a number of statements, in his art, and through public actions such as appearing in full Fascist regalia and holding a dagger in a photograph alongside Bob Heick, taken in 1989 to promote the latter's organisation, the neo-Nazi skinhead party, American Front. He has also appeared on White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger's cable TV show Race and Reason, where he declared that his friends in Current 93 and Death in June were promoting a 'racialist' agenda and emphasised the importance of Industrial and Neo-Folk music for building the 'Aryan youth movement'.

Since the 80s Rice has continued to release records as well as dabbling ineptly in other media (photography, painting) and playing a leading role in the Church of Satan (he has recently been installed as its leader and 'High Priest') as well as getting involved with Grail mythology, Tiki culture, alcoholism and various other similarly moronic pastimes. Along the way he's written essays and articles outlining his evolving concerns and hobbies for a string of publications, which are collected here along with some previously unpublished writings in the book Standing in Two Circles: The Collected Works of Boyd Rice, edited by Michael Clark and published in 2008 by Creation Books. This collection offers an opportunity to pin down the peculiarly slippery Rice; 'slippery' because his defenders claim that he sets out essentially to 'provoke', which lends him a degree of insulation from the charges of Fascism that would be trivially obvious in any other context. The way this works is that Rice can openly declaim and publish Fascist and racist ideas, and yet confused fans and commentators - who have bought into the mistaken idea that provocation in and of itself is the ne plus ultra of artistic radicalism - still refuse to accept that by buying his records and attending his gigs they are financing a Fascist propagandist since, after all, he is 'merely' trying to provoke. Perhaps these people are by now so utterly stupefied that they're just grateful to anyone who can still manage to wring a response out of them - even if it's by promoting ideas that threaten themselves and everyone they know. This was brought home to me earlier this year when a photographer friend attended Rice's gig in New York to record it for a local paper. Despite the fact that this person has a background as an anti-Fascist, having watched an entire evening of Rice dressed in Fascist military gear, surrounded on stage by Sieg Heil'ing Nazi goons while projecting images of the Swastika and Wolfsangel (the SS symbol Rice used for years as his logo) and reading selections from racist, Social Darwinist tracts, and with the support groups being open White Suprematists, the best he could come up with at the end was that Boyd might perhaps be "a little dodgy". I mean, what does a Fascist have to do these days to get the recognition they deserve?

One reason that Rice's ideology is difficult to get to grips with is that he is patently stupid, meaning that people are loath to take him seriously in case it reflects poorly on their sense of humour or proportion. But that is to miss the fact that condescending to Rice's idiocy by not taking him seriously also makes it easier for him to sell his ideas. While Fascist ideology is by its very nature irrational and essentially incoherent - it doesn't seek to understand the social world in order to place it under collective human control but rather to justify post hoc the Fascist's pre-existing drive to annihilate large parts of society in the name of racial and spiritual 'purity' - this is made worse in Rice's case due to his inability to grapple in even the slightest way with history, politics or anything else requiring a modicum of intellectual focus. His arguments are confused and contradictory, and on top of this he shares the Fascist-occult regard for portents and symbols, for 'mysterious forces', innate biological imperatives, occult machinations and Chthonic powers as the determinants of history, which means that his thought necessarily has the chaotic, cobbled-together quality of childhood obsessions and superstitions.

Despite the fact that there is very little logic or sense in his thought there is nevertheless another kind of coherence at work to the extent that his obsessions cohere with those of his comrades, overlapping neatly with those of the other players in the Fascist-occult 'Apoliteic' counter-culture. Their ideas may well be an incoherent mess when considered purely as ideas, but they share them in common in practical terms as they thrust their hands into the lucky-dip bowl of Fascist esoteric idiocy to pluck out those notions they like they sound of and dole them out among their peers. So it's no surprise that in these essays Rice touches on many of the core themes that tie him to the likes of Michael Moynihan, Doug Pearce and other musicians he has collaborated with over the years (both Moynihan and Pearce provide blurb texts promoting the book; Pearce even providing a rare dash of humour when he salutes Rice as an "inspirational genius"). These people may be in different stages of denial or employing different degrees of deception when it comes to admitting their Fascist allegiances, but they all draw from the same pool of half-baked atavistic notions and gladly share what they find, disagreeing only in points of detail (and then largely only on the basis of minor variations in taste or as a matter of mutual brand positioning). Among Fascist ideologues ideas are essentially fuel for the creation of a mobilising myth, so coherence doesn't matter that much. But while it is impossible to take Boyd Rice seriously as a man or a thinker it would be irresponsible not to register the threat his ideas represent.

Balding alcoholic Boyd Rice
(Photo by Brian Clark)

A good place to start into this mess of a book is Michael Clark's 'Introduction', which runs through a few of the set-piece arguments the Fascists and their supporters use in their defence. First up is Clark's defence of Rice's use of Fascist motifs;

"To conform to the edicts of contemporary Western social mores one must totally accept or reject controversial taboo subjects... In considering the issue of Nazism, for example, there can be no grey area, no possibility whatsoever that certain facets of such a subject might hold a kernel of merit or glimmer or redemptive worth... The use of Fascistic or Nazi aesthetics and symbolism is resolutely - aggressively - forbidden in all but the most comedic of contexts, while... the Hammer and the Sickle and The Red Star are so ubiquitous as to verge on countercultural corporate branding... Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini are unilaterally and universally anathematised, while their despotic Communist counterparts Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung and regularly given a pass - despite the fact that the latter wrested exponentially more human life from the planet than did the former." ^[38]

The first thing to note about this is that it skirts the fact that Rice not only uses Fascist 'aesthetics and symbolism' but promotes Fascism itself (in the very book Clark is introducing, for example): Clark presumably hopes that the reader is as stupid as his author and won't notice his equivocation. More importantly, this line of argument exemplifies one of the defining characteristics of the book as a whole since it remains trapped entirely within the framework of a bourgeois thought. To put it bluntly, Rice and his friends repeatedly accept a liberal perception of the world and then simply reverse its particular judgements (Fascism is taboo <-> Fascism is grand). This does not allow the individual to escape bourgeois thought in the way that is promised to the consumer, but rather keeps them entirely within its clutches, albeit perhaps looking a little racier now they sport Totenkopf patches and worship Satan.

Stalinism did indeed pile up the bodies of its victims, slaughtering millions on the road to conquering and then consolidating its social power. But Stalinism and Fascism do not represent political antitheses in the way that both Clark and Fascist thought like to pretend. They are simply different forms of rule peculiar to different stages and conditions of capitalism. Both Stalinism and Fascism murdered Jews, homosexuals, national minorities,'revisionists' and backsliders, trade unionists and socialists. The difference is that Stalinism in both Russia and China did so as part of a process of primitive (state-) capitalist accumulation similar to that by which Britain, for example, achieved much the same ends at a corresponding stage of development through, eg., the slave trade and Highland Clearances (though Stalinism appears bloodier because it compressed the same phase of development into a far shorter period of time). This does not justify Stalinist violence in any way, but it begins to explain it. Fascism serves a different end and achieves it differently. It is essentially a form of emergency rule at a time of extraordinary capitalist crisis in which the working class is terrorised into submission by unleashing waves of destructive violence against any and all perceived enemies of the state, internal and external. Fascism has its ideological dimensions, of course, but in practice they are ultimately subordinate to its self-appointed task of integrating and stabilising capitalist society at times of danger to the state by liquidating it's enemies, both real (the class conscious working class) and imagined (any and all impure and degenerate elements as defined by whatever myth or prejudice inspires the particular strand of Fascism under consideration and mobilises the masses behind it). This is done in order to create an 'organic' / integral society where all the parts are subordinated to the social totality, existing only to serve it.

All of this is opaque to Clark, who talks instead like a consumer in the shopping mall of history, choosing between competing brands of totalitarianism on the basis of which is less fattening for his notional conscience. He wants to pile up the bodies and count them rather than understand the ideas that coordinated their destruction. Instead of considering the politics of Rice's Fascism he likes to present Rice simply as someone 'brave' enough to challenge the 'taboo' against Fascism, as if he might shake bourgeois society to its core merely by invoking the negative theology it shrouds itself in. But this taboo is, after all, only the socially constructed fetish of a particular epoch and doesn't mean that crisis-ridden capitalism won't reach toward Fascism again in future (there are faint indications of this already in Europe). And this turn will be made easier to the extent that ideologues and propagandists, even feeble ones like Boyd Rice, have helped clear the route back to Fascism by normalising it's anti-democratic, mythic values.

A similar logic is apparent in Clark's defence of Satanism;

"The Church of Satan is often dismissed outright as illegitimate by practitioners of more established belief systems... it's difficult to deny that conventional organised religion has been responsible for scores of large scale wars, genocides, inquisitions, witch hunts, crusades and other varieties of human strife over the centuries, but one would be hard pressed to find so much as a single example of a major conflict undertaken in the name of Satan." ^[39]

Once again, the ignorance of basic historical processes (if it isn't entirely feigned) is astonishing. Does he really imagine that the Crusades were simply an expression of Christian values, as opposed to social and political struggles for which the language of religion served merely as a smokescreen and ideology? Clark takes religious ideology at its own word and assigns to it a primordial power over events, as if religion created man rather than the other way about. Worse than this, in treating Satanism as merely an abstract negation of Christianity he ignores the positive content that modern Satanism has developed, which is rooted in racist and proto-Fascist ideas. Modern Satanism begins with the work of Howard Stanton Levey (aka Anton LaVey) and his Church of Satan. As is well known, the key text of his church, The Satanic Bible, which has influenced all of the main Satanist cults since, plagiarises the 19th Century Social Darwinist tract Might is Right, by Arthur Desmond (aka Ragnar Redbeard), a work brimming with violent anti-Semitism and racism. Partly as a result of LaVey's promotion of it, Desmond's book has become a favourite of modern racists, right-wing Libertarians and Fascists, and was even republished by 14 Words Press, the company founded by David Lane, the notorious Klan member who also helped lead the armed Fascist group, The Order, and who died in prison after being convicted of conspiring in the murder of Denver Radio talk show host (and Jewish anti-Fascist) Alan Berg. Entire sections of Might is Right are simply transferred wholesale into Levey's Bible. If Satanism has not yet proved as practically malevolent as Christianity in Clark's estimation it is certainly not for the want of effort on the part of those who have taken the core of Levey's teaching to its logical conclusion, such as Lane and, eg., the members of The Order of Nine Angles and other Nazi-Satanic cults.

As a collection of occasional pieces it's hard to get to grips with Rice's book as a whole. Large parts of it document his obsession with all kinds of ephemera: over the course of the book he discusses things such as novelty soaps, The Lawrence Whelk Retirement Home and Museum, bumper stickers and campaign ribbons, Disneyland, Tiny Tim, 'Leave it to Beaver', Martin Denny and Tiki bars, Mondo films, bubblegum pop and similar avowedly lightweight culture. I've heard it argued that Rice's love of trivia shows that he can't really be a Fascist since he clearly doesn't take anything that seriously (whereas Fascists are presumably permanently dour, focussed solely on their destiny and the tasks of history). But that is to seriously overestimate the Fascist mind which, in reality, feels quite at home with the banal, the kitsch and the maudlin. Rice's debunking attitude is represented as a levelling, critical iconoclasm, but in fact it expresses a much more systematic and thoroughgoing narcissism and cynicism which ultimately sees everything (other than his own übermensch ego) as essentially worthless. This conception perhaps represents the point at which Fascist narcissism blends into post-modern affectlessness. For the Fascist the social world (as opposed to nature) really is a meaningless pit. In Boyd Rice's mind a bar of novelty soap might well be the perfect symbol of the supposed vacuity of existence. The twist in his case is only that he revels in this vacuousness; "it is my view that the best way to inoculate oneself against the prevailing dystopia is to simply decide to love it" ^[144]. Boyd celebrates the trivial because, as Terry Eagleton put it, "Nihilists and buffoons are allergic to the slightest hint of significance" ^{[TE, 87]}.

In 'Burning the Ice' (1989) Rice recalls "one of the pivotal episodes of my youth", in which he watches through a picture window as an anonymous man within irons his shirt then makes himself a sandwich and packs his lunch before setting off in his car for work. "I was horrified", says Rice ^[56]. This experience leads him into a life of desperate opposition to conventional morality, which expresses itself through his stealing money from purses he finds in the cloakroom at parties and breaking into his neighbour's flats through open windows in order to have a sniff around. Terrifying stuff. In 'Sin in the Suburbs' (1994) Rice details his early sexual experiences, including an unintentionally hilarious story about how he was told as a youngster that every time he masturbated he was destroying the millions of potential souls contained in his sperm. This naturally led him to embark on a prolonged course of intense wanking. The image of the red-faced Rice furiously pulling on his cock while fantasising impotently about annihilating non-existent Christian souls seems somehow a fitting tribute to the man and his career.

Things start to take a more genuinely sinister turn when, as the next stage in the planned development of his psychopathy, he decides to stalk a waitress from a local restaurant. He follows her around to learn about her daily movements and then engineers a 'chance' meeting with her on her way home from work. This leads to a date after which, back at the woman's flat, he talks her into letting him tie her up for some S&M fun. Once she is bound he goes into the kitchen to fetch a carving knife then convinces the woman that he is going to cut her open. He then suddenly departs, leaving his victim terrified. Such violent misogyny would become a staple of Rice's life. In 1994's 'Revolt Against Penis Envy' (notice the acronym) he works himself up into a fever of hatred and contempt for women;

"At one time all was right with the world. It was lorded over by men who imposed their will by force. Women kept their mouths shut, underlings knew their place... In a once glorious past, woman was a creature without rights; a second class citizen... She was part cook, part whore, part servant and all child... Woman must be put in her place... These days the only way to restore balance between the sexes is by fear and pain... Rape is the act by which fear and pain are united in love... Now is the time to subjugate. Now is the time to dominate. Now is the time to rape. Let the RAPE commence. Go forth! Rise up! Rape, rape, rape!" ^[81-83]

Clearly this was written as a provocation and, according to the reasoning usually applied to Rice, can't be taken entirely seriously. But why not? If the ideas conform to his practice we can assume that for all that these opinions are expressed so as to 'provoke', they nevertheless also represent his thinking. In her book, Drugs are Nice, Lisa Crystal Carver (aka Lisa Suckdog) details the long-term mental and physical abuse she suffered as Rice's partner and the mother of their child, leading to a brutal attack which saw her badly injured and Rice imprisoned ("Boyd strangled me and threw me against walls and bashed my head against the futon frame, [finally he] released his hands from my neck and stood up, dazed, like a big, stupid oaf and smacked his lips with the satisfaction of having given in to impulse" ^{[LC, 309]}).

Other parts of Rice's book concern individuals who have become icons for the Fascist counter-culture; Anton LaVey, Savitri Devi and Charles Manson. In 'I'll Call You Abraxas' (1994) Rice details his various meetings and interviews with Manson. Indeed, Manson gave this book it's title, having said to Rice, "I'll call you Abraxas, because you stand in two circles at once" ^[100] (Abraxas being a Gnostic deity which Rice believes, after Jung, is "the ultimate archetype", being beyond all dualities - and therefore 'beyond good and evil'). Rice claims to have been a fan of Manson since his teenage years. He also claims that it was him who took Throbbing Gristle out to Manson's old base at Spahn Ranch to have the photographs taken which appeared in Re:Search's early feature on TG, and which cemented the association between them and Manson. Naturally, Manson is a hero to Rice, and a font of tremendous wisdom;

"... he seemed to be an expert in many things... He knew about ancient history and current history, and the forces that shaped both. He seemed to posses a comprehensive overview of the history of the whole world; not just the events as they are presented, but all the unseen factors that preceded and resulted from those events." ^[97]

Even Rice cannot fail to notice that Manson is a fantasist (at one point he tells Rice that his supporters have hijacked a fleet of nuclear submarines and are holding the leaders of the world to ransom while negotiating his release). He also notices the disparity between Manson's supposed omniscience and the fact that, apart from anything else, he is by normal standards a hopeless loser. But that only leads Rice to conclude that Manson is "a far more complex and multi-faceted character than even I'd imagined" ^[100]. What binds Rice and Manson together is a titanic narcissism which leads them to take for granted their own effortless superiority to the general run of worthless mankind (an impression which strikes me as incredible, given the poverty of the human material in question). Rice certainly approves of Manson's violent misanthropy, which mirrors the attitude expressed in LaVey's Satanic Bible and Redbeard's Might is Right. At one point Rice encourages Manson to attempt to get people to understand his point of view, to which Manson responds;

"People? Understand? People don't understand a fucking thing. They have lower awareness than turds. If this table were the world, and it was covered with turds representing humans, and you exercised complete control over them... You could move the turds from here to there... and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. Not one bit. They have no souls. No intelligence. You could flush three fourths of them down the toilet and the planet would never miss them." ^[99]

"When the person finally comes along to restore the balance in this world... There will be more blood, more death, more destruction and more suffering than there has been in the history of life on Earth. And I don't say that just because it's what all the worthless fuckers out there deserve... but because that is what will be necessary." ^[99]

A love of Manson's systematic misanthropy ties Rice squarely to James Mason and The Universal Order, a Nazi group dedicated to promoting Manson as a Fascist icon. Mason's book, Siege, celebrates Manson's vicious alienation and was published by Rice's friend and collaborator Michael Moynihan (and discussed in a earlier post). In the early nineties Rice appeared alongside Mason and Moynihan on radio evangelist Bob Larson's show, during which Moynihan and Rice not only defended Manson but even taunted the mother of Sharon Tate (one of the victims of the Manson Family's killing spree), who had called in to protest. Mason famously has even defended the murder of Tate's unborn baby, saying that "it was, after all, a Jew" ^{[JM, 328]}.

Rice also has essays here on Anton LaVey and Savitri Devi. Both are important figures in the Fascist-occult underground; LaVey as the fantasist who founded The Church of Satan, and Devi as an obscurantist who tried to combine Fascism with ideas drawn from Vedic culture, arguing that Hinduism is the nearest thing we have today to the Pagan religion of the original Aryans. In her book The Lightning and the Sun she argues that Hitler is 'Kalik', an incarnation of Vishnu destined, according to the Vedas, to end the current cycle of world history and initiate a new age (she was clearly wrong about that, but that doesn't bother her followers). Devi was also an active Fascist, imprisoned by Allied Forces in 1949 for spreading Nazi propaganda in post-War Germany. Her work has been praised by such conspicuously un-diverse figures as repeat-offending aspirant British Führer Colin Jordan, James Mason, and 'Squeaky' Fromme from the Manson Family. As it happens Rice has little of interest to say about either LaVey or Devi, except inasmuch as he gives away aspects of his own mindset. Apart from celebrating LaVey's misanthropy ("He would often speak at great length (and in great detail) of unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence" ^[133]) he is also impressed because LaVey normally "only deals with millionaires and movie stars" ^{[ 131]}. In Devi's case he notes that "she tested as having genius level IQ" ^[152]. Reified wealth, celebrity and intelligence are all equally attractive to Rice's banal mind.

A number of essays in the book deal with the weighty matter of Rice's 'philosophy' and world-view. In them he touches on ideas that are common currency among his Fascist peers. Rice's 'big' idea, which he returns to over and again, consists of a reactionary-romantic elevation of nature over culture. It is not so much that his view is reductive (in which case culture would be a mere epiphenomenon of nature); he sees everything that is specifically human as an unnatural and arbitrary excrescence on top of nature. His train of thought starts with an idea he quotes from the German naturalist and artist (and Social Darwinist racist) Ernst Haeckel; "Man is not above nature, but in nature" ^[89]. As far as it goes, this is true. The problem is that Rice's rigidly mechanical mind cannot grasp the thought dialectically, so he draws the mistaken conclusion that "man is synonymous with nature" ^[65]. But this is a very different argument, and it leads to the conclusion that that part of man which is not strictly natural is abstract to the point of unreality. This is clearly a self-cancelling and redundant philosophy: to see this you need only ask yourself why somebody who believes that nature is everything, and ideas are airless distractions, would bother publishing a book at all. The point is that man, while wholly part of nature, is at the same time distinguished from it by culture, and that this culture is every bit as real and effective as nature.

To see what this implies, consider the next stage of Rice's argument, which involves pointing out that nature has no sense of right and wrong, good or bad; "Nature, unlike man, is utterly indifferent to subjective judgements such as 'good' and 'bad'" ^[142]. The obvious response is to point out that the converse is equally true - that man, unlike nature, simply is not indifferent to subjective judgements. If that were not true then Rice would have nothing to rant about, and his attempts to persuade you of anything at all would be pointless. In fact, the distinction between nature and culture which Rice's entire 'philosophy' turns on is itself cultural and unnatural (but nonetheless real). It is culture that generates the dialectical distinction between ourselves and the nature that is the 'other' we transform in production: Rice's mistake is to reify this distinction and make it absolute, rather than relative.

Rice claims that "Nature adheres to an immutable order" ^[63], but in fact nature is very much mutable and has a substantial history of its own. One thing we know with absolute certainty is that nature at some point gave rise to culture. This mechanical idea of an unchanging nature is also at the root of traditional religious metaphysics. If nature was immutable then you might ask; where did humans and their culture - where did 'spirit' - suddenly arise from? The traditional answer is that God breathed spirit into matter as part of his creation, and yet this spirit is still separate from matter and exists in its own right, being 'unnatural'. In this way the crude materialism Rice advocates inevitably gives rise to religiosity and occultism ('spiritualism'), as it does with Rice himself: his book is littered with tales of ghosts (autonomous 'spirits'), uncanny happenings, mysterious portents and other such occult banalities: stupid materialism (mechanical and biological determinism) and stupid spirituality (occultism) are conjoined twins.

While Rice's explanation of his ontology and 'spirituality' are a nothing more than jumble of 19th Century solecisms, they nevertheless form the basis for the further development of his boneheaded narcissistic resentment. Having separated nature and culture his next trick is to argue that nature itself knows nothing of equality or human rights;

"In truth, the concept of natural equality is not natural at all - and in fact contradicts every dictate of nature." ^[63]

"Nature adheres to an immutable order; humanity to an ever increasing chaos. Nature recognises no equality at any level of its order; humanity preaches an all-pervasive equality and freely hands out unearned 'rights'... In short: humanity is Democratic, nature is Fascist." ^[63]

This naturally allows him to launch into a series of bitter tirades against 'inferiors' of every kind, who he believes have no rights and should expect no mercy, since talk of 'rights', 'equality' and so on is rooted in the unreality of culture and out of step with natural law. In an act of extraordinary special pleading he argues that the intellect is nothing to be proud of anyway, and not to be taken seriously because it is out of kilter with 'reality'. Instead he argues that man should rely on instinct alone;

"Man follows his intellect, employing logic and reason, and yet in so doing he betrays his most primal, basic desires." ^[88]

"Man's instincts will always and forever reflect the will of the natural order. Conversely, man's intellect has become divorced from the hard realities of life on earth, having instead become lost in a nebulous realm of ideas, theories, beliefs and opinions, which largely have no basis in tangible fact. Unless man's intellect comes to reflect his instinctual, soul-oriented values it will always place him at odds with himself." ^[61]

His trick here is to try to divide the human being schematically in two, one part (ideas and values) corresponding to culture, the other (instincts) corresponding to nature. Once again he makes absolute what is in reality only a relative distinction. Of course some human responses are more deeply wired into the physical, biological and genetic 'nature' of man than others, but certainly the 'instincts' that Boyd is covertly trying to justify (racism, misogyny, etc.) are in fact very much cultural products, as can be seen by anyone who spends any time at all considering their long development and the way that different societies have taken different attitudes towards them.

Morality too has nothing to do with nature in Rice's estimation, and so he's against it and wants you to slough it off. He believes that "a true understanding of natural law would render conventional morality obsolete." ^[87]. What Rice advocates is an eternal feeding frenzy in which the strong annihilate the weak in a totally amoral struggle for domination, for "higher men disdain the lives of the weak and cowardly - slave types" ^[61]. You might call this 'unprogrammatic Fascism', as he doesn't believe that things could ever be otherwise and criticises his Nazi heroes because they "still harboured the naively romantic dream that they could somehow turn the tide around" ^[141]. So that is Rice's philosophy in a nutshell: Fascism without its noble ideals (like the old joke about Hitler returning to Earth and declaring "this time - no more Mr. Nice Guy").

The only remaining thing to say about Rice's cod-philosophy is how neatly it mirrors that of his hard-core Nazi friend James Mason. Both fetishise extreme alienation and violent misanthropy: Mason's Universal Order has adopted Manson as the ideal Nazi icon because of a combination of this and the fact that he has counter-cultural clout. Both believe that that the process of social 'degeneration'  (from a fascist point of view: multiculturalism, democracy, etc.) is so advanced that they will support any and all violence against it. Both prioritise 'instinct' (their prejudice) over reason. And both, in different ways, are finding an audience.

This utterly stupid and offensive book should be warning enough that Boyd Rice is not a prankster and certainly not someone who should be lauded for 'pushing the envelope', but rather a Nazi who uses the cover provided by slack-jawed concepts of what constitutes radical art in order to promote - and create a focus for - the violence and hatred of a small but growing section of the Fascist movement internationally. As such he should be opposed in every possible way in order to stop his operation in its tracks, precisely as we would with any other Fascist shithead.

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Unless noted otherwise, references are to Boyd Rice, Brian M Clark (ed), 2008, Standing in Two Circles: The Collected Works of Boyd Rice, Creation Books, London.

LC: Lisa Crystal Carver, 2005, Drugs are Nice, Snowbooks, London.
TE: Terry Eagleton, On Evil, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
JM: James Mason, 2010, Siege: The Collected Writings of James Mason, edited by Michael M. Jenkins (Michael Moynihan), introduction by Ryan Schuster, Black Sun Publications, Bozeman, MT.