Anyone with primarily European ancestry, and especially those
of us with Germanic ancestry, are deeply embedded into the
systemic cycles of bloodshed and hatred that are at the core
of what’s happening in Palestine. I heard one Palestinian
woman say, “Palestinians are paying the price for the sins of
Europe”*.
This image is from the Wewelsburg castle** in Germany, which
in 1934 was selected by Heinrich Himmler to be the centre of
the Germanic "Völkisch" consciousness; being close to the
Teutoburger Forest, where Arminius, a Cherusci warrior led a
coalition of tribes into battle and defeated the Romans in
9AD. It’s also quite close to the Externsteine, a sandstone
rock formation and sacred site that’s been used for ritual
practice for tousands of years, and was another focul point of
the national socialist vision of a new "Aryan" Germania.
Occultism, rune magic and the Arthurian legends were
interwoven with anti-semitism, eugenics and White supremacy;
and the site was used both as a school and as a ritual site.
**
It’s uncomfortable for me to talk about these places because
I’ve visited these sites, hiked through the surrounding
forests drunk on mead with my friends; and I feel a deep
connection to pre-Christian Germanic spirituality. When I
visited Germany, I felt like I was home.
I was fascinated with the practice of occultism in the Third
Reich and I listened to black metal bands that were openly
national socialist. I felt a sense of community with the
people who I was friends with at the time (underground black
metallers), and even though I never considered myself a Nazi
and thought that they were idiots, I tolerated their presence
at black metal shows and parties.
I was defensive about my Whiteness and had no understanding of
colonization and how the lands I called home (Northern Turtle
Island) were settled. I had a baked in sense of entitlement.
**
Recently I found out that I have some Jewish ancestry and it’s
bringing up a lot of complex feelings.
Although I don’t feel that the small percentage of Jewish
blood I have gives me a place in the community as a whole, I
do feel that it has spiritual significance (as for kinship
ties, that part of my ancestry still has a lot of blanks in
it..)
Anti-semitism in Europe (and beyond) and the trauma of the
Holocaust is not healed. When I was travelling around Germany
in the early-mid 2000’s, it seemed like most people avoided
confronting the reality of what happened, downplayed the
seriousness, or made excuses about how their own family played
no direct part in the atrocities. That was over 20 years ago,
and things may have changed somewhat since then, yet overall
Germany (and most of the rest of Europe) seem content to watch
Israel take out their trauma on Palestinians while the West
remains silent, or outright enables Israel’s ongoing
massacres.
I would never deny any Palestinian person the right to express
how enraged they are or accuse Zionists of being White
supremacists and not being from those lands. But I feel
uncomfortable when I hear those types of expressions, because
I know that for Jewish people as a whole they have never felt
a part of Europe, and for thousands of years have experienced
brutal persecution culminating in a full-blown genocide.
I personally feel that collectively those of us who are of
primarily European descent need to be a part of healing the
Jewish collective in way that acknowledges our place within
the cycles of abuse that are playing out, yet also protects
Palestinians. And, if like myself, you’re living in one of the
major colonial countries of the world i.e. Canada, America,
Australia or New Zealand, then we also have to acknowledge the
genocides of these lands, and the privileges that we enjoy
here.
On both personal and systemic levels it’s rarely those who
initiate abusive cycles who experience the backlash for their
actions. It trickles downwards and becomes intertwined with
the broader societal matrixes of power, money, land, resources
and social status.
It’s a lot to carry, and each person has to look within
themselves and figure out how they feel they can best be a
part of the collective healing of humanity.
**
ACTIONS I’VE BEEN TAKING:
For the past couple of years I’ve been bringing awareness to
the policies of Neocities, which allows openly Nazi and
antisemitic sites to to be hosted, though I haven’t made much
headway with that, so I reached out to some Jewish rights
groups and let them know about the sites. I also reached out
to some of Neocities financial backers. I’ve come across some
really horrible web pages that have images on them that were
used in Third Reich propaganda campaigns, and advocate for
eugenics.
I’m also taking a course through the Friendship Centre in
Lekwungen/W̱SÁNEĆ and am broadening my understanding of
Indigenous perspectives so I can be a stronger ally and
support person within the community.
I’m putting ongoing pressure on the politicians on these lands
to push for a ceasefire and to stop arming Israel.
I also know that what happens between the worlds affects all
the worlds, and I’ve been doing ritual workings around the
healing parts of the Germanic spirit that were crippled
through Romanization and Christianization; and also
celebrating the sacred, mystical aspects of Judaism. The Thoth
and Rohrig tarot decks I work with are heavily influenced by
the Kabbalah tree of life. The Rohrig deck has some very
profound sigil workings on all of the major arcana cards, as
they each have both a Hebrew letter and a rune stone painted
on to them, which embodies the essence of the card; and from
my perspective is pwerfully healing.
Interestingly, many people on the far-right have unconsciously
tattooed themselves with another powerful symbol of healing in
that of the Vegvisir sigil. Many have called this symbol a
“Viking compass”, but it’s actually from a 19th century (1860)
Icelandic magical text called “The Huld Manuscript”, which was
very much inspired by 12th and 13th century Medieval texts
that drew inspiration from the Books of Solomon (where the 6
pointed Jewish star came from). The Vegvisir, the Aegishjalmur
and other Nordic magickal staves are very much a blending of
Nordic rune magic and Judaic mysticism. In fact, I would say
that they seem far more alchemical and Hebraic than they do
runic, so much so that when I first encountered them I assumed
they were from the Books Of Solomon.
I have a Vegvisir tattoo on my forearm and it has a lot of
personal significance for me, and I’d like to write more about
this stave another time because I think it’s a very important
and interesting sigil, and there's a lot of misinformation out
there about it. I saw a YouTube video made by a young woman in
Scandinavia who had millions of followers, and she was
perpetuating the claim of this symbol being from Old Norse
culture, when there is zero evidence of that, and these
magickal staves are only known to have existed over a thousand
years after the Viking era!
**
Another thing I’d like to address is the whole idea of a
“global Jewish conspiracy”, which is the source of a lot of
anti-semitism globally, and is heavily propagated by far-right
goon balls. It’s true that some Jewish people have a lot of
power in the media (which they use to suppress Arabic
perspectives) and there are some excessively wealthy Jewish
families. Yet many non-Jewish Europeans also have a huge
amount of money, power and influence and it’s not thought of
as some Global White European conspiracy, even though there is
no collective group of people who've been more oppressive and
destructive than that of the Europeans. Yet I don’t feel that
civilians or commoners should be punished indiscriminately for
the actions of their oppressive overlords; and that applies
the world over.
My life have been heavily fragmented since I had a full blown
mental breakdown in my late 20’s, which I talk about
throughout these pages. Since then I started living my life in
a way more intuitive and spirituality guided way and I was
drawn into activism. Yet even before then I grew out of the
Völkisch beliefs that I had, and so did most of the other
people I know who were part of the underground black metal
scenes in the 90’s and early-mid 2000’s***. But I’ve been
wanting to take some time to reflect on those times and try
and understand how I ended up being influenced by those belief
systems, because when I was a child and in my early teens I
was very into environmentalism, social justice and
anti-racism. But then I moved out of my sheltered mostly White
town into a poor multicultural neighbourhood, and I felt quite
alienated.
I ended up dating a neo-Nazi. We fought a lot about our
different ideologies and, like I said, I never considered
myself a Nazi; and I was called an “ARA bitch” (Anti-Racist
Action) by others in his scene. Yet over the years some of the
ideas he was expressing took hold in me, and after we broke up
I started dating someone in the underground black metal scene.
I began to identify more strongly with my European ancestry. I
learned German, I was studying Asatru, and I was reading books
by people like Pete Helmkamp and Jim Goad.
Maybe I was trying to be edgy and cool after reading the Lords
of Chaos book? Maybe I was rebelling against my hedonistic
hippie upbringing? Though more likely: it was because I felt
very isolated in general and I struggled socially, and I was
developing a strong sense of despair and misanthropy..
Becoming a part of an underground subculture and projecting
strength and intolerance out into the world gave me a sense of
security and dominion over myself, and it became a blanket for
my insecurities and vulnerabilities..
I want to talk about this openly because I think that a lot of
people get attracted to extremism because they feel rejected
and alienated, and there’s a part of me that understands how
young people get the point of shooting up schools or taking
their lives. I know what it's like to be a weirdo that doesn't
fit in, who people find something off about but can’t quite
put their finger on. And I understand White alienation and the
sense of rootlessness that comes from being born on lands that
I have no spiritual connection to. I also understand the
feeling of being connected to one’s kin and feeling a part of
the landscape, as I did when I was in Germany.
And maybe it’s my selfish motivations for redemption but I
don’t think that a person should be held hostage by their
former selves if they’ve shown willingness to change. And for
a long time I held back in being more vocal about racism when
I encountered it because I felt like a hypocrite.
Nonetheless, I do think it’s important to be honest about
one’s past, and that's what I’m trying to do here. I got
sucked in to some fucked up belief systems and I still don’t
know if it was just me being young and easily influenced or if
the perspectives I came to hold were lying dormant within me
waiting for the right environment the flourish. Probably a
little bit of both. And I think that there are aspects of our
souls as Europeans that can be deeply racist, and that there's
a huge sense of collective alienation that comes from our
traumas, wars, forced Christinaization, industrialization, low
birth rates, high immigration rates and a sense of emptiness
that comes from not knowing who we are. We've sold our souls
for the empty dream of so-called civilization.
But don't worry Grandpa, the future of the White race is
secure! It’s not like we’re some remote tribe with 12 members
left struggling to retain our culture and identity while
industry and government crushes us daily. There are close to
100,000,000 German speakers on the planet!! But: global White
supremacy is being uprooted and there’s an adjustment that
will need to happen. Equality can feel a lot like oppression
if something has to be sacrificed for the greater good of
humanity.
At the same time, humans are equally capable of being super
shitty and oppressive, which is why having a Black president
changed fuck all within the American genocidal terrorist war
machine. And if China becomes the next superpower, it's
unlikely they'll be more noble and gracious than America on
account of being POC.
So on one hand, I’m open to being totally accountable for the
systemic harm of my ancestors, and I will advocate for
vulnerable BIPOC people (and vulnerable White people), yet I
also recognize that the root cause of everything that's
happening globally is human nature: greed, power, entitlement,
hierarchies and the emotional traumas that we each carry. Oh
ya, and religious institutions, lets not forget about them.
Healing is happening on a global scale and involves everyone.
**
I've been wanting to write about some of these things for a
long time but I didn't know how. I also wanted to try and
understand better how I ended up subscribing to those
ideologies, and how I came out of it. And like I said, I think
it was partly because I was vulnerable, yet I reckon I also
carried some darkness within me that I inherited from my
ancestors, and I was was hyper aware of how out of place I
felt on these lands.
How I came out of it happened gradually and it wasn’t
something I was aware of happening. Mostly it was because I
made different friends who were more into punk. And through
that scene I fell very much in love with someone who was
part-Black. Then I ended up in a scene that had a lot of
Indigenous people in it, and my perspectives started to change
completely. I also worked on a film that was written by Marie
Clements and I got to hang out with her and a lot of
Indigenous actors and activists, and I was extremely humbled
and inspired in getting to know all of them.
During the process of healing from my mental breakdown I
realized that activism was something I always felt drawn to. I
ended up getting into Indigenous-led land protection, and I'm
now a strong advocate for anti-racism.
I also came back into the folds of Asatru when I was doing
group rituals with Reclaiming (a pagan group rooted in social
justice). I had dissociated myself completely from
Norse/Germanic magick on account of it’s racist associations,
but then I attended a ritual to protect a BIPOC member who was
experiencing racism; and one of the women I was doing the
ritual with had deeply studied the runes - so we used runic
magic for the ritual. I told everyone about my past, and how
friend's of my neo-Nazi boyfriend ended up murdering a Sikh
man. We talked a lot about how we could could connect to the
essence of the runes in a way that directly challenges the
usage of these runes in Third Reich. Since then I've continued
to study the runes and have connected to them on a much deeper
level.
I root my Asatru practice in anti-racism and the liberation of
the Germanic soul. And I don’t expect this of others, but I
hold space for the healing of Nazi skinheads and others who
are lost in the darkness of White supremacy (which is really
just a feeling of loss and inferiority on a deeper level). I
knew many of them personally and was very much in love with a
man who was a Nazi skinhead, and I see them as broken humans
who are misguided. I try to forge an energetic path forward,
where we can tap into our collective ancient memory and see
ourselves as being part of an interconnected whole, instead of
looking down on and opressing others to pump ourselves up.
DNA testing has confirmed that the ancient Scandinavians were
not racially homogeneous. A person who is half-Black and
half-Germanic has just as much right to practice rune magic as
someone who’s half Italian and half-German, or anyone else for
that matter (runes have been found as far as India and Iran).
Asatru and the runes are open to all. Loki is indiscriminate
in his sexual exploits and Odin knew that he had to study the
ways of the Völva to be spiritually whole, even if he was
mocked for it. Even the mighty Thor wasn’t above
cross-dressing if necessary. And the entire cosmos of the
Norse peoples was begotten from the body of a Hermaphrodite
called Ymir who suckled the breasts of a sacred cow. Also:
humans come from trees so it makes sense to honour the old
Norse/Germanic ways by protecting ancient forests and
countering rapid industrialization.
This is a long ass fucking post and I have no idea if anyone
even reads the shit that I publish in this blog space, but
when I write about these kinds of complexities and am honest
about myself and the world as I see it, I feel like I'm
hanging over Urd’s well weaving the Wyrd, and I know that it's
having an impact energetically.
* I've heard a Jewish person argue that this statement is not
correct, as they feel that the historical relationship that
Jewish people have to the state of Israel precedes national
socialism by thousands of years, and that Jewish people alone
are paying the price for anti-semitism in Europe. It's true
that the situation in Palestine/Israel is different than that
of North America for instance, as European people have no
prior connection to these lands. However, in further research,
it seems that both Palestinians and Israelis have a deep
connections to the lands they now inhabit. Unfortunatley, the
establishment of the Jewish state was carried out with Western
backing, and the Jewish settlements have been created in a
manner that is reflective of other European colonial states.
They have not harmonized with the land or the people who have
been living on the lands for thousands of years. And the
ongoing enabling of Israel by Western powers seems like a way
of avoiding our own guilt over the Holocaust and, even worse:
Israel is used as a puppet to subjugate the greater Arabic
world and maintain Western hegemony. So, I stand by this
stement, even though I acknowledge that it's a simplification
of a very commplex situation that I'm always learning more
about and wanting to understand better.
**In further research I uncovered the fact that the dungeons
at Wewelsburg were used to hold 17 Jewish people who were
taken there after Kristallnacht in 1938. After Wewelsburg they
were transported to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
*** I ended up at Wacken in 2001 and met up with some of my
Vancouver black metal friends who were in a well-known band
with punk rock roots and a black person in the group (who
wasn't present at the time). A musician from Australia asked
one of them “so what’s it like to have ni***r in the band?”.
He ended up getting his face punched out and I saw the
aftermath when he was bleeding all over the place whining like
a little baby trying to get sympathy from others, of which
there was none whatsoever to be found.
Somehow in Vancouver when my black metal boyfriend and I (who
were both into Völkisch Asatru) had parties at our house there
would be a mix of openly NSBM metal heads and other people we
knew who were Asian, Black, Hispanic and south east Asian -
yet there were no conflicts. I’m not sure how those BIPOC
people felt about it, likley they were internalizing some
shit, yet there seemed to be some kind of unspoken rule that
the music always came first; which might explain why even now
I still see BIPOC people wearing band t-shirts and patches of
NSBM bands. And some of my hard line right-wing black metal
friends still go to DOA and other lefty punk shows because
they love the music so much.
Also, everything I’m writing really only applies to the
Pacific North West, which had very unique scenes that begat a
lot of “blackened crust”, and eventually the crust and BM
scenes started to merge more and more. At one point I attended
a party where crusty lefties and a former Nazi from the band
Odin’s Law (a racist rock band from Surrey) were all hanging
out together. And the roommate who I met my neo-Nazi boyfriend
through ended up going through a gangster rap phase, then went
through a punk phase and dated an Indigenous friend of mine (who
strangely enough used to hang out with the guys from Odin's
Law and knew my neo-Nazi x-boyfriend). And the
singer of Odin’s Law ended up on heroin and living in the
Downtown Eastside. My Völkisch Asatru black metal
boyfriend also went through a gangster rap phase and at one
point converted to Islam. And he had a black girlfrienid for a
while after we broke up. And the aformentioned highly
influential Vancouver black metal band that had a black member
in it also had a guy playing with them for a time who was also
in Odin's Law, who's the same former neo-Nazi that later ended
up hanging out at the crust punk parties I was going to. I
don't know how to make sense of it all! Though it's probably
best not to judge every person who was in a band with someone
who was racist back in the day cause even BIPOC people were,
and most black metallers are like 12 year-olds going through
phases every 6 months.
It's great to see bands like Pan American Native Front, Hulder
and Doom tearing new portals into the realm of underground
metal, and they do it just by existing and making awesome
music.
