Romantic Men With Guns And Religious Determination Are A Dangerous Species
begin again from the beginning
Being an ‘American’ national is among folkish pagans too shallow and all-inclusive to satisfactorily constitute a primary identity. They attach more importance to being white, Aryan, or Northern European as this sets them apart from other Americans. They mobilize history to further strengthen the separateness of the imagined community, tracing the racial or ethnic nation back to Europe and beyond Christianity to the perceived point of cultural origin during the golden age of national freedom; this provides folkish pagans with information by which an alternative identity that feels uniquely meaningful can be constructed.
Ancient Norse culture seems well suited for this purpose, as it provides ample but incomplete material about an alternative world of old. Paganism therefore allows activists to project their ideals back into legendary times when Aryan society was untainted by the ills of modernity and materialism, when there were no presidents or kings, no federal government or capitalist plutocrats, no junk food, environmental destruction, pornography or Rick Lake shows—a wonderful pristine world where not a single Jew wandered through the Nordic woodlands.
They imagine a time when Aryan man lived according to his true nature, when men were men and women were women, a glorious time of heroism and adventure, of nobility and honor, of campfires and sagas. Practitioners may see the original Aryan society as based on the free yeoman who lived in harmony with nature or the barbarian warrior who bowed to no one. Norse paganism thus appeals to those animated by the mythos of Americanism and moral conservatism as well as to those attracted by the romanticized legacy of American outlaw culture in any of its current manifestations, such as racist skinhead gangs, biker brotherhoods, or satanic metal head legions.
This duel attraction resembles the German national socialist fascination with Norse paganism that appealed to the competing NSDAP factions of Darre and Himmler and their respective romances with the earth-based yeoman and the barbarian warrior-mystic. The national socialist phenomenon stands as a warning against dismissing the milieu of racist paganism as a lunatic fringe of hopeless dreamers: romantic men armed with guns and religious determination have throughout history been a dangerous species.
Gods of the Blood: Pagan Revival and White Separatism (2003)
Mattias Gardell