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Spencer Sunshine, Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Spencer Sunshine’s Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Let’s get some preliminaries out the way. Sunshine is an unabashed You likely didn’t hear much about the American Nazi Party (ANP) in your Rockwell’s ANP saw local battles over integration and fair housing as a Sunshine’s story really takes off with the assassination of Rockwell in Despite his best efforts at building some form of unified party system, the post-Rockwell party along geographic lines by the mid-seventies. Enter the Ohio boy, James Mason, and his assessment of how the 1960s Mason well understood his era’s “vibe shift”: the youthful energy; a Unsurprisingly, Mason found his closest allies among the California Keeping with the zeitgeist, Mason’s own religious beliefs and personal Mason’s spiritual moves and his continued fascination with late 1960s The Family, to Mason, was akin to the Weather Underground. It was a While his promotion of Manson and The Family severed many of Mason’s Over five dense chapters, Sunshine recounts Mason’s personal and Parfey, who was Schreck’s publisher and was Abraxas’ conduit to Like many even today, Schreck and Parfrey played the “ironic aesthetics” It was, however, the fourth member of the Abraxas Clique, Michael And then, suddenly, Mason and Siege<\/em> all but disappeared.<\/p>\n In May 1995, Mason went to prison. While Siege<\/em> had been making the Once released, Mason continued to produce content and worked in retail It was fairly quiet for Mason until Iron March and Atomwaffen Division And even more young men and women have “Siege-pilled.” Mason’s This book isn’t a comfortable read. It isn’t an easy read. But it is to Sunshine’s Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism<\/em> clearly The Weekly Digest<\/p>\n All of our recent essays and podcasts, delivered to you. Free.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spencer Sunshine, Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: TheOrigins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege (Routledge, New York,2024), 453pp. Spencer Sunshine’s Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: TheOrigins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege (Routledge, 2024)describes how America’s early Cold War neo-Nazi movement reacted andadapted to the late 1960s American youth counterculture. The story istold through the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":358069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99697,179605],"tags":[29173,11616,5715],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-358068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews-2","category-brian-auten","tag-dissident","tag-origins","tag-understanding"],"yoast_head":"\n
Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege<\/em> (Routledge, New York,
2024), 453pp.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege<\/em> (Routledge, 2024)
describes how America’s early Cold War neo-Nazi movement reacted and
adapted to the late 1960s American youth counterculture. The story is
told through the person of James Mason, a Boomer neo-Nazi heavily
influenced by Satanism, who, in 1966, at 14 years old, affiliated with
the youth wing of George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party (ANP).
Sunshine describes how Mason brought the 1960s counterculture into the
movement’s strategy, tactics, and its branding. The book is also a
production and reception history of Mason’s magnum opus, Siege<\/em>, which
is a compilation of his 1970s-1980s neo-Nazi writings. Solicited and
edited by alternative publishers and musicians operating in neo-Nazi,
ethnoseparatist, and Satanist circles, Siege<\/em> was initially released in
1993 and later retrieved and popularized in the mid-2010s through the
now-defunct online forum Iron March and by the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen
Division.<\/p>\n
leftist. His 2013 Ph.D. from City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate
Center was on the history of post-1960s anarchism in the United States,
and featured anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan and Bullshit Jobs<\/em>‘s David
Graeber. Since 2014, Sunshine has written about facets of the
American right-wing for publications like The New Republic<\/em>, the
Southern Poverty Law Center, and The Daily Beast<\/em> — the kind of
outlets that make many conservative Christian believers auto-roll their
eyes, say “Nope!,” and slam their laptops shut. Even so, I’d caution the
skeptical and the wary to keep their tabs open a little longer. Years
ago, I assigned one of Sunshine’s longer reports on Oregon’s Patriot
movement to my Patrick Henry College undergraduates because Sunshine is
what I call a “digger” and he knows his subject matter in ways many do
not. And if you desire insights about the origins of the alternative
and dissident American right that existed before<\/em> the “alt-right” and
dissident right we’ve all heard about over the last ten years,
Sunshine’s book will be a key text for many years to come.<\/p>\n
US history classes, but for almost five years in the 1960s, George
Rockwell and his party knew how to draw headlines. Established in the
late 1950s, the party didn’t garner much public attention until 1962. It
was the ANP’s Roy James who, that September, charged to the front of a
church in Birmingham, Alabama and repeatedly punched Martin Luther King,
Jr. at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference event.<\/p>\n
way to build its brand. For instance, throughout 1962 and 1963, as the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) held “Freedom Dweller” pickets,
sit-ins, and “dwell-ins” at newly-built, racially segregated housing
developments in the southern California cities of Torrance and
Carson\/Dominguez Hills, the ANP’s “Western Division” organized and led
counterprotests.,<\/sup> In 1966, Rockwell and his Chicago Division
had appropriated Stokely Carmichael’s call for “black power,” and had
rallied local “white power” to fight off housing integration in
Southwest Chicago. On August 5, the group attacked a march during which
King himself was struck by a rock. King commented afterwards that he
“[had never seen in Mississippi or Alabama] mobs as hostile and as
hate-filled as [he’d] seen in Chicago.”<\/p>\n
August 1967, just eight months after re-christening his own organization
as the National Socialist White People’s Party (NSWPP). The name change
reflected Rockwell’s desire to tone down the group’s explicit Nazi
features, transforming it into a wider, “white power” umbrella
coalition. Indeed, Rockwell had already made efforts to construct a more
“Americanized” Nazism, one in which “Aryan” was replaced with “white,”
where adherents of the Christian Identity movement were made more
comfortable, and where Holocaust denialism had a more “central” role.
Rockwell had even tried to start a “front” — the Fighting American
Nationalists (FAN) — he hoped could attract more whites by minimizing
the ANP’s “Nazi trappings.”<\/p>\n
however, local chapter priorities, strategic and tactical disagreements,
and commonly held frustrations over the leadership style of Rockwell’s
successor, Matthias Koehl, split the<\/p>\n
Koehl desperately tried to maintain authority over a rump NSWPP, but
Sunshine relates — in startling detail — how that remnant and other
NSWPP splinter groups in northern California, southern California,
Chicago, Virginia, New York\/Buffalo, and parts of Ohio evolved,
competed, further divided, changed names, and tried to outbid one
another for personnel, recruits, funding, and market share through the
rest of the 1970s into the 1980s.<\/p>\n
counterculture impacted the neo-Nazi movement’s recruiting, strategy and
tactics, and how, going forward, that counterculture could be
beneficially appropriated.<\/p>\n
new, outside-of-the-home political\/advocacy role for women; “free love,”
sexual laxity, and public acceptance of pornography; an anti-law
enforcement bias (“anti-pigism”); and a replacement of the tired, mass
politics-as-usual with militant vanguardism, direct action, and
guerrilla warfare. Mason’s writing highlighted the structures and
actions of violent leftist groups such as the Weather Underground,
Symbionese Liberation Army, May 19th Communist Organization, and the
Black Liberation Army. He argued how a “few” could accelerate a collapse
of the “Jew Capitalist system” through bombings, “expropriations,”
street battles, and murder\/assassinations. And, like these leftist
groups, Mason believed the “few” included women in more operational
roles, which was very distinct from Rockwell’s older, more “stag”
approach.<\/p>\n
splinter groups; that is, from the post-Rockwell factions that were
operating well within the counterculture’s ground zero. In the mid
1970s, Mason tried to construct his own above-ground, combined Klan-Nazi
umbrella organization using southern California’s National Socialist
Liberation Front (NSLF) as a tandem, underground “armed wing” or
“liberation army.” In fact, until the early 1980s, Mason would regularly
look to the NSLF as a seed group, even with that group’s various
leadership changes and despite Mason having a short stint of cooperation
with the National Socialist White Workers’ Party (NSWWP) in northern
California.<\/p>\n
spirituality were also in flux. In the 1970s, he adhered to Christian
Identity, which Rockwell himself had believed compatible with Nazism. As
time went on, however, Mason transitioned away from his heterodox
Christianity into Nietzscheanism and atheism, decrying any forms of
Christianity as “weak” and “alien.” By the 1980s, Mason thought one
could support Christian Identity, but at best, only as a utilitarian
“conveyor belt” into non-Christian racialism.<\/p>\n
counterculture also led him to his most controversial stance — the
assertion that Charles Manson and his followers (“The Family”)
represented a tactical and spiritual model for the post-Rockwell
Neo-Nazi movement. In some of Mason’s earlier musings on the use of
assassination as a tactic, he lauded Manson Family member Squeaky
Fromme’s unsuccessful attempt on President Ford’s life). Mason’s
personal interactions with Manson Family members and his direct
communication with Manson himself only served to enhance his praise of
the jailed murderer.<\/p>\n
non-monogamous, sexually promiscuous, drug-friendly, countercultural
community of “free love” in which women had an active role in violent,
anti-system plans and operations. The 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders, he
argued, were a solid example of direct action and “redemptive violence,”
aimed at accelerating an American race war. The Family’s rural outpost
was a place where, if needed, an intentional, white racial community
could sit out the coming societal apocalypse, engage in “mutual aid,”
and establish a new, white racialist, antisemitic polis<\/em> as the
existing “system” was toppled. Moreover, Manson’s “gnosticism,” says
Sunshine, guided Mason’s eventual move into what he [Mason] described
as “universal order,” a “new kind of revolutionary National Socialist
consciousness,” that transcended all boundaries between Christianity and
Satanism and identified world-historical “Christ figures” in Jesus,
Hitler, Rockwell, and Manson.<\/p>\n
relationships to older neo-Nazis, it made him very attractive in the
mid-to-late 1980s to the Abraxas Circle, a coterie of
alternative\/dissident book publishers and editors, Holocaust deniers,
industrial and deathrock musicians, Nazi skinheads, and, lastly, various
friends, relatives and associates of Anton LaVey, the head of the Church
of Satan.<\/p>\n
professional relationships with the Abraxas Circle, and, in particular,
how Mason’s longevity in the American neo-Nazi movement and the access
he had to Charles Manson endeared him to four men within the Circle’s
innermost ring (what Sunshine deems the ‘Abraxas Clique’): Boyd Rice,
Adam Parfrey, Nikolas Schreck, and Michael Moynihan. Describing itself
as “a sort of Thule Society for the 90s,” The Abraxas crowd and Mason
hit it off well, particularly in light of the group’s focus on the
occult, fascism, natural inequality, dysgenics, and Social Darwinism.
Schreck, LaVey’s son-in-law and one of the founders of the
goth\/deathrock band Radio Werewolf, at one time described the group’s
aim as introducing young men and women to “the western European
tradition” in order to provide them with a “firm alternative” to the
“dysgenic ocean of mud that has swept the [western] world.”<\/p>\n
numerous Holocaust deniers associated with the Institute for Historical
Review (IHR), told James Mason in early communications that they
believed Charles Manson was an “important figure [to save] the white
race from a dysgenic condition.” Schreck, Rice, and Parfrey would
use Mason’s stories, recollections, and arcana for The Manson File<\/em>
(1988) and the related documentary,”Charles Manson Superstar.” (1989).
Released by Parfrey’s Amok Press (now known as Feral House), The Manson
File<\/em> is one part of a book catalog that includes Joseph Goebbels’ novel
Michael: Pages from a German Destiny<\/em>, assorted LaVey volumes, and two
of Parfrey’s own neo-Nazi anthologies (Apocalypse Culture<\/em> I and
II).<\/p>\n
card when it comes to their brandishing of neo-Nazism. Sunshine
dismisses their attempts. Regardless of whether Schreck’s Radio Werewolf
viewed the use of Nazi and Satanic symbols or references in ironic
terms, Sunshine argues the band had attracted real<\/em> neo-Nazis by 1988
\u2013 the year the mainstream media declared as “the year of the Nazi
skinhead.” Schreck’s overt relationships and associations had also by
that time moved him well away from mere aesthetics. And Parfrey’s Feral
House continued to publish works on Nazi occultism and insider
recollections of the Nazi skinhead music scene. In fact, Sunshine says,
Parfrey was much less reticent about his white racialism near the end of
his life. Parfrey died in 2018, and Feral House is releasing a
posthumous “Apocalypse Omnibus” later this summer.<\/p>\n
Moynihan, who would take on the greatest importance for James Mason’s
continued popularity. Moynihan is the one who first pitched Mason with
the idea of compiling a “best of” anthology to get all of his neo-Nazi
materials from the 1970s and 1980s into a single volume. It took longer
than expected, but the Moynihan-edited, first edition of Siege<\/em> came
out in April 1993. The volume was dedicated to Charles Manson, who Mason
called “the Son of Man.” Throughout 1993 and into 1994 — which was the
year Moynihan was made a Church of Satan high priest — Mason’s Siege<\/em>
generated serious buzz across the neo-Nazi and black metal worlds. It
was advertised in music fanzines, in Black Flame<\/em>, the Church of
Satan’s regular newsletter, and was the subject of evangelical “shock
jock” Bob Larson’s radio talk show. It also had a rare media breakout
moment when mentioned on an episode of the McLaughlin Group.<\/p>\n
rounds, Mason, who was then living in Colorado, had taken up with the
15-year old daughter of a fellow neo-Nazi. Sunshine relates how Mason
had long been into pornography (including an interest in CSAM, or child
sexual abuse material), and it wasn’t long before he was arrested,
released, and then re-arrested for CSAM-related crimes, contributing to
the delinquency of a minor, and for menacing the 15-year old’s
subsequent boyfriend. Mason would be in and out of prison for the next
four years.<\/p>\n
security. He had rediscovered a heterodox Christianity in prison. His
prison and post-prison writings are a cafeteria-style bonanza of
(ostensible) Christianity, antisemitism, white racialism, “ancient
aliens” (a la Chariot of the Gods<\/em>), “alien DNA,” and a divine
elevation of Hitler. Between 2001 and 2003, Mason worked with a
different set of alternative, white racialist publishers — Greg
Johnson and Ryan Schuster — to release the second edition of Siege<\/em>
under the imprint Black Sun (now Counter Currents Publishing).,<\/sup>
Mason’s initial publisher, Moynihan, on the other hand, moved to
editing new English language translations of Italian occultist
philosopher Julius Evola, French New Right thinker Alain de Benoist,
and, most recently with Arcana Europa Media, works by “Germanic
Revival,” pagan, Odinist, and Asatru writers.<\/p>\n
(AWD) retrieved and popularized Mason’s counterculture-inflected
neo-Nazism for online-savvy Millennials and early Zoomers in the mid
2010s. Those interested in Siege’s<\/em> second reception period will want
to pay very close attention to Sunshine’s opening chapter, the
concluding parts of his chapter on Nazi Satanism, and portions of
Chapter 17 (“From Prison to Revival”). Iron March released a third
edition of Siege<\/em> in 2015, which caught the eye of the Atomwaffen
Division. According to Sunshine, Atomwaffen Division was enchanted by
the entire Mason package: the long-standing white racialism and
antisemitism, the turning-away from Rockwellian-era party building, his
loathing of run-of-the-mill conservative culture-warring, the
comfortability with California “drop-out” drug culture, the love for
Charles Manson and the Family, his connections to Satanism, and, most
importantly, his anti-system accelerationism and the call for direct
action and “cleansing” violence. It took very little time for Mason’s
Siege<\/em> to become Atomwaffen’s “Bible” and for Mason to become the
group’s guru. And it didn’t take long for others to catch on. Sunshine
reports that by July 2017, Siege had approximately 16,000 downloads from
the Iron March forum.<\/p>\n
anthology has been updated and re-released multiple times since its
third edition. As Sunshine attests, one can easily research Mason’s
influence on Atomwaffen Division’s domestic and international affiliates
or splinters — groups like Feuerkrieg Division, Sonnenkrieg Division,
and AWD Russland. Or — and I solemnly warn you, this part gets even
darker — you can read through available news stories and legal
documents involving the Siege<\/em>-inspired Order of the Nine Angles (O9A),
the National Socialist Order of the Nine Angles (NSO9A), Satanic Front,
MKY\/No Lives Matter (NLM), and 764, the child predator online occult
network. None of this is Sunshine’s leftist fever dream.<\/p>\n
be respected. Sunshine is refreshingly unafraid to show his work. He
offers nine pages of dramatis personae, charts\/graphics, a rundown of
the archives he used, a full periodical list of Mason’s writings,
granular footnotes, and, for his final hundred pages, eleven full
appendices covering various individuals, groups, and concepts associated
with Mason. I heartily recommend it. Not only that, I strongly recommend
the Routledge series of which Sunshine’s book is a part — the
Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right<\/em> series. I own a number
of the now over 100-volume series. Together with Brill’s free
online Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies<\/em> (which was
discontinued in 2025, but involves many of the same American and
European scholars), the Routledge series offers some of the best,
up-to-date work on interwar fascism, the interwar, Cold War, and
post-Cold War transnational right, and more granular assessments of far
right phenomena.<\/p>\n
establishes that the counterculture of the “long 1960s” is not merely
a left-wing or so-called “cultural Marxist” story, but that its
appropriation and its impact is also discerned on the political right.
Moreover, at a time in which neo-Nazi, white identitarian, and\/or
European New Right outlets are finding their way into vendor tables at
conservative Christian conferences, it is high time for conservative
Christian believers to have a clear, historical perspective on this
entire ecosystem.<\/p>\nPremier Thought Every Thursday.<\/em><\/h3>\n