>The growing presence of racists in American Pagan communities threatens to tear the faith apart say Jews at Vice.com
>There’s a war going on in the American Pagan community. On one side are racists who see gods like Odin and Thor as an embodiment of the supremacy whites have over the rest of the planet. On the other are the practitioners who believe these gods transcend racial lines and belong to everyone. Recently, the contention between these two groups has reached a tipping point as anti-racist Pagans try to claim the narrative around their faith before it is overtaken by alt-right racists.
>Although the leaders of Nazi Germany were obsessed with Paganism and the occult, it has largely been associated with multiculturalism here in the United States. But with the recent rise of right-wing extremism in America, we've seen a co-mingling of racism and Paganism that has alarmed experts, activists, and Pagans themselves. For racists, the faith and its offshoots serve as both a cover and a recruiting tool. Today, one of the largest white nationalist organizations in the US, the National Socialist Movement, has traded in their Swastikas and Totenkopfs for Pagan symbols like the Othala rune. Similar groups have adopted Odinist phrases like "Faith, Family, and Folk." And while the Third Reich did embrace the Othala rune in their time, the symbol is far less inflammatory or recognizable than the Swastika in the United States, enabling these groups to fly under the radar.
>White power's embrace of Paganism was on full display at the tragic Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017. One notorious Pagan present was Stephen McNallen, the founder of the Asatru Folk Assembly, a far-right group fixated on "the survival and welfare of the Ethnic European Folk as a cultural and biological group." The rally also featured aspiring Pagan politician Augustus Sol Invictus, a an alt-right leader Richard Spencer credited with writing the first draft of the "Charlottesville Statement." Among other repugnant things, that infamous screed framed the refugee crisis as a religious war and promoted the concept of a white ethnostate.
>Unfortunately, Charlottesville was just the tip of the iceberg. These racist Pagan groups are very much active. Recently, two Heathens and former members of the National Socialist Party purchased 44 acres of land in Tennessee to begin construction on a private religious community where they can "practice [their] religion freely" among "other culturally and spiritually similar people."
>To the outside world, the far-right’s association with ancient gods and magic might seem absurd. But it’s actually been tied up with specific acts of violence and terrorism. One member of Virginia’s neo-pagan white nationalist group the Wolves of Vinland, Maurice Michaely, spent more than two years in prison for burning down a black church in 2012. A free man now, Facebook posts from 2015 suggest Michaely is back at work with the Wolves. In November 2015, three individuals with connections to Asatru were arrested in conjunction with a plot to ignite a race war. And in 2017, self-proclaimed “viking” and white supremacist Jeremy Christian was charged with stabbing two people to death on a train in Portland, Oregon.
>Some Pagans have tried to combat the spread of racism within their ranks. They’ve formed advocacy groups like Heathens United Against Racism (HUAR) and The Asatru Community (TAC). These groups have banded together in public pronouncements: In August 2016, 43 Pagan organizations signed Declaration 127, a public renunciation of any Heathenry that promotes hatred or discrimination. Since then, that number has grown to more than 180 organizations in over 20 countries. And in 2017 TAC created "The Shieldwall," a manifesto compelling Heathens around the world to “denounce all those abusing [the Heathen] faith to spread hatred and negativity.”
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