Fascist “pagan” Varg Vikernes arrested in France

-An analysis of the events and its meaning to the heathen community-

Kristian Vikernes AKA Count Grishnackh AKA Varg was arrested recently in France on the suspicion he was planning a “massacre”. A statement by the French Interior Minister said both Kristian and his wife were a “potential threat to society”. That’s right, the most infamous White Power “pagan” is at it again, this time, he is in France.

Vikernes house in France

Some may remember an odd, charismatic, young Norwegian musician of the pioneer black metal bands Burzum and Mayhem, who was found guilty of murdering his band-mate Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth by stabbing him to death in 1993 and of burning down Christian Norwegian Stave churches (the arson of Åsane Church, Storetveit Church, Skjold Church and Holmenkollen Chapel in Oslo) beginning with his suspected arson of Fantoft stave church. These events all helped to contribute to the “Satanic Panic” of the late 80s and early 90s when the western world media mistook his “pagan” reasoning for the arsons as “satanic” and “occult” in origin. He is also suspected of forming small radical nationalist racialist pagan cells which burned other churches as well as founding and participating in a Neo-völkisch prison gang after his incarceration called the “Norsk Hedensk Front” (“Norwegian Heathen Front”). The reasoning for the arsons, as he writes in his book Vargsmål was that:

“For each devastated graveyard, one heathen grave is avenged, for each ten churches burnt to ashes, one heathen Hof is avenged, for each ten priests or freemasons assassinated, one heathen is avenged.”

To Kristian, Christianity is responsible for the moral decay of society (including race mixing, international monied interests, and the subjection of the individual to religious authority), specifically in regards to Norwegian society. This corrupting influence stems, according to Vikernes, from the Jewish origins of Christianity (amongst other things). Thus we find the origin of his anti-Semitism and Nationalist tendency. Really his ideology is a right-wing/fascist reaction to encroaching modernity that was felt during the “McDonaldization” of Norway in the late 80s and early 90s as a result of globalization. Kristian’s participation in the revolutionary violent far Right European political scene and his self-expressed links to “paganism” and “heathenry” have caused long term damage not only to the image of paganism but also contributes to anti-pagan sentiment all over Europe and North America as well as continued suspicion of all self-identified heathens as secretly subscribing to neo-Nazi ideologies.

Kristian was released in March 2009 on parole he served 15 years of his 21-year sentence under Norwegian law. Days after his release a church in Våler was destroyed by arson perhaps the work of his sycophants of a self-styled “Einsatzgruppen” he once hired to break him out of prison.

It is important to note that when “Varg” was arrested, for the murder of Øystein, he was found to have 150 kg of explosives and 3,000 rounds of ammunition in his house with the intent of blowing up an anarchist community center and squat in Olso called “Blitz House”. To us this shows his clear intent to escalate from arsons of empty buildings to mass murder.  In the documentary Until the Light Takes Us Kristian retells stories from his childhood:

“Rode our bikes up to McDonald’s and we set down and started to fire on their windows. You know, we were sneaking up and “Boom!”  We were shooting at McDonald’s. We stockpiled weapons, munitions to prepare for war.”

The Norwegian government shows how it deals with racist terrorists: lock them up and let them go. Kristian’s recent arrest in France shows that the Norwegian government, known for its progressive social democratic state, let a known racist terrorist walk free to take his reign of racially motivated terror international.

The Vikerneses

We were at first surprised to find Kristian in France. Then we quickly realized why he might have picked up and moved residence from a small Norwegian farm in in Bø, Telemark to modern, multicultural France. The New Right and associated crypto-neo-fascist groups are coalescing in France (as well as England) stoking anti-Muslim and anti-foreigner sentiment in hopes of building political and military power to ‘take back Europe’. This particular brand of fascism draws heavily on the fascist idea of “Europe for Europeans” and a “Grand Euro-ethnic awakening”. Obviously the new fad in fascist organization is based around exchanging the racially charged term “white” for a pseudo ethnic pan-European identity similar to the Pan-Germanicists of the late 1800s in Northern Europe. This mirrors the approach of most racialist tendencies in the American Heathen community to gather followers under the banner of pan-Europeanism (of course always mixed with a heavy dose of patriarchy and unchallenged misogyny). Despite the obvious fact that Europe and thus Europeans are a diverse mix of people, beliefs, and origins, this holdover ideology from the 19^th century still is a pervasive belief.  Mirroring again modern fascist groups, racialist authoritarian heathens typically reject Christianity on metaphysical and cultural grounds using it as a scape goat for the ills of modernity and to explain their withdrawal from mainstream culture into idealized racial enclaves and small tight knit white communities.

Again the basic idea promoted by the “Count”, other fascist groups in the US and Europe and racialist heathens is that because Christianity came from Judaism (and because Jews are the classic bogey man of the White Right), Christianity is a cultural poison with the cure being a race war of some sort (sometimes couched in cultural terms and sometimes posed as a calamitous event cause either by corrupt political or economic forces controlled by other races) which results in a purge the ‘desert God’s poison’ from society. Replace Christianity with Islam and you find the other half of a modern fascist organizers coin. We were also less than shocked to find out Kristian was possibly stock piling arms and munitions in France, a hallmark of race warriors everywhere. The main take away is that modern fascist ideological currents are mirroring that of racialist Heathens and their organizations in hopes of creating a base of which to recruit from.

Another aspect of this story central to us, and the Heathen community (as well as our physical communities), is how locals in his French community dismissed him “I didn’t notice anything strange other than that he liked to wear military costumes and liked Gothic music“. This is exactly what covert and overt white nationalists depend on: the apathy and ignorance of their physical communities to dangerous fascist cultural flags or markers. Fascists want people to think white revolutionaries are simply eccentrics and really nothing more than people who have passing weird or dark interests.  They count on our communities’ ignorance of things like their symbology to catch the community into their ideological web. Our inoculation from these unwanted incursions is education and dissemination of information about fascist culture so others can identify and expose them for what they are.

We sincerely hoped that the French government might be successful in prosecuting and imprisoning Kristian so French antifascists can catch up with him behind bars. Despite arguments about unfair State repression against “innocent” Kristian, we do not mind seeing State power used to tie up the funds and movements of known fascists. Although as they showed, in typical fashion, the State failed to do anything real except add to the martyr complex “Varg” banks on to sell records and books. The rule that rarely does any State move to prosecute fascists in any real way is proved yet again. Typically governmental powers utilize the desire of fascists to kill others to fill the ranks of their military, police and security apparatus and ignore their violent organizing until it boils over into a mass shooting or bombing which they claim as an isolated event of someone who was mentally ill. This is what is known as the medicalization of violent racists which is used by a system of institutions to reinforce white supremacy as a pervasive element within both North American and European societies. Even in the U.S. rarely are people such as neo-Nazis prosecuted for obvious hate crimes in relation to their criminal political activity.

The story of “Varg”s life should be a wakeup call to all pagans and heathens around the world. If these Outlaws go unchecked they will continue to gain footholds in our communities. These jötunn are amongst us, they help run national heathen organizations and are helping to build a movement of white race radicals very quietly by leeching our communities of their power to fill their ranks with disposable race warriors. Our counter message is simple:

If you express racist/fascist beliefs or views, you are not welcome in our communities! Freedom of speech does not protect you from the consequences of your speech!

The work that the Circle Ansuz Collective and our allies do, are in part, to undermine the organizations, like those started by Kristian and others, and to prevent and disrupt their violent anti-social agenda. We will not back down to Outlaws who wish to use our community as a base to build violent fascist organizations. By building a culture, and a community based on anti-fascist heathen values we show our strength. When fascists see a circled Ansuz rune they will know that they are not welcome and that Outlaws cannot hide.

-the Circle Ansuz Collective