Today’s offering comes to us from Ryan Smith. Smith has been a practicing Pagan since his teens, with over 15 years of experience in inclusive and anti-racist Heathen spirituality. He is the author of The Way of Fire & Ice: The Living Tradition of Norse Paganism and Spinning Wyrd: A Journey Through the Nordic Mysteries, has contributed to Bringing Race to the Table: Exploring Racism in the Pagan Community and No Pasaran: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis anthologies, and been published at Huginn’s Heathen Hof, Patheos Pagan, and Truthout. Ryan is also the host and producer of the Heathen podcast, the Wayward Wanderer, which is available at wherever you get your podcasts. He has a PhD in modern economic & social history and can be found online on Bluesky, Patreon, and Mastodon.
James Mason is one of the most influential modern American fascists who you’ve probably never heard of before. Despite that, he’s one of the biggest influences on the violent wing of the global far-right and his newsletter Siege been cited as an inspiration by violent groups like the Atomwaffen Division. Mason and the work of his contemporaries in the Abraxas Circle further created cover in the 1980s underground, Satanic, and occult scenes for spreading fascist politics. Even though you may not know it, understanding James Mason helps explain how organized bigotry first entered the early Pagan movement and what enabled that process.
I learned all of this thanks to antifascist researcher Spencer Sunshine’s latest book, Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege. In this book, Sunshine uses James Mason’s personal papers, interviews with surviving white nationalists, and his extensive understanding of the American far-right to demonstrate the origins, influences, and impact of James Mason’s most notorious work, the newsletter Siege.
Along the way, you see how the white nationalists, including Mason, of the 1980s poisoned elements of underground cultures at the headwaters of the developing Pagan movement, like the occult and Satanic scenes, so they could further spread their ideas and create safe havens for recruitment.
Sunshine organizes the book chronologically, following Mason’s life and the story of the white nationalist scene of the period in question. Mason, thanks to being something of a neo-Nazi Forrest Gump, was either involved with or connected to people involved in many key developments in the more extreme, underground wing of the white nationalist movement. This makes his papers, experiences, and activities a valuable window into the larger world of neo-Nazi politics in the 1970s and 1980s.
Sunshine also provides critical information in the later sections of the book and the appendices on how James Mason’s ideas, through Siege, have continued to inspire acts of violence and far-right extremism.
Easily the point of greatest interest for modern Pagans is Spencer’s coverage of the Abraxas Clique, the creepy cabal of “occult-fascist” musician, artists, and writers which helped inject fascism into the underground cultural roots of modern Paganism. Abraxas operated in the 1980s and early 1990s; their original members were Boyd Rice, Adam Parfrey, Nikolas Schreck, and Michael Moynihan. All of those members have openly advocated for white nationalist, socially Darwinian ideals, and pursued a shared goal of making a fascist counterculture.
Abraxas’s members shared an aesthetic of occult imagery with a particular affinity for LeVayan Satanism, veneration of serial killers like Charles Manson, shock for shock’s sake, and a profession of extreme ideas provided an ironic, plausible cover for promoting fascist politics. Mason operated in a similar mold in Siege where he freely appropriated slogans from the 60’s New Left to give cover for, explain, and propagate far-right political ideas.
The Clique exerted further influence through the Circle, a broader grouping of artists and countercultural figures that included James Mason and Marilyn Manson, who gravitated towards or participated in the same underground spaces, utilizing a process that is quite similar to how groups like the Asatru Folk Assembly operate within Heathen and Pagan spaces.
Another greatly appreciated aspect of Neo-Nazi Terrorism is how, thanks to Sunshine’s comprehensive access to white nationalist sources, the book effectively demonstrates this same period of growth, development, and definition was also riven with instability and at at-times violent struggles for control and influence. For scholars of fascism, this infighting is not surprising, but for much of society the image in media and popular culture of right-wing politics is one of control, lockstep obedience, and cohesive teamwork. Seeing inside of the world of the white nationalists of the 70s, 80s, and 90s reveals a different picture defined by endless contests for power, relentless debate over finer points of ideology, and the ever-present risk of total fracture and organizational collapse. Sunshine’s effective illustration of these instabilities remind us that fascism is not inherently more efficient or pragmatic than any other movement and, thanks to their “might makes right” philosophy, possesses its own exploitable failure points.
In a time of rising extremism, Spencer Sunshine’s work is essential reading — not just for scholars and activists, but for anyone concerned about how fascist ideologies infiltrate the margins of culture. Sunshine’s painstaking research, direct writing style, and deep understanding of the American far-right is what makes Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism a highly informative and approachable work on the vital topic of far-right violence. His coverage of the Abraxas Circle’s place in subcultural spaces is especially valuable for understanding how far-right movements used alternative spaces as safe harbors, a process that many Pagans are all too familiar with. Given the times we are currently facing, such knowledge is needed even more urgently than ever.
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