Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism [Paperback]

Mattias Gardell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 27, 2003

Racist paganism is a thriving but understudied element of the American religious and cultural landscape. Gods of the Blood is the first in-depth survey of the people, ideologies, and practices that make up this fragmented yet increasingly radical and militant milieu. Over a five-year period during the 1990s Mattias Gardell observed and participated in pagan ceremonies and interviewed pagan activists across the United States. His unprecedented entree into this previously obscure realm is the basis for this firsthand account of the proliferating web of organizations and belief systems combining pre-Christian pagan mythologies with Aryan separatism. Gardell outlines the historical development of the different strands of racist paganism—including Wotanism, Odinism and Darkside Asatrú—and situates them on the spectrum of pagan belief ranging from Wicca and goddess worship to Satanism.

Gods of the Blood details the trends that have converged to fuel militant paganism in the United States: anti-government sentiments inflamed by such events as Ruby Ridge and Waco, the rise of the white power music industry (including whitenoise, dark ambient, and hatecore), the extraordinary reach of modern communications technologies, and feelings of economic and cultural marginalization in the face of globalization and increasing racial and ethnic diversity of the American population. Gardell elucidates how racist pagan beliefs are formed out of various combinations of conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, warrior ideology, populism, beliefs in racial separatism, Klandom, skinhead culture, and tenets of national socialism. He shows how these convictions are further animated by an array of thought selectively derived from thinkers including Nietzche, historian Oswald Spengler, Carl Jung, and racist mystics. Scrupulously attentive to the complexities of racist paganism as it is lived and practiced, Gods of the Blood is a fascinating, disturbing, and important portrait of the virulent undercurrents of certain kinds of violence in America today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nazi skinheads and other groups proclaiming white supremacy represent a disturbing and frightening challenge to those advocating toleration and equality for all races. Historian of religion Gardell (In the Name of Elijah Muhammad) draws on interviews with white supremacist leaders to provide a startling and revealing view of many of these groups and their religious motivations. He contends that the increasing multiculturalism in the United States has led these groups to seek a racial purity that can be found only in pagan cultures. According to Gardell, individuals in these groups become religious racists when they claim that the Divine created the elements of an ancient, pure race. Gardell shows that pagan Nordic culture provides white supremacists with a model of legendary times in which the Aryan race was uncontaminated by the evils of modern global society. Thus, groups such as Wodan's Kindred, the Odinist Fellowship and the Church of Jesus Christ, Christian/Aryan Nations, see themselves as heroes whose task is to restore the lost purity of this bygone era. Gardell argues that members of these groups cannot be dismissed as hopeless dreamers; he calls them "romantic men armed with guns and determination" who have been throughout history a "dangerous species." Although Gardell's academic tone and sometimes torturous prose make for slow reading, his well-researched book offers never-before-seen glimpses of the visions and goals of racist pagans.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Gods of the Blood will stand as the definitive work on white racist neopaganism in the United States, a movement virtually invisible until now. Mattias Gardell has gained remarkable access to this secretive religious subculture, mapping its feuds, factions, and rivalries."—Michael Barkun, author of Religion and the Racist Right

”Gods of the Blood represents the culmination of the author's tireless fieldwork among America's radical right: race activists of every description, denizens of the occult underground, and adherents of a variety of small oppositional religio-political belief systems throughout the United States. Never before has a scholar had the means, the determination, or the unparalleled access Mattias Gardell has been accorded in the American radical right.”—Jeffrey Kaplan, author of the Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 456 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (June 27, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822330717
• ISBN-13: 978-0822330714
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #898,402 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is not about Asatru. It is about the theft of the trappings of Asatru., September 9, 2005

By 

Bear (Kenmore, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Paperback)

The prose, while difficult is not a real obstacle to this text. Primarily this book is not about paganism, Asatru, or those communities, rather it is about how the trappings of these things that have been co-opted by White Separatists in North America. The bulk of the text is used to establish the context of how this has come about. With so many Americans having no real knowledge of the White Separatist movement it is important for the author to explain the progression of Ariosophy and later Christian Identity into the realm of racists adopting Asatru trappings esp. those of the 'folkish' type.

By the last third, when Gardell really gets into the modern racist/pagan crossover the reader should understand that these are not your typical pagans. These are a group of ideologically inbred folk who are seeking to escape the faith they can not justify and replace it with something that better fits their ideals. Let's be honest, "Love those that hate you," is harder than hell to justify if you hate everyone not like you. So the adoption of a form of Asatru as, 'the religion of the Aryan people,' is easy to understand. The in had been around for a long time in the form of the racialist or more folkish Asatru and Odinians like Edred Thorsson.

For this I must say that I found the presentation of Edred Thorsson's position to be sympathetic. Gardell apparently just let Thorsson talk about his perspective, one that has been presented elsewhere by Edred, often in his own books, and quoted him. Thorsson has long held that individuals should honor the gods and goddesses of their own ancestors. This position, while having a certain ethnic-heritage logic is not one that lends itself to the principles of liberal tolerance that we so often hear from the pagan community. I found no attack on either Thorrson or racialist pagans to be present. Perhaps many of the reviewers who did might want to consider why they feel so strongly about an academic text that presents very little commentary until the conclusion where you may disagree with his analysis but frankly there is not much of that.

My favorite criticism that seems to be labeled at this book though is the clear Marxist/post-modernist biases so many seem to find here. Gardell starts with early American commentaries on race and how the perception of race has changed over the last two and a half centuries. From Ben Franklin referring to, "swarthy Swedes," and their inferiority to the white race (read WASP) to the modern madness of skin tone determining race he seems well-justified in the declaring of race a cultural construct. For the review by Prometheus all I have to say is that just over a century and a half ago the Irish were considered to be nothing more than, 'white-niggers,' by the English and less than dogs in the States when they fled an artificial, state-created famine. The Irish race was damn real then, but now they are just white. Get a grip. Gardell is just establishing that at its core the term racist really means anyone who believes in the validity of the theory of race at any level. They may not be bigots, but for this text they are racists. That is neither a Marxist nor a post-modernist position in itself; it is just demonstrable fact that bites into an ideology that is untenable. This makes it much like both Marxism and post-modernism.

This book is for everyone. It is a clear and cogent history of the theologies that have been used to justify racist theories. It should be used as a wake-up call to the Asatru community that one day some idiots are going to get some real media attention for some bombing or high-profile assassination and they will shape what the public believes Asatru to be. It is a PR nightmare that could be diffused if the Asatru community really got its act together and started not merely distancing itself from this kind of stupidity but was seen to castigate and berate the forms of racist Asatru that Gardell looks at.

By the last third, when Gardell really gets into the modern racist/pagan crossover the reader should understand that these are not your typical pagans. These are a group of ideologically inbred folk who are seeking to escape the faith they can not justify and replace it with something that better fits their ideals. Let's be honest, "Love those that hate you," is harder than hell to justify if you hate everyone not like you. So the adoption of a form of Asatru as, 'the religion of the Aryan people,' is easy to understand. The in had been around for a long time in the form of the racialist or more folkish Asatru and Odinians like Edred Thorsson.

For this I must say that I found the presentation of Edred Thorsson's position to be sympathetic. Gardell apparently just let Thorsson talk about his perspective, one that has been presented elsewhere by Edred, often in his own books, and quoted him. Thorsson has long held that individuals should honor the gods and goddesses of their own ancestors. This position, while having a certain ethnic-heritage logic is not one that lends itself to the principles of liberal tolerance that we so often hear from the pagan community. I found no attack on either Thorrson or racialist pagans to be present. Perhaps many of the reviewers who did might want to consider why they feel so strongly about an academic text that presents very little commentary until the conclusion where you may disagree with his analysis but frankly there is not much of that.

My favorite criticism that seems to be labeled at this book though is the clear Marxist/post-modernist biases so many seem to find here. Gardell starts with early American commentaries on race and how the perception of race has changed over the last two and a half centuries. From Ben Franklin referring to, "swarthy Swedes," and their inferiority to the white race (read WASP) to the modern madness of skin tone determining race he seems well-justified in the declaring of race a cultural construct. For the review by Prometheus all I have to say is that just over a century and a half ago the Irish were considered to be nothing more than, 'white-niggers,' by the English and less than dogs in the States when they fled an artificial, state-created famine. The Irish race was damn real then, but now they are just white. Get a grip. Gardell is just establishing that at its core the term racist really means anyone who believes in the validity of the theory of race at any level. They may not be bigots, but for this text they are racists. That is neither a Marxist nor a post-modernist position in itself; it is just demonstrable fact that bites into an ideology that is untenable. This makes it much like both Marxism and post-modernism.

This book is for everyone. It is a clear and cogent history of the theologies that have been used to justify racist theories. It should be used as a wake-up call to the Asatru community that one day some idiots are going to get some real media attention for some bombing or high-profile assassination and they will shape what the public believes Asatru to be. It is a PR nightmare that could be diffused if the Asatru community really got its act together and started not merely distancing itself from this kind of stupidity but was seen to castigate and berate the forms of racist Asatru that Gardell looks at.

40 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Misleading, poorly conceived and poorly written, July 24, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Hardcover)

The author of "Gods of the Blood" is a scholar in the history of religions at Stockholm University. With this background one might expect to find a wealth of intellectual and spiritual insights in a study of this sort. No such luck. Instead what we get is basically a warmed-over Marxist/materialist interpretation of marginal pagan religious groups, with some weakly formulated sociological analysis thrown in to please other branches of the academic establishment. The end result is both predictable and shallow. Starting with a long discussion of racism in America, none of which has anything to do with paganism at all, the book then catalogs a variety of figures involved in contemporary Norse pagan groups.

Interestingly, the people discussed here who qualify as "white supremacists" or "extreme racists" are ultimately dualistic Christians at root, not pagans. They invariably come out of anti-pagan backgrounds, whether Christian Identity or Church of the Creator, and their adoption of paganism is just the latest window dressing for their core ideology, which has little or nothing to do with paganism per se. Take, for example, the prime movers of "racist paganism," the 14 Words/Wotansvolk crowd. The main personalities involved (David and Katja Lane) both come from a militant Christian Identity/KKK background, a fact which the author misleadingly downplays. Should it come as any surprise then, that they also supplied the book's cover photo of a giant burning cross (taken at Aryan Nations, a hardcore Christian racist compound)? The fact that this image was chosen as the cover illustration for the entire volume says a lot about the flawed and deceptive nature of this book.

Throughout "Gods of the Blood," the author struggles to fit everyone else into a slippery-slope racist continuum, but things are nowhere near that simple. Nevertheless, it's easier to demonize and dehumanize your enemies if you can just paint them as being somehow part of an amorphous and potentially threatening movement (in this case the tritely termed "romantic men with guns" movement). This is the same modus operandi that Hitler used when talking of the shadowy cabal of Jews, Freemasons, gays, and other subversives who were all seeking to undermine the totalitarian dream.

It's surprising that a university press would issue something like this, especially without bothering to edit it. While the author, a Swede, can be forgiven for not being able to write in clear English, presumably his editors have no such excuse. Given the consistent awkward and improper linguistic usages that abound here (or "torturous prose," to quote Publishers Weekly), one wonders whether anyone at Duke University Press even read the text before it went to print.

16 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Misleading, poorly conceived and poorly written, July 20, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Paperback)

The author of "Gods of the Blood" is a scholar in the history of religions at Stockholm University. With this background one might expect to find a wealth of intellectual and spiritual insights in a study of this sort. No such luck. Instead what we get is basically a warmed-over Marxist/materialist interpretation of marginal pagan religious groups, with some weakly formulated sociological analysis thrown in to please other branches of the academic establishment. The end result is both predictable and shallow. Starting with a long discussion of racism in America, none of which has anything in the least to do with paganism, the book then catalogs a variety of figures involved in contemporary Norse pagan groups.

Interestingly, the people discussed here who qualify as "white supremacists" or "extreme racists" are ultimately dualistic Christians at root, not pagans. They invariably come out of *anti-pagan* backgrounds, whether Christian Identity or Church of the Creator, and their adoption of paganism is just the latest superficial window dressing for their core ideology, which bears no commonality with paganism per se. Take, for example, the prime movers of "racist paganism," the 14 Words/Wotansvolk crowd. The main personalities involved (David and Katja Lane) both come from a militant Christian Identity/KKK background, a fact that the author misleadingly downplays. Should it come as any surprise, then, that they also supplied the book's cover photo of a giant burning cross (taken at Aryan Nations, a hardcore Christian racist compound)? The fact that this image was chosen as the cover illustration for the entire volume says a lot about the flawed and deceptive nature of this book.

Throughout "Gods of the Blood," the author struggles to fit everyone else into a slippery-slope racist continuum, but things are nowhere near that simple. Nevertheless, it's easier to demonize and dehumanize your enemies if you can just paint them as being somehow part of an amorphous and potentially threatening movement (in this case the tritely termed "romantic men with guns" movement). This is the same modus operandi that Hitler used when talking of the shadowy cabal of Jews, Freemasons, gays, and other subversives who were all seeking to undermine the totalitarian dream.

It's surprising that an academic press would issue something like this, especially without bothering to edit it. While the author, a Swede, can be forgiven for not being able to write in good, clear English, presumably his editors have no such excuse. Given the consistent examples of awkward and improper linguistic usage that abound here ("torturous prose," to quote Publishers Weekly), one wonders whether anyone at Duke University Press even read the text before it went to print, except for maybe running it through their computerized spellchecker.

The revival of paganism--in all its manifestations--is a topic ripe for a definitive and balanced religious-historical study. Unfortunately this is nothing of the sort.