Abstract
In this article, I investigate the literary representation of the religious convictions and political strategy of neo-Nazi ideologues who are influential in rightwing authoritarian movements in the USA today. The reason that I do this is because in contemporary fascism, the novel has replaced the political manifesto, the military manual and proselytizing testimony, since fiction can evade censorship and avoid prosecution. I read William Luther Pierce’s Turner Diaries and Hunter together with his text on speculative metaphysics and religious belief, Cosmotheism. Then, I turn to Harold Covington’s Northwestern Quintet with The Brigade, reading this with Christian Identity and his own conception of Nazi religious tolerance. Finally, I look at OT Gunnarsson’s Hear the Cradle Song, reading this together with discussions of racism in Californian Odinism. I propose that what this literature shows is that the doctrinal differences between the three main strands of neo-Nazi religion—Cosmotheism, Christian Identity and Odinism—are less significant than their common ideological functions. These are twofold: (1) the sacralization of violence and (2) the sanctification of elites. The dystopian fictions of fascist literature present civil war scenarios whose white nationalist and genocidal outcome is the result of what are, strictly speaking, supremacist death cults.
Highlights
In contemporary fascist propaganda, the novel has replaced the political manifesto, the military manual and proselytizing testimony
I propose that what this literature shows is that the doctrinal differences between the three main strands of neo-Nazi religion—Cosmotheism, Christian Identity and Odinism—are less significant than their common ideological functions
Combining elements of all three, fascist literature today presents dystopian future scenarios that lead through civil war to the foundation of white supremacist states
Summary
The novel has replaced the political manifesto, the military manual and proselytizing testimony. Under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald, Pierce was the author of the novels The Turner Diaries (1978), which directly inspired neo-Nazi terrorist group The Order (1983–1984) and the Oklahoma bombing (1995), and Hunter (1984), which contributed to the mass murders by Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant (Berger 2020) He was the founder of Cosmotheism, a mystically inflected Darwinian pantheism of the White supremacist variety, and its Cosmotheist Church, and a leader of the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi political party (Whitsel 1998). Some clues as to the religious and organizational coordinates of this perspective are provided by the racist publications of the Wotansfolk movement These fictions depart from remarkably similar starting points in fictional dystopias, involving the efforts of democratic constitutional regimes to suppress fascist insurgency and secessionist rebellion. I acknowledge James Gregor’s point that the ethnically defined national territory is only sometimes involved and that trans-national clerical variants exist (Gregor 2012), suggesting that “restoration of group supremacy” is better than “national rebirth.” Neo-Nazism meets the demanding criterion specified by my working definition for the simple reason that it deliberately emulates the paradigmatic instance of fascism, German Nazism, in the moment of its ascent to power
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