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Title: Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism by Mattias Gardell ISBN: 0-8223-3071-7 Publisher: Duke Univ Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: June, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.29 (7 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Fascinating perspective
Comment: I agree with the previous comment that this is a scholarly work and isn't intended to read like the latest Stephen King novel. While some may say that the book is biased, I'd say the author has something called a "hypothesis" and uses his research to back it up. You can disagree with some of his research but it is the arguably one of the first attempts to define this subculture. A fascinating read with some very enlightening observations, especially to someone who was raised in rural Southeast America. The comments about the Christianity portions of this book are short sighted and make me wonder why people seem so offended that the author wrote about Paganism and racism in the context of diverging Christian beliefs. I think some readers were wanting something that the author never really claimed to have in this book. Good read!
Rating: 5
Summary: Racist pagans revealed
Comment: Comprehensive, scholarly, and clearly written Gods of the Blood describes the history and condition of non-Christian, religiously based, white separatists in the US. The neo-fascist 'counter-cultural milieu' that Gardell defines has rejected Christianity (as a religion of the tribes of the Middle East) and reached into northern European history to adopt as 'tribal religion' the old Scandinavian gods.
Gardell, a professor of religion at Stockholm University, previously published In the Name of Elijah Muhammad a detailed look at black separatism in the US.
Gods of the Blood apparently (from reading Amazon reviews) does not please racist pagans. It does uncover this hateful counterculture for the rest of us, which may be why they don't like it.
Some reviews on this site have complained about the language being difficult. This 'difficulty' is simply the denseness of academic writing. As one who has edited the work of scholars working in English as a second language -- the editing is excellent.
Rating: 3
Summary: Blut und Boden: The Rise of Aryan Paganism.
Comment: _Gods of the Blood_ is a book which examines the rise of various pagan myths from the perspective of a postmodern leftist academic. Others have already pointed out that this book abides by various Marxist and postmodern modes of thinking and therefore cannot be fully trusted. In fact, the first two chapters do not discuss paganism at all, but focus strictly on the author's theories of cultural and moral relativism. Of course, these types of theories are self-refuting, and the idea that race is somehow a cultural construct is ridiculous (ask any man on the street if he thinks the Irish are "white" and he will reply "of course"), however that has never stopped academia from trumpeting such things. Most ridiculous of all however are some of the author's conspiracy theories about public figures which contend that "culture" is to be interpreted as "race", making many well known public figures into "racists". Whatever. The second chapter is mostly devoted to racist organizations, the Ku Klux Klan, Christian patriots, and the Christian Identity movement. Interestingly, many of those in the Ku Klux Klan have recently teamed up with racist black nationalists. This is interesting because if one were to try to get these groups together using the rhetoric of "diversity" and "multicutlural tolerance" they would never meet. However, by pushing each of these groups to the limits of their own egotism they meet somewhere on the other side of the political circle. By the third chapter however, the author finally turns around to discussion of the pagan revival. He begins with such things as Wicca and contrasts this to Asatru and Odinism. Various individuals in these movements are discussed and a history of pagan beliefs is examined. The author seems to have some trouble distinguishing between many pagans who advocate outright racism (such as David and Katja Lane and Ron McVan) and those who are merely "ethnic" pagans who advocate a more libertarian and separatist philosophy. It seems to me that many of these pagans combine a form of fascism and anarchism in what is termed "tribal socialism" (which the author feels to resemble the ideal of Jeffersonianism). Pagans who advocate such things are radical localists who believe in ties to family, clan, and race, and thus perhaps constitute a truer perception of conservativism than the current elites running the "conservative" parties. An interesting discussion of both Native American "nationalist" and European pagan nationalists is discussed with respect to the recently found Kennewick man skeleton, whose origins may be European indicating the presence of Europeans in America not only before Columbus but well before the "Native" Americans as well. The author moves on to various forms of Odinism and Satanism (darkside Asatru, in which Loki the trickster god is perceived to be the shadow side of Odin the Allfather, in Jungian terms). Here, certain famous individuals such as Michael Moynihan and Steven Flowers (a.k.a. Edred Thorsson) who have both helped translate various works on paganism, runic mythology, magic, German rune magicians, and Julius Evola are discussed. Finally, the political extremism of the White Order of Thule is discussed in relationship to the neoNazi National Alliance. While the author's liberal and postmodern bias is unfortunate as other reviewers have already pointed out, the book does include some good discussion of some of the pagan, Odinist, Asatru, and other groups and alliances which make up the modern day revival of Norse and panEuropean pagan beliefs. In this respect, the book is good and probably worth reading if you can get through the first two chapters. On the other hand, since the author is basically a journalist his accounts are probably not to be fully trusted. In this respect, one must do one's own research to fully understand the revival of paganism in the United States.
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Title: Himmler's Crusade : The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race by Christopher Hale ISBN: 0471262927 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 03 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: A Hundred Little Hitlers : The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America by Elinor Langer ISBN: 0805050981 Publisher: Metropolitan Books Pub. Date: 02 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: TYR: Myth - Culture - Tradition, Vol. 1 by Joshua Buckley, Collin Cleary, Michael Moynihan ISBN: 0972029206 Publisher: Ultra Pub. Date: July, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: A Culture of Conspiracy : Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America by Michael Barkun ISBN: 0520238052 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: November, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Unholy Alliance: History of the Nazi Involvement With the Occult by Peter Levenda, Norman Mailer, Peter Lavenda ISBN: 0826414095 Publisher: Continuum Pub Group Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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