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Death cults and dystopian scenarios: Neo-nazi religion and literature in the USA today

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journal contribution
posted on 2021-01-01, 00:00 authored by Geoff BoucherGeoff Boucher
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.

History

Journal

Religions

Volume

12

Article number

ARTN 1067

Pagination

1 - 14

Location

Basel, Switzerland

Open access

  • Yes

ISSN

2077-1444

eISSN

2077-1444

Language

English

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Issue

12

Publisher

MDPI