Taken from Spencer Sunshine’s Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege (Routledge, 2024)

Appendix 10: Varg Vikernes and the Heathen Front

Amongst the secondary literature, one of the less common claims is that James Mason was the leader of the U.S. branch of the Heathen Front. Related to this is his contact with the Norwegian black metal musician Varg Vikernes, the purported founder of the group.

Vikernes recorded as Burzum in the early 1990s and became one of the most influential black metal acts. At the same time, he also participated in numerous church burnings, which had become a trend in Norway. He also played in Mayhem until 1993, when he murdered their guitarist, Euronymous, after which he was in prison until 2009.

Vikernes is not just known for his music and crimes but also his political-spiritual views. Before his arrest he espoused Nazi-­ Satanism and afterward became a racist Odinist. (While in some statements he was explicit that he had been a Satanist, in others he denied ever having been one.) (1)

Familiar Thoughts

In 1996, Adam Parfrey’s Feral House Audio co-­released the Burzum album Filosofem. (2)

Vikernes was also the focus of the 1998 Feral House book Lords of Chaos, an important early book in English about Norwegian black metal written by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind, and Vikernes was later the central figure in the movie of the same name. In 1995, neo-Nazi terrorist ideologue James Mason praised Vikernes, saying “killing any number of people and blowing up any number of buildings” is “ultimate heroism”—although there needed to be many actions like this “simultaneously.” According to Ryan Schuster, publisher of the second edition of Siege, while in prison Mason wrote an essay about Vikernes called “Move to the Light”; the record label and publisher Cymophane asked if it could be used as a preface to the English-­language edition of Vikernes’s manifesto Vargsmal. (3)

In 1997, the musician wrote Mason, saying that he had become a “great admirer of SEIGE,” which Michael Moynihan had sent him in prison. “The book shocked me…the thoughts portrayed in it was very familiar…. If I had read SIEGE, let us say one or two years earlier than I did, it would have been a great help to me—really.” (4) In 2003, Mason told an interviewer that Vikernes “epitomizes the Man of Action, which the West is in dire need of…. I wish him the best.” (5)

Heathen Front

According to Lords of Chaos, Vikernes, while in prison, said he both formed and was “chieftain” of the Norwegian Heathen Front. The second edition of the book made additional claims, including that Vikernes also founded the international parent group, the Allgermanische Heidnische Front (Pan-Germanic Heathen Front). Despite the fact that the early Norwegian Heathen Front had the same address as Vikernes’s prison address, the organization denied he was its founder—even though he wrote its program. (6)

Regardless of Vikernes’s exact role, the international group spread, and affiliates in other countries formed. A website run on behalf of Mason while he was in prison included a link to the Allgermanische Heidnische Front. (7) In 1999, a monitoring group’s report on White Supremacist music claimed that Mason led the Vinland Heathen Front in the United States; the SPLC repeated this claim. (8)

However, the claim that Mason led the Vinland Heathen Front is implausible for four reasons. First, Mason never showed any interest in any kind of Heathen or pagan beliefs. Second, in Mason’s voluminous papers at the University of Kansas, there is no documentation about the Heathen Front. Third, Mason was an atheist until just before his time in prison, during which he created his own brand of Christianity. And fourth, forming—and certainly leading—an organization would be counter to Mason’s dictums which he had carefully elaborated in SIEGE. When asked about the Heathen Front, he said “I was never any sort of ‘leader’ with any of them.” (9)

ENDNOTES

1) In Lords of Chaos, Vikernes was cited as saying Satanists will often become Asatrú practitioners. “We can see that again and again. We see it with Bathory, I see it in myself. I was interested in Satanism to where I advocated it….with the whole Black Metal community…but now there’s a growing interest in pan-Germanic heathenism.” In a 1995 interview, Vikernes gave contradictory statements about being a neo-­ Nazi and Satanist. Kaplan said that in his letters to him in 1995 and 1996, Vikernes repeatedly denied he was ever a Satanist. Moynihan and Søderlind, Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground (Venice, California: Feral House, 1998), p.153; “Into the Lion’s Cage Interview with Varg Vikernes ‘Sounds of Death’ Magazine (#5, 1995), by Stephen O’Malley,” www.burzum.org/eng/library/1995_interview_sounds_of_death.shtml; Kaplan, “Religiosity and the Radical Right,” in Jeffrey Kaplan and Tore Bjørgo, eds., Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), p.122n29.

2) Burzum, Filosofem (Misanthropy Records/Cymophane Productions/Feral House Audio, 1996), www.discogs.com/release/1327160-­Burzum-­Filosofem

3) Joe Conason, “Hitler Youth?,” Salon, May 4, 1999, www.salon.com/1999/05/04/nazis; Ryan Schuster to James Mason, July 1, 2002, letter in the archive “Papers of James N. Mason,” University of Kansas, Kenneth Spencer Research Library Archival Collection, Box 32, Folder 29.

4) Varg Vikernes to Mason, September 10, 1997, letter in “Papers of James N. Mason,” Box 16, Folder 22.

5) “Universal Order: An Interview with James Mason” (interview with AAC) in James Mason, Articles and Interviews, 3rd ed. (2018), pp.243–44.

6) Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind, Lords of Chaos, p.166; Moynihan and Søderlind, Lords of Chaos, Revised and Expanded Edition (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003), ebook, chapter 8.

7) “Links,” Universal Order, https://web.archive.org/web/19990429165231/http://www.heathenfront.org. The link in question went to http://www.heathenfront.org

8) Devin Burghart, ed., Soundtracks to the White Revolution: White Supremacist Assaults on Youth Music Subcultures (Chicago: Center for New Community/Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity, 1999), p.62; Eric K. Ward, John Lunsford, and Justin Massa, “Sounds of Violence,” SPLC Intelligence Report #96, Fall 1999, pp.28–32, online version is “Black Metal Spreads Neo-Nazi Hate Message,” SPLC, December 15, 1999, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/1999/black-metal-spreads-neo-nazi-hate-message

9) The author could not find any documents related to the Heathen Front or similar subjects in Mason’s papers at the University of Kansas; Mason to Spencer Sunshine, January 1, 2023 (letter in possession of author)