Book: Gods Of The Blood The Pagan Revival And White Separatism by Mattias Gardell
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.Mattias Gardell, a swedish religious historian proffesseur at Uppsala University writes in this book about his meetings with the american rightwing odinist communities. Since many rewievers here discusses Mattias Gardell as if he wasn't asatruar/heathen himself I would like to point out that he is. There seems to be a big difference in the american and scandinavian asatruar communities since in USA there is a significant part of that community that has some race ideologies.
I've read the book in swedish, and I couldn't put it down when I started reading. It is not a dry academic language but a flowing and exciting story. It is also a good Description of what you as a scandinavian pagan will bump in to when you surf the web for asatruar in US, as I have. When I started getting more involved in the pagan communities it was in the asatruar part. The american litterature and the people online came from such a different viewpoint that I really couldn't take it serious at first. With this book the ideologies behind their take on Sed/Asatru will be put in it's right context.
The book is also a good read for anyone interested in what racism can be.
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