[This essay was written to bring awareness to the issue of fascist presence in our community and to point out how certain people within it have accommodated it and that many of them still choose to associate with those who openly promote fascist ideology.
In July 2019, Sean Dimentia (Oakland-based electronic musician who had formed a new crew called Sidereal after having been a part of the Katabatik crew for a long time) approached the crew I’ve been involved with about doing a Sidereal takeover party at Omni Commons community space which we had been doing events out of. I approached a few of the people in my crew privately to say that I had a concern about someone who has been involved with Katabatik (and Sidereal) who might be a fascist sympathizer – without mentioning any specifics – and that I wanted to talk in person about it. Both of the people I had reached out to responded separately by saying they thought they already had some idea about what I may be referring to, based on things they themselves have noticed over the years. The next thing I knew, one of those people had approached Sean and suggested to him about making a public stance on Sidereal’s position regarding fascism. Sean reacted to this by making a public post on his social media accounts implying that someone had been “saying a lot of things behind mine and other’s backs” about him and Sidereal being fascists and that he was “110% Anti-Fascist, Anti-Nazi”. I then learned that he was telling people privately that I was the one accusing him of such things. My concern wasn’t even about him and this all happened before I actually had a talk with anyone about who/what exactly I was referring to. I did eventually end up having a mediated conversation with Sean and one of my main concerns seemed to be getting addressed, at least regarding the Omni party, since it was agreed that the specific person I was referring to wouldn’t be involved at the party if it was to happen. By then, I had written down what follows below in order to explain my concerns, and in part to help dispel the false rumor going around that I was just spreading “gossip and lies” accusing Sean/Sidereal of being fascists.
There is a lot of information here based on what I’ve observed and documented over many years, including what people in the community have shared directly with me. It reveals a pattern within a particular scene that has been, in the words of a friend who has been a part of it, “at the very least allowing a safe space for racist/fascist remarks, jokes, and other media, and for tolerating, consuming, and in some cases promoting media with ties to outspoken fascists” and that while some of the people involved are seemingly ignorant of “the true political nature of the bands and ideas with they are associating”, that “some people appear to be true sympathizers”.]
“When we avoid difficult conversations we trade in short-term discomfort for long-term dysfunction.” – Unknown
“You only get to watch [the world burn] when you have the privilege of not being on fire. It’s edgy, but it’s not the darkness. The darkness is finding a way to laugh about being on fire. Edginess is always adolescent. The darkness is edginess aged by time and pain.” – ContraPoints
This essay documents the situation surrounding neo-fascists Nathan “Exile” Block and Joyanna “Sadie” Zacher and their close connections to certain members of Katabatik, and looks at how various fascist associations were allowed to go unchecked for many years within this circle.
During the late 90’s and early 00’s, the Earth Liberation Front was carrying out arsons as part of large-scale acts of industrial sabotage and property destruction. Nathan Block aka “Exile” and Joyanna Lynn Zacher aka “Sadie”, along with Bryan LeFey and many others were eventually imprisoned for those actions in what became known as the “Green Scare”. Exile, who has been living in Olympia, WA before and after prison, is a long time friend of Katabatik members Michael Buchanan (Djynnx/Identity Theft/Abandoned Footwear) and Barrett (Polar/RMS). Bryan LeFey (Poison Ring) is also very closely affiliated with Katabatik.
Around 2009, I began to notice Katabatik members promoting a music festival in the woods of Northern California called Stella Natura. By the time I actually paid attention to what it was about when they were promoting it in 2013, many of the things I noticed were quite unsettling. I later found out that Katabatik was involved in running one of the stages. The 2013 lineup featured Katabatik-associated act Poison Ring (Bryan LeFey).
Stella Natura, with its tagline “The Light of Ancestral Fires”, was an annual neo-folk/ambient/black/doom metal festival in the woods of Northern California with an emphasis on exploring Euro-Pagan roots. It was organized by Adam Torruella (of the Pesanta Urfolk label and the neo-folk band Lux Interna), and Tommy Ferguson of Ásatrú Folk Assembly (Torruella was also a member). Joshua Phillips, a member of Olympia-based black metal band Fauna (who have a history of associating with fascists such as Nathan “Exile” Block, Markus Wolff of Blood Axis/L’Acephale/Waldteufel/Tyr journal/Hex Magazine…etc., Asatru Folk Assembly, and have used Swastikas in their art and were on the Pesanta Urfolk label who also released Blood Axis), was also one of the founders of the event. I noticed that Amoeba Records was one of the sponsors of the 2013 event, and that a group called “Viking Brotherhood” was providing “logistical services”. The first Stella Natura gathering occurred in Nevada City, CA and afterwards moved to the Tahoe National Forest.
Ásatrú Folk Assembly (one of the main sponsors of Stella Natura) is a neo-Völkisch racialist Heathen organization initially founded as Viking Brotherhood in 1972 by white nationalist Stephen McNallen of Grass Valley, CA. McNallen also founded the Wotan Network which views the Norse god Wotan aka Odin as an archetype for the “future of the white race” and engages in “PSYOPS campaign” to recruit from the alt-right and “Asatruar/Odinists/Heathens”. Stephen McNallen has openly supported the neo-Nazi “14 Words” slogan (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”), quoting them verbatim.
Stephen McNallen, who has ties to Apartheid South Africa and the failed white ethno-state of Rhodesia, showed support for the Cascadia secessionist movement in the Pacific Northwest in his July 2017 Facebook post, in which he mentions the Asatru Land Union, “an effort to create a real-world Folkish Asatru community in Lewis County, Washington”. The Cascadia secessionist movement has been heavily infiltrated by the white nationalist organization Northwest Front – which white supremacist murderer Dylan Roof referred to in his manifesto – whose final solution to the race “problem” is to expel non-white people from the Pacific Northwest and to establish a mono-racial republic there.
I was then alerted to the fact that many of the acts that have performed at Stella Natura since its inception have included prominent fascists such as Robert Taylor whose band Changes (whose members were also members of the Third Positionist American Front) has played every year of the festival. Taylor, who had been involved with the 1960s right-wing paramilitary organization called ‘The Minutemen’ (founded by millionaire Robert Bolivar DePugh), was a founder of the Asatru Alliance along with former American Nazi Party member Michael “Valgard” Murray. Other fascist acts who have been booked to perform at Stella Natura include Blood Axis, Fire and Ice/Ian Read, Die Weisse Rose, Waldteufel/Markus Wolff, C.O.T.A. (Children Of The Apocalypse), and Of the Wand and the Moon/Kim Larsen. The 2013 lineup also included Wardruna, the Norwegian neo-folk band formed by ex-members of black metal band Gorgoroth, whose show in San Francisco during the 2018 US tour was attended by a sizable contingent of “Aryan Brotherhood” types and “Wotan Mit Uns” folks along with Stephen McNallen (escorted by a neo-Nazi guard) and members of Identity Evropa.
Fire + Ice, which was one of the headliners at Stella Natura in 2013, is a band founded and fronted by Ian Read, who has been a member of Current 93 and the founding member of the Nazi neo-folk band Sol Invictus. Ian Read was featured on Death In June’s “Brown Book” album doing vocals for their rendition of ‘Horst Wessel Lied’, the anthem of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 1930 to 1945. Read also played with the openly neo-nazi group Above the Ruins (whose name is derived from the writings of fascist esotericist Julius Evola) who contributed to the National Front’s benefit album No Surrender Vol 1, alongside neo-Nazi punk bands such as Skrewdriver. Read has also led militant security teams for both Holocaust denier and anti-Semite Michele Renouf and editor of far-right magazine Michael Walker. Read was also exposed as an organizer of the fascist group IONA’s Nazi street fighters in the 1997 article ‘Rocking for Satan’ by the antifascist magazine Searchlight. One of Read’s closest collaborators has been Tony Wakeford (Death in June, Sol Invictus, Above the Ruins), a former member of the National Front who has also been a key figure within occult-fascist music. Ian Read was also a member of the band While Angels Watch, which worked with British fascist Troy Southgate whose Black Front Press publishes occult writings such as the Crowley anthology as well as writings on fascists such as Julius Evola, Corneliu Codreanu, and Otto Strasser. Southgate’s movement has been described as working to “exploit a burgeoning counter culture of industrial heavy metal music, paganism, esotericism, occultism and Satanism that, it believes, holds the key to the spiritual reinvigoration of western society ready for an essentially Evolian revolt against the culturally and racially enervating forces of American global capitalism”.
Initially, I contacted the organizers of Stella Natura asking if they knew about these bands. After my inquiry went ignored, I alerted Amoeba Records about these associations who then pulled out of sponsoring the event. This resulted in angry messages from Stella Natura and a pointless back-and-forth exchange with a member of the band Blood Axis. I then approached a few Katabatik members including Michael Buchanan during one of their events and asked what they knew about all of this. Buchanan insisted that Blood Axis is just using fascist imagery for “attention” because otherwise they’re just some mediocre band, and then abruptly cut off the conversation saying that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I had also reached out to Bryan LeFey (Poison Ring) asking if he knew about these associations with Stella Natura considering he was performing that year but I never got a response.
One of the other original Katabatik members that I had reached out to who was sympathetic to my concerns, did get in contact with me privately and shared his experience from having gone to the very first Stella Natura event. He told me there was a literature table selling Nazi propaganda, and that when one of the bands was playing, he had noticed a group of people in formation wearing a uniform with armbands out in the audience doing the Nazi salute. White nationalist Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents Publishing was selling their books at the 2013 event and wrote about how “a good number” of people into “neofolk, black metal, neopaganism, or Traditionalism” are white and/or “White Nationalist” and that he “met a large number of Counter-Currents readers” there.
A friend who happened to attend Stella Natura in 2012 recalled “I was caught off guard a few times last year at Stella. Fascists are among those attending and more times than 2 they were pretty open about it. Seeing blood axis was disturbing and undoubtedly nazi influenced. I’m all about honoring our ancestors, that don’t mean that mine are better than anyone else’s.”
Around 2014, it was discovered that Nathan Block aka “Exile”, who had been released from prison by then, had a Tumblr blog called “Loyalty is Mightier than Fire” (an Evola quote) which was full of writings by fascists such as Julius Evola, “esoteric Hitlerist” Miguel Serrano, Carl Schmitt who was a key theorist for the Nazi party, and Oswald Spengler, the German nationalist who was a prominent member of the “Conservative Revolution”, as well as numerous Nazi imagery including Swastikas, Black Suns and runes used by Nazis. Exile’s blog also showed that he was “fond of portraits of Hitler, memes threatening racist skinhead violence, imagery of intimidating white men with the caption “support your local fascist crew,” links to a veritable cornucopia of transphobic screeds, and at least a couple articles about how the prison experience will necessarily turn whites into “racialists” for all the insight they would gain into the “problem of the Blacks.”” This revelation was followed by a series of in-person conversations between local activists and Sadie and Exile which left no doubt that they could be “fairly characterized as neo-fascists”. Some of Exile’s answers during these conversations included “Evola shows us the way” and “Some of my good friends are neo-nazis”. Both in and out of prison, Sadie and Exile have made racist remarks about non-white people (“the Mexicans”) and Exile has made statements supporting white separatism, which Sadie has defended. They’re both a part of the black metal scene in Olympia where white separatist attitudes have a stronghold among some members of that scene. Some time later, a mutual friend had tried talking to Bryan LeFey (Poison Ring) about Exile but I was told he was unwilling to talk about it. According to members of the Olympia community, Bryan LeFey has been the biggest apologist for Stella Natura and Exile and is known to have spread false rumors about anti-fascists.
As mentioned, along with being full of quotes from various fascist theorists, Exile’s blog is filled with various symbols utilized by neo-Nazis such as Swastikas, Black Suns, Anglo-Saxon runes, Wolfsangels, Celtic/Aryan/Sun Cross, Iron Cross, Algiz Rune, and Germanic Pagan symbols like the Valknut. When Exile came down to Oakland to attend Katabatik’s memorial event at Omni after the Ghost Ship fire, he was wearing large wooden plugs of Swastikas in his earlobes.
Exile and Sadie’s letters from prison often ended with a reference to Charles Manson’s racist ecological philosophy ATWA (which meant “Air Trees Water Animals” and “All The Way Alive”), as well as references to “the ancestors” and the “fair folk”. A former ELF member recalled that Exile and Sadie “shared an unusual love of Scandinavian black metal, made disturbing references to Charles Manson, and promoted an elitist, anti-left mentality”.
One of the images that Exile shared on his blog is a photo of Thomas Thormodsæter Haugen, aka “Samoth” of the Norwegian black metal band Emperor. Samoth did time in prison for burning down the historic Skjold stave church in 1992 with the infamous white supremacist murderer/hate crime convict Kristian “Varg” Vikernes of Burzum (“Varg” means “Wolf” in Norwegian. “Wolf” was Hitler’s self-adopted nickname). Samoth then went on to form a black metal band called Zyklon-B (the gas used in gas chambers during the Holocaust) who have a song titled “Bloodsoil”. In 1992, Bård Guldvik Eithun aka “Faust” of Emperor, who also went on to burn down Holmenkollen Chapel with “Varg” Vikernes and Øystein Aarseth aka “Euronymous” of Mayhem after a failed bombing attempt, stabbed a gay man to death. Faust has shown no remorse and was eventually welcomed back into the metal community after prison. Jan Axel Blomberg aka “Hellhammer” of the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem has said that he “honor[s]” Faust for killing a “fucking faggot” and that “we don’t like black people here. Black metal is for white people”. He has also claimed “there are differences between races” and “that like animals, some races are more […] intelligent” “like a cat is much more intelligent than a bird or a cow, or even a dog”, and has advocated violence against homosexuals and called for burning up mosques and Hindu temples “with plenty of people in them”, instead of Christian churches, for being “foreign”. Vikernes, an Odalist/Odinist, is said to have formed small nationalist racialist Pagan cells in the Norwegian black metal scene including members of Mayhem and Emperor, resulting in at least 50 church burnings by 1996. Anders Breivik, a Norwegian terrorist who committed the 2011 Oslo bombing and shooting rampage that killed 77 people, identified himself as an Odinist. Vikernes, who has lived in France since his release, originally drew the attention of French authorities after receiving the manifesto sent by Anders Breivik. Vikernes wrote a blog post about how he agreed with much of Breivik’s views, but suspected that the mass murderer was actually working on behalf of a vast Jewish conspiracy.
Another image Exile posted on his blog is a photo of Micah Allison, the wife of Derick “Ion” Almena, the scam artist who operated as a slumlord at the Ghost Ship/Satya Yuga warehouse (which he built into a literal tinderbox of cultural appropriation full of makeshift construction out of South East Asian wood carvings and pallets) that claimed the lives of 36 people in the fire that started during a party on December 2nd, 2016. In the photo, Allison is holding a Swastika in her hands while also wearing Swastika ear rings. Like Exile, Derrick “Ion” Almena and Micah Allison were obsessed with Swastikas. They both had Swastika tattoos and the symbol could be seen all over inside their warehouse, being a major theme of Almena’s “art”. Almena’s Facebook profile was also full of photos and collages about Swastikas and his twisted rants that attempted to defend his cultural appropriation. One of the photo collages Almena had created showed a scantily clad woman with the Swastika symbol on her buttocks with Nazi soldiers marching in the background, and referenced “Operation Paperclip” which was the secret US military program that recruited leaders of the Nazi party and over 1,600 Nazi scientists to the US for WWII and the subsequent Cold War. In many of Almena’s online rants, he compared himself to serial killers and murderous dictators. In one rant that he entitled SWASTIKA, he accused those who “FIND THE SWASTIKA OFFENSIVE” or “ANYBODY TELLING ME OR 10 MILLION NATIVE AMERICANS THAT ALSO SUFFERED GENOCIDE …THAT WE CANNOT WAVE THE FLAG OF THE SWASTIKS WITH ANCIENT HISORICAL [sic] PRIDE” of “INTOLERANCE AND HATE”. According to people who lived at the Ghost Ship warehouse, Almena would often speak to his second-in-command Max Harris “in a sharp German accent, pretending that Harris, whose mother was Jewish, was his Jew, his slave”.
Some time after Exile’s fascist allegiances became known, Olympia-based neo-folk band called Ekstasis (featuring a member of Fauna), whose members have close ties to Exile, went on tour. When the band failed to give an adequate response to an inquiry about the revelation that their close associate Exile had been outed as a fascist, the Oakland venue Night Light ended up taking them off the bill. Ekstasis then responded with a statement with the following accusation directed at anti-fascists: “You have allied yourselves with the snitches, the McCarthyites, the secret police forces of the world. Congratulations: you are the fascists.” It also resulted in strong reactions from the Katabatik circles, many of whom were angry about Exile being called a fascist and Ekstasis getting pulled from the show. Some people affiliated with Katabatik including Sean Dimentia reacted by sharing and liking an “anti-antifa” video. When I approached Sean about the whole situation surrounding Exile, he responded saying “Michael is Jewish.” “Both Michael and Barrett go way back with Exile. They wouldn’t be friends with a fascist”.
Some time later, Michael Buchanan had posted on Facebook a video of a song by Hate Forest, a neo-Nazi black metal band from Ukraine. When it was pointed out that Hate Forest describes themselves their work being “based upon the Aryan/Slavonic mythology, Nietzschean philosophy, and the ideology of elitism” with threatening language toward “subhuman”(s), Michael did not respond. A couple of people who he is friends with on Facebook did respond, basically saying “Who cares if they are?”. A quick look at their profile revealed their locations as the Pacific Northwest and one of them even had a picture of themselves wearing a Charles Manson back patch that looked like it was taken at one of the Stella Natura gatherings. Michael never responded but eventually deleted his post after several days. Hate Forest members are also in a Nazi band called Drudkh including a member of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion of the Ukrainian military who have been documented for actively working with and training American neo-Nazi groups such as Rise Above Movmenet, Identity Evropa, and Atomwaffen Division, and for their close connections to white nationalists Greg Johnson (Counter-Currents), Jared Taylor (American Renaissance), and Kevin MacDonald.
Katabatik member Christopher Ashbrook would often get defensive about how people who speak up about fascist presence in black metal and neo-folk scenes don’t know what they’re talking about. He once posted an article that he claimed to represent his idea of a more informed, constructive criticism on this topic. The article was on Heathen Harvest, a music review website that constantly gives platform to far-right and fascist ideologies, and has close ties to fascists such as Troy Southgate, Counter-Currents Publishing, and Asatru Folk Assembly. It called for the neo-folk movement, as admirers of “social Darwinism, volkisch writers, and European Paganism” to appear more intellectual by co-opting theories of philosophers such as Foucault, and to get more serious by adopting a religious outlook. Ashbrook, who has exhibited that he was into satanic and occult subject matters and seemed to harbor an elitist mindset based on previous conversations, once asked me if I liked the black metal band Watain, saying that while he’s not into their actual music that he’s into the way they present themselves. Watain is a band who describe themselves as theistic Satanists with well-documented Nazi associations. They have an album called “Go Fuck Your Jewish God” and have been on Drakkar label which has released numerous Nazi metal bands. Members of Watain have been spotted wearing shirts promoting Nazi bands such as Absurd. One of their members was caught on video doing the Nazi salute onstage in January 2018, which the band denied. When photo of another Nazi salute surfaced in March of that year, that member was forced to leave the band. Video of his onstage Nazi salute from 2011 then also surfaced. Another longtime Katabatik associate later told me while rationalizing how most of that scene chooses be “apolitical”: “The only guy I saw posting a long defense of the crypto-fascism music was Ashbrook”.
Christopher Ashbrook’s name appears on the Heathen Harvest website in the announcement of the 2016 episode of The Forest Passage, the podcast of Raul Antony, a Reverend of the Church of Satan and the editor of Heathen Harvest and Black Flame, the official magazine of the Church of Satan which has praised neo-Nazi James Mason and his book SIEGE as “a monumental achievement”. “The Forest Passage” is taken from the title of the book by Ernst Jünger, the leading proponent of “Conservative Revolution” that contributed to the rise of fascism in Germany, who had a big influence on Evola (who eventually published a book on Jünger).
In a 2015 episode of The Forest Passage podcast, Raul Antony interviewed and endorsed then-political candidate and self-proclaimed “American fascist”/Holocaust denier Austin Gillespie aka “Augustus Sol Invictus” who was running for senate in the 2016 Libertarian Party primary with the message that a violent second Civil War is necessary to preserve “Western civilization”. Gillespie, a Florida attorney who’s also known for slaughtering a goat and drinking its blood as part of an animal sacrifice in a pagan ritual, was a member of the Thelemic organization Ordo Templi Orientis (occultist Aleister Crowley was an influential member), and has close ties to The Satanic Temple. He had this to say about whether six million Jews died in the Holocaust: “I am still waiting to see those facts”. Gillespie co-founded the Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights – a “military wing” offshoot of the Proud Boys – and was a headline speaker at the Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville. He has since dropped out of the “mainstream” Alt-Right in order to focus on “Deep Ecology” (a movement that has been influenced by quasi-spiritual fascists like Julius Evola and French Nazi mystic Maximiani Portaz aka “Savitri Devi” who developed an anti-humanist practice of Nazi nature worship.).
Christopher Ashbrook’s various social media accounts uses the name “Oneiric Tomb”. On his Tumblr blog “ONeiRiC.TOMB”, Ashbrook’s posts and likes are full of quotes from writers popular among fascists such as Julius Evola, René Guénon, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Ernst Jünger, Alain de Benoist, Georges Bataille, Jose M. Herrou Aragon, Charles Baudelaire, and Antonin Artaud, just as you would find on Exile’s blog.
Many of Ashbrook’s posts were shared directly from Exile’s blog “Loyalty is Mightier than Fire” and the Radical Traditionalism blog which is entirely fascist, white nationalist propaganda. The Radical Traditionalism blog promotes “white genocide” propaganda and white supremacists such as Lauren Southern, Brittany Pettibone, Jonathan Bowden, Ricardo Duchesne, Stefan Molyneux, and the Austrian Identitarian organization Generation Identity whose leader Martin Sellner has been confirmed to have received funds from the mass murderer who killed 50 Muslims at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, and pointed the shooter to his anti-Muslim youtube videos after receiving those funds.
In February and March of 2015, Ashbrook posted quotes from Italian Traditionalist fascist thinker Julius Evola who believed that Jews were to blame for modern materialism and democracy that he thought subverted the natural order of the world. Evola worked with Hitler (He idolized the Nazi SS, admired the SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, whom he knew personally, and spent World War II working for the Nazi SD), Mussolini and all the fascists who kept on murdering people in Italy during the Years of Lead. Evola believed in a hierarchical society run by a spiritually superior caste and that the ideal order was based on “hierarchy, caste, monarchy, race, myth, religion and ritual”. Evola’s early writings on race was admired by Mussolini and influenced the 1938 Racial Laws restricting the rights of Jews in Italy. Evola himself wrote the Synthesis of Racial Doctrine for Mussolini’s regime in 1941. In 2014, Steve Bannon, the head of Breitbart News who went on to become the White House chief strategist for Trump, gave a speech at the Vatican in which he brought up Evola and Traditionalism, as well as fascist ideologue Aleksandr Dugin, the ultranationalist Russian Traditionalist who is considered Putin’s most influential thinker. As one of the key figures of the Traditionalist philosophy which rejected the 20th century modernity, Evola also believed that women should never occupy the same social space of men. He argued that the Isalmic harem is the ideal form of relationship and even justified rape as a natural expression of male desire.
On February 28th, 2015, Ashbrook shared an image containing a quote from Traditionalist René Guénon who had a strong influence on both Julius Evola and Aleksandr Dugin. Steve Bannon, in his book ‘Always the Rebel’, recommends Guénon’s book ‘Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta’.
On the same day he posted the Guénon quote, Ashbrook also shared a quote from Ernst Jünger, directly from the Radical Traditionalism blog.
Ashbrook’s post from March 2015 contains the following words: ‘We Fascists are the only true anarchists’ (from a 1975 torture porn film Salò/120 Days of Sodom.)
And on the same day, Ashbrook posted a quote from the gnostic satanist Jose M. Herrou Aragon. Aragon’s books on gnosticism are consistently recommended and quoted in anti-semitic, neo-Nazi, and consipiracy forums.
In May of 2015, Ashbrook posted quotes from Italian proto-fascist Gabriele D’Annunzio who directly influenced Mussolini and Italian Fascism.
In June 2015, Ashbrook posted quotes from French philosopher Georges Bataille who was a part of the European avant-garde and intellectual elites with ambiguous politics who drifted toward fascism during the 1920s and 1930s. “In France, literary figures like Georges Bataille and Antonin Artaud began experimenting with fascist aesthetics of cruelty, irrationalism, and elitism. In 1934, Bataille declared his hope to usher in “room for great fascist societies,” which he believed inhabited the world of “higher forms” and “makes an appeal to sentiments traditionally defined as exalted and noble.” Bataille’s admiration for Stirner did not prevent him from developing what he described decades later as a “paradoxical fascist tendency.” Other libertarian celebrities like Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Maurice Blanchot also embraced fascist themes—particularly virulent anti-Semitism.” Bataille is consistently cited by fascists as inspiration including fascist black metal bands such as Pete Noire and Deathspell Omega. One of the quotes Ashbrook posted is from Bataille’s “Programme” for his secret society “Acephale” which wanted to carry out human sacrifice and contains the line “Affirm the reality of values, the resulting inequality of men”. L’Acéphale, a black metal band from Portland, OR whose name is based on Bataille’s secret society, have performed at Stella Natura and toured with Fauna. L’Acéphale’s member Markus Wolff is also a founding member of fascist Michael Moynihan’s band Blood Axis who have performed at Stella Natura along with Wolff’s project Waldteufel. Wolff has supplied writings on German völkisch authors and pagan revivalists to right-wing publications such as Tyr, and also helped Moynihan release English editions of Evola’s works. He is the staff editor, contributing artist and writer for Hex magazine, another sponsor of Stella Natura. Hex magazine, a “heathen” journal, has published works by neo-fascist Gerhard Petak (as Gerhard Hallstatt) and promoted his band Allerseelen who has toured with Waldteufel. One of the founders and initial editors of Hex magazine, Amie Rautmann aka “A. von Rautmann” is an enthusiast of the Holocaust‐denier David Irving.
Other blog posts that Ashbrook has liked on his Tumblr blog include several more quotes from Guénon, Bataille, Artaud, and the anti-Semitic poet Charles Baudelaire who famously declared: “A fine conspiracy could be organized for the purpose of exterminating the Jewish race”. Notably, Baudelaire is referenced in the album art of Nazi black metal band Mgła. Ashbrook also liked a post mentioning “Esoteric Hitlerist” Miguel Serrano who often serves as inspiration for the loose network of music acts that combine neo-fascism and satanism as part of the Neo-völkisch movement that advocates for anti-modern neo-tribalism and Traditionalism. Ashbrook also liked a post by French fascist Alain de Benoist whose “pagan” mysticist ideals and Nouvelle Droite (New Right) movement were inspired by Julius Evola. Benoist, who opposes egalitarianism, has been influential with the alt-right movement in the U.S. and has given a lecture on identity at a National Policy Institute conference hosted by neo-Nazi Richard Spencer.
[Just as Exile had done when his blog became known, Ashbrook has followed in his footsteps and has since hidden his Likes on his Tumblr blog after becoming aware of this essay.]
Ashbrook also liked a quote from the self-described “Pagan Modernist” and fascist Jonathan Bowden (British National Party) in a 2016 post on the Radical Traditionalism blog.
Another post that Ashbrook liked on his blog is the album art for “Für Ilse Koch”, a 1982 industrial/noise compilation dedicated to Ilse Koch, the wife of Karl-Otto Koch, the commandant of the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp. Ilse Koch was accused of having made lampshades out of the skin of prisoners. The comp was released by Come Organisation, a record label operated by William Bennett of the Nazi noise group Whitehouse that has released music by other neo-Nazi/white supremacist music acts such as Sutcliffe Jugend, Maurizio Bianchi, Nurse With Wound and even Charles Manson. The “Für Ilse Koch” compilation featured the voice of Aleister Crowley, Nurse With Wound, Leibstandarte SS MB, WhiteHouse, Charles Manson, and an audio collage of Heinrich Himmler (the main architect of the Holocaust) speaking, accompanied by an undisclosed Nazi military song.
Christopher Ashbrook also performs as Aigokeros (Greek word meaning “horned goat”) and in Schmitt Computations. Ashbrook is known to work at the F8 nightclub in San Francisco doing sound and for Recombinant Media Labs.
In 2013, Ashbrook liked a post announcing the Katabatik summer solstice campout from a blog called ‘identityastheft’ that belongs to Michael Buchanan.
Michael Buchanan often shared and liked posts from Exile’s blog on his own blog, including quotes and references to René Guénon, Ernst Jünger and George Bataille, and a post supporting Charles Manson.
A post on Exile’s blog that Buchanan shared on his blog in 2012 contains writing on Sufi mysticism which claims that the “Nordic man” can be considered “Oriental” “in the polar sense of the word”. In 2005, Katabatik released an album called ‘Hurqalya’ by Exile’s dark ambient project Sacrificial Totem. It includes excerpts from the writing on the Aryan-Sufic Hyperborean paradise of Hurqalya by Henry Corbin which is also the same source of the quote from the blog post.
Exile’s project Sacrificial Totem has also been released on the Ajna Offensive label in 2003. Ajna Offensive label distributes neo-fascist material including writings by Julius Evola, Ernst Jünger, and Moynihan’s Tyr journal. The label was co-founded by Stephen O’Malley of doom metal band Sunn O))) who has worked with and published materials by Burzum (“Varg” Vikernes), and other NSBM and Nazi Power Electronics bands, and has a history of promoting Resistance Records’ white power band RaHoWa (RacialHolyWar).
In 2013, Buchanan shared a post from Exile’s blog that quotes ‘Symbols of Sacred Science’ by René Guénon which claims that the “Hyperborean regions” is “the actual place of origin of the primordial tradition”. In Greek mythology, the Hyperboreans were a race of giants who lived “beyond the North Wind”. Northern Europeans eventually began identifying as Hyperboreans while ignoring the part about the “perpetually sunny land beyond the north”. Friedrich Nietzsche referred to his readers as Hyperboreans in ‘The Antichrist’: “Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans – we know well enough how remote our place is.”
The Thule Society, a German anti-semitic occultist group including founding members of the Nazi Party like Rudolf Hess, believed the racially pure “Aryan race” arose in Thule, the mythical northernmost land of Hyperborea. On June 5th 2019, Youtube deleted Kristian “Varg” Vikernes (of Burzum)’s channel Thulean Perspective (also the name of his blog) as part of its sweep targeting channels with white supremacist and other bigoted content. According to Aleksandr Dugin’s book ‘Foundations of Geopolitics’, white people (he uses the German term “sonnenmensch”) are spiritually superior to darker-skinned people, and the world will come into harmony when the South realizes that the sonnenmensch descended from a Hyperborean super-race that emerged from the Arctic to devolve into a red-bearded race of giants called Atlantians (from Atlantis), and finally into Aryan, human form.
Michael Buchanan’s website and twitter account is called ‘hyperborealism’.
Buchanan also liked Exile’s blog post showing the photo of the Black Sun symbol mosaic design on the floor of the Wewelsburg Castle in Germany, designed by Heinrich Himmler (when he ordered the castle to be expanded and rebuilt in order to turn it into a center for the SS) during Nazi Germany.
The Black Sun symbol has since become prominent in Nazi occult circles and has also been used by the Church of Satan. According to Esoteric Hitlerist Miguel Serrano, the “Black Sun” emblem represented “the celestial homeland of the Hyperboreans and the invisible source of their energy”. The symbol has seen frequent use by many neo-Nazi, alt-right, and white nationalist groups, and was used on the cover of the manifesto and weapons of the Christchurch mosque shooter.
The question we should all ask ourselves is: Can we trust people who support and defend fascist material or choose to remain friends with someone who has shown themselves to be a fascist – whether through ignorance of being uninformed or just from choosing to be indifferent – to be involved in spaces where we invite our community?
Background
[Much of what is presented in this essay has been on my mind for quite some time. I would like to offer some more context to show how something that should be completely unacceptable, such as maintaining fascist associations, became an unchallenged reality within this scene. It bears pointing out that in bringing up many of the following examples, the intention is not to label or equate all the Katabatik-associated people being mentioned with the actual fascists who are also mentioned in this essay (aside from the clear examples of those who have knowingly promoted fascist material). But they do show the various ways in which this particular scene fostered a culture of tolerating and normalizing highly problematic and often unexamined behaviors that play into ultimately allowing fascists and sympathizers to operate freely within it. And too often, these tendencies seem to perpetuate because of ignorance and lack of analysis rather than being a result of calculated malevolence.
It should also go without saying that just because someone happens to share a piece of writing or music that turns out to be a work of a fascist or just because someone happens to be a friend with a fascist, that it doesn’t automatically mean that person is also a fascist. And not every single thing presented here is necessarily evidence or proof of something on its own. All of this information is meant to be looked at together in context and to show that there is a pattern here that people should be aware of and that these types of things cannot be overlooked anymore.]
I’ve always been drawn to the darker side of things when it comes to music. I grew up around metal and punk so when I started getting into the underground rave scene, I gravitated towards styles that were intensely dark and gloomy that I saw coming from some of the local crews including Katabatik.
I’ve known people involved with Katabatik like Michael/Djynnx and Barrett since the early-mid 00’s. I remember going to a party back then at the rooftop suite of the old Sunshine Biscuits factory where Katabatik members lived and seeing a copy of the Satanic Bible on the coffee table. I knew about the existence of such a book but didn’t know what it was really about. In my mind, satanism was just something that was associated with occultists like Aleister Crowley, the Church of Satan, Ouija boards, metal (and the 80s Satanic Panic), goths, and a culture of irreverent transgression, and I placed the Satanic Bible in the same category as something like the Anarchist Cookbook. Something that could be easily dismissed as just another kitchy item I might come across at a party in someone’s living room.
I later learned that the Satanic Bible was “written” by Anton Lavey, the founder of the Church of Satan (who viewed non-whites and homosexuals as inferior), and is known for having been plagiarized almost verbatim from a significant portion of the 19th century white supremacist social-Darwinist book called ‘Might Is Right’/’The Survival of the Fittest’ by Arthur Desmond aka “Ragnar Redbeard”. The rest of the Satanic Bible contains sections that LaVey lifted directly from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, as well as Nietzsche and Crowley.
On July 28th, 2019, a gunman opened fire on a crowd at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California, killing 3 people and wounding at least 15. Just before the shooting, the gunman posted on his Instagram mentioning the festival, instructing people to “Read Might Is Right By Ragnar Redbeard”.
Might Is Right has long been considered a key text in the white supremacist movement. Since its first edition was printed in 1896, Might Is Right has been reprinted numerous times including in 1984 by Loompanics Unlimited, and in 1999 by 14 Word Press which was founded by David Lane – a former Klansman and a member of white-separatist terrorist organization The Order (connected to the neo-Nazi Christian Identity terror network Aryan Nations) who wrote the preface for the 1999 reprint – and his wife Katja Lane. David Lane is also responsible for the “14 Words” (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”) – the white nationalist catchphrase popular with the alt-right and derived from a passage in Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical book Mein Kampf – which he wrote while in prison for the 1984 murder of the Jewish radio talk show host Alan Berg. Lane also wrote a white-separatist manifesto while in prison called 88 Precepts. “88” is a Nazi numerical code for “Heil Hitler” (H being the 8th letter of the alphabet). “1488” has become a popular Nazi dog whistle. 14 Word Press was used to disseminate David Lane’s writings and to promote Wotansvolk, a form of white nationalist, neo-völkisch Ásatrú/Odinist paganism co-founded by Lane.
In 1996, satanist Shane Bugbee (a high priest in the Church of Satan) released an edition of Might Is Right with an introduction written by Anton LaVey and editor’s notes by Katja Lane. In 2001, Bugbee organized and promoted the “The Angry White Male” tour, a “free speech extravaganza” featuring confederate flags and artists like Mike Diana who depicted child rape and white nationalist affiliated artists like the “godfather of the new right” Jim Goad, whose work is considered the Proud Boys bible. Bugbee , who reprinted Might Is Right in 2003, was by then co-hosting a radio show called Might Is Right with Doug Misicko/Mesner aka “Lucien Greaves” who eventually became the co-founder of The Satanic Temple. The description text of the 2003 episode of the Might Is Right podcast mentions “White power, racialism”, Tom Metzger (of White Aryan Resistance), George Eric Hawthorne of the white power band RaHoWa, and fascists “Boyd Rice and Adam Parfrey”. “RaHoWa” refers to “Racial Holy War”, the credo coined by Ben Klassen who founded the white supremacist pseudo-religion World Church of the Creator/The Creativity Movement (TCM). In a recording from one episode, Doug Mesner, Bugbee, and the rest of the show’s participants can be heard going on a highly anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denial rant about Jews and Eugenics.
George Eric Hawthorne aka “George Burdi” of the white power band RaHoWa founded the Canadian white nationalist label Resistance Records and did time in prison in the late 90s for attacking Anti-Racist Action protesters at a RaHoWa show in Ottawa in 1993. Burdi now identifies as “Traditionalist. Organic farmer. Vegan. AntiMarxist. Free Speech Advocate” and is in a neo-folk project called Überfolk with white nationalist youtuber Cat Weiss aka “Philosophicat”.
In 2014, Shane Bugbee announced a limited edition of Might Is Right consisting of 23 signed copies to mark the 23rd year of his press Mike Hunt Publishing (“MyCunt” Publishing). This limited edition includes afterwords by Church Of Satan High Priest Peter H. Gilmore (who also wrote the introduction to the 2019 ‘Authoritative Edition’ of Might is Right) and George Burdi (RaHoWa), and artwork by Doug Mesner (The Satanic Temple). Might Is Right is also distributed by white nationalist press Counter-Currents Publishing and the PDF version is a staple in white supremacist digital libraries and forums.
I’ve known for some time now that the Church of Satan has had fascists in its leadership for a long time. A small group that became a part of LaVey’s inner circle in the 80s such as Adam Parfrey, Nikolas Schreck, Michael Moynihan, Boyd Rice, along with LaVey’s daughter Zeena, played a prominent role in “further radicalizing Satanism with their shared obsessions: the idolization of Charles Manson, the notion of the decline of Western culture, collaboration with the far right, and an increasingly heavy emphasis on radical social Darwinism.” (Mathews, C. (2009). Modern Satanism: Anatomy of a Radical Subculture). One of its earlier associates was neo-Nazi James Mason, the author of SIEGE which has served as primary inspiration for the murderous Satanic paramilitary neo-Nazi cult Atomwaffen Division. In the early 80s, under the guidance of the notorious white supremacist cult leader and would-be race war instigator Charles Manson, Mason founded the neo-Nazi ‘Universal Order’ from the National Socialist Liberation Front. Highest ranking members of Church of Satan, including LaVey and High Priest Peter H. Gilmore, have personally endorsed SIEGE.
SIEGE, a collection of writings by James Mason which calls for terrorism and revolutionary acceleration in order to build a white-only ethnostate, was edited together into a book by fascist Michael Moynihan, a longtime leading member of Church of Satan who has been heavily involved with racialist Paganism. Moynihan is known for co-authoring Lords of Chaos (published by Feral House/fascist Adam Parfrey), the most well-known book on the early 90’s black metal scene and the associated church burnings. Moynihan is also in a neo-folk band Blood Axis who cite fascist esotericist Julius Evola (who Moynihan has published) as influence, runs the Storm record label distributing Nazi metal including Burzum, and edits the “Radical Traditionalist” journal Tyr (distributed by Counter-Currents Publishing run by white nationalist Greg Johnson) which promotes fascist writers along with neo-Paganism/occultism.
Moynihan was also in the fascist think-tank Abraxas Foundation with another prominent Church of Satan member and fascist noise musician Boyd Rice (NON), along with holocaust denier Keith Stimely and Nikolas Schreck who directed the documentary ‘Charles Manson Superstar’ and is married to Anton LaVey’s daughter Zeena (Katabatik founding member Michael Buchanan has been known to be a huge fan of her). Boyd Rice was a close associate of neo-Nazi skinhead Bob Heick (American Front) who was connected to White Aryan Resistance’s Tom Metzger (former KKK Grand Dragon). Rice knew Charles Manson personally and would visit him in prison. According to Rice, Manson wanted him to start a mass movement of Manson followers among youth and to try to co-opt the Nazi skinhead movement. In a 1986 interview on Metzger’s TV show ‘Race and Reason’, Boyd Rice declared that his friends in Current 93 and Death in June were promoting a ‘racialist’ agenda and emphasized the importance of industrial and neo-folk music for building the “Aryan youth movement”. Current 93 has an album called ‘Swastikas For Noddy’ which features songs like ‘Panzer Rune’ whose title references Nazi tanks and Nazi SS runes commonly used by neo-nazis.
Over the years, I have been in conversations with a few people who shared their frustrations about their experiences from having been a part of the Katabatik scene. They reached out to me privately about how so many people in that scene did not seem to care about making a stand about things like fascism and got defensive or apathetic when it did get brought up. They described a culture that was “bro-y” and one that actively encouraged having a laugh about “pretending” to be Nazis and “joking” about Nazi imagery. Some of the people who noticed these things were afraid to speak up because certain individuals held more social capital.
One Katabatik member in particular would often pushed back against those making a stand against fascist/white supremacist types in music scenes. I remember him reacting by saying something along the lines of “Why don’t you focus on something that actually matters?”. He was known to wear Nazi SS symbols like Totenkopf “death’s head” and shirts of fascist neo-folk bands like Death In June. According to some people who knew him, he was known for frequently making “jokes” about Hitler, Swastikas, being a Nazi, and even doing things like clicking his heels and doing the Nazi salute (while wearing a Totenkopf pin on his shirt), almost as if it was an obsession for him. And the scene he was part of seemed to engender a culture that tolerates making light of such a heavy and highly sensitive subject matter. A friend of his had even made him an Iron Cross cookie cutter for his birthday. In 2018, 3 members of British neo-Nazi group National Action were convicted for being members of a terrorist organization who were preparing “for a “race war”, plotting an assassination, and advocating violence against and extermination of Jews and “non-whites”. Evidence revealed that its members had direct ties to Death In June and other fascists including Michael Moynihan and Troy Southgate.
Members of Katabatik have openly talked about being into artists with known history of fascist associations. A Katabatik member once posted about how much he loved Boyd Rice. When I replied referring to Boyd Rice’s well-documented past of being a fascist, him and his friends quickly came to his defense: “He’s just trolling.” He’s pretending to be a Nazi for laughs.” “He’s into Tiki stuff now lol which proves he’s just a joker.” The exchange ended with him asking “What’s wrong with being proud of being white?”.
As if to illustrate how pervasive things like Nazism and pedophilia seem to be so prevalent in the dark music scenes, particularly with noise/neo-folk and black metal, another music act that Katabatik members were openly big fans of is the noise acts Whitehouse/Cut Hands. Rape/child abuse-themed Nazi noise band Whitehouse’s Peter Sotos was convicted of using child porn on his zine “Pure”. Whitehouse member William Bennett (who has complained of “unhealthy Negroid influences”) appropriates black art via his current project Cut Hands.
In 2016, I noticed that Michael Buchanan had marked himself as going on an event page for a show at Oakland Metro featuring a Swedish black metal band Marduk who have a history of playing with NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal) bands and shows organized by outspoken nazis. In a 1995 interview, Marduk’s frontman Patrik Niclas Morgan Håkansson aka “Evil” complained of his city being “occupied by immigrants who poison our environment” “you wonder if you are in Sweden or in Somalia!”, and mentioned that his band had already been banned by venues in Germany for his previous statements about wanting to “prevent immigration to Sweden” and being proud of his grandfather who was a Nazi trooper. In a 1998 interview, Håkansson mentioned they “got into big trouble” in Germany and other European countries because of their use of the Reichsadler “Imperial Eagle” symbol and their “interest in the Waffen SS, and the whole structure of the Third Reich”.
I noticed that Marduk was about to embark on a US tour and that their material clearly glorified the Third Reich and anti-semitic sentiments. In one of many examples, their ‘Panzer Division Marduk’ album (Panzers: Nazi tanks) has anti-semitic lyrics cloaked as anti-Christianity. “Christraping Black Metal”: “shepherd of the inferior rats” “Crushing your race”. Marduk’s “Blond Beast” on Frontschwein (military slang/nickname of Nazi field marshal Walter Model) album and “Hangman of Prague” refer to Holocaust architect Reinhard Heydrich. “Afrika” refers to Nazi general Erwin Rommel. “Night Of The Long Knives” refers to Hitler’s 1934 purge (This is also what the name of the band Death In June is in reference to). More lyrics from Marduk’s Frontschwein album: “renew the genocide” “Human vermin in flames – cleansing death meant to be” “Replacement of blood stock begins” “Blood and soil mixed as one” “Relentless Germanisation” “Gott mit uns!” (Nazi slogan) “The blood is shaken in the Reich”
When I began to speak up publicly about this band being booked to play in Oakland, two of the people I knew from the Katabatik circles, who had also marked themselves as going to the show, removed themselves from the event page. Michael Buchanan still remained on the list of people who were going. I had also noticed that Sean Dimentia liked a post that was ridiculing people who were speaking up about Marduk.
The Oakland Metro (whose owners had been unwilling to remove Marduk from the bill despite having been presented with overwhelming evidence) show ultimately ended up getting cancelled at the last minute due to outside pressure. Like Jeremy Christian who stabbed people to death for defending the black girls he assaulted on a Portland train, many metalheads came out against anti-fascists in defense of Marduk. Steve DeCaprio, who was in Oakland-based black metal band Embers and is known for opening squats for mostly white punks/metalheads, wrote an anti-antifa screed in defense of Marduk and Oaklnd Metro in which he stated that “Antifa” is “a racist, reactionary, reductive, counter-revolutionary, and nihilistic organization” and a “white, German/European, Islamaphobic, Zionist movement” that “further[s] white supremacy” and that anti-fascists are contributing to gentrification by targeting the Oakland Metro (He has also admitted to his self-interest in being able to continue to play at the venue).
In 2017, Marduk’s singer Daniel Rostén and drummer Fredrik Widigs were exposed for having ordered anti-semitic Nazi propaganda material for distribution from Nordic Resistance Movement (a “Pan-Nordic Neo-Nazi Movement” in Sweden, Norway, Denmark & Finland).
Around this time, an online conversation took place which many in the Katabatik circle participated in when someone posed a question along the lines of “Is it ok to separate the art from the artist when it comes to something that’s obviously harmful?”. Responses were mixed. The only thing Michael said was “If I had to worry about things like that, my record collection would be very small”. The Katabatik member who had defended Boyd Rice chimed in with “what if I’m studying it from an anthropological angle?”, invoked “cultural relativism”, and how “everyone has hateful impulses that exist within”. I joined in the discussion pointing out that whenever someone is promoting white supremacist/crypto-fascist music, what I often see are people doing a whole lot of posturing to appear edgy/provocative, and fascists who want to spread their ideology, and that these types tend to associate with one another. Soon after that online discussion occurred, Sean confronted me yelling about how I’m attacking everything he has loved for a long time such as Death In June, Charles Manson, and Cthulhu/H.P. Lovecraft and that perhaps I was the one acting like a fascist for what I had posted in that thread. I tried to explain calmly why I speak up about things I feel strongly about. He proceeded to tell me that he “grew up around racists” and admitted to me that he hadn’t thought about the problematic aspects of all those things he’s into and that he just blocked them out of his mind. I gave him a hug and reassured him that it wasn’t a personal attack against him when I speak up about those things.
There have been many experiences around Katabatik events that I have found deeply troubling. At their summer solstice campout event in 2015, I was in a conversation with a Katabatik associate from Olympia who was talking about what had been happening in Olympia ever since the police shot two unarmed black men earlier that year. As protests intensified, white supremacists were coming out of the woodwork to show support for the police and were driven out of town by the community. Referring to how local activists had been on high alert and doing shifts walking around to protect the town from any further attacks by local Nazis (including the area around the Cryptatropa bar where Exile was known to be a regular), this person told me he thought the anti-fascists were the ones being fascists. Just to add some perspective, this campout event took place shortly after white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered 9 black churchgoers. And when Katabatik had a show at Omni a while back, one of the attendees was spotted wearing a patch design with a swastika incorporated into it.
At another event at Terminal, a venue run by Katabatik associate Ryan Jencks, I saw a local musician who performs regularly at Katabatik events engaged in a conversation. When I happened to jump into the conversation and asked what they were talking about, he replied, “I’ve been reading this neo-fascist book and I really do think that it’s not possible for there to be unity among people”. Ryan Jencks (Cruor Incendia), a noise musician who plays in the black metal band Dispirit and has also played in Sutekh Hexen (both bands have played at Stella Natura) and Crash Worship, has also hosted a noise music fest at his venue Terminal featuring acts using explicit Nazi imagery (including Oakland based noise musicians Alexandre “Mackenzie” Chami who performs as Koufar and is also a member of Sutekh Hexen and noise band Terror Cell Unit and Disgust (with Samuel Torres/Miscreant), and Mike Finklea of Disgust who performs as Striations) after the original San Francisco venue F8 cancelled their date and RS94109 was also forced to cancel one of the dates due to public outcry. Alexandre “Mackenzie” Chami’s act Koufar (which has used the neo-Nazi associated Triskele symbol as its logo) describes itself as “a Power Electronics act that uses Right Wing Militant Maronite Lebanese views to push forth his message of restoring a Lebanon to its glory days”. Chami also performs as “Bachir Gemayel”, a reference to the leader of the fascist Lebanese Phalanges Party which allied with the Israeli Defense Force in murdering Palestinians and Shiite Muslims because of the fear of an eventual Muslim majority in Lebanon. Mike Finklea’s Striations 2014 album ‘Hunting for Bitches’ includes tracks such as “Kill Mode,” “Dirty Cunt,” and “Well Trained Fuck Doll”. In 2018, he released ‘Evidence Of Overpopulation’ with a track title called “Malthusian Crisis”. Terror Cell Unit (Chami and Samuel Torres), who have toured with Sutekh Hexen, has an album called ‘Psalm 137:9′ (referring to the Bible verse that says “Blessed is the one who grabs your little children and smashes them against a rock”) which includes a photo of Timothy McVeigh and a reference to white supremacist militia movement. Disgust (featuring Chami, Finklea, and Torres) has a song called Swastika. Samuel Torres’ project Miscreant has released albums called ‘Inhuman’, ‘The Noose Slowly Tightens’, ‘Birthright’ and ‘Eugenics’ which has the following song titles: “The Problem”, “Stamp Them Out”, “Eugenics”, “Cleanse”, “The Solution”
When a longtime associate of Katabatik began dating someone named Shannon Moore after he hosted a Katabatik-related event some years ago out on his family’s land where I also met him, I had become facebook friends with him. Some time after that, when the term “alt-right” was just coming into public consciousness around Trump’s election, I noticed Moore writing about feeling some kind of ownership over the term “alt-right” and wanting to protect it because it was becoming tainted. I noticed that he identified as a right-wing Libertarian and was heavily involved in that milieu. When Charlottesville happened, Moore posted a rant about the assault on DeAndre Harris by six Nazis in a parking garage during the Unite the Right rally suggesting that he deserved to get beat claiming that Harris started it. Some time later, when a friend posted about the rise of right-wing militias such as the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers, Moore jumped in to defend the militias saying they weren’t racist at all. When I shared an article written by a friend who had gone undercover into the militia movement that showed otherwise, he immediately blocked me on Facebook.
In February 2019, during the Oaklajara benefit party at Oakland.Secret, a long time community member who has been around the Katabatik circle and the goth/industrial scene in general, ended up projecting visuals for it. Throughout the night, he kept rotating through many of the same images, some of which depicted photos of people wearing white Klan robes in the woods, and other photos showing the Nazi Swastika flag. While I feel like I’ve known him long enough to know that he meant no ill will, this incident serves as an example of how, regardless of whether someone has good intentions or just unaware of the potential impact of one’s own actions, it is still possible for people who may not be operating with malice to cause harm without realizing it. It also seems to illustrate how normalized those types of imagery are in the aesthetics of goth/industrial subcultures.
At an annual gathering in 2019 that brings together many crews from the larger community, I noticed there was a new version of the Katabatik/PanZen collaboration camp called Sidereal, although it was still hyperlinked to the Katabatik website when announced on the event’s website. I noticed Ashbrook was involved at Sidereal which made me avoid going by there just as I have avoided going by Katabatik-associated camps altogether for the last 3 years. I had already noticed before the gathering that the sound for the Sidereal event at Oakland.Secret that happened recently was being done by Oneiric Sound (which was Barrett’s system Oneiric Audio that Ashbrook reportedly made a move to take for himself following Barrett’s death) and had also avoided that event.
Sean Dimentia often signs his posts with “23/93” which is a reference to how Aleister Crowley signed his letters with “93 93/93”.
The number 23 is associated with the “23 Enigma” attributed to William S. Burroughs by Robert Anton Wilson, the author of The Illuminatus! Trilogy, and also referenced in Principia Discordia. Industrial music group Throbbing Gristle’s song “The Old Man Smiled” is about Burroughs and the number 23. Spiral Tribe (SP23), a free party sound system collective (and their record label Network 23) who had a huge influence on the free tekno scene in the early 90s, used to discretely mark the locations of their raves with 23. Satanic Nazi Shane Bugbee published 23 limited edition copies of the white supremacist book Might Is Right on his 23rd year anniversary of publishing it.
The number 93 is associated with Aleister Crowley and his esotericist religion Thelema which was based on occultism and western mysticism such as the Qabalah. Aleister Crowley held racist views including anti-Semitism, was anti-abortion, and regarded women as “moral inferiors” and “secondary social beings in terms of intellect and sensibility”. The military strategist Major General J. F. C. “Boney” Fuller – who was a confidante of Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists – was a disciple of Aleister Crowley. Fuller was the founding chancellor of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a spiritual order which Crowley founded to reform the British occult society, and helped Crowley launch Thelema. Fuller was also a member of the clandestine Nazi group the Nordic League and his ideas on mechanized warfare influenced the Nazi implemented tactics known as Blitzkrieg.
The number 93 can also be seen in the name of the aforementioned group Current 93 – the 93 Current being the current of Thelema/Agape. Richard Moult, a British musician and member of the Satanic neo-Nazi organization The Order of Nine Angles (O9A) – which is known to have infiltrated the leadership of the murderous neo-Nazi satanic cult Atomwaffen Division – has worked with David “Tibet” Michael (the “Tibet” name being given by Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV) of Current 93 as well as Tony Wakeford of Sol Invictus, Death in June and Above The Ruins.
It is common for Thelemites to greet each other with “93” in person and in written correspondences. For example, in his post on The Aleister Crowley Society website, Paul Hamblet, a Thelemite from New Hampshire starts off with “93 Hails” and he is greeted with “93’s Paul!”.
Paul Hamblet aka “Paul Heathen” is the leader of the Libertarian Nazi Heathen black metal band NortherN/Cold Northern Vengeance which hosted the Finnish Nazi metal band Horna in April 2019. Hamblet was charged in 2003 with assault and battery for kicking a black man in the face several times.
When Sean Dimentia posted all over social media in July 2019 trying to counter his false assumption that I was accusing him of being a fascist, one of the commenters, Rachael Kozak-Salmi, asked why people can’t “have any other viewpoint” instead of being “anti-fascist, anti-nazi, anti-racist…etc.” and suggested that having to “tow the line” as such “sounds fascist” to her.
Rachael Kozak-Salmi performs as Hecate and is known for having collaborated with the likes of metal band Belphegor and breakcore artist Venetian Snares. She is married to a Finnish neo-Nazi Sami Salmi. Sami and his friends openly make anti-Semitic remarks against Jews, which Rachael Kozak-Salmi has approved of. She has made multiple statements attacking “Antifa”, as well as bringing up “black on black crime”, and her FB likes show fascists such as Iron Bonehead Productions, Operation Werewolf, and Milo Yiannopoulos. In 2015, Rachael Kozak toured with the Finnish Nazi metal band Horna and posted a rant on Facebook in which she proclaimed “FUKK THE ANTI-FA”.
At this point, I feel exhausted from having to constantly speak up about these types of things to people in that scene and other “dark” music scenes and being met with defensiveness and the privileged position of choosing not to care whether they might be actively promoting acts who propagate Nazi ideology and imagery and are in some cases directly involved in fascist organizing. I’ve long since avoided being around anything related to Katabatik and the metal scene because of this. I do believe that some people are capable of growth and I am open to having conversations around this with those who are sincere and willing. Unfortunately, many within Katabatik still have not taken seriously the fact that those within their circles such as Exile, Michael Buchanan, and Christopher Ashbrook have shared explicitly fascist material. Sean Dimentia, for example, told me when we talked in July that he was going to visit with Buchanan and Exile during his upcoming trip to the northwest, and has always insisted that I should “just talk to them”. Other comments from Katabatik members have focused on trying to explain how people like Exile and Buchanan couldn’t possible be racist rather than addressing the specific concerns that have been brought up.
[Update: As of September 2019, Sean Dimentia has made moves to force me out of my housing situation in retaliation for bringing the above information to light and helping this community become aware of these issues. Another person who lives at this house has also collaborated with Sean Dimentia to push me out. Even though I had not talked to her about any of this because she is close with Sean, she has been harrassing me with unsolicited gaslighting texts after she recently went out of town saying “you need to understand this is all your own BS. You made this up” and that I’m “spreading rumors that aren’t true”, suggesting that I’m mentally ill: “People are questioning your sanity”, which I have not responded to at all (This has entirely been one-sided coming from her). She has continued to harrass me by posting lies about me on Facebook on 10/1/19: “threatened my roomate and various people” “he is now going after me” When a friend shared with her this essay after seeing her FB post, she sent me a text referring to this essay as a “letter” that she “copied” and “will use it if needed”, continuing to make gaslighting accusations: “You are being manipulative.” “You are threatening me. And making false accusations.”]
Recommended reading:
- A Field Guide to Straw Men: Sadie and Exile, Esoteric Fascism, and Olympia’s Little White Lies
- Countering Fascism in Black Metal in Olympia: An Analysis
- Apoliteic music: Neo-Folk, Martial Industrial and ‘metapolitical fascism’
- The Undying Appeal of White Nationalism
- Fascism, Ecology, and the Tangled Roots of Anti-Modernism
- Stephen McNallen Part 4: Stella Natura and What Can be Done
- NeoFascist: Heathen Harvest, Neofolk, and Fascist Subcultural Entryism
- Drawing Lines: Waldteufel and Markus Wolff’s Involvement in the New-Right Cultural Movement
ktbtk 
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