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ACTIVISTS Ai AND MUSH

MOYNIHANI EXTREMIST! BUT THEY'RI ELLING

STORY.

BYZACH DUNDAS

0 8 - 1 6 - 2 0 0 0

to ast fall, the Southern

% Poverty Law Center,

\ the national anti-racist

M . organization, published

^ ^ a list of six men it

claimed to be the leaders of

a new generation of American

hatemongers.

There's Jimmy Miller, a skinhead

imprisoned for bombings in

Arizona; Alex Curtis, a San Diegan

convicted of harassing inter-racial

couples, now publisher of a white-

supremacist newspaper; Matt Hale,

once arrested for threatening three

black men with a gun and now

pimp for the virulent World Church

of the Creator; Bruce Breeding,

crony of David Duke and member

of the far-right National Alliance;

and Erich Gliebe, a National

Alliance organizer.

And then there's Portland's

Michael Moynihan, a 31-year-old

author and musician, whom the

SPLC describes as "a major purvey-

or of neo-Nazism, occult fascism

and international industrial and

black metal music."

Two Sundays ago, as a gor-

geous summer evening faded to

black, Moynihan reclined on the

back patio of the Moon &

Sixpence, an English-style pub just

off Sandy Boulevard. He sipped a

Guinness and considered the

notion that he is one of the most

dangerous men in America.

T h e s e guys have no idea

where to even begin," he says.

"They're out of their league. If

they would check with me in the

course of their research, it would

be much more difficult to spread

these lies."

Especially since last May, when

neo-Nazism was initially (and

incorrectly) supposed to have

sparked the massacre at Columbine

High School, Moynihan has

become a favorite bete noire of

anti-racist activists. On May 13,

1999, an Oregonian guest editorial

by Robert Crawford, a member of

the Northwest Coalition for Human

Dignity, declared, "we believe that

the Portland leader of a metal

band, Blood Axis, and head of

Storm Publications, is a big player

in the effort to bring racism into

the metal scene locally." Joe

Conason, writing in Salon, alleged

that music and writing like

Moynihan's drives "dangers lurking

in dark, Nazi-worshiping corners of

alienated youth culture."

A booklet called Soundtracks to

the White Revolution, published in

November by the Seattle-based

Northwest Coalition, accused

Moynihan of spreading racism

through his music and writing,

particularly his 1998 book Lords of

Chaos, an examination of Norway's

violent "black metal" underground

that was praised by numerous

reviewers. (The book won a presti-

gious alternative-press award and

sold more than 20,000 copies.)

Why do activists lump an

author and musician together with

convicted felons and active right-

wing organizers?

"Moynihan's inclusion on that

list is more emblematic of a differ-

ent section of the far right than an

strangeness, ACII contains oddball

actor Crispin Glover's denunciation

of Steven Spielberg ("Would the

culture benefit from Steven

Spielberg's murder?"), a short

story by Ted Kaczynski and an

essay by one S. Epps, explaining

why white people are genetically

inferior to black people.

Moynihan helps translate some

Italian terrorist manifestos and an

essay by Finnish ecologist Pentii

Iinkola, who believes that only the

dismantling of modern society can

save the Earth. Moynihan also pro-

files the efforts of onetime Charles

Manson associate and convicted

murderer Bobby Beausoleil to

adapt his formidable sexual

appetite to prison life.

If Apocalypse Culture II crosses

activists' desks, such strangeness

may join other evidence they cite

in their case against Moynihan:

Exhibit A: Quotes in obscure

fanzines, like one from No Longer

a Fanzine, circa '94: "The number

of six million [Jews killed in the

Holocaust] is just arbitrary and

inaccurate.... If I were given the

opportunity to start up the next

Holocaust, I would definitely have

more lenient entry requirements

than the Nazis."

Exhibit B: Interest in Asatru, a

revival of Norse pagan spirituality.

Some forms of Asatru are champi-

oned by white supremacists,

although many elements within

the movement vigorously oppose

such efforts. Moynihan also writes

for The Black Flame, the Church

of Satan's magazine, and inter-

viewed late COS founder Anton

LaVey twice.

Exhibit C: Blood Axis, his band,

well-regarded within a small exper-

" I d o n ' t see w h i t e p e o p l e d o i n g a n y t h i n g p a r t i c u l a r l y n o b l e t h e s e d a y s , so w h y o n e a r t h w o u l d I be a w h i t e s u p r e m a c i s t ? "

attempt to suggest that he's the

leader of any group," says Mark

Potok, the editor of the SPLC's

Intelligence Report. "He's an intel-

lectual leader."

The drumbeat may get louder.

This month, Feral House, publisher

of Lords of Chaos, released

Apocalypse Culture II, an antholo-

gy of extreme writing and art cer-

tain to be one of the most jarring

books published in America this

year. In its percolating stew of

imental scene in which a fascina-

tion with the forbidden is practi-

cally de rigueur. Blood Axis rarely

books clubs in the US, but has

toured extensively in Europe.

Despite what some think, Blood

Axis is definitely not a heavy metal

band. Dark portents of classical,

folk, electronic and experimental

music swirl through band's sound.

Blot: Sacrifice in Sweden, the most

recent of the group's two albums,

runs hot with images of sacrifice,

pagan gods, revolution and arcane

ritual, but contains no racist lyrics.

Still, the band's use of such con-

troversial material, not to mention

the Kruekenkreuz, an ancient

cross adopted by some Christian

Crusaders and Austrian national-

ists (but banned by the Nazis),

sparks leftist ire. Protests spurred

by socialist groups forced the can-

cellation of Blood Axis shows in

Seattle and San Francisco in 1998.

Exhibit D: Moynihan's small

hobby-level publishing company

and record label. Storm, carries

such "rare and heretical" items as

folk recordings by Charles Manson

(Manson and Moynihan had fre-

quent phone conversations for a

time, which later served as the

basis for an article by Moynihan)

and Siege, an anthology of rants

by James Mason, an ex-Nazi and

Mansonite. Siege has been out of

print for five years, and Moynihan

says he hasn't printed a Storm cat-

alogue in about as long.

Exhibit E: Lords of Chaos,

which Moynihan co-authored with

Norwegian journalist Didrik

S 0 d e r l i n d . Though many praised

the book's exploration of a grim

variant of heavy metal that won

popularity among some Norwegian

kids, Moynihan's activist critics

slam the book's account of mur-

ders and arsons and the racism

espoused by some of the scene's

principals. Some call the book a

work of veiled propaganda.

Surveying this jihad against

him, Moynihan is frankly dismis-

sive. "They don't understand the

first thing about what I'm saying

or doing," he says. "They're con-

vinced that if society was run

according to their views, every-

body would be happy. I don't

think it's that simple."

That Moynihan has some

unusual ideas and interests is

clear. However, a deeper look into

his strange case creates serious

doubts about allegations that he's

a fascist bent on twisting under-

ground culture to his will. If you

actually talk to him, you, too,

might start thinking that it's not

that simple.

continued on page 27

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Heretics on tour: Members of Blood Axis, with Moy-nihan at center, in Budapest, Hungary. Inset: liner notes from Blot.

The Northwest

Coalition for

Human Dignity is

the product of a

merger between

the Northwest

Coalition Against

Malicious

Harassment and

the Coalition for

Human Dignity.

The latter group

was founded in

Portland in the

late '80s.

Apocalypse Culture

II has received

advance praise

from Portland rock

journalist and

poet Richard

Meltzer, National

Public Radio's

Andrei Codrescu

and Marilyn

Manson, among

others.

No one from the Coalition or SPLC has spoken with Moynihan. If they did, they would find him an engaging and tireless talker who waxes decidedly pessimistic on the direction of modern society, but also exhibits a certain sardonic humor, especially as far as his noto-riety is concerned. He christened his other band, a dark-edged folk group, Witch Hunt; he adorns an envelope full of recordings with sprightly "TEACH TOLERANCE" stick-ers. He recently told the venerable punk magazine Flipside that his membership in the "National Polite People's Party" precludes any sym-pathy with Nazis.

He moved to Portland in 1995 and now shares, a house in Northeast with his girlfriend, Blood Axis violinist Annabel Lee, and their two dogs. He has a dis-tinct fondness for good beer and also sings the praises of absinthe, which some friends of his distill. He describes his circle as a diverse crew of artists, writers and musi-cians, mostly united by their determination to stand against conventional thought.

"I know all kinds of strange people," he says. "I've always hung out with people who are real outsiders or heretics."

A pair of local events illustrate the wide swathe Moynihan and friends cut through Portland's (for lack of a better term) "alternative" subcultures. At the end of July, Witch Hunt played a kind of New Age teach-in at Pioneer Courthouse Square organized by Jose Arguelles, a local writer who believes he's decoded the ancient 13-month lunar calendar of the Mayans. Last week, Moynihan and Lee both played in an eclectic per-formance-art cabaret at Berbati's Pan, joining in on a Gypsy bur-lesque song popularized by Marlene Dietrich.

The Boston native has been involved in underground music and culture since he was a teen-

CHAOS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2*

continued on page 29

ager. Trading hardcore punk for the more transgressive aesthetics of early industrial music, he played for a time with genre pioneers Sleep Chamber. He moved to Belgium in the late '80s, hanging out with avant-garde artists and

squatting in a fac-tory. After return-ing to the US, he roomed and collab-orated with notori-ous musician/ provocateur Boyd Rice—who actually has called himself a fascist—in Denver before moving to Portland

in 1995, in part to work with Feral House. (The publisher has moved to LA; Moynihan has long since stopped working with Rice.)

There is no doubt that, as an artist and thinker, Moynihan is rad-ical. For starters, he rejects the idea that society is evolving into pro-gressively more enlightened forms.

That's where I part ways with all these political people," he says, "whether they're the Marxist/ Communist/Socialist people who think that humans want to get along on a grand scale, or whether it's the Nazis, who think that if everyone was just of the same race, they'd all get along perfectly, or the anarchists, who think everyone would1 love to live this way if you just took away the police.

"They're all deluded. People should worry about what happens on their block. They should get along with their neighbors before they worry about the great ills of society and about telling someone who lives 200 miles away what to do."

He describes conventional poli-tics as a parlor game played out to 19th-century rules while con-sumerism paves the planet and wipes out unique cultures. He says he never votes. He says vast nation-states are a ridiculous way to organize society, and that a tribal mosaic of small, tightly bonded groups would better suit a human nature he views as largely unchanged from ancient times.

"Based on my work with the subject of the far right, and my dealings with Michael Moynihan, none of these labels would consti-tute a fair characterization," says Dr. Jeffrey Kaplan, an American cultural historian currently associ-ated with the University of Helsinki in Finland. Kaplan wrote Radical Religion in America, a well-regarded 1997 investigation of fringe religions, including Asatru and the extreme racism of Christian Identity. Kaplan says he made Moyriihan's acquaintance while working on the book's sec-tion on Asatru. He also says he called some of the several errors of fact in the SPLC's bio of Moynihan to the attention of Intelligence Report editor Potok.

James Ridgeway, a Village Voice reporter who has covered extremist politics for years and wrote Blood in the Face, a 1991 study of the far right, praises Lords of Chaos as a useful reference work. As for the SPLC's list, he says, "I don't know what the shit that was about."

continued on next poge

®CHAOS C O N T I N U E D FROM PACE 27

Moynihan clutch-es the Firecracker Award for Lords of Chaos, pre-sented to him by El Vez, the "Mexican Elvis."

Moynihan says he is not a member of any national Asatru group, though he works with a small "Asatru-oriented" arts collective.

"The only realistic way I would want to deal with society is on some sort of small level of people who have something in common, who look out for each other," he says.

Asked point-blank, Moynihan says he's not a neo-Nazi. He also bashes white supremacy and fascism.

"I don't see white people doing anything particularly noble these days, so why on earth would I be a white supremacist?" he says. "What does fascism have to do with any-thing that's going on? The far right is a bunch of isolated losers. I probably have far more in com-mon with anarchists than I would with any right-wing person, and they would probably agree."

People who have encountered Moynihan in Portland's indepen-dent music and publishing scenes have reached a rather different conclusion about him than the watchdog groups like the SPLC.

"My most basic impression is that he thinks some people are better than others and the people who are better should not have to live according to the lowest com-mon denominator," says Chloe

Eudaly, owner of Reading Frenzy, the downtown 'zine emporium that hosted a standing-room-only read-ing by Moynihan shortly after Lords of Chaos came out. Eudaly says she's known Moynihan for about four years. "I wouldn't call that fascist, I would call it elitist. I think that many people share the same belief and act it out on a daily basis but would never recog-nize it in themselves."

"Mike has been a very good friend," says Sean Tejaratchi, the Portland graphic artist who designed Lords of Chaos in close collaboration with Moynihan.

Tejaratchi is also the half-Iranian adopted son of a Jewish family. "He's gone out of his way to help me. If he turns out to be a high commander of the evil racist forces, then hoo boy! There's going to be egg on my face! I choose to give more weight to my own expe-riences and observations than to people who tell me that a good friend of mine is a force of ulti-mate darkness."

Some academics and journalists who've done extensive work on radical politics and religion also feel that damnations of Moynihan may be off-base.

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The Krueken-kreuz, symbol of Crusaders and Austrians, now serves as Blood Axis' logo. Some call it swastika-like, but it was banned by the Third Reich.

Blood Axis' Blot:

Sacrifice in

Sweden, is avail-

able at Ozone and

other local record

stores, and from

the label Cold

Meat Industry:

www.coldmeat.se

Moynihan has said some things that, at first glance at least, are pretty outrageous. There's his suggestion that a new Holocaust under his direc-tion might be more freeform than the Third Reich's, for example.

"That's the big one," he says. "A

lot of these attacks stem from that one quote, basi cally."

A close reading of the quote reveals it to be general misan-thropy rather than specific big-otry. Last fall, Moynihan told Eye

that he is not a Holocaust revi-sionist. More crucially, he notes that the quote has been lifted from its original place in an under-ground subculture, where all brands of radicalism are bandied about, and held up as a serious political statement.

"This is in response to a ques-tion from a snotty 15-year-old punk rocker, and that's the spirit in which it was answered with this sort of incendiary statement," he says. "I'm not calling for singling

out any one group for this sort of treatment, because I've never made such a comment about any-one, ever."

As the old pulp-fiction cliche goes, no one knows what evil lurks in the hearts

of men. But inso-far as it can be said of anyone, it can be said that Moyriihan's not a neo-Nazi. And

the idea that he's an agent (or organizer) of a nebulous far-right conspiracy looks

a little shaky. The research presented by his

critics is mostly based on quotes in old fanzines and outfield websites, and is thus built on quicksand. Even as such, it neglects most of the voluminous material by and about Moynihan that's been printed in 'zines, newspapers and journals. While the activists argue that they're just presenting their side of the story, there's no question that their slickly printed reports, widely distributed to journalists and law enforcement, have a rather unbal-anced impact. In the wake of Soundtracks, for example,

continued on page 32

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Lords of Chaos won a 1998 Firecracker Alternative Press Award for music writing. Other Firecracker hon-orees include left-ist historian Howard Zinn and Zapatista leader Subcommandante Marcos. Moynihan and S 0 d e r l i n d are preparing a German edition.

"I feel perfectly comfortable sell-ing Blood Axis," says Janelle Janosz, owner of Ozone Records. Janosz doesn't carry bands such as infamous English Nazi bone-heads Skrewdriver. "I've never seen any reason not to carry his band."

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Moynihan's name figured in a num-ber of newspaper articles that did not include any comment from him.

"Once you get stuck with that Nazi tag, it never comes off," Moynihan says. "Putting an editor-ial like that in The Oregonian, filled with misrepresentations, has serious implications for someone who has to live and work in Portland. People lose their jobs over that sort of thing."

Moynihan does take America's traditional fascination with the strange to a deeper level of inquiry. You could trace this national tendency back at least as far as Edgar Allen Poe, and detect it, in debased form, in the serial-killer T-shirts sported by suburban metalheads. His writing examines people far beyond the borders of the mainstream. Blood Axis' allu-sions to a pagan past and its use of Nordic, Germanic and Celtic ele-ments definitely contrast with both bubble«-gum pop and sword-and-sorcery metal.

"I make no apology about my interest in European culture," Moynihan says. "Europe is my spir-itual homeland. I'll leave to other

people to research Native American culture, or Far Eastern culture, or whatever. I encourage everyone to find out as much as they can about their heritage."

Those who criticize him on political grounds, he says, really lose him.

"These people are worried about some skinhead takeover?" he says. "It's not like the average black person in America, or some-one in Thailand or Tibet, is really threatened by skinheads. What they're threatened by is a global corporate monoculture that's really going to divest them of power and destroy their culture. Not to sound like some progressive type or any-thing, but I actually do support the idea of a diversity of human , groups surviving on earth. Different cultural traditions make the world interesting. In the United States, you have homoge-nous consumerism. Everyone buys the same clothes at the mall no matter what their heritage is. That's a far more immediate threat to racial justice or identity than anything emanating from neo-Nazis."

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Season of the Witch: Moynihan and Annabel Lee play with Witch Hunt in Pioneer Square in July.

Certainly, a serious consideration of Moynihan takes you into rocky terrain, where many of the assumptions of mainstream politics and culture are either irrelevant or under assault.

At the same time, who hasn't looked at the plastic sprawl of cur-rent pop culture and wished for something a little more intense, intimate and immediate? Who has-n't spent at least a few moments considering some of the darker corners of human experience? Who hasn't said things or entertained notions that could offend? Aren't artists, under a cultural mandate as old as the West, supposed to rub salt into society's wounds?

There's no doubt that some aspects of Moynihan's work are

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