UPDATE: In a Thursday, July 16 post, AFA gothar coordinator's life changed from police shoot-out & prison to serving old Gods, we look at one Ásatrú Folk Assembly's leaders' back story. [end update]
A reader in Swift County, Minnesota's small town Murdock emailed us on Friday with a message under the subject line, White supremacists in Murdock, with this message:
Check out the white supremacists moving into Murdock in Swift County. I’m not on Facebook but if you search for Baldurshof Dedication or Asatru Folk or Baldurshof: Third Hof of the Asatru Folk Assembly I think you’ll find something. They bought the old Lutheran church in Murdock and are having a dedication ceremony on Nov 21 later this fall. . . .
How could we resist? Murdock is a fine small town whose population was 278 at the 2010 census, Wikipedia tells us.
We found this on twitter:
Baldurshof https://t.co/0tI9LYuHSt
— Asatru Folk Assembly (@FolkAsatru) June 22, 2020
A Lutheran friend in the Murdock area identified the building as the former Calvary Lutheran Church, which had apparently had a "For Sale" sign on the property for some time. The owner listed in Swift County tax records does not appear to be the new owners.
The property is now zoned residential, according to the tax records online.
UPDATE July 12: The Preliminary eCRV for the property on file at the Minnesota Department of Revenue reveals that the property was purchased by Allen Turnage, a bankruptcy lawyer in Tallahassee, Florida, who serves as Lawspeaker for the AFA, "...ensuring that we not only abide by the laws of the land, but stick to our own AFA laws: Declaration of Purpose, The Law of the Hall, and the Statement of Ethics [links added by BSP editor]." [end update]
So what is the Asatru Folk Assembly and why did our correspondent, a resident in Murdock, call that group "white supremacists"?
Asatru Folk Assembly self-description
The group's web page (The Runestone) describes itself in these terms, which differ from the description from the Southern Poverty Law Center that we'll share in a bit. From the AFA's frontpage:
Asatru is an expression of the native, pre-Christian spirituality of Europe. More specifically, it is the religion by which the Ethnic European Folk have traditionally related to the Divine and to the world around them.
From Iceland to Russia, from the frozen north of Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, the Ethnic European Folk wandered and settled over a span of thousands of years. Today, their descendants are spread around the world. We may refer to ourselves as Americans or English, Germans or Canadians, but behind these labels lurks an older, more essential identity. Our forefathers were Angles and Saxons, Lombards and Heruli, Goths and Vikings – and, as sons and daughters of these peoples, we are united by ties of blood and culture undimmed by the centuries.
Asatru is our native religion. It gave our ancestors comfort in millennia past, and it can give us strength and inspiration today. The word “Asatru” comes to us from Old Norse, the tongue of ancient Scandinavia, where it means “those loyal to the Gods.” Since the ancient Scandinavian version of our religion is the best documented, it has given us much of Asatru’s terminology and imagery. The soul of Asatru, however, is not confined to the Scandinavian model, but encapsulates the belief of all the Ethnic European Folk. Indeed, Asatru reflects the deeper religiosity common to virtually all the nations of Europe.
As a part of the great Aryan religiosity, Asatru has a number of characteristic beliefs. . . .
Go read them at the website, which continues:
The Asatru Folk Assembly was formed by Stephen McNallen in 1994 as a successor to the Asatru Free Assembly, which dominated the Asatru scene in the United States from its inception in the 1970’s until its dissolution in 1986. Since it’s inception, the AFA has been the premier force in the development and practice of Asatru. The AFA is committed, today and everyday, to building strong and lasting communities and families, embracing traditional values and venerating our holy Gods.
In the late 1960’s, Stephen McNallen embraced the Gods and founded the modern religion of Asatru. In short order, Alsherjargothi McNallen started the Viking Brotherhood which quickly evolved into the Asatru Free Assembly. The Asatru Free Assembly began publishing “the Runestone” magazine as well as starting the first Asatru gatherings called Allthings.
Asatru grew and developed throughout the 1970’s and 80’s. In 1986 the Asatru Free Assembly was disbanded. In the late 1980’s and early 90’s the original values and aims of Asatru were growingly subverted by the decay of cultural marxism [emphasis added] Alsherjargothi McNallen knew he must once again take up the banner and save what his vision and initiative had put into motion. The Asatru Folk Assembly was founded from that day forward to be a solid spiritual force for our Ethnic European Folk and our Ethnic European Faith.
Since our founding we have watched our folk grow and thrive. In the early 2000’s the first Gothar were legally ordained as priests of our holy Gods. In 2015, Óðinshof was founded as the first Asatru Hof in the Western Hemisphere.
At Midsummer 2016, Stephen McNallen passed the title of Alsherjargothi to Matthew Flavel. As time has progressed the AFA continues to grow and develop as a solid Church that will stand the test of time and serve our Gods and Folk eternally. We have 5 national gatherings each year and countless local events across the United States and in 13 countries around the world. Since the inception of the AFA Kindred Program in 2016, we have 23 loyal AFA kindreds (chances are there is one near you!). Great things are on the horizon and the blessings of the Gods are rolling in.
If you are a traditionally minded son or daughter of Europe…
If you agree with our Declaration of Purpose…
If you want to be part of a growing church dedicated to OUR Gods and Folk…
We invite you to join our AFA family.
Sidenote on Cultural Marxism
We bolded the text "the original values and aims of Asatru were growingly subverted by the decay of cultural marxism" as it's trendy among the alt-right and their fellow travelers. In 2003, Bill Berkowitz wrote in the Southern Poverty Law Center's article Cultural Marxism' Catching On:
"Cultural Marxism," described as a conspiratorial attempt to wreck American culture and morality, is the newest intellectual bugaboo on the radical right. Surprisingly, there are signs that this bizarre theory is catching on in the mainstream.
The phrase refers to a kind of "political correctness" on steroids — a covert assault on the American way of life that allegedly has been developed by the left over the course of the last 70 years. Those who are pushing the "cultural Marxism" scenario aren't merely poking fun at the PC excesses of the "People's Republic of Berkeley," or the couple of American cities whose leaders renamed manholes "person-holes" in a bid to root out sexist thought.
Right-wing ideologues, racists and other extremists have jazzed up political correctness and repackaged it — in its most virulent form, as an anti-Semitic theory that identifies Jews in general and several Jewish intellectuals in particular as nefarious, communistic destroyers. These supposed originators of "cultural Marxism" are seen as conspiratorial plotters intent on making Americans feel guilty and thus subverting their Christian culture.
In a nutshell, the theory posits that a tiny group of Jewish philosophers who fled Germany in the 1930s and set up shop at Columbia University in New York City devised an unorthodox form of "Marxism" that took aim at American society's culture, rather than its economic system.
The theory holds that these self-interested Jews — the so-called "Frankfurt School" of philosophers — planned to try to convince mainstream Americans that white ethnic pride is bad, that sexual liberation is good, and that supposedly traditional American values — Christianity, "family values," and so on — are reactionary and bigoted. With their core values thus subverted, the theory goes, Americans would be quick to sign on to the ideas of the far left.
It's richly ironic that a neo-pagan group would adopt the term, but this is the Age of The New Normal. Whatever on that. For more insight, check out Jason Wilson's 2015 piece in the Guardian, 'Cultural Marxism': a uniting theory for rightwingers who love to play the victim, Samuel Moyn's 2018 New York Times Opinion: The Alt-Right’s Favorite Meme Is 100 Years Old, and the RationalWiki entry.
Who calls AFA a hate group?
In the Neo-Volkisch article in the SPLC's Fighting Hate's Extremist File, the AFA appears in the list, 2019 Neo-Volkisch hate groups (View all groups by state and by ideology). Under the cruelty of the alphabet, AFA tops the list:
Ásatrú Folk Assembly
Brownsville, CA*
Alaska
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Kentucky
Massachusetts
Missouri
Bloomington, MN
Newport, MN
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Washington
We've bolded Kentucky, Minnesota and North Dakota, because one of the leaders, Blaine Qualls Jr, appears to have moved from Kentucky to North Dakota. His name appears in connection with the new congregation's Facebook page,Baldurshof: Third Hof of the Asatru Folk Assembly.
Read the entire SPLC entry to get a sense of how the group earned its way on the list. Also worth a look? The 1998 SPLC article, New Brand of Racist Odinist Religion on the March, points out:
A neo-Pagan religion drawing on images of fiercely proud, boar-hunting Norsemen and their white-skinned Aryan womenfolk is increasingly taking root among Skinheads, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists across the nation.
Asatrú leaders have opened prison ministries in at least five states recently, and their many jailed followers are heavily white supremacist.
(Note: Austin area neo-nazi Samuel Johnson told Bluestem about his introduction to the religion while in jail in our 2009 post, NSM SE MN's Sam Johnson, part two: that neo-old time religion).
Some choice entries from the new congregation's page:
The SPLC says of Alexander Rud Mills in the 1998 article, New Brand of Racist Odinist Religion on the March:
According to Jeffrey Kaplan, who wrote the 1997 study Radical Religion in America, an early international promoter was Australian Nazi sympathizer Alexander Rud Mills. Mills, in turn, deeply influenced a key American Odinist, Else Christensen, who published The Odinist newsletter in the early 1970s . . .
The Camp Courage episode
In 2016, John Reinen and Paul Walsh reported in the Star Tribune article, Minnesota camp cancels booking of Nordic heritage group with white supremacist bent:
A Nordic heritage group that chose Wright County for its first-ever Midwest gathering had to scramble for a new location after Camp Courage in Maple Lake canceled the group’s Labor Day weekend booking.
In a statement issued Thursday, Camp Courage said it canceled the booking of the Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA), a California-based organization, after determining that the Nordic group’s “mission and areas of focus significantly conflict with [our] core values.”
Scholars who study modern pagan and heathen religions have identified the AFA as a white supremacist group.
“At this point, with decades of history and documentation, it is difficult to see the AFA as anything other than a hate group on the extreme fringe of Heathenry,” said Karl E.H. Seigfried, president of interfaith dialogue at the University of Chicago and author of the Norse Mythology Blog.
Allen Turnage, the AFA’s secretary and treasurer, blamed the cancellation on critics who ran a phone campaign that “badgered Camp Courage into pulling the plug.” Camp Courage, about 50 miles northwest of the metro area, serves people with disabilities and also rents its facilities to other groups.
Turnage described the planned gathering as “a seasonal festival that hearkens back to old fire festivals a thousand years ago. It’s a harvest-type festival … that gets us back into the rhythm of the planet and the season.”
In old Norse language, “Asatru” roughly translates as “belief in the gods.”
Turnage said the group had secured a new venue for its gathering, but said he didn’t know where it was. He said the group expected 80 to 100 attendees.
Turnage acknowledged that there have been a minority of adherents drawn to the Asatru faith who see its mission as the promotion of white supremacy. But he insisted that he and other AFA members are “practicing a religious culture that is indigenous to Europe. There is nothing more than that.”
That’s what a lot of white supremacists say, countered Jennifer Snook, a sociology lecturer at Grinnell College in Iowa and herself a practicing Heathen. Snook last year published a book, “American Heathens: The Politics of Identity in a Pagan Religious Movement.”
The AFA has “identified themselves as a white supremacist organization,” Snook said. “They will, of course, deny this, as do most white supremacists who view their ideology as pride rather than hate.”
The group’s website states that “the survival and welfare of the Northern European peoples as a cultural and biological group is a religious imperative for the AFA.” . . .
In a Facebook post, AFA organizers praised “our feminine ladies, our masculine gentlemen and, above all, our beautiful white children.”
Update: Turnage's new tasks as Lawspeaker includes making sure the group sticks "to our own AFA laws: Declaration of Purpose, The Law of the Hall, and the Statement of Ethics."
That final document includes item IV The Family Principle:
Healthy families are the cornerstone of folk society and its strength and prosperity is derived from them. We in Asatru support strong, healthy white family relationships. We want our children to grow up to be mothers and fathers to white children of their own. We believe that those activities and behaviors supportive of the white family should be encouraged while those activities and behaviors destructive of the white family are to be discouraged.
For many readers, this may seem to contradict Turnage's explanation to the Star Tribune:
Turnage acknowledged that there have been a minority of adherents drawn to the Asatru faith who see its mission as the promotion of white supremacy. But he insisted that he and other AFA members are “practicing a religious culture that is indigenous to Europe. There is nothing more than that.” [end update]
At the Agora, a pagan site, Alyxander Folmer told the other side of the story in Wyrd Words: The Real Story Behind ‘Camp Courage’ And The AFA, though we're not sure our readers will be pleased to learn more about the AFA's fellow travelers:
Many Heathens awoke on the morning of September 2nd to the news that the Asatru Folk Assembly’s “Midwest Fallfest” had been kicked out of the camp that they had booked for the event just days before the event was due to take place. Given the recent flurry over the AFA’s statements and stances, the article (written by the StarTribune) quickly made the rounds and received a mixed review. While the reporting done on our religious community was refreshingly thorough and honest, many AFA supporters were furious over the accusations made in the article as well as by Camp Courage.
Due to the timing of this press release, shortly after a number of highly controversial statements made by the AFA, this news had many of the organization’s proponents pointing fingers at various Heathen organizations. Namely, those which had recently taken the AFA to task. The Troth and H.U.A.R. were among those most commonly accused.
Each of these parties independently denied any responsibility for the phone campaign that resulted in the AFA’s being banned from multiple campgrounds in Minnesota. H.U.A.R. announced their non-participation on their Facebook feed, while The Troth did so on their official blog. It was the Troth that initially discovered the first piece of evidence about who really did get the AFA event shut down. Their brief search of Twitter revealed a local Anti-Fascist (or ‘Antifa’) page called ConflictMN, who tweeted the following:
Please contact Camp Courage (Maple Lake MN) and tell them to cancel AsatruFolkAssembly's event this weekend! #antifa pic.twitter.com/q673xAiMPu
— The Minnesota Wild (@lets_go_wild) August 30, 2016
ConflictMN seemed to be just boosting the signal, so Huginn’s Heathen Hof reached out to them to see if they knew where it had originated. ...
.. . The point of connection actually comes from a single sentence within the original statement.
Quote: “Notably, one of their members Josef Sigmundr is also a member of the Golden State Skinheads who attended a white nationalist-organized pro-Trump rally where a fellow Skinhead stabbed multiple people.”
The event in question, which was dubbed “The Battle of Sacramento” by some news outlets, took place on June 26th of this year on the steps of the Sacramento capital building. The event, which was hosted by the Traditionalist Workers Party, was backed by the local Golden State Skinheads. It erupted into a massive conflict between Anti-Fascist protesters and the two groups of white supremacists which resulted in at least ten people being injured. Two of the TWP people were beaten and pelted with rocks, while at least seven protesters ended up being stabbed by the Skinheads. ...There's a lot of insider baseball there, but essentially,
Who is Mr. Josef Sigmundr?
For that info, we turned to the leader of the Traditionalist Workers Party (Matthew Heimbach), who tweeted the following image of the TWP and GSS members just before they left for the ill-fated march. Josef Sigmundr appears at the far right, wearing a TWP shirt and camouflage shorts. He was also filmed at the march during the conflict that resulted in the stabbing of several protesters and, reportedly, one bystander. . . .
There's a lot of insider baseball there, but essentially, the Minnesota callers were repulsed by the violence in Sacramento.
We'll have more on this story as we confirm some stories Mr. Google is telling us about one of the principle characters in the AFA story.
Photo: Welcome to Murdock. As the Minnesota Native Daughter puts it, Bishop John Ireland established a "Catholic colony adjacent to Murdock and DeGraff. Healing Minnesota Stories puts it a different way in Bishop Ireland’s Efforts to Colonize Minnesota with Irish Catholics, a Doctrine of Discovery Story.
Comments