Check out YOUR pagan forum

[illgrace]

As I mentioned in another thread, pagan forums are seen as fertile 'hunting grounds' for Racist Groups looking to recruit. Again, many of the board owners are not even aware, although some most definitely are. One can usually tell by the tone and content of most of the posts.

IF you have protection on your computer ( remember, if you are on their site, they have your IP), go to the main 'Stormfront' board. Go to the 'Pre-Christian Indo-European religions thread. Click on the 'Heathen/Pagan Links.

Read the posts and you will see many familiar pagan sites. If it's on this thread, chances are these people are on your board as well if you are a member of one mentioned. Check out other 'Aryan' boards , such as the 'Pan Aryan Alliance for the same kind of information.

Some recommended links, like 'witchvox' are used as resources to find other boards or information. Some boards don't even know they made the 'list'.

Now they do.

It would be a good idea for those boards not on the list to make your site as 'user-unfriendly' to hate groups as possible. A well-known board in the U.S. (The Cauldron) has a Zero Tolerance for ANY racist or neo-Nazi attitudes. They have successfully kept these types off their board through their constant vigilance and zero-tolerance policy. One large U.K. board is also not on the list but may end up there if they are not vigilant and keep being afraid of illusory legal issues. If it's in the open in the public domain, it can be 'named and shamed'.

Again, it's not the post's in the open that are the problem, it's what you can't see that can hurt you or your members.

Illgrace

[rowan]

illgrace said:

IF you have protection on your computer ( remember, if you are on their site, they have your IP), go to the main 'Stormfront' board. Go to the 'Pre-Christian Indo-European religions thread. Click on the 'Heathen/Pagan Links.

I wouldn't use it as a learning tool though, as this gem from another thread shows:

"Also contrary to popular belief the druids didn’t build Stonehenge! Stonehenge predates Celtic society by at least 10,000 years"


Joking aside it is extremely worrying seeing the amount of pagans on those forums and knowing a good many of them are using other pagan boards.

[Andy N]

I've just done what Illgrace suggested and trawled though the Stormfront site looking at Pagan links.

At the start of their thread some general Pagan organisations were mentioned. This included the PF who I think are shits, but who I know are not fascist shits. There is no mention of PN interestingly. After this initial couple of mentions of general Pagan sites the remainder of that thread homes in quickly on known Northern trad organisations with fascists tendencies, or which are outright fascists/racists. Frankly this is no surprise and it does not show any great inclination on the part of any of those posting to that thread to bother to talk to anyone but other fascists. There's no evidence that these "folk" are seeking to subvert non-fascist Pagan boards there that I can see.

[Boojum]

Andy-

Have a look at the thread on Woden's Folk and the one on the Long Man protest.

While that's obviously 'real life', rather then the net, it's still direct evidence of the targetting of a protest organised by non-fascist pagans by a fascist group.

[rowan]

Andy, it's a huge board, and as with any large board topics aren't all kept neatly in the correct forum or thread. There are lots of pagan references in threads that you wouldn't particularly think of looking at, quite a few in the Activism section.


See the stats at the bottom of the board:
'Threads: 368,015, Posts: 4,493,270'

I don't know how long you spent looking, but I'd imagine with 4.5 million posts you probably missed quite a few relative ones - you'd find plenty of 'evidence' the more posts you read
(One quick search there just now brought up posts about The Cauldron and Mysticwicks - one or two familiar names on the Cauldron (archived) thread )

[Andy N]

Well all I did was what Illgrace suggested. I don't have the time or the inclination to read a lot of the dumb and nasty threads on sites like Stormfront.

It would be sensible to make sure that when something is said on this site it is reasonably easy to verify otherwise its effectiveness will be compromised.

I am aware of the Woden's Folk hi-jacking of the T & S stunt at the Long Man of Wilmington. I do realise that some of the nastier racists out there will try and target and recruit susceptible people.

What does seem to be fairly clear is that so far racist tendencies seem to be almost exclusively found in Northern Tradition groups. I am aware that some of the more rabid "traditional" witchcraft groups set a lot of store by "witchblood", but bizarrely they seem to think this isn't necessarily a matter of genetics.

.

[rowan]

Andy said:

What does seem to be fairly clear is that so far racist tendencies seem to be almost exclusively found in Northern Tradition groups.

.

If you're talking about groups like Woden's Folk, yes, they do seem to be mainly northern traditions.

But that's a different scenario to individual racists, sometimes with a couple of friends as back-up, who use other pagan boards for possible recruitment.

I think it's important to make everyone aware that it does happen, and to recognise the signs - a lot of us will get loud warning bells ringing when one of them starts on their 'propaganda', but as we keep saying, there are large numbers of younger, impressionable pagans on lots of boards who probably won't see what is happening.

It does no-one any good (except the racists who'd get the green light to carry on!) to ignore the problem or pretend it doesn't exist in the wider pagan community.

[Alistair]

What does seem to be fairly clear is that so far racist tendencies seem to be almost exclusively found in Northern Tradition groups. I am aware that some of the more rabid "traditional" witchcraft groups set a lot of store by "witchblood", but bizarrely they seem to think this isn't necessarily a matter of genetics.

The trad groups I think you're thinking of talk a load of nonsense about this Witchblood thing anyway, and whilst they're nutters, it's not racist.

One candidate with some pretty strange views is our old friend Kevin Carlyon. His website used to have a directly homophobic comment on there, although I note it's not removed, and I know of someone who claims that in conversation with him he said 'Hitler had the right idea, get rid of all the rubbish...'

[Andy N]

I'm sorry to say that I've heard homophobic comments elsewhere and some pretty harsh comments about people with disability. This is bizarre because I know many Pagans with varying degrees of disability. (My wife btw has progressive MS so I have some first hand experience about how disabilities can affect lives.)

I actually think there is perhaps more homophobia and potential anti-disablement discrimination amongst Pagans than racism or fascism.

[Alistair]

Who was it that said that disabled people couldn't be witches, as they couldn't dance in circle?

I'm sure one of the 'elders' in the Wiccan scene said it during a talk about a PF conference, or something similar? Is that what you're thinking about?

[Boojum]

Andy said:

Well all I did was what Illgrace suggested. I don't have the time or the inclination to read a lot of the dumb and nasty threads on sites like Stormfront.

It would be sensible to make sure that when something is said on this site it is reasonably easy to verify otherwise its effectiveness will be compromised.

I half agree with you here. I certainly think it should be possible to verify anything said, but I don't think it's valid to insist it's easy to do so. It's the same principle that suggests that people should actually read history books before talking about teh Burning Times!11!!!.

I am aware of the Woden's Folk hi-jacking of the T & S stunt at the Long Man of Wilmington. I do realise that some of the nastier racists out there will try and target and recruit susceptible people.

What does seem to be fairly clear is that so far racist tendencies seem to be almost exclusively found in Northern Tradition groups. I am aware that some of the more rabid "traditional" witchcraft groups set a lot of store by "witchblood", but bizarrely they seem to think this isn't necessarily a matter of genetics.

Yes and no.

On Stormfront, it's true to say that the majority are Northern Tradition- it seems to be 'trendy' among fascists at the moment. But it's by no means confined to those groups. There's several posters who identify as Celtic pagans. And while this is something of an anomaly, there's at least two posters who identify as Wiccan-
http://www. stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php/anyone-else-here-wiccan-413392

(As well as the one in that thread, there's also "Scottish Purple Heather". And while she isn't anymore, one of the moderators, Lycia, claims to have been a Wiccan for fourteen years).

See also the Icke thread, for a very new age version of old far right themes.

But yes, most of the Stormfront posters are actually pretty hostile to most neopagan traditions. This doesn't preclude at least some of them seeing it as a potential recruitment pool however.

See this post- http://www. stormfront.org/forum/showpost.php?p=3891497&postcount=17 as an example:

You raise an interesting point. Most New Age people are not friends of WN (although I would imagine that a few are).
Yet many of us embrace these ancient religions, and so do many New Agers.
I wonder if there's a possibility here...if New Age people could be taught White Pride?
Could be a new recruiting base.....

That's as stark an example of fascists looking to recruit from the entire neopagan movement as you're likely to find.

So that would link into why they have non-fascist sites linked to on the board- that doesn't suggest that they want to completely seperate themselves.

'm sorry to say that I've heard homophobic comments elsewhere and some pretty harsh comments about people with disability. This is bizarre because I know many Pagans with varying degrees of disability. (My wife btw has progressive MS so I have some first hand experience about how disabilities can affect lives.)

I actually think there is perhaps more homophobia and potential anti-disablement discrimination amongst Pagans than racism or fascism.

I think that probably is the case. I'm happy for anyone who wants to start a thread on any form of bigotry to do so. I just didn't want the forum name to take up half the page.

[

Alistair said:

One candidate with some pretty strange views is our old friend Kevin Carlyon. His website used to have a directly homophobic comment on there, although I note it's not removed, and I know of someone who claims that in conversation with him he said 'Hitler had the right idea, get rid of all the rubbish...'

That wouldn't entirely surprise me if he did, tbh. He's also made some extremely transphobic comments over the years.

And there was also the whole Seax Wicca shitstorm with Mark 'Homosexuals should be executed' Ventimiglia.

See davensjournal.com/index.htm?evidence.xhtml&2

[rowan]

From one of the threads I mentioned above:
http://www. stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php/assault-white-nationalists-pagan-forum-238919.html

What's more, I think you should just give up on that forum like others have recommended. People like that are so brainwashed that you will never be able to present any facts to them and even slightly have them change their opinions. I have this strange feeling, however, that if these people were forced to live in the ghetto for a year, they might wind up changing their minds. They just don't know otherwise because they all probably live comfortably, in all white neighborhoods and have known nothing other than love, tolerance, PC bull****, etc.

[illgrace]

rowan said:

From one of the threads I mentioned above:
http://www. stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php/assault-white-nationalists-pagan-forum-238919.html

What's more, I think you should just give up on that forum like others have recommended. People like that are so brainwashed that you will never be able to present any facts to them and even slightly have them change their opinions. I have this strange feeling, however, that if these people were forced to live in the ghetto for a year, they might wind up changing their minds. They just don't know otherwise because they all probably live comfortably, in all white neighborhoods and have known nothing other than love, tolerance, PC bull****, etc.

To get a really good 'flavour' of such, go to the American Pagan forum "The Cauldron", go to their 2005 archives (check 'start reading' and columns will come up on the left side), go to 'general ponderings' , on the second page, Dec.2005 is a thread called 'Neo Nazi's in Pagan Groups'. There you can read the thread rowan referred to. What is funny is this person who identified as a white supremacist Wiccan, weaseled out later and pretended it was a joke then went back to Stormfront crowing about what a hero he was.

Why this thread is worth searching for and reading is the for the various arguments used and also, to get a good take on some North American takes on racism.

Illgrace