(Heathen Harvest administrator, supporter of Trump and Roosh V., and blatant racist Raul Antony promoting the Operation Equinox tour.)
In March, Of the Wand and the Moon, Die Weisse Rose, and Hitler Youth cosplayers Blood and Sun, among others, will be going on a tour sponsored by Heathen Harvest — a webzine organized by racial separatists. While idiotic promoters are quick to believe that the neofolk scene’s use of far right themes is apolitical, Heathen Harvest is run by a team that promote neofolk as historically and inherently right wing [UPDATE: as of writing HH has taken down their message board, but here’s a screenshot from the thread]. Anti-fascistNews.net recently published an article call for antifascists to pressure venues to cancel the shows and describing Heathen Harvest’s sympathies:
In almost every interview on the site they will begin referencing racial and neo-fascist themes. Often times questions reference the perennial traditionalism of [openly fascist political philosopher] Julius Evola , books like Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, or racial paganism. While some musicians resist these associations, many play into them directly, even if not incredibly deeply…. What drives a common spirit is a disgust for the “modern world,” a term that has become in popular use from Evola. Some interpret this as things like industrial capitalism and environmental destruction, but in the traditionalist school this more aptly means multiculturalism, democracy, and equality.
Their podcast, The Forest Passage, drops much of the pretense and takes us directly back to the racism of the Alt Right. In Podcast #12, they open with jokes like calling our current period the “current year,” a joke from the rabidly racist and anti-Semitic podcast The Daily Shoah. They go on to deride “liberals” for their universalizing morality, they admire nationalism instead of “globalism,” and certainly side with the idea that elites should be running society…. In this episode one of the hosts discusses Germany’s choice to let in Syrian refugees, which they say is “destroying” Europe. They present contemporary politics as “Nationalism vs. Globalism,” presenting the common straw-man argument from fascists that to be against nationalism is to be in favor of global corporate capitalism. One of the hosts derives his name GJ Anarch from far-right philosopher Ernst Junger’s concept of the Anarch, which means a “sovereign person.” At almost any point on their website you can find references to the coming collapse, when the western decadence of the “Kali Yuga” will bring us back to a possible Western Golden Age. While they rarely jump into openly “racist” language, they have a consistent voice in favor of white racial nationalism. They functionally make the same arguments as places like the Radix Journal or The Daily Shoah, but have recolored it with esoteric, pagan, and counter-cultural language so as to provide an intellectual mirage that provides a feeling of rebellious superiority to their audience.
Heathen Harvest has a long history that includes contributions from numerous sources, the majority of which are simple reviews of new music in the “post-industrial underground.” In the mix however are articles like this one published in February 2016 by an openly fascist author who gives a glowing review to a new book by a leading National Anarchist figure. The review includes lines like “’Australian Nationalists… have in mind a revolution—a racial revolution—in which white Austrialians will suddenly develop racial consciousness and sweep non-White immigrants away,’” and “Perhaps the NSDAP [Nazi Party] were right in 1939.”
(Heathen Harvest admin and podcast host describes the difference between good and bad fascists. He’s qualified to do so because he apparently knows them all.)
The article’s title, “The Left? The Right? Whatever,” sums up Heathen Harvest’s strategy—coyly feigning apolitical inclusiveness as a pretext for printing racial separatist positions. Editor-in-Chief Sage L. Wheatherford spells this out plainly in a thread from 2012, in which several main Heathen Harvest editors discuss which records from a neo-Nazi label they should review, after a musician from the label went on a shooting-spree that left 7 dead. They agree that as “moderate ethnic separatists” they would cover everything, but “call out the music that is blatantly ignorant.” It’s clear they never actually enacted this strategy.
In another thread Heathen Harvest contributor and forum administrator Stuart Sudekum writes, “I figured the reason these Brooklyn Jews are mostly anti-Zionist is because they are very happy with the foothold they have here. Their commitment to their culture is commendable, but living on what amounts to be their tribal land makes me wish they would all buy a one way ticket to Israel.” Wheatherford follows by posting the section of the National Anarchist manifesto which calls Jews “vampiric parasites” who run the world. The Manifesto also states:
Race defines who we are, it provides us with an identity and exists for a damn good reason. Without maintaining this essential diversity, something you can find throughout nature, the world will become increasingly drab, standardised and monotonous and the only people left on the planet will inevitably form part of a coffee-coloured mush of uniform humanity.
(Podcast cohost Jesse Degtyarov has a tough time finding a gig outside Heathen Harvest.)
National Anarchists have protested a gay street fair and burned a Quoran in the Bay Area, and protested punk and left spaces in New York like ABC No Rio and Bluestockings books, calling them a “red scourge”. Weatherford and Sudekum are both members of the National-Anarchist Movement’s Facebook group (in fact Weatherford was looking to organize with N-AM in Portugal), and this is no coincidence. Troy Southgate, former member of the UK’s National Front, founder of National Anarchism, and author of its manifesto was a longtime contributor during Heathen Harvest’s first reincarnation as a webzine. His projects still receive favorable reviews in which his hateful lyrics are reprinted in full. Heathen Harvest writers also praise White Power bullshit or political misogynists, and a review of a new Evola translation ends with this paragraph:
Those of us who have rejected modernism are probably already aware of the folly in conflating anything reminiscent of fascism with totalitarianism and genocide. There are certain beneficent ideas that have been doomed to unjustified dismissal because of their association with the losing side of World War II. It is our duty to explore these ideas, think about them critically, and preserve them until the time comes when they can be given a fair consideration.
(Stuart Sudekum referencing an article about Hungary’s arrest of a Nazi war criminal as an example of uncomradely behavior between Nationalists.)
Pro-fascist writing like this is easy to find on Heathen Harvest, so it’s no surprise that some of its administrators actively promote such sentiments offline as well. Sudekum tries to distribute the fascist New Right journal Tyr to Brooklyn bookstores. In a Facebook post explaining why they refuse to play with fascist musicians, the antifascist band Aradia describes the journal as such:
[Tyr says it] “celebrates the traditional myths, culture, and social institutions of pre-Christian, pre-modern Europe.” Contributors to Tyr include writers such as the French academic Alain de Benoist, one of the fathers of the [fascist] New Right movement, and the racist founder of the Asatro Folk Assembly, Stephen McNallen. The journal has also featured an interview with French fascist Georges Dumézil and translations of texts by Julius Evola. One of Tyr’s three editors is crypto-fascist Michael Moynihan who is the founding member of the band Blood Axis and editor of the books Introduction to Magic and Men Among the Ruins, both by Julius Evola.
Fortunately, several of these Brooklyn stores have refused to sell this White Nationalist trash. If only the same could be said of its underground music scene.
The tour comes to the Nothing Changes night at Home Sweet Home March 23 and Black Bear Bar in Williamsburg March 27th. Home Sweet Home bar can be reached at 212-226-5708. Black Bear Bar can be reached at 347-614-6886 or chip@newislandgroup.com. (The Black Bear show is part of the SORT PÅSKE FESTIVAL.) The Philadelphia, Rhode Island, Baltimore, and Madison dates can be found at AntifascistNews.net
