Book Talk: Counterculture and Neo-Nazi Terrorism

Submitted by the Event Organizer

James Mason’s book Siege—which praises terrorism, serial killers, and Charles Manson—has become the go-to text for today’s aspiring neo-Nazi terrorist. At least a dozen murders can be connected to circles based on the book’s ideas. This talk will trace the origins of his ideas, and how members of the 1980s and ’90s counterculture—including those from the Bay Area—were responsible for their spread.

The talk will explain how Mason developed his ideas after a terrorist wing emerged out of a slew of 1970s neo-Nazi micro-parties, including San Francisco’s NSWWP. But in the next couple decades he was discovered and promoted by a clique of four 1980s and ‘90s counterculturalists: industrial and neofolk musicians Boyd Rice and Michael Moynihan, Satanist Nikolas Schreck, and Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey. Both Rice and Schreck lived in San Francisco, and the four were all members or associates of the Church of Satan, also based in the city.

We’ll also ask about how the 1980s and ’90s counterculture became complicit in this. What enabled the situation to arise? How were these four able to obscure their background, continue to function in the underground scene, and remain unaccountable? And what can be done differently in the future?

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