Given the recent arrest of a US soldier for conspiring with members of the UK-based occult group the ‘Order of Nine Angles’ (O9A) to orchestrate an attack on fellow soldiers, and with the UK anti-fascist collective Hope not Hate calling for a ban on the O9A after labelling them “an incubator of terrorism”, it is timely to examine the relationship between the extreme right and occultism in the UK, with a focus on the O9A.
Scholarship on the radical right and religion has tended to focus, however, upon “the links between the churches and fascism”. Nevertheless, some occult groups and the extreme radical right also have a long history, with National Socialism in the late 1930s being heavily influenced by a particular genus of racist occultism, often known as ‘Ariosophy’. Worryingly, elements of the same Ariosophic thinking connect a number of recent violent episodes globally.
James Alex Field, who was arrested for murder in Charlottesville, marched alongside a flag depicting the Black Sun (or Sonnenrad), a Nazi symbol drawing on Ariosophic imagery. This same emblem appeared on the cover of the 2019 manifesto published by the Christchurch murderer. The murderer of UK MP Jo Cox,Thomas Mair, also had Ariosophic runic links, subscribing to publications such as the ‘Secret of the Runes’. Furthermore, in 2020 UK teenagers with occult neo-Nazi inclinations were being convicted of terrorist offenses.
