So recently Priti Patel, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, talked about how she would be willing to change the law in order to label Extinction Rebellion a criminal organization. What this means is that the Conservative government, or at least more or less Patel herself, are going to look to just about any means within their power, to the extent that they will rewrite existing laws specifically for the purpose of locking up Extinction Rebellion protesters. This was motivated by a protest carried out by Extinction Rebellion last Friday in which they blocked access to three printing presses owned by News Corporation (yes, that News Corporation), resulting in delays to the publication of several newspapers, and in turn no doubt motivated by the reaction of several press outlets incensed by delays to production.
For some reason my mind thinks back to that time when Theresa May said she would “rip up” any human rights laws that stand in the way of passing new counter-terrorism legislation, which of course raised a lot of questions about just what kind of counter-terrorism legislation May was planning on passing. When Conservatives talk about how they want to push the envelope for what is legally permissible for the government to do, you get a sense that they want to redefine the limits of their power in order to justify what could be rather heinous. Our government’s counter-terrorism policy has already trampled over basic civil liberties as it is, and several anti-establishment organizations (on the left and the right) are already given watchful eye by the government under the auspices of the Prevent scheme, which can see ordinary people suspected of terrorism over trifling comments. So you can imagine why I might be skeptical of what the government might be planning, even if Extinction Rebellion’s antics are profoundly unlikeable.
What really gets me, though, is how all this on both sides seems to center around the whole Murdoch media trope. I mean, think about it. Gauge the reaction of much of the press, whether Murdoch-owned or otherwise, their condemnation of Extinction Rebellion as a threat to their industry (that’s what the talking point about them attacking freedom of speech ultimately comes from, although perhaps it’s not totally untrue that they dislike freedom of the press), and then consider the strong attacks by the government, by the Prime Minister and by Priti Patel, characterizing these protests as a threat to democracy. And on the other side of it, if you dig around searching for any sort of motivation for those protests, you find that all of the protesters are motivated by a shared despial of Rupert Murdoch, as though he were the Father of Lies himself, blaming him for primarily for a perceived burial of climate change news stories. So those presses got blocked mostly to stick it to Murdoch, and the government seems to be pondering drastic action seemingly to protect Murdoch. Can’t help but think about what must seem like quite a coincidence.
In any case, it is good to be wary of what the government is up to these days. I don’t expect it’ll be anything good. And keep in mind that the Labour Party is joining with the Conservatives on this. It might seem like the honest bipartisanship, until you remember that, here in the UK (not unlike in the USA), bipartisanship just means the two main parties are agreeing on further oppressing the average man. The Labour Party has never been reluctant to have authoritarian legislation pass through, and if anything that’s one of the few things they really agree with the Tories on. Just look at the Conservative attempts to ban pornography for example. To my knowledge at least, not a single Labour politician opposed it. And look at the Investigatory Powers Act, which granted the government the power to request telecommunication companies to hand your internet history over to them and allowed security services to hack into any device they pleased. I have not heard the Labour Party utter one word of opposition to this, not even Jeremy Corbyn and his cadres had anything to say. And if I recall correctly, it was the Labour Party under Blair that actually had a law in the books that, technically, criminalized blasphemy. I for one am not surprised that Labour are, once again, joining the Tories in finding ways to expand state power.
I remember about three years ago when that guy in Florida murdered 50 gay people at that Pulse nightclub, and the horror that it inflicted upon the world, and the only reason it returns to my mind now is because what happened in Christchruch yesterday appears to have been about as deadly. From what we know so far, a white nationalist terrorist killed about 50 people and injured about 50 more attacking two mosques – the Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre. In addition to this being the deadliest mass shooting in New Zealand and in general probably one of the deadliest shootings that happened in this decade at least, the attack was made all the more gruesome by the fact that the attacker livestreamed the massacre on Facebook as he was committing it.
There are many perplexing details about Brenton Tarrant, the man who seems to have committed this atrocity, in that his motives are unlike any mass shooter I’ve seen to say the least. On the one hand, he seems to sincerely espouse a number of ethno-nationalist/alt-right talking points, particularly about the replacement of white Europeans by Muslims, and him placing himself as a militant enemy of just about any leftist (he has said that he doesn’t want to reason with or convert leftists, preferring to simply to place their necks under his boot and see them on the streets as it were). But he also has some more eclectic positions, such as his support for eco-fascism, his disdain for conservatism (which is strange for someone who would otherwise position himself on the right), and his apparent support for the government of China. He also claimed that he didn’t know if he was Christian or not, whilst invoking Pope Urban in his manifesto, screeching about the need to defend Christendom, and railing against people he deemed anti-Christian (such as Madonna). And then there’s the part of his manifesto that is literally just shitposting, such as his claim to have accepted ethnonationalism through a video game named Spyro the Dragon 3 and learned how to kill from another game called Fortnite. But perhaps the most striking part is that, in parts of his manifesto, he states that he actively sought out to inspire terror in ordinary people and his enemies in order to trigger a variety of events in numerous countries, possibly leading up to civil war – for example, he hoped that the shooting would cause the “left” to push for the abolition of the Second Amendment in the United States, which he believed would fracture the country along political, cultural and ethnic lines.
I think it’s safe to speculate that the culprit was not just your ordinary far-right extremist (in fact, he considered himself to be both right-wing and left-wing depending on the definitions), but he also appears to be what some have called an accelerationist (someone seeking to intensify the contradictions of capitalism in order to bring about radical political change as a result) as well as, judging from the fact that he apparently got many of his ideas from 8chan, the kind of nihilistic wastrel who mixes hardcore nationalist and collapsitarian ideology with memetics pulled straight from the gutter of the internet. However, if we are looking to judge him in a single label, we can go by the shooter’s own word when he describes himself as “an actual fascist”, and describe him accordingly for convenience.
What also piques my interest in particular is the terrorist’s claim to have contact with Anders Breivik, and the fact that he appeared to reference Rotherham on his rifle. There is the possibility being discussed that he may have been part of a broader network of right-wing terrorism that has yet to be discovered. I don’t know for sure, but to be honest, as I looked into him I think it’s safe to say that may be in doubt: that is unless, of course, that network happens to be on /pol/. People in online liberal and leftish spaces tend to blame random American conservative commentators that normal people don’t give a shit about, in part because of his manifesto mentioning Candace Owens, as well as Pewdiepie (who was quick to denounce him and his actions) simply because he shouted “subscribe to Pewdiepie”, but really simply the memetic nature of parts of his manifesto and even the slogans he shouted as he committed the massacre tells me that this guy is the product of /pol/, and the ways by which blackpilled nationalism reinforces itself there.
One other thought I had at the back of my head is that I remember years ago when satanicviews told me something about holy war between Christians and Muslims, or more or less that that was on the minds of many Christian zealots, and from the looks of it we may be seeing that in 2019. And to be honest, he might be getting that as a result of his attack. I’ve seen one Muslim post on social media a picture of a rifle with Arabic words on it, captioned with a comment about revenge, which tells me that it’s possible that something might kick off. In the mean time, though, I think we need to do something about the growing phenomenon of fascistic ideology that appears to be motivating him, and for me this means addressing the structural sources of alienation that allows people to become attracted to fascism.
Does anyone remember years ago when it was only the Joy of Satan guys who were busy mixing Satanism with Hitlerian ideology? Or at least, they were basically the only Nazis most Left Hand Path traveler had to deal with. Those were so much more innocent times, back on the old Yahoo Answers website, before the purple scourge that was their new website format ruined everything. That must have been about eight or seven years ago, maybe a decade. And sweet Ishtar how times have changed.
While the Joy of Satan is almost irrelevant as far as I know (we all remember them and their crazy shenanigans, but they don’t seem to be doing much), there does seem to be a current of esoteric fascism centered around neo-Nazi politics that is very much alive in the current decade, and unfortunately that current involves certain contingents of the Satanist movement. Of course I don’t mean the typical Satanist. In fact, in my experience and from what I have seen it is very much at the feet of the Order of Nine Angles, and from there a certain contingent of theistic Satanists who adopt O9A ideas as part of their belief system. It is somewhat well-documented at this point that the group has a distinctly Hitlerian ontology in their esoteric worldview, as V K Jehannum has detailed in one of his posts about the O9A, but, there is a lot more going on relating to neo-Nazism than simply that.
What I’m attempting to do is bring a rather disturbing development that, for some reason, has eluded me until this point, but which I think deserves the attention of Left Hand Path oriented individuals and communities.
Recently a friend of mine showed me a KiwiFarms thread concerning an internal schism as regards the neo-Nazi organization known as the Atomwaffen Division, with certain Atomwaffen members talking about how they would leave the organization if the organization continued to harbor a certain Satanic element within it.
Now before we continue on I think it’s worth establishing the appropriate context regarding just who Atomwaffen really are. Atomwaffen are a militant Nazi organization that derives much of its ideological milieu from the writings of James Mason, an American neo-Nazi and former Church of Satan associate most famous for being the author of a book entitled Siege, as well as Charles Manson, specifically his idea of the “Helter Skelter” from which they apparently get their ideas about race war. They have a reputation for being linked with numerous murders, including one incident where an apparent member murdered a 19-year old college student named Blaze Bernstein – an indicent that was presumably motivated by him being of Jewish ethnicity and a homosexual. The group seems to have emerged from an online neo-Nazi forum named Iron March (or Ironmarch), which until its mysterious disappearance in 2017 served as a hub for people from all kinds of fascist organization, often people who would go on to commit violent hate crimes. Atomwaffen are so controversial that they are often despised even by others in the extreme right, some of whom consider them plants sent by the US federal government in order to discredit radical nationalist movements.
Entering into that is the drama concerning Atomwaffen and Satanism, which has been going on for the last year if I understand correctly. I first encountered this development in an article for The Daily Beast released in March, documenting the frustration expressed by many neo-Nazis that their movements are being infiltrated by the Order of Nine Angles who they believe go about taking over far-right movements to use as mouthpieces for a kind of apocalyptic Satanism. The article does actually mention the KiwiFarms thread that I’m about to talk about, but it doesn’t go into the full detail – and perhaps, given the actual content, that’s understandable because it is one of the most disturbing things I’ve come across on the Internet. However, for now, the main takeaway from the article seems to be the reaction to the thread’s release on websites like Gab, which is filled to the brim with all manner of unsavory far-right personalities, and from there arguments between different members of Atomwaffen on the subject of Satanism and its relation to Nazism. Those who left Atomwaffen said they did so out of disgust for the group’s affiliation with Satanism, while those who stayed with Atomwaffen say that Satanism will be useful to them in the race war they intend to fight, saying “You guys can get all moralistic if you want about Satanism… but when the fuckin’ race war comes, morals aren’t going to do anything but get you fuckin’ killed.”.
The actual thread goes into much further detail on just what sort of activity the O9A contingent of Atomwaffen was getting up to, from the perspective of a disillusioned neo-Nazi by the name of Vexation who left the group upon discovering these things, centering around a 27-page document he wrote entitled “On AWD“. The individual describes a man named Rape, who was apparently the de facto leader of Atomwaffen, asking Atomwaffen members to read certain books associated with the O9A branch of Satanism. The first of these books, which is apparently supposed to be required reading for prospective Atomwaffen members, is a post-apocalyptic novel entitled Iron Gates, which was authored by Tempel ov Blood, an offshoot of the O9A with probably a more pointlessly edgy name than the Misanthropic Luciferian Order. The book can probably be described as gore porn, at least as suggested by the commenter’s description of the book opening the with the brutal murder of a baby, in front of his mother. Not only does Rape apparently think it’s a great read but a lot of Atomwaffen guys are described as indifferent to the book on the grounds that it’s “just a meme”. The second book is Liber 333, perhaps one of Tempel ov Blood’s more well-known releases, which is apparently also a window into just how the O9A types think. In fact, I’ll leave a quote apparently from the book featured in the document here:
Second, the infiltration and manipulation of organizations and forms with Sinister potential. Aryanism, particularly the more religiously fanatical forms of it, such as Christian Identity are a good example. The manipulating Noctulian is to use these forms for their own Presencing of the Dark, as well as changing in subtle ways the followers of such forms to following a more Sinister direction. For example, in Identity, using knowledge of the Biblical doctrines and prophecies encourage war, hardship, and system disruption using the scriptures as guidance and proof of the message you are sending to adherents of the said form. Any form with a transhuman, system disruption, or satanic direction to it may be of use here. The key is finding a form that in itself is an aid to the Dialect and empowering it further, causing a saturation of Acasual Energy.
If this passage is indeed from the book, we can gather from it that the “Noctulians”, that is members of the Order of Nine Angles or more or less Tempel ov Blood at least, infiltrate various extreme political movements in order to use them for their own ends if they have the right “sinister” potential. It’s interesting how they seem reasonably confident in spelling that out, presumably under the impression that only the few would read their literature let alone take an interest in doing so to begin with. It’s also quite curious to note how the “Noctulians” frequently seek out ultra-nationalistic and fascistic groups like Atomwaffen and Christian Identity movements. This is most likely because they identify neo-Nazism as the outer rim of politics in the same way their particular form of Satanism represents the outer rim of spiritual philosophy. As one Goodreads reviewer put it, “In the context of cosmopolitan neo-liberalism, neo-Nazism quite possibly represents that furthest outer limit to most people. The neo-Nazi is the “Satanist” of the above example. No matter how they put forth their arguments, they are clearly the enemy of all the values of the society they live in, and their positions come across as gibberish when they travel beyond certain bounds.”
This strategy is echoed in other O9A books featured on the SiegeCulture website, such as Hostia, where it apparently says on page 80:
“A Satanist, concerned with experience, may use a political form for a specific purpose – the nature of that form in terms of conventional politics and morality (such as ‘extreme Right-wing’) is irrelevant. What is important is whether it can be used to (a) provide experience of living and the limits of experience, and/or (b) aid the sinister dialectic of history. Thus a Satanist may become involved in, or set up, an organization of the extreme Right – this is dangerous, exciting, vitalizes, provides experiences ‘on the edge’ and should thus aid the development of the character and insight of that Satanist*. What is important, is that this involvement is done for an ulterior, Satanic, motive: what others think and believe about such actions is totally irrelevant. Anyone purporting to be a Satanist who criticizes such an action, whatever the political hue of the group/organization, reveals by that criticism that they are not Satanists – but rather, moralizing nerds lacking in insight and real Satanic understanding.”
The book is also apparently shown advising its readers to, as part of their transformation into “Noctulians”, become burglars or join the police force in order to specialize in a particular area of theft in addition to becoming extreme right-wing political activists, for the primary purpose of living dangerous lives in order to become hardened by the experiences that come with them.
Further into the document, it is attested that Rape claims to be opposed to Satanism, calling it “gay”, even though it is shown through his Instagram (under the name Vincent Snyder) that he flaunts his interest in the Order of Nine Angles (as well as Charlie Manson). He doesn’t even hide his interest in neo-Nazism. He’s also affiliated with a guy named Dante Aschard, who not only is an avowed O9A Satanist but is also affiliated with Atomwaffen as indicted by his appearance on the Siege Culture website. Rape also runs the Siege Culture account, which puts up tweets saying stuff like “We wish everyone a Satanic millennium” as well as Satanic artwork of Charles Manson (who wasn’t even a Satanist ffs!), which would make sense for someone associating themselves with Atomwaffen. Rape also seems to like larping as a communist, or presumably a National Bolshevik (though lacking the actual NazBol flag in his photo-ops), most likely not because of his own interest in communism as an ideal but because he views it as a vehicle for “sinister” ends (to which any actual communist would either laugh or barf). He even goes so far as to claim that he was “redpilled” by Boyd Rice (who himself liked to hang around white supremacists), Anton LaVey (who was not a Nazi), and Nicholas Schreck (probably not a fascist) alongside Charles Manson and James Mason, and has expressed fondness for LaVey and Liber Falxifer (which don’t strike me as going very well together given the gulf between LaVey’s humanism and the gnostic nihilism of the Chaos Gnostics). It’s possible that he may be more interested in extreme Satanism than the Nazi politics, as he goes out of his way to say “I’m not interested in save our people” (“our people” meaning the white race, of course).
After laying out the full extent of Rape’s connection to O9A Satanism, and Satanism in general, the author goes on to say that other Atomwaffen members respond to his statements on the matter by attempting to dox him, which seems to suggest that they were against such criticism of their leadership and were willing to silence people for bringing it up.
What this development suggests is that there is a band of Order of Nine Angles Satanists who, while they may not even be neo-Nazis, they find in neo-Nazi/fascist movements the potential to carry out their desires and their will in the world, and since this is Atomwaffen we’re talking about we can assume those desires involve spreading as much terror in the world as possible and trying to start a race war. But whereas the actual neo-Nazis, as horrible as they are, are invested in their horrible ideas for decidedly ideological reasons, the O9A guys seem to be involved solely for the prospect of bringing destruction and terror to as many people as possible. Perhaps the worst thing about it is that they simply prefer to use others to do their dirty work. Though I suppose if they actually did form a militia they would probably make ISIS seem like the A-Team in terms of the pure evil that runs through their minds – I don’t say that because they’re Satanists, by no means, I say that because they’re the worst kind of Satanist you can think of: a Satanist who hates humanity, hates the world, looks at the asinine dichotomy Christianity presents and decides “I want to be the bad guy” and presumably masturbate to the works of James Mason and Charles Manson.
While some may look at this as proof of the flirtation and even concordance between fascism and LHP groups, I see it more as proof of the cultivation of esoteric fascism, and how certain individuals are using Satanism in order to manifest this current. The reason I bring the phenomenon to light is so that those in the LHP milieu are armed with the knowledge necessary to take a stand against it, because we cannot stand for it. These O9A fascists smear us with their activities, in the sense that their actions create a justification for other people to treat as alike to them when in truth most of us are nothing like them, and we must not allow the LHP milieu to be dragged into the swamp of fascistic psychopathy.
The Japanese doomsday cult known as Aum Shinrikyo has been back in the news this month, with the execution of its leader Chizuo Matsumoto (a.k.a. Shoko Asahara) on July 6th and his successors now fighting for his ashes to be scattered into the Pacific Ocean. I have covered weird religious phenomenon before, let alone from Japan, but I’m surprised to have never covered this particular cult on my website despite their infamy. Here, I hope to rectify this by providing a basic outline of their beliefs, the atrocities the cult committed, and some reasons why some people still fall into this cult well into the 2010s.
Aum Shinrikyo began in 1984 as essentially a yoga club, at the time going by the name of Aum Shinsen no Kai. Three years later, Matsumoto changed the group’s name to Aum Shinrikyo, and two years after that the group was officially recognized as a religious organization/corporation under Japanese law. By this time, Chizuo Matsumoto changed his name from his birth name to Shoko Asahara. It is said that, between 1984 and 1987, Matsumoto appeared in various spiritualist and occult magazines claiming to be capable of levitation, established a publishing firm named Chōnōryoku no Kaihatsuhō to distribute his teachings to a wider audience, and claimed to have encounters with supernatural beings, including the Hindu deity Shiva, informing him of his divine mission.
The doctrine of Aum Shinrikyo can best be summarized as an apocalyptic form of Buddhism mixed with doctrines from Christianity, Hinduism and New Age belief systems, centered of course around the personality cult of Chizuo Matsumoto. One of the main aspects of the doctrine is its interpretation of the Vajrayana Buddhist doctrine of powa, or phowa. In Vajrayana Buddhism, Powa refers to a specific ritual performed on behalf of the deceased by a Lama or a guru in order to transfer the consciousness of the deceased into a spiritual location known as a “pure land”, the abode of a Buddha or bodhisattva. This ritual is performed in order to aid the deceased in his or her journey towards spiritual liberation. In Aum Shinrikyo, however, Powa refers to the act of killing someone on behalf of Chizou Matsumoto or Aum Shinrikyo in order to stop them from accumulating negative karma through their opposition to Aum Shinrikyo or by acting in a way that undermines their interests. For example, when in 1989 a member named Taguchi Shuji decided to leave the movement after the accidental death of another member named Majima Terayuki and threatened to go public about Terayuki’s death, Chizuo Matsumoto ordered that Shuji be killed in order to protect Aum Shinrikyo’s reputation. It was believed that had Shuji informed public about the death of Terayuki within Aum Shinrikyo, Shuji would acrue eons worth of bad karma and suffer countless negative reincarnations as a result. By killing him, in accordance with the perversely interpreted doctrine of Powa, his soul could be saved from such a fate while protecting the organization. This interpretation of Powa would also go on to serve as a justification for the atrocities that were to be enacted from then on.
Matsumoto and adherents of Aum Shinrikyo also believed that the end of the world was coming imminently, with “materialism” running rampant and people having forgotten how to practice Buddhism. In East Asian forms of Buddhism, the history of Buddhism is divided into three stages: The Former Day of the Law, The Middle Day of the Law, and The Latter Day of the Law. For convenience we will use their Japanese names – Shobo, Zoho, and Mappo respectively. Shobo refers to the age of the true dharma, where said dharma was practiced by the disciples of the Buddha and flourished as such, Zoho refers to the age of copied dharma, dharma that resembles the true dharma but does not accurately reflected, and Mappo refers to the age of degenerated dharma, wherein the essence of dharma is forgotten and thus cannot be upheld properly. The concept also dovetails nicely with the Hindu concept of the Four Yugas, in which after the Satya Yuga (basically the golden age) Man strays further from God until finally Man reaches the Kali Yuga, the time in which Man is farthest from God. Typically it is held that the Mappo age is to be abolished and the Shobo age restored by Maitreya, the Buddha who is yet to be. For Aum Shinrikyo though, the duty of restoring the Shobo age falls upon them. Chizuo Matsumoto technically gave himself the role of Maitreya through his claiming to be Jesus Christ in the flesh. This of course fits into the theme of holy war, a war between the saved and the unsaved, between those who believed in Aum Shinrikyo and those outside of the cult who were held to be trapped in materialistic urges and bad karma, an idea that very much echoes the sentiments found within the Book of Revelation concerning holy war between the believers and the non-believers. Indeed Matsumoto would eventually begin referring to the concept of Armageddon by name in the run up to the sarin gas attack committed in 1995, even believing that America wanted to hasten the arrival of this event by triggering World War 3 with Japan (in true religious conspiracy theorist character).
Another notable feature is that, besides Matsumoto himself being the messiah, there is a central deity within this sect, namely Shiva, the Hindu deity of destruction, recreation and transformation. Indeed, some say Matsumoto’s messianic title refers not to him being Jesus Christ, but an incarnation of Shiva. While Hindu sects venerate Shiva as a positive figure, representing not simply destruction, let alone necessary destruction, but also the rebirth of the universe and the transformation into new forms, thereby natural and positive change, as well as a creative force in the cosmos, not to mention also venerating him as the Godhead who does battle with demons and sometimes performs self-sacrificial acts to protect the universe from premature destruction, the Aum Shinrikyo veneration of Shiva most likely stems from an obsession with the deity’s destructive aspects, dovetailing with their theme of apocalyptic salvation, destroying the world in order to “save” it. It is said that Aum Shinrikyo had a secret chapel containing a large statue of Shiva, inaccessible to all but the chosen few within the cult.
One very interesting aspect of the cult is its incorporation of bizarre paranormal technology. Members of the cult would wear headsets that connected electrodes to their heads. The idea behind this device was supposedly to allow devotees to telepathically communicate with their guru Chizuo Matsumoto by having them receive his brainwaves or synchronize their own electrical impulses with them. Another piece of technology they made was an electronic device known as an “astral teleporter”, which would purportedly pick up vibrations from Matsumoto’s meditations while he recites his mantra and transmit them to his disciples. That’s not even getting into their development of chemical weapons, and their liaisons with international networks for the purposes of acquiring them and other weapons of mass destruction.
Over the years, the cult became infamous for the various crimes and atrocities they have committed, most notably in 1995 where the cult unleashed sarin gas in a Tokyo subway, killing thirteen people and injuring many more. Following this attack, police uncovered evidence of the cult’s laboratories dedicated to producing drugs and chemical weapons. Prior to the attack, the cult perpetrated a number murders on people who opposed the cult as well as cult members who they perceived as a threat. Known victims included lawyer Tsutumi Sakamoto, along with his wife and son, fellow cultist Taguchi Shuji, another fellow cultist Tadahito Hamaguchi, and notary Kiyoshi Kariya, who died under their confinement. In the years after the 1995 sarin gas attack, the Aum Shinrikyo cult would split off into two spin-off cults – Aleph, not to be confused with yours truly, and Hikari no Wa, the latter of whom claims to want to shed the influence of the old Aum Shinrikyo and its leader. As of July 6th, Chizuo Matsumoto and six other cultists have been executed by the Japanese government for the atrocity committed in 1995, with another six still awaiting execution.
Despite the cult’s infamy, particularly following the sarin attack in 1995, the cult continued to attract membership well into the present decade. Apparently by 2016 the cult gained thousands of new members from, of all places, Russia, as evidenced by the arrests of new cult members from Russia, as well as Belarus, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. It seems that Aum Shinrikyo had set up operations in Russia shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, by which time The Japan Times reckons the cult acquired blueprints for their sarin gas attack from Russia. Russian experts suspect that the appeal of the cult is similar to that of New Age movements and even that of ISIS for young Muslims prone to radicalization – that is, those who join Aum Shinrikyo do so because they see in Chizuo Matsumoto a source of unified truth and in his cult a source of brotherhood, in much the same way some people ultimately see absolute truth and fellowship in other violent religious extremist movements (like ISIS or one of those American Christian militias). In 2016, the Russian government banned the Aum Shinrikyo cult from being practiced because it was, unsurprisingly, seen as a terrorist organization. I can only assume that this decision was made by the Russian state upon its discovery of Russian followers of the cult, lending itself to fears of a religious terror cell operating in Russia.
In Japan, Aum Shinrikyo’s spin-off cult Aleph has attracted numerous young followers despite the atrocities committed by Aum Shinrikyo. For example, in the case of an anonymous man one Kuchikomi writes for Japan Today:
Mr S was in junior high school when the sarin affair exploded on the national consciousness. He recalls being more interested than appalled, and anyway, all that was a long time ago. If anything, the connection to so dramatic an episode made his present experience all the more titillating. Moreover, he says, by then he’d spent some 40,000 yen on the training, and he was unwilling to admit that it was money down the drain.
And so he graduated into hard-core Aleph training, heavy on recorded sermons by Aum guru Shoko Asahara, currently on death row.
His awakening, when at last it came, was a strange one. It was in response to an Aleph teaching to the effect that a man who has sexual relations cannot attain enlightenment. Strange, thought Mr S – Asahara has children. “Yes,” he was told, “but the Master is no ordinary man.”
To the surprise of just about anyone, including myself who missed this development entirely when it came up, Aum Shinrikyo has been been growing in the twenty years since the sarin gas attack of 1995, with new generations in Japan developing a perverse fascination with the cult for various reasons including the good looks of some of the cult members, the absurdity of their cultish activities, the sense among sympathizers that their murderous acts were motivated not out of malice but out of obedience to their guru, and broad empathy with the cult and its leader for standing against a society that frustrates them.
That last part needs to be looked at rather carefully, especially given how apparently Aum Shinrikyo literature is known for emphasizing contempt for contemporary society. The fact that such a reprehensible cult known to the public for committing atrocities, ones that have had a significant negative impact on the national consciousness of Japan, can still attract a number of converts to me says something about the widespread alienation within Japanese society. I mean think about it: this is the country that actually has its own word for working yourself to death, itself testament to a horrendous work culture where you just tough it out until you die. A country known for its notoriously high suicide rates. A country where one bad day might turn you into a complete and total shut-in. A country whose social attitudes are defined by deference to authority or the social group above almost anything else including the individual. And to top it all off, like many East Asian cultures, the elder generations are never to be put at fault on pain of violating long-embedded Confucian virtue towards respecting your elders, and criticizing authority in general is considered anathema in Japanese society, so everything bad about Japan can be shafted to the younger generation (admittedly not too dissimilar to attitude baby boomers have towards millennials here in the West), who are socially and economically powerless.
The more you learn about Japanese society, the more you understand how profoundly dysfunctional it is. This is especially relevant when dealing with young converts of the cult. If you have a society that a generation of people has come to see is against, they might well go off towards anything that can stand against it. For some of these people, it seems, the Aum Shinrikyo cult is one avenue by which to actively resist the social order because it appeals to their alienation and the sense of a lack of purpose, or they just fall in love with criminals because they see them as attractive bad boys. Like with a lot of cults, people facing alienation and other social ills will often gravitate towards whatever suits them best, including totalitarian cults. Just ask anyone who’s ever been in groups like the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, Yahweh Nation, ACMTC or Scientology.
On the whole, damn, I can’t believe I didn’t cover this subject much sooner. Learning about the cult has definitely yielded some surprises on my part. A perverted Buddhist doctrine fighting to bring about the end of days, believing this will save the souls of the mass dead from accumulating bad karma, in the name of a self-proclaimed reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and to that end amassing and developing weapons of mass destruction, mind controlling drugs and paranormal technologies, and killing those who oppose them or don’t believe in them, and now potentially hiding out in Europe after the arrest of their leader and other cultists. In a sane world, this would be the stuff of movies, video games and thriller novels, and I guess manga as well (this is Japan after all). To be honest, I’ll be disappointed if Chizuo Matsumoto’s execution is the last we hear from them, considering the cells that are likely hiding outside of Japan.
Chizuo Matsumoto (Shoko Asahara) in an animated promo video for Aum Shinrikyo
I did not plan to write something like this right now, and I am still supposed to working on my next post about Satanism and all that, but something happened recently that hit somewhat close to home, and I have reflected on it, as well as the reaction and possible ramifications.
As I’m sure you know, there was a terrorist attack on an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in which 22 people were killed, including children who have been subject to horrific injuries. It was a suicide attack carried out by a 22 year old man named Salman Abedi, and the possibility that he was operating as part of a wider terror plot rather than as a lone wolf is seriously being considered. I have two people who I work with who are from Manchester who have been talking about it yesterday, and I’m sure have contacted their relatives to see if everything is OK. As of today, the terror threat level in the UK has been raised to Critical, meaning that more terrorist attacks are expected to occur very soon. The country is putting itself on high alert, and there’s talk of troops being sent to patrol the streets as though this country has turned into fucking Israel!
And what did we do immediately following the Manchester attack? The usual. We cry, we mourn, we change our Facebook profiles and whatnot, pretend that they will not divide us, preach about diversity and inclusion, and then Muslims come out and pretend that they are the real victims, not the people that Islamic radicals blew to smithereens. Oh and don’t forget the Sadiq Khan message: terrorism is just like the weather now, “part and parcel of living in a big city”, just the bread and butter of the modern world. I can’t be the only one who’s had enough here.
Oh, and the Metropolitan Police have decided that any rabble-rousers who aren’t going on about peace and unity and all that bullshit and instead speak against Islam can be investigated for “Islamophobic hate speech”. Isn’t that just the cherry on top of the shit sundae?
Lots of terrorist attacks have happened in my day, not just in the UK but also the Western world, Europe in particular, and in my opinion too many. And every time it feels like the same cycle. For over 20 years, we in the West have tried dealing with this shit by either creating borderline police/surveillance states to diminish the civil liberties of their own people, we go to wars with Middle Eastern countries and then we try playing nice and needlessly shielding all Muslims and their shitty religion from criticism when most of us are mad at the terrorists rather than all Muslims, going so far as to discuss race where the issue does not belong (and both extremes seem to forget that Islam is not a race). None of this changes the problem. We strip away liberty, we cause destruction and then we bend over backwards to a force that wants us dead and our values defiled, all for nothing. And one someone comes up with a different solution, any at all. They are dismissed as xenophobic. The simple idea of controlled immigration is automatically deemed racist, because they believe that opposing immigration can only be based on hate. The idea that we should be tackling Islamist ideology is seen as “Islamophobic”, and racist, because people stupidly confuse Islam to be a racial group, rather than a religious one. The idea of promoting integration, promoting your own societal values and looking out for the interests of your own country is automatically, without context, denounced as fascistic, funny enough by people who don’t seem to know what actual fascism is.
And this whole spell that we should all just live with it is odious. Terrorism is treated like it’s a natural disaster, something that always has been and always will be with us. But that is madness! Terrorism isn’t something that occurs normally as part of civilized society. It is the product of the will to kill innocents on the part of violent individuals, in many cases an ideology that demands the radical and violent overthrow of a given social structure in favor of a typically authoritarian or totalitarian worldview and an array of societal ills that contribute to the growth of terrorism. You can’t just say this is a normal thing and an inevitable course of modern life that we can’t hope to solve. Sure, we will never be able to *completely* eliminate all terrorism from society at large, but to suggest that we shouldn’t even try and instead just live with it as though you would live with heavy rain and thunderstorms is not just defeatist, it’s also callous. We’ve tried carrying on as things were before, and I don’t think things are getting better. Not that such a thing ever happens when you decide to ignore a problem. And don’t give me any bullshit that this is some kind of blowback to the West, when terrorists kill lots of people in the Middle East just that no one notices, and right now the Philippines is in a state of martial law because of an Islamic terror group taking over a city in the country. What the hell did the Philippines do to deserve getting attacked by Islamists I wonder!
I think we need to come up with far better solutions than the kind we have offered for the problem, and we need to figure something out soon. Because the longer people keep seeing nothing change, and being told that nothing ought to change, eventually we’ll reach a point where they’ll say “we’re not gonna take it anymore”.
So I imagine you might already know what happened recently, but yesterday a terrorist killed four people outside of Parliament before being shot by police officers, after which Westminster went into lock-down for the day. At first the attacker was identified as a radical Islamic preacher named Abu Izzadeen by the likes of Channel 4 and The Independent, but it emerged that he is currently in prison serving a two year sentence for attempting to illegally leave the UK, contravening the Terrorism Act of 2006. Today, however, the attacker has been identified as Khalid Masood, who apparently had a string of convictions for non-terrorism related offences and had been under investigation by the state over concerns of violent extremism, and eight more people have been arrested after the attack. It was a small attack, but it does seem to be a case of terrorism that may be tied to radical Islam.
Oh, and just today someone tried to run over a crowd of people in Antwerp, Belgium, with his car. The suspect has apparently been identified as a man named Mohammad R, a Tunisian national. And as both these things happen, we are only a year removed from the bombing that occurred in Brussels.
I am so tired of this. I’m so tired of seeing more terrorism happen and it seems there’s a Muslim radical or radicals behind it. And every time it happens I’m fed up with the tiresome virtue signal that comes in the form of the prayers from those who think that’s supposed to make it all better. People have prayed for Paris, for San Bernandino, Brussels, Orlando, Nice, Munich, Ansbach and Berlin and what in nebulous fuck did it accomplish? Nothing. They’ve changed theirr icons on Facebook or whatever to those flag overlays in solidarity with the country where the attack happened, and nothing happened. And now they’re all praying for London like nothing happened over the last two years. And no matter what, the response we need to see does not manifest itself. There is no conversation about the threat of radical Islam, there is only apologizing for Islam. There is no action taken against terrorist networks, and no rebuking of those who fund terrorism in the Middle East. The powers and that be and the media class sing the same tune, seemingly without end. I know it may sound like a cliche, but it seems to me that madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result each time.
That’s it. That’s all I have to say on this, for there is not much else to say on the matter.
As I’m sure you’ve heard it in the news recently, ISIL has attacked Medina – a major site of pilgrimage and the second holiest city in the Islamic faith. One thing I notice on social media is how people have used this event to say “see? these guys have nothing to do with Islam!”. After all, what sincerely believing Muslim would think to attack Medina of all places? Of course I’m sure you know that ISIL has attacked other Muslims before. In fact, other Muslims seem to be very frequent targets of attacks by ISIL. Their attack on Medina isn’t even the first time they’ve attacked a mosque. Remember when they attacked a mosque in Kuwait, and during last year’s Ramadan no less?
Here’s the thing the people who say “they’re not Muslims” are missing: ISIL don’t consider their Muslim victims as fellow Muslims. They follow a particularly extreme version of the Islamic faith, which in the end is still an extension of Islam in the same way that fundamentalist Christians practice a hardcore belief system that is still an extension of the Christian faith. Specifically, they are proponents of a branch of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism, which today is the sponsored belief system of the state of Saudi Arabia – the same state that is believed to be supporting ISIL. Wahhabism emphasizes strict adherence to Islamic law, believes in an absolute monotheism and rejects any heterodoxy, debate or more modern or liberal interpretations of the Quran and the Hadith. Wahhabists view themselves as following the true path laid out by Allah based on the teachings of the Quran through a very conservative and literal interpretation of Islamic teachings, and naturally they believe everyone else to be following heterodox teachings. This is exactly why ISIL is willing to kill other Muslims. In their eyes anyone, literally anyone, who does not follow their particular interpretation of Islam is an infidel and a non-believer, and they believe that non-believers are to be killed. To them a moderate Muslim is just another infidel. I mean fuck, these people actually view the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist political party of Egypt, as a cancer and they think of their belief system as pagan. That’s like how fundamentalist Christians view other Christians celebrating Christmas and Easter as practicing pagan tradition. I cannot believe this is lost on people.
Then you have the eschatological element. It’s important to remember that ISIL wants the West to wage war against them. They await the day when the armies of Rome will face them in the small town of Dabiq, which is located in Syria. Why Dabiq, you ask? Because apparently in the Hadith it is stated that, during the “last hour”, the armies of Rome will come to Dabiq to fight Muslim armies, at which point the armies of Rome would be defeated, which begins the countdown to the arrival of a being known as Al-Masih ad-Dajjal (better known simply as Dajjal) and the beginning of the apocalypse. Since the Hadith are considered to be recordings of the thoughts, words and actions of the prophet Muhammad, the central figure of the Islamic faith (being the messenger of Allah and all), it is safe to infer that ISIL consider what the Hadith says about the end of days to be, literally, the word of Muhammad. And in the absence of an actual Roman empire or an army commanded by the Pope, it’s not unreasonable to assume that ISIL have chosen to interpret Rome as meaning the Western world or the armies of NATO. They literally believe that by defeating the Western armies in Dabiq, it will trigger the end times. They want to make this happen, for the same reasons that Christians await the arrival of Judgement Day (or in some cases the Rapture). And for this to happen, the West has to declare war on ISIL. To that end, this is why they go about committing such horrible acts of violence and destruction upon innocent people (Muslim or not) and upon the land that they, and why they have agents committing terror attacks and massacres in Europe and more recently in America. By creating havoc and inflicting pain upon our world, they are clearly intending to provoke a violent response in order to get us to declare war on them so that eventually we would fight them in Dabiq. And again, they literally believe that the apocalypse will occur if this happens, because they believe that what is said in the Quran and the Hadiths is literally 100% true, because they are religious as fuck. Violently so too. Those who try to divorce them from Islam by referring to them as thugs simply do not understand this. Even if they are chiefly psychotic warmongers, it is impossible to ignore that they are very much religiously motivated.
In my opinion, this may also partly explain why some Muslims in the Western world go and join ISIL. It’s important to stress that not all Muslims are religious fanatics. In fact, much of the Muslim world is perfectly willing to condemn ISIL. And I certainly don’t believe that most Muslims are inclined to join ISIL or any other militant Islamist movement, just as I don’t believe most Christians are going to join the KKK our go out and kill homosexuals. But it is also important to remember that there are large numbers of Muslims who want Sharia law implemented in the Western world. I don’t feel inclined to doubt that for every “cultural” Muslim who isn’t actually particularly religious, you have Muslims (not necessarily radicals I might add) who are sincerely religious. The concept of all Islamic countries being united under a single caliphate is, from what I hear, a concept that appeals to some Muslims, and apparently there have been at least four historical caliphates, the last one having been established in the Ottoman Empire. So when ISIL marches across the Middle East promising to create a new caliphate based on Islamic law, I am not surprised that groups like ISIL can recruit Muslims in the Western world.
Ruins of the Sulayman Bin-Abd-al-Malik shrine in Dabiq, Syria
Recently I had heard that another person in Bangladesh had been murdered on the basis of atheistic or humanistic beliefs by religiously-motivated fanatics. Nazim Uddin Samad was a law student at Jagganath University in Sadarghat before he was hacked and shot to death by members of Ansar al-Islam, who are actually a branch of al-Qaeda, all because he posted a criticism of Islamic religious fundamentalism on his Facebook. It was yet another senseless act of violence, one that was appallingly familiar to me (two years ago I heard about a guy called Thaba Baba who was killed in the country for much the same reason). Now, when you have such a senseless brutal murder on your hands, you might ask, what does the government do about this? Well guess what? Bangladesh’s Minister of Home Affairs, Asaduzzaman Khan, decided to assert that bloggers should “control their writing” and decided that the government needed to “scrutinize” his writings to see if he wrote anything objectionable about religion.
I actually have a few words for Asaduzzaman Khan: what the fuck are you talking about!? That Nazim wrote anything “objectionable” towards religion is not the point! You should know damn well that Nazim was murdered by people who wanted to impose their fanatical religious beliefs on others through violence, and through that violence induce fear and terror with the obvious purpose of forcing others to observe their beliefs and destroying the right to freedom of speech. The problem isn’t that he offended certain religious beliefs, it’s that an innocent man was killed for expressing his opinions and the government is not only doing fuck all to stop it, but has actively decided that people expressing their opinions is the problem rather than people being killed by goddamned terrorists! In my opinion, that you’re warning bloggers to be wary of “hurting the feelings of religious people” is a sure sign that you don’t want to protect freedom of speech or freedom of belief, that you have no intention of stopping religious extremists from doing the wrong thing. You’re condemning innocent people to die and you don’t even know it, because you don’t treat these terrorists who kill innocent people as criminals, which is the way they should be treated in the fucking first place!
That is disgusting! It’s abominable, and no one should stand for it!
Nazim is far from the only person to be murdered for criticizing Islamic extremism. Two years ago I mentioned in one of my posts a guy called Thaba Baba (aka Ahmed Rajib Haider), who was killed in 2013 by Islamists. But Thaba Baba is not the only one either. Last year, five other secular atheist bloggers were also murdered: Avjit Roy, Faisal Arefin Dipan, Anant Bijoy Das, Washiqur Rahman Babu, and Niloy Chakrabarti were all hacked to death on separate occasions. Some of them, like Arif Noor and Asif Mohiuddin, manage to survive their injuries. Often times, when the bloggers aren’t being attacked and killed by Islamists, they’re receiving death threats from these people. Ananya Azad, for instance, was told that he would be next after nine other bloggers out of a hit list of 84 were murdered. Another blogger, Maruf Rusal, had received several threatening calls from Islamists, some of whom offered to “buy [him] a coffin”. And sometimes, the government of Bangladesh arrested atheist bloggers, including Asif Mohiuddin, for violating Bangladesh’s apparent “blasphemy laws”. Although Mohiuddin was eventually released, let the word be known: Bangladesh’s supposedly secular government arrested bloggers for writing against Islamic extremism, and all instead of punishing whose who want to kill people simply for not believing in their interpretation of Islam. In Bangladesh, the threat of being killed for speaking out as an atheist, secularist, or humanist very is real, and people in Bangladesh are justifiably terrified of such a thing happening to them, while the government does fuck all to stop it.
In fact, before he died, Nazim wrote a criticism of the current ruling government, writing this (originally in Bengali):
The situation of the country, deterioration of law and order in the country, speak that maybe you cannot stay long in power.
Quite obviously Nazim was aware of people being killed for doing nothing more than , and he seems to have observed that the government in Bangladesh, despite its supposed commitment to delivering justice, has done nothing about it. And now, after his death, the government has decided to warn the victims not to speak their minds, instead of warning the terrorist religious fundamentalists that they will face justice for their crimes. And it’s true what Nazim said isn’t it? If religious fundamentalists can kill innocent people and a supposedly secular government hasn’t done much to stop it or even discourage it, then that is a deterioration of law and order, a sign of the takeover of religious extremism, and a sign that the government of Bangladesh is giving up its legitimacy as a government because it won’t defend its own people – a sign that a country is going straight to shit!
Since last year, ISIL has been busy establishing itself as a clear and present danger to the Western world and beyond. I’m sure we have all become familiar with their beheading of non-believers and showing it on the Internet, their campaign of the destruction of the remnants of pre-Islamic civilization (along with actual Islamic mosques), their invasions of various settlements in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, and the phenomenon of young Muslims migrating to the Middle East in order to join ISIL. Not to mention their militant form of Islamic teachings. It’s little wonder that they have been feared as a credible fighting force in the modern world, or how many people in the world may feel they could only watch and see if ISIL will advance far enough to be able to encroach on their lives.
On the other hand, I feel this is set to change. While I admit it may be too early to say for sure, I have a strange feeling that ISIL are proving themselves to not necessarily be the nigh-unstoppable force of destruction and terror that they may have come off as.
For starters, given the way they apparently abuse those who join their cause, and the rumors that even Jihadi John is fleeing ISIL for fears that they will kill him the moment they deem him useless to their cause, it seems to me that ISIL is incapable of inspiring any real loyalty from its recruits, and when that happens it’s only a matter of time before more and more people who once joined start fleeing the group. A fighting force that cannot inspire loyalty in its members, and serves only to inspire fear and loathing, is a fighting force that’s doomed to grow weaker as it sees less people willing to fight for it, until it consists of only the few who are fanatical or stupid enough to stay on and meet their demise.
I also think the forces fighting against ISIL have proven capable of doing major damage to the group. In fact, American forces managed to kill a senior member over two months ago, one Abu Sayyaf to be precise. And apparently, Sayyaf had been the one who oversaw ISIL’s financial operations and helped them direct their illicit oil and gas, which is seen as a key source of revenue for ISIL that would enable them to carry out their military operations.
And more recently, I think ISIL may well have proven themselves to be far stupider than we all thought, as two of ISIL’s chiefs manage to blow themselves up with their own explosives. Call me crazy, but if they’re dumb enough to get themselves blown up by one of their own explosives, then it’s going to be difficult to convince me of their intelligence as a fighting force. In fact, if I hear of a lot more of incidents like that, coupled with ISIL’s monstrous treatment of its own members, then I will seriously entertain the possibility that ISIL might end up destroying themselves before any army gets closer to destroying them.
As I said, it’s still far too early to say, and there’s plenty I probably don’t understand about what’s going on in the Middle East, but I have a feeling that it shouldn’t be too long before ISIL is no longer feared by the world. In any case, I think the army fighting against ISIL has a much better chance of defeating ISIL than ISIL has of defeating it. All the coalition may have to do about ISIL is press on and crush them. But I guess that much remains to be seen.
Those wacky Christian fanatics. They just never give up do they? Even in the face of incontrovertible defeat at the hands of the judgement of secular law, with liberty on its side no less, they simply can’t allow themselves to quit no matter how weak they are at the end of it. You may remember that the Ten Commandments monument at Oklahoma State Capitol was ruled by the state’s supreme court as a violation of the separation of church and state and that it was decided the monument must be removed on those grounds. You may also remember that this meant the Satanic Temple’s statue of Satan (depicted as a Baphomet figure), which was meant to counter the presence of the Ten Commandments monument, had become unnecessary as a result, and was left pretty much without a home. Well since then, the Satanic Temple has planned to unveil the statue in Detroit, but there’s been a snag in their plans. The statue was originally planned to be displayed publicly at Bert’s Market Place in the Eastern Market District of Detroit, but the Satanic Temple has decided to instead unveil the statue privately at a secret ticketed event. The Satanic Temple made its decision because the usual Christian fanatics have threatened to destroy the statue.
The completed Satanic Temple statue, before bronzing.
There is only one word for the sort of behavior being directed at the Satanic Temple: terrorism. There’s simply no other way to describe it. When you make threats of violence or harassment towards an individual or organization and demand that they suppress their activities because they don’t conform to your religious or political views or express themselves as such, then you are a terrorist and there’s no ifs and buts about it. It’s as simple as that. The mentality of these Christian fanatics is no different at all to the way Islamic terrorists have threatened those who draw cartoons of their prophet Muhammad or satirically portray their religion. The whole idea is to suppress people, to silence, to forbid freedom of expression by using threats of violence. It matters not whether you act on those threats, if you make the threats at all then you clearly intend to violently suppress people for expressing themselves, or encourage doing that such suppression take place, and that makes you a terrorist. Some people might not see this, because they only see terrorism as something that can take place successfully (a la the attacks that have been carried out by Islamic terrorists over the past 14 years). But what needs to be understand is that terrorism means trying to suppress people with threats of violence, harassment, and persecution, and as long as this is true it doesn’t matter if any threats of violence are actually acted upon because you’re already engaging in coercive behavior with no justifiable motivation. Nothing, except pure hatred and the mistaken belief that everyone must conform to certain beliefs, let alone totally and by the letter.
The fact that such terrorism exists in America and is overlooked, I’m actually worried that America is in danger losing the moral ground to actually condemn terrorism, and who knows what disaster could ensue in the country what that’s the case. I feel these hooligans who threaten religious liberty should be made an example of, to prove that this sort of terrorism is not OK on American soil, or anywhere.
Aleph's Heretical Domain 
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