Heathen Front
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The Allgermanische Heidnische Front (AHF) was an international neo-Nazi organisation, active during the late 1990s and early 2000s, that espoused a form of neo-völkisch Germanic Neopaganism. It grew from the Norsk Hedensk Front (NHF), which was claimed to be led and founded by the musician Varg Vikernes in 1993, although he and the organisation denied it. The program was based on his first book, Vargsmål (1994), published shortly after he was convicted for church arson and the murder of fellow musician Euronymous.
As of 2005, the organization is defunct.
Biography edit
Norsk Hedensk Front (Norwegian Heathen Front) was founded in 1993. Its program was based on Vargsmål, a book by Norwegian black metal musician Varg Vikernes. Swedish scholar Matthias Gardell states in his 2003 book Gods of the Blood that Vikernes launched the Heathen Front through which he advocated "national socialism, anti-Semitism, eugenics and racist paganism."
The Encyclopedia of White Power (2000) said that Vikernes was the "self-proclaimed leader" of the Norwegian Heathen Front and the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke mentioned that Vikernes underlined "his role as chieftain of his Norwegian Heathen Front" with the writing of Vargsmål, "formulat[ing] his heathen ideology using material from Norse mythology combined with occult National Socialism". As of 1999, Heathen Front's website was selling Vargsmå.
The Norwegian Heathen Front soon became the Allgermanische Heidnische Front (AHF), a network of organizations in different countries. The Swedish Heathen Front (Svensk Hednisk Front) was a small group formed around 1996. The German chapter, Deutsche Heidnische Front, was founded in 1998 by Hendrik Möbus of the band Absurd In 2001, the AHF claimed chapters in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, Canada, Russia and Flanders.
There was also a short-lived English Heathen Front closely associated during its inception with the British Movement but later linked by Searchlight, the anti-fascist monthly, to Tom Gowers, an officer of the British National Party based in the East Midlands, and to the militant odinist group Woden's Folk.
The organisation with time became a forum for neo-Nazis and heathen nationalists. In 2005 the Allgermanische Heidnische Front was closed down. Its members spread to other organisations.
Summary of ideology edit
The group's ideology was part of the loosely defined Neo-völkisch movement sometimes known as Odinism. The organization described its specific ideas as "Odalism", derived from the Germanic rune Odal (ᛟ). This movement rejects conventional academic research on history and archaeology, instead interpreting Germanic mythology as esoterically transmitted via ancestry.
The Heathen Front espoused neo-Nazism, white supremacism and anti-semitism. A 2001 report by the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism describes the Svensk Hednisk Front (Swedish Heathen Front – SHF) as "an emerging Nazi organization" with an ideology blending "Odinism, anti-Christianity and antisemitism."