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Varg Vikernes, or legally known as Louis Cachet, (born February 11, 1973) is a Norwegian musician, writer, and convicted murderer. In 1993, he stabbed fellow Mayhem guitarist Euronymous to death and was sentenced to 21 years of prison in 1994. He also believes in his own version of folkish Norse paganism called Odalism and is a fierce White Supremacist, and was allegedly the leader of the now disbanded Neo-Nazi organization Heathen Front, which he founded in prison. Vikernes is also responsible for several church burnings including the historical Fantoft State Church dating to the 12th century. He also intended to blow up a far-left organization called the Blitz House. He was released on parole in 2009 and is now living with his family in France.
Biography
He spent part of his childhood in Iraq, where his dad worked for the government and claimed that the teachers would not dare to touch him, because he was white. He became "race conscious" as a child and mentioned that while his dad had a Nazi flag, he was worried about his son becoming a Nazi, leading Varg to brand his father a hypocrite. His mother was also "race-conscious", worrying that her son would bring home a Black girl.
As a child, he was a fan of classical music, especially Tchaikovsky, as well as as the Middle-earth in the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings universe. The band name Burzum was taken from the Black Speech on the One Ring in The Lord of The Rings, while his stage name Grishnackh was from an orc in The Two Towers.
Vikernes is the solo member of the band Burzum, one of the most important bands of the early Norwegian black metal scene. Vikernes later gained more mainstream "fame" by burning a bunch of medieval wooden churches and murdering fellow black metal musician and collaborator Øystein Aarseth (aka. 'Euronymous') of Mayhem. Vikernes was said to have stabbed Euronymous 23 times due to a power struggle. In October 2003, after being granted a short leave, he hijacked a family of 3 at gunpoint in the village of Numedal. He was arrested about 20 hours later in Romerike. The car contained knives, a GPS navigator, camoflauge clothing, a compass, maps and a laptop. He was later sent to a maximum security prison. Vikernes was released in 2009 after over 15 years in prison. These "extra-curricular activities", along with his generally odious personal views, have made Vikernes a highly controversial figure in the metal community. One could restate Godwin's law as "As an online discussion on black metal grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Burzum or Varg approaches one." It should be pointed out that Vikernes' music does not contain neo-Nazi lyrics or imagery. Many metalheads praise Vikernes for his musical ability, while disliking his personal ideology. Similarly, many pagan religions including Odinism denounce the white supremacism that has been associated with the religions.
Vikernes has expressed supremacist views regarding evolution. Most notably, his claim that white Europeans descended from Neanderthals and are therefore (somehow) biologically more intelligent. In a video on his YouTube channel "ThuleanPerspective", Varg has apparently decided that depictions of what actual Neanderthals might have actually looked like were "painted by priests in the 19th century who were bent on showing the European culture as primitive and subhuman". He then goes on to show pictures of Vikings and ancient Norsemen, and assures us that these are what Neanderthals actually were.
Vikernes is also an anti-vaxxer, not just because of the mercury myth, but also because "[vaccines] make morally bankrupt Jews in the medical industry (even more) filthy rich and powerful". Along with politics, Vikernes appears to view most aspects of modern European culture through his belief in an international Jewish conspiracy, and takes The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as an authentic document, not realizing it's been exposed as a hoax decades ago. As one would naturally expect at this point, Vikernes doesn't "trust the official story" when it comes to the Holocaust, stopping just a hair's breadth from full-blown Holocaust denial.
Vikernes is also something of a prepper, stating that you should immediately "stockpile fuel, guns, ammo, canned food et cetera, and withdraw all your money from the bank.". He now lives in the picturesque center of France, probably because these low-density rural areas make it easy to acquire a big farm with some land and accumulate said resources. In July 2013, the French police raided his farm after his wife legally bought 4 hunting carbines. Minister Manuel Valls claimed the intelligence services were worried he might go on a terrorist murder spree since Vikernes was one of the 530 persons who received Anders Behring Breivik's manifesto. The only charge that could be held against him in the end was "incitement of racial hate" which got him 6 months of probation and a minor fine.
In 2013, Vikernes released the first edition of his attempt at an old-school fantasy role-playing game, Myfarog: Mythic Fantasy Role-playing Game, based on pre-medieval, pre-Christian European mythology and history, allowing you the opportunity to "play a game in accordance with your own European nature". A second edition of the game was released some time later. Whether the actual game design is successful or not is up for debate, but he has been accused of writing some of the lore based on his racist ideologies. Varg himself has attempted to defend himself from these accusations.
In June 2019, Vikernes' YouTube channel was permanently banned as part of YouTube's new content policy on hate speech.
Trivia
- Although Anders Behring Breivik sent him a copy of his manifesto, Vikernes agreed with some of his views while theorizing that he was working under a Jewish conspiracy. He also called Breivik a "Christian loser" who killed innocent Norwegians and mentioned that “If you, dear European nationalists, really want to save Europe (as a biological term) you have to realise that the only thing to do is to cast aside all Christian and other international nonsense and embrace only the European (i.e. Pagan) values and ideals.”
- He once sent a letter bomb to Ze'ev Tannenbom of the Israeli metal band Salem.
- He is a fan of the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit series.
- He has described himself as a "romantic" who dreams of performing acts of heroism.