Odinists have been identified as violent white supremacists for several decades. Their religion, based on a pagan medieval Scandinavian religion, enacts “group rituals (including animal sacrifice) and hold fights between members to test their masculinity.” They have been regularly connected to Aryan and alt-right violence, such as Jeremy Christian’s May 2017 attack in Portland, Oregon. They practice a form of toxic masculinity based on their ideas of how the barbaric warriors of medieval Northern Europe functioned as a violent warrior comitatus. The Odinists, often called the Wolves or Sons of Vinland, claim their religion is based on a medieval, pre-Christian Scandinavian belief that worships the god Odin and is organized into warrior gangs.
I will discuss two different examples of how they use, abuse, and exploit ideas of white medieval religions in order to push their violent racist vision.
The alt-right is interested in using the medieval European past because it sees this historical epoch as a space of pure white religious and racial culture.
Their message is intended to incite violent racism, xenophobia, toxic masculinity, Islamaphobia, and anti-Semitism. Almost all the major nodes of this universe are attached to specific iterations of the medieval past. The best article that explains this universe is Joseph Bernstein’s Buzzfeed piece from 2017, “Alt-White: How the Breitbart Machine Launched Racist Hate.” With evidence from a trove of leaked emails and documents, Bernstein maps all parts of the alt-right universe how they are connected and deliberately take orders from Steve Bannon to infiltrate, normalize, and make racist and gendered hate mainstream. The alt-right is a specific political and social ecosystem that has many nodes. Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue Topic
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