WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SOME EXTREMELY OFFENSIVE/UPSETTING CONTENT

In January this year, there was a liberal outcry in the UK after the non-violent environmentalist group Extinction Rebellion appeared on a watch-list compiled by counter-terror police. Titled Safeguarding young people and adults from ideological extremism, the 12-page document, produced by officials in the south-east, listed a variety of ideologies deemed dangerous enough to warrant reporting an individual to the Government’s Prevent safeguarding programme. While Extinction Rebellion made the list, one group that did not was the Order of Nine Angles (O9A/ONA), a UK-originating Nazi-Satanist cult that has openly promoted extreme violence for decades, and has influenced terroristic nazi groups on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite its distinctive terminology and iconography, the availability of its published works, its understood goals, strategies and tactics and its documented impact on the extreme fringes, O9A continues to fly under the police radar, who appear too bewildered by the group to understand its threat and take action.

HISTORY AND IDEAS

While it claims to have pre-Christian roots, O9A’s modern iteration originated in the early 1970s, when British nazi David Myatt, using the alias Anton Long, developed a system that intertwined elements of Satanism, paganism and Nazism into a bizarre pseudo-religious political cult. In brief, O9A seeks to harness supernatural forces and overthrow the alleged “Nazarene/Magian” (Jewish) influence on society, reduce the population of “mundanes” through acts of extreme barbarism, and usher in a new imperial aeon (age) ruled by a race of Satanic supermen who would colonise the solar system.

Such notions are patently absurd, but as Jacob C. Senholt of the University of Aarhus claims, unlike many Satanic creeds, O9A is inherently intertwined with extreme politics, and is bent on subverting and destabilising society through both “magick” and practical action.

There is a deeply transgressive spirit and a very real cruelty at the core of O9A, which encourages acolytes to engage in forbidden and illegal acts, including extreme violence, sexual assault, assassinations and human sacrifices (or “culling”). Doing so supposedly enables contact with sinister supernatural forces, and accelerates the breakdown of the current system. In The Dreccian Way, leading O9A figure Richard Moult (AKA Christos Beest) writes: “To cull humans is to be the ONA.”

O9A is organised into “nexions” (chapters), and climbing O9A’s hierarchy requires founding and leading one’s own nexion. Groups resembling O9A are known to have been founded in mainland Europe, the US and New Zealand, but as Senholt writes, it is difficult to ascertain which of these groups “are merely inspired by O9A, sharing their ethos, and which groups are a direct result of an initiate’s work within the order”.

The group’s hierarchy also requires followers to undertake “insight roles”, which means spending a minimum of six months infiltrating and subverting other organisations or religions in order to gain new experience, thereby strengthening O9A. The O9A work Hostia directs initiates to: “Undertake the role of extreme political activist and so champion heretical views (by e.g. becoming involved in extreme Right- Wing activism)”, or alternatively to join the police.

Myatt, who regards Nazi Germany to be “a practical expression of Satanic spirit”, has been actively involved in extreme right politics for decades. In the 1990s he contributed to the emergence of a militant far-right underground in the UK. He was a particular influence on the Sargent wing of the nazi terror group Combat 18, and also founded the National Socialist Movement, which counted the 1999 London nailbomber David Copeland among its members.

When asked in 2005 if O9A was posing as nazis to recruit and spread its message, Myatt responded:

“You seem to have missed the point about O9A and National Socialism. From the get-go the O9A have propagated holocaust revisionism, have praised Hitler, have encouraged members to join NS groups, with one of their core principles being, to quote Professor Monette, ‘the Way of Defiance of and Practical Opposition to Magian Abstractions’. This principle refers to the O9A’s opposition to what it perceives as illegitimate Magian (western Judaeo-Christian) control of global culture and economics.

Magian is O9A code for ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government – a phrase to describe the Jewish control of the state that became widely adopted by nazis in the 1980s and 90s].

For Myatt, a National Socialist society can only be achieved by revolution: “Revolution means struggle: it means war. It means certain tactics have to be employed, and a great revolutionary movement organised which is primarily composed of those prepared to fight, prepared to get their hands dirty and perhaps spill some blood.”

In 1998, Myatt wrote A Practical Guide to The Strategy and Tactics of Revolution, widely considered his terrorist manifesto.

Myatt converted to fundamentalist Islam, initially as an attempt to unite jihadists and nazis over their mutual hatred of Jews, but when that failed he threw himself into hard-line Islamism. He became a strong supporter of Hamas and al- Qaeda, writing long diatribes in support of terrorism and suicide attacks.

Whether Myatt had genuinely converted is open to question, but given his life and the O9A rules, his promotion of Islamism is just as likely to have been another period of “insight” rather than a true conversion.

THE RESURGENCE

Given its clandestine and decentralised nature, it is difficult to estimate O9A’s true size and influence with confidence. Some believe it’s comprised of just a handful of people, while others put its global membership at 2,000. Whatever the true figure, what is abundantly clear is that O9A has enjoyed a recent resurgence among several of both the USA’s and UK’s most extreme terroristic far-right groups, and has gained a new visibility online. Most disturbingly, the adoption of O9A’s philosophy of unbridled transgression and depravity appears to have played a role in excusing, or even fostering, a culture of violent sexual sadism and the promotion of weaponised rape among certain sections of the extreme right. O9A operates on two levels. It sends its supporters into existing organisations to influence and recruit, but it also disseminates its propaganda far and wide, both through its own platforms and those of others. O9A functions both as a covert organisation, and as a brand suited to the online post-organisational far right: young radicals drawn to extreme fringe ideas can easily access O9A material and take from it what they wish.

National Action

Ryan Fleming was a prominent activist within the now-banned British terrorist group National Action (NA). He got involved in NA in February 2015 after he made contact through the now-defunct nazi forum Iron March (IM), offering his services as a cybersecurity expert. His first public appearance for NA was on its Newcastle demo, where he made a hard-line barnstorming speech, described by soon-to-be terrorist Jack Renshaw as “great bants”.

What his new NA friends did not know was that Fleming was an important figure in O9A, running its Yorkshire nexion, and was closely linked to its offshoot in the US, the ‘Tempel ov Blood’ (ToB).

Fleming was also an established writer on the occult and Satanist scene, writing several books under the pseudonym A. A. Morain. Among his masterpieces were Scithain: Vampyric Witchcraft of the Drakon Covenant and Codex Aristarchus, with the latter having a foreword written by Czar Azag-kala of ToB. Fleming’s books focus on hunting down people in rural settings and feeding on them.

In 2011, Fleming was jailed for the sexual assault of a vulnerable young man, who he had imprisoned and tortured before forcing him to perform a sex act. This was not considered serious enough to have him excluded from NA. In 2017, after NA was banned, he was jailed for sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl.

It would also appear that West Yorkshire Police was either totally unaware of Fleming’s involvement in O9A, or did not think it was in anyway related to his politics. This meant that they ignored a possible Satanic/political element to his abuse, as well as the impact his views were having on others.

Through Iron March, which did much to develop the modern terrorist nazi scene, Fleming guided interested users to O9A texts in private messages. His profile on the forum was chilling: “The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don’t ask for their love; only for their fear.” Any knowledge of his involvement in O9A should have made the authorities far more concerned with statements like these.

We will probably never know how effective Fleming was in spreading his Satanism, but what we do know is that others within the NA orbit began dabbling in O9A.

When police raided Garron Helm for alleged membership of NA in September 2017, they should have noticed the framed O9A picture hanging above the mantelpiece in his living room. Likewise, they should also have realised that the picture stuck onto the notebook of Andrew Clarke, another former NA activist arrested at the same time, was the logo of O9A.

Helm became a strong believer, and described his participation in Prevent, the government’s deradicalisation programme, as “insight”. He is now rumoured to have begun recruiting for his own nexion in the North West.

ATOMWAFFEN DIVISION

More widely reported is O9A’s influence on the Atomwaffen Division (AWD), a US-based group that grew from Iron March in 2015, in part inspired by NA. The group aims to establish a network of leaderless cells in order to wage a brutal terrorist war and overthrow the system. Journalist Jake Hanrahan and ProPublica, who have done much to expose the leadership, organisation and ideology of AWD, estimated in February 2018 that the group had established as many as 20 cells across the US. However, since being linked to five murders, it has suffered crackdowns and numerous arrests.

AWD has also suffered deep internal rifts due to the increasing influence of O9A and ToB, a development that emerged after John Cameron Denton (AKA “Rape”) took control of the group. AWD has increasingly incorporated Satanic iconography into its propaganda, including images of Myatt, and also promoted O9A and ToB literature on its website. Its endorsement of books such as Liber 333 and especially Iron Gates, a horrific fiction that graphically depicts the murder of a child in its opening pages, has proved particularly divisive, with several AWD members quitting in protest in 2018.

Since then, ToB Satanists have reportedly strengthened their hold on AWD’s leadership. Journalist Nate Thayer reported last year that leading AWD activist Corwyn Storm Carver had posted pictures of himself posing with O9A literature while deployed in Kuwait with the US military, alongside the caption “Hidden in plain sight. #O9A #orderofnineangles #hostia #knowledge #esoteric #military #soldier”.

SONNERKRIEG DIVISION

While it would appear that O9A got involved in National Action either as ‘insight’ or to recruit, a much stronger link existed with the Sonnenkrieg Division (SKD). SKD emerged as a split from within System Resistance Network (itself an NA splinter group), after several members were expelled due to their preoccupation with O9A. Members of the small group, which described itself as an “offshoot” of AWD, celebrated rape, paedophilia and murder, and, like Fleming, were fixated on the Moors murderers.

In June 2019, SKD members Michal Szewczuk, 19, and Oskar Dunn-Koczorowski, 18 (previously a member of NA), received four years and 18 months, respectively, for terror-related offences. Szewczuk ran a blog that encouraged the rape and torture of opponents, including small children, and Dunn-Koczorowski wrote about decapitating babies.

In September 2019 Jacek Tchorzewski, 18, who had links to SKD, received jail time for possessing bombmaking manuals and instructions on how to make firearms. He was also found to have Satanist literature depicting rape and paedophilia at his house. Disturbing images of the apparent rape of a woman, who had a swastika cut into her flesh, were also circulated by another alleged member of the group.

HOPE not hate is aware of several other SKD activists linked to the O9A.

Recently, a nazi who was just 16 at the time of his arrest, became the youngest person ever convicted for planning a terror attack in the UK, and was jailed for six years and eight months. He was obsessed with Satanism, etching the O9A symbol into his revolting terror manual.

“I believe there is primal enjoyment to be had in sadism,” he wrote. “How wonderful it is to be an amoral individual”.

THE SPREAD

The threat of O9A also manifests through the propaganda spread by its supporters. The internet, and particularly the encrypted platforms increasingly used by violent nazis, are awash with O9A and ToB material. Some such material focuses on pure nazism, while others gleefully promote sexual violence. This is especially the case across the so-called Terrorgram network on the messaging app Telegram, which is detailed elsewhere in this report.

There are several small dedicated O9A channels and groups on Telegram, spaces where PDF files of O9A/ToB texts and music are shared, and occult propaganda, sometimes featuring Myatt’s face, is posted. The relatively large channel “RapeWaffen”, which claims to have splintered from AWD, states that its “official beliefs are o9a Satanism and Esoteric Rapistism”, encouraging followers to “JOIN YOUR LOCAL NEXION”.

What is most disconcerting is that O9A material has become so commonplace and normalised that it is even accepted by those who do not actually share in its Satanism. HOPE not hate knows of one person, currently awaiting trial on a terrorism charge, who shared O9A material while stressing that he did not actually agree with it all.

“I am not into O9A, I’ve read into their stuff […] it isn’t mind blowing stuff”, he wrote, yet he regularly used O9A symbols in his artwork, thereby extending its spread.

Many people understandably find it difficult to discern the extent to which support for O9A/ToB is sincere, as its terminology and trappings have taken on lives of their own, adopted into the lexicon of the wider terroristic far right. Embossing propaganda and weapons-making manuals with Satanic symbols provides them with a sheen of occult mystery, and the sheer notoriety of O9A means that references to it function as shorthands for extremism and violence.

O9A continues to be a divisive force on the extreme right, and the proliferation of its ideas and imagery on platforms such as Telegram is much to the dismay of other nazis. One far-right channel exists solely to “expose” O9A Satanism on Telegram, considering Satanists to be violating the purity of National Socialism, degrading it into “utter hopelessness, nihilism and pointless hatred”. This only intensifies the allure for some; O9A is enticing to certain individuals precisely because it frightens, and holds status as the “edgiest” set of beliefs available. But given the history and writings of Myatt and others, O9A’s links to people connected to terrorism in the UK, and the violence of groups linked to it in the US, we have to take O9A seriously.

TIME FOR ACTION

In the post-organisational far right, where young people are increasingly radicalised online and getting drawn into the occult, the allure of the O9A is growing. For an organisation that spent decades on the fringes of the fringe, its propaganda and message has become more widely distributed than ever before.

O9A’s sick ideas have drawn in young extremists in the UK and elsewhere, and have helped nourish a dangerous culture of unprecedented depravity amongst the extreme right, which has none of the moral constraints that previous generations of far-right activists had.

Reflecting on 40 years of political activity, Myatt said in a 2005 interview with Aryan Nations: “In my own life, I have tried to create some things which can disrupt our societies and which can lead to the creation of strong, really dangerous, ruthless individuals – some things which are so subversive that no laws could ever outlaw them, and that attempts to restrain them, to outlaw them, would only make them more attractive to some individuals.”

It is time that the Order of Nine Angles is proscribed by the UK Government as a terrorist organisation.

