The Immaturity of Modern Asatru

Modern Asatru is immature. This is something many sense, and in great need of remedy. While it is true that the ultimate remedy to immaturity is time and experience, and even granting Blake's dictum that the fool who persists in his folly grows wise, at the same time it must also be admitted that intelligence and initiative are often needed to propel a system out of immaturity, especially if it is an immaturity which can stillborn an important movement. Decisiveness and willingness to do what is necessary (within appropriate ethical bounds) to midwife a child are the signs of a strong, caring individual.

The first major mistake Asatru made was to be careless and timid in its stance towards racism. This has been a tremendous error, based on a timidity towards conflict that Tyr would blush with shame over, in an attempt to "avoid divisiveness", when it is precisely divisiveness on important matters that is necessary to midwife a movement into fuller integrity. The last thing one wants to do is have truck with racists, or leave without critique a volkism whose history is intricated in the history of the Nazis (a history which certainly must be faced square-on if one even has a shadow of a hope of extricating it from that context). Gods of the Blood should be required reading in every kindred, and if its discussion, or the larger discussion about racism, sparks fiery, intense debates, are you going to tell me that a religion based on our Gods is going to shy away from meaningful melee? Are you serious? Not on Odin's watch!

If fierce and creative debate about important matters alienate nidings, so much the better. The worst thing is to cater to nidings in the first place, especially if one is going to build an authentic and powerful movement. Better not to worry about being divisive or losing ranks if the issues are important enough to face. Unfortunately, much of modern Asatru is cowardly in this regard, pathologically avoidant of the issues of racism or ethnic nationalism instead of confronting such things head on in a bold and values-driven approach. There are discussion groups that have the gall to call themselves "anti-racist", and then go on to define "anti-racism" as a prohibition against discussing racism --- and they engage in this snivelling shadow-discourse without blushing! That combines nerve, cowardice, and the parochial attitude into one disgusting ball!

Honor doesn't have anything to do with popularity. It has to do with integrity. If we want an Asatru we can be proud of, we have to build on the proper foundations, and that will require a critique of everything that has come out of global fascism and racism, and demands a historical sense amongst the Asatru that does not allow simplistic thinking about complex matters, nor retreats from difficult social and cultural challenges into the prejudices of the past. I would like to see an Asatru where those whose blood seeks out ideologies to justify their prejudices finding a good dose of sobering, cold water thrown onto their reactionary tendencies, amongst smiling faces holding out a helping hand to those who can pass the necessary hazing and initiation into mature, adult collaboration, based on practical, informed, but more importantly, educated wisdom, and let me be precise in my definitions : education is not simply the elaboration of information in order to leave the prejudiced core unchallenged, but rather, precisely, the development of the self through the creative confrontation with difference, in which the core is liberated from the parochial through a broadening of its own perspectives ; not in a way that denies its localism or its folkroots, but rather strips it of its narrowness. Education is meant to broaden our horizons, not to merely inform our chauvinism. Confrontation of racism is merely the first step in ridding the movement of narrowness, but a necessary step it is indeed, for nothing good can come out of shameful avoidance, and it is the foundational hedge against the tradition and its symbols being entirely appropriated by nidings who would turn it -- and are turning it -- towards their own heinous, uneducated aims.