David Myatt

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

David Myatt
Tanganyika
NationalityBritish
Other namesAbdul-Aziz bin Myatt
Occupation(s)Author, religious leader, and British far-right and Islamist militant[1][2][3]
Years active1968–present:
1968–1998 (Neo-Nazism)
1974-2016 (Order of Nine Angles)
1998–2009 (Islam)
2010–present (Numinous Way)
Known forNeo-Nazism, Order of Nine Angles, Numinous Way

David Wulstan Myatt

White nationalist theistic Satanist organization Order of Nine Angles (ONA) from 1974 onwards.[1][2][3] He is also the founder of Numinous Way[5][6][7] and a former Muslim.[7]

Early life

David Wulstan Myatt grew up in

Midlands[9][10]

According to Jeffrey Kaplan, Myatt has undertaken "a global odyssey which took him on extended stays in the Middle East and East Asia, accompanied by studies of religions ranging from Christianity to Islam in the Western tradition and Taoism and Buddhism in the Eastern path. In the course of this Siddhartha-like search for truth, Myatt sampled the life of the monastery in both its Christian and Buddhist forms."[11]

Beliefs and career

Political scientist George Michael writes that Myatt has "arguably done more than any other theorist to develop a synthesis of the extreme right and Islam,"[8] and is "arguably England's principal proponent of contemporary neo-Nazi ideology and theoretician of revolution."[12]

He described Myatt as an "intriguing theorist"[8] whose "Faustian quests"[8] not only involved studying Taoism and spending time in a Buddhist and later a Christian monastery,[13] but also allegedly involved exploring the occult, and Paganism and what Michael calls "quasi-Satanic" secret societies, while remaining a committed National Socialist.[13]

In 2000, British anti-fascist magazine

terrorism [...] Myatt is believed to have been behind a 15-page document which called for race war, under the imprint White Wolves."[14]

At a 2003

Jihadi,[16] is supported by Professor Robert S. Wistrich, who writes that Myatt, when a Muslim, was a staunch advocate of "Jihad, suicide missions and killing Jews..." and also "an ardent defender of bin Laden".[17] One of Myatt's writings justifying suicide attacks was, for several years, on the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades (the military wing) section of the Hamas website.[18]

In addition to writing about Islam and National Socialism, Myatt has translated works by Sophocles,[19][20] Sappho,[21] Aeschylus,[22][23] and Homer.[24] He has also developed a mystical philosophy which he calls The Numinous Way[25] and invented a three-dimensional board-game, the Star Game.[26]

Alleged involvement with occultism

Myatt is alleged to have been the founder of the occult group the Order of Nine Angles (ONA/O9A) or to have taken it over,[27] written the publicly available teachings of the ONA under the pseudonym Anton Long,[28] with his role being "paramount to the whole creation and existence of the ONA". According to Senholt, "ONA-inspired activities, led by protagonist David Myatt, managed to enter the scene of grand politics and the global 'War On Terror', because of several foiled terror plots in Europe that can be linked to Myatt's writings".[29]

David Myatt has always denied such allegations about involvement with the ONA.[30]

George Sieg expressed doubts regarding Myatt being Long, writing that he considered it to be "implausible and untenable based on the extent of variance in writing style, personality, and tone" between Myatt and Long's writings.[31] Jeffrey Kaplan also suggested that Myatt and Long are separate people,[32] as did the religious studies scholar Connell R. Monette who wrote that it was quite possible that 'Anton Long' was a pseudonym used by multiple individuals over the last 30 years.[33]

Order of Nine Angles

The

White supremacist international networks,[35] most notably the Iron March forum.[35]

Myatt is regarded as an "example of the axis between right-wing extremists and Islamists",[6][36] and has been described as an "extremely violent, intelligent, dark, and complex individual";[37] as a martial arts expert;[38][39] as one of the more interesting figures on the British neo-Nazi scene since the 1970s,[38][40][41][42] and as a key Al-Qaeda propagandist.[43] According to Daniel Koehler of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, Myatt "is a complex persona who defies simple answers to the question of why he changed groups and milieus so often and so fundamentally. It is also obvious, that during large parts of his life, Myatt was driven by a search for meaning and purpose."[44]

Before his conversion to Islam in 1998,[45][46][47] Myatt was the first leader of the British National Socialist Movement (NSM),[5][48] and was identified by The Observer, as the "ideological heavyweight" behind Combat 18.[38]

Myatt came to public attention in 1999, a year after his Islamic conversion, when a pamphlet he allegedly wrote many years earlier, A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution, described as a "detailed step-by-step guide for terrorist insurrection",

David Copeland, who left nailbombs in areas frequented by London's black, South Asian, and gay communities.[50] Three people died and 129 were injured in the explosions, several of them losing limbs. It has also been suggested that Myatt's A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution might have influenced the German National Socialist Underground.[51][52]

In 2021 The Counter Extremism Project listed Myatt as one of the world's 20 most dangerous extremists.[53]

Political activism

Myatt joined Colin Jordan's British Movement, a neo-Nazi group, in 1968, where he sometimes acted as Jordan's bodyguard at meetings and rallies.[54] Myatt would later become Leeds Branch Secretary and a member of British Movement's National Council.[55] From the 1970s until the 1990s, he remained involved with paramilitary and neo-Nazi organisations such as Column 88 and Combat 18,[56][57] and was imprisoned twice for violent offences in connection with his political activism.[8]

Myatt was the founder and first leader of the

David Copeland was a member. He also co-founded, with Eddy Morrison, the neo-Nazi organization the NDFM (National Democratic Freedom Movement) which was active in Leeds, England, in the early 1970s,[60] and the neo-Nazi Reichsfolk group,[61][62] and which Reichsfolk organization "aimed to create a new Aryan elite, The Legion of Adolf Hitler, and so prepare the way for a golden age in place of 'the disgusting, decadent present with its dishonourable values and dis-honourable weak individuals'".[63]

Of the NDFM,

John Tyndall wrote (in a polemic against NDFM co-founder Eddy Morrison): "The National Democratic Freedom Movement made little attempt to engage in serious politics but concentrated its activities mainly upon acts of violence against its opponents. [...] Before very long the NDFM had degenerated into nothing more than a criminal gang."[64][65]

It is also alleged that in the early 1980s Myatt tried to establish a Nazi-occultist commune in Shropshire,[38] and which project was advertised in Colin Jordan's Gothic Ripples newsletter,[66] with Goodrick-Clark writing that "after marrying and settling in Church Stretton in Shropshire, [Myatt] attempted in 1983 to set up a rural commune within the framework of Colin Jordan's Vanguard Project for neo-nazi utopias publicized in Gothic Ripples".[67]

Michael writes that Myatt took over the leadership of Combat 18 in 1998, when

Charlie Sargent, the previous leader, was jailed for murder.[8]

Alleged influence on David Copeland

In November 1997, Myatt allegedly posted a

anti-Semitic pamphlet he had written called Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution on a website based in British Columbia, Canada by Bernard Klatt. The pamphlet included chapter titles such as "Assassination", "Terror Bombing", and "Racial War".[68] According to Michael Whine of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, "[t]he contents provided a detailed step-by-step guide for terrorist insurrection with advice on assassination targets, rationale for bombing and sabotage campaigns, and rules of engagement."[49]

In February 1998, detectives from S012 Scotland Yard raided Myatt's home in Worcestershire and removed his computers and files. He was arrested on suspicion of incitement to murder and incitement to racial hatred,[49] but the case later dropped, after a three-year investigation, because the evidence supplied by the Canadian authorities was not enough to secure a conviction.[68]

It was a copy of the Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution pamphlet that, in 1999, was discovered by police in the flat of David Copeland,

Admiral Duncan pub on Old Compton Street in London, frequented by the black, Asian, and gay communities respectively.[70] Friends John Light, Nick Moore, and Andrea Dykes and her unborn child died in the Admiral Duncan pub. Copeland told police he had been trying to spark a "racial war."[48]

Following the conviction of Copeland for murder on 30 June 2000, after a trial at the Old Bailey, one newspaper wrote of Myatt: "This is the man who shaped mind of a bomber; Cycling the lanes around Malvern, the mentor who drove David Copeland to kill [...] Riding a bicycle around his Worcestershire home town sporting a wizard-like beard and quirky dress-sense, the former monk could easily pass as a country eccentric or off-beat intellectual. But behind David Myatt's studious exterior lies a more sinister character that has been at the forefront of extreme right-wing ideology in Britain since the mid-1960s."[71]

According to the BBC's

Panorama, in 1998 when Myatt was leader of the NSM, he called for "the creation of racial terror with bombs".[48] Myatt is also quoted by Searchlight as having stated that "[t]he primary duty of all National Socialists is to change the world. National Socialism means revolution: the overthrow of the existing System and its replacement with a National-Socialist society. 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".[14]

Conversion to Islam

Myatt converted to

Islamist groups, and believed that he shared common enemies with Islam, namely "the capitalist-consumer West and international finance."[72]

While, initially, some critics, specifically the anti-fascist Searchlight organization, suggested that Myatt's conversion "may be just a political ploy to advance his own failing anti-establishment agenda",[73] it is now generally accepted that his conversion was genuine.[74][75][76][77][78][79][80]

As a Muslim, he travelled and spoke in several Arab countries,[81] and wrote one of the most detailed defenses in the English language of Islamic suicide attacks.[82] He also expressed support for the Taliban,[6] and referred to the Holocaust as a "hoax".[47] An April 2005 NATO workshop heard that Myatt had called on "all enemies of the Zionists to embrace the Jihad" against Jews and the United States.[83]

According to an article in The Times published on 24 April 2006, Myatt then believed that: "The pure authentic Islam of the revival, which recognises practical jihad as a duty, is the only force that is capable of fighting and destroying the dishonour, the arrogance, the materialism of the West ... For the West, nothing is sacred, except perhaps Zionists, Zionism, the hoax of the so-called Holocaust, and the idols which the West and its lackeys worship, or pretend to worship, such as democracy... Jihad is our duty. If nationalists, or some of them, desire to aid us, to help us, they can do the right thing, the honourable thing, and convert, revert, to Islam — accepting the superiority of Islam over and above each and every way of the West."[47]

Departure from Islam

In 2010, Myatt publicly announced that he had rejected both Islam[84] and extremism.[85]

Notes

  1. ISBN 1-55553-331-0
    .

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Abrams, Joe (Spring 2006). Wyman, Kelly (ed.). "The Religious Movements Homepage Project – Satanism: An Introduction". virginia.edu. University of Virginia. Archived from the original on 29 August 2006. Retrieved 30 December 2020.
  2. ^
    LCCN 2001004429
    .
  3. ^
    OCLC 1030572947
    .
  4. ^ R. Heickerö: Cyber Terrorism: Electronic Jihad, Strategic Analysis (Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses), Volume 38, Issue 4, p.561. Taylor & Francis, 2014.
  5. ^ a b Langenohl, Andreas Langenohl & Westphal, Kirsten. (eds.) "Comparing and Inter-Relating the European Union and the Russian Federation", Zentrum für internationale Entwicklungs- und Umweltforschung der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, November 2006, p.84.
  6. ^ a b c Michael, George. (2006) The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. University Press of Kansas, p. 142ff.
  7. ^ a b Monika Bartoszewicz: Controversies Of Conversions: The Potential Terrorist Threat of European Converts to Islam, PhD thesis, University of St Andrews (School of International Relations), 2012, p.71.
  8. ^ a b c d e f Michael, George. (2006) The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. University Press of Kansas, p. 142.
  9. ^ Sunday Mercury, July 9, 2000
  10. ^ Sunday Mercury, February 16, 2003
  11. ^ Kaplan, Jeffrey (2000). Encyclopedia of white power: a sourcebook on the radical racist right. Rowman & Littlefield, p. 216ff; p.512f
  12. ^ Michael, George. The New Media and the Rise of Exhortatory Terrorism. Strategic Studies Quarterly (USAF), Volume 7 Issue 1, Spring 2013.
  13. ^ a b Michael, George. (2006) The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. University Press of Kansas, p. 143.
  14. ^ a b Theoretician of Terror, Searchlight, issue #301, July 2000.
  15. ^ Simon Wiesenthal Center: Response, Summer 2003, Vol 24, #2
  16. ^ Myatt was described by author Martin Amis as "a fierce Jihadi". The Second Plane. Jonathan Cape, 2008, p.157
  17. ISBN 978-1-4000-6097-9
  18. ^ Durham, Martin. White Rage: The Extreme Right and American Politics. Routledge, 2007, p.113
  19. ^ J. Michael Walton: Found in Translation: Greek Drama in English, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp.206, 221, 227
  20. ^ Morawetz, Thomas (1996) Empathy and Judgment, Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities: Vol. 8, Issue 2, p.526
  21. ^ Gary Daher Canedo: Safo y Catulo: poesía amorosa de la antigüedad, Universidad Nur, 2005.
  22. ^ J. Michael Walton: Found in Translation: Greek Drama in English, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp.206
  23. ^ Bethany Rainsberg: Rewriting the Greeks: The Translations, Adaptations, Distant Relatives and Productions of Aeschylus' Tragedies, Ohio State University, 2010, p.176f.
  24. ^ Smith, S: Epic Logos, in Globalisation and its discontents, Boydell & Brewer, 2006
  25. ^ Senholt, Jacob C: Political Esotericism & the convergence of Radical Islam, Satanism and National Socialism in the Order of the Nine Angles. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Conference: Satanism in the Modern World, November 2009. [2][permanent dead link]
  26. ISBN 9780814731550
  27. ^ Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. Black Sun, NYU Press, 2002, p. 218.
  28. ^ Ryan, Nick. Into a World of Hate. Routledge, 2003, p. 54.
  29. ISBN 9780199779246
  30. ^ Ryan, Nick. Into a World of Hate. Routledge, 2003, p. 53.
  31. ^ Sieg, George. Angular Momentum: From Traditional to Progressive Satanism in the Order of Nine Angles. International Journal for the Study of New Religions, volume 4, number 2. 2013. p.257.
  32. ISBN 978-1-55553-331-1
    . Kaplan additionally states that the individual who used the pseudonym Anton Long was a friend of Myatt's in the 1970s and 1980s.
  33. ISBN 978-1-940964-00-3
  34. ISBN 978-1-57607-292-9
    .
  35. ^
    pagan neo-fascists a belief in a primordial spirituality that has been supplanted by the Abrahamic faiths
    . Its doctrines are apocalyptic, predicting a final confrontation between monotheistic "Magian" civilization and primordial "Faustian" European spirituality. The skull mask network groups are not religiously monolithic, and most accept members who are not O9A adherents, but O9A philosophy has had a strong influence on the culture of the network. The O9A texts emphasize solitary rituals and the sense of membership in a superhuman spiritual elite. The O9A texts do not make social or financial demands on new adherents. Psychological commitment is instead generated through secrecy and the challenging, sometimes criminal, nature of the initiatory and devotional rituals. Because the rituals are solitary and self-administered, they create a set of shared 'transcendent' experiences that enhance group cohesion without the need for members to be geographically close to each other. Its leaderless structure and self-administered initiations make the O9A worldview uniquely well-suited to spread through online social networks, while the ritual violence used in O9A religious ceremonies contributed to the habituation of individual skull mask network members to violence.
  36. ISBN 3-531-14514-2
    , pp.61-64.
  37. ^ Raine, Susan. The Devil's Party (Book review). Religion, Volume 44, Issue 3, July 2014, pp. 529-533.
  38. ^ a b c d "Right here, right now", The Observer, February 9, 2003
  39. Independent.co.uk. Archived from the original
    on 2 October 2015. The Independent, Sunday 1 February 1998
  40. ^ Arkadiusz Sołtysiak. Neopogaństwo i neonazizm: Kilka słów o ideologiach Davida Myatta i Varga Vikernesa. Antropologia Religii. Wybór esejów. Tom IV, (2010), s. 173-182
  41. ISBN 978-3-531-17191-3
  42. ^ Jeffrey Kaplan (ed.). David Wulstan Myatt. In: Encyclopedia of White Power. A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA 2000, p. 216ff; p.514f
  43. ^ "Far right hate is spiralling out of control", The Independent, February 18, 2019.
  44. ISBN 9781108911283
  45. ^ Michael, George. (2006) The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. University Press of Kansas, p. 147.
  46. ^ Greven, Thomas (ed) (2006) Globalisierter Rechtsextremismus? Rechtsextremismus in der Ära der Globalisierung. VS Verlag, p.62
  47. ^ a b c Woolcock, Nicola & Kennedy, Dominic. "What the neo-Nazi fanatic did next: switched to Islam", The Times, April 24, 2006.
  48. ^ a b c BBC Panorama, June 30, 2000.
  49. ^ a b c Whine, Michael. Cyberspace: A New Medium for Communication, Command and Control by Extremists, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Volume 22, Issue 3. Taylor & Francis. 1999.
  50. ^ "Panorama Special: The Nailbomber", BBC, June 30, 2000.
  51. ISBN 9781137396211
  52. ^ "Ikke så ensomme ulve". Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 23 September 2012.
  53. ^ The Top 20 Most Dangerous Extremists", Jan, 2021
  54. ^ Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. "Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth and Neo-Nazism", NYU Press, 2000, p.215
  55. ISBN 9781472514592
  56. ^ Goodrick-Clark, N. (2001) pp.215-217 Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. (chapter 11 in particular)
  57. ^ Lowles, N. (2001) White Riot: The Violent Story of Combat 18. Milo Books, England; this edition 2003
  58. ^ Arkadiusz Sołtysiak. Neopogaństwo i neonazizm: Kilka słów o ideologiach Davida Myatta i Varga Vikernesa. Antropologia Religii. Wybór esejów. Tom IV, (2010), s. 173-182
  59. ^ Goodrick-Clark, N. (2001) p.50 Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity
  60. ^ Goodrick-Clark, N. (2001) p.217 Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity
  61. ^ Jeffrey Kaplan (ed.). David Wulstan Myatt. In: Encyclopedia of White Power. A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, CA 2000, p. 216ff; p.512f
  62. ^ Taguieff, Pierre-André. (2004). Prêcheurs de haine. Traversée de la judéophobie planétaire, Paris, Mille et une Nuits, "Essai", pp. 788-789
  63. ISBN 0814731244
  64. ^ Spearhead. April, 1983
  65. ^ See also David Myatt and the Occult-Fascist Axis, in the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, No. 241 (July 1995), pp.6–7, where it is stated that NDFM members, including Myatt, were involved in a series of violent attacks on coloured people and left-wingers.
  66. ^ Searchlight, #104 (February 1984) and #106 (April 1984(
  67. ISBN 0814731244
  68. ^
    ISBN 1-58450-389-0
  69. ISBN 9781317190882
    , p.156.
  70. ISBN 3-531-14514-2
    , pp.61-64.
  71. ^ Sunday Mercury, July 9, 2000
  72. ^ Michael, George. (2006) The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. University Press of Kansas, p. 144.
  73. ^ Amardeep Bassey (16 February 2003). "Midland Nazi turns to Islam". Birmingham Mail. Retrieved 1 May 2006.
  74. ^ Miller, Rory (2007). British Anti-Zionism Then and Now. Covenant, Volume 1, Issue 2 (April 2007 / Iyar 5767), Herzliya, Israel.
  75. ^ "Common Motifs on Jihadi and Far Right Websites". Archived from the original on 23 September 2007. Retrieved 23 March 2007.
  76. ISBN 0-89526-078-6
  77. ^ Amis, Martin (1 December 2007). "No, I am not a racist". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
  78. ^ Amis, Martin. The Second Plane. Jonathan Cape, 2008, p.157
  79. ^ Alexandre Del Valle - The Reds, The Browns and the Greens or The Convergence of Totalitarianisms Archived 2011-07-07 at the Wayback Machine
  80. ^ http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/images/stories/pdfs/unlocking_al_qaeda.pdf[permanent dead link]
  81. ISBN 978-1-60750-536-5
  82. ISBN 978-1-60750-536-5
  83. ^ Karmon, Ely. "The Middle East, Iran, Palestine: Arenas for Radical and Anti-Globalization Groups Activity" Archived 15 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine.
  84. ISBN 9780230241299
  85. ^ Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Madeleine Blackman (2019). Fluidity of the Fringes: Prior Extremist Involvement as a Radicalization Pathway. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. Taylor & Francis. [3]

Further reading


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