Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege

A new wave of aspiring neo-Nazi terrorists has arisen--including the infamous Atomwaffen Division. And they have a bible: James Mason’s Siege, which praises terrorism, serial killers, and Charles Manson. Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism, based on years of archival work and interviews, documents for the first time the origins of Siege.

First, it shows how Mason’s vision arose from debates by 1970s neo-Nazis who splintered off the American Nazi Party/National Socialist White People’s Party and spun off a terrorist faction. Second, it unveils how four 1980s countercultural figures--musicians Boyd Rice and Michael Moynihan, Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey, and Satanist Nikolas Schreck--discovered, promoted, and published Mason. Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism explores a previously overlooked period and unearths the hidden connections between a countercultural clique and violent neo-Nazis--which together have set the template for today’s Neo-nazi terrorist underground.

It is obligatory reading for those interested in contemporary terrorism, postwar countercultures, and the history of the U.S. Far Right and neo-Nazism.

Spencer Sunshine holds a PhD in Sociology and has written extensively on the U.S. Far Right. He is the author of Looking Left at Antisemitism: Antisemitism on the Left, Right and In-Between in the United States (forthcoming) and the organizing guide 40 Ways to Fight Fascists (2020), and is co-editor--with Pam Chamberlain, Matthew N. Lyons, and Abby Scher--of the Chip Berlet festschrift Exposing the Right and Fighting for Democracy (Routledge, 2022). Sunshine has also written for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Daily Beast, TheForward, and Truthout, and has been translated into numerous languages.